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NYT and vaping: How to lie by saying only true things (2022)

gwern.net

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Re: NYT and vaping: How to lie by saying only true things (2022)

#7

I sure am glad such deception is limited to that one vaping article.

I’m disappointed this is the first comment on this post.

gwern’s writing (including on nicotine) was formative for me; it showed me how and why the internet the was important: it let me read good, well written thinking I had never seen from the NYTs or my parents.

I first saw a link to gwern.net on HN. And I trusted the NYTs as an institution then, and do to this day… and I’m sure I clicked through, and took the gwern post seriously in part because comments weren’t universally negative.

You can point to bounded trust problems, or talk more about how “The Media Very Rarely Lies”…

But please don’t take up the first comment on a gwern post to cheap shot the NYTs

Re: NYT and vaping: How to lie by saying only true things (2022)

#9
One of the more amusing things about the vape panic is that it's now easier to purchase fentanyl adulterated meth in San Francisco than it is to get a Juul pod. And it's riskier to be a seller of the latter than the former.

Public health officials are throwing their credibility into a bonfire when they land on a fixation and use heavy handed strategies to pursue their goals, without a sense of proportionality or efficacy.

Re: NYT and vaping: How to lie by saying only true things (2022)

#10
nearly all the value in a news article comes from the collation of facts needed to formulate it.

i would much rather read this collation directly, give me bullet points. in such a structured format it would also be easier to analyze if a given statement is too specific or has too many qualifiers. it would also be easier to notice what's missing.

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