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The Truth Is Paywalled but the Lies Are Free

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Re: The Truth Is Paywalled but the Lies Are Free

#501

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well the point of the NYT article totally evaporates if you read the HN post. PG is explicitly saying that no-one knows the effect that this will have, but better to prepare for the worst. And that's the thing: if you cannot trust that someone makes their point as neutrally as possible, they become worthless for me as a source of condensed information. Rather look up the original source then for myself.

It's even worse than that, their sentence after the quote implies PG said something about FB stock. https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1236980342667575296?s=20 The NYT writer isn't mistakenly summarizing, they're actively misleading. They had to read through PG's post and selectively pick a line that they could stuff into the position they already had, to say the thing they already wanted to say. It's just motivated re…

Sadly, NYT does this frequently to push their own ends.

In one story, they tried really hard to push for authoritarian laws to protect children and ended up wading through history to find a retracted and discredited paper. All this to make criminals look more dangerous than they actually are. They even admitted it was an old retracted paper in the article. But downplayed it.

If the evidence was so solid, they could have cited a more recent paper of higher prestige.

Re: The Truth Is Paywalled but the Lies Are Free

#502
post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your conspiracy theory is a conspiracy fact when you think about peoples motivations. Take the current virus. We realize that the republican version of 'it's a hoax and everything is fine' is a lie. But so is the democrat version of 'you need to never leave your house or you're a murderer'. The simple fact is that without having solid numbers for: 1). The true infection rate. 2). The true age-adjusted mortality rate.…

I don't think it's a democratic perspective to be on the safer than sorry "version of the virus".

But the safer side is a political battle.

Saving lives by preventing viral spread sounds good until the economic and societal damage of the preventative measures lead to more harm than they prevented.

Funny enough many of this and other virus worst symptoms are the bodies natural response to the virus. Inflammation for instance is the bodies response to damage, bit it can in turn cause more damage than the original source of issue.

Re: The Truth Is Paywalled but the Lies Are Free

#503

The linked article concludes: "Creators must be compensated well. But at the same time we have to try to keep things that are important and profound from getting locked away where few people will see them. The truth needs to be free and universal." Let's also consider whether lies should be made more expensive. Free costs more than it's worth.

Let's also consider whether lies should be made more expensive. Whether lies should be more expensive or not, lies cannot be made expensive. Even in a totalitarian state, false rumors spread easily. The cost of production of lies is close to zero, the cost of distribution of lies also close to zero. It's like all of HN is eager to apply an argument that makes sense for cheap, knock-off auto parts ("Cheap is too expen…

>Whether lies should be more expensive or not, lies cannot be made expensive.

But they can. Defamation laws make false claims expensive. Accounts can be revoked. Costs can be imposed if society has the will to do so.

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