4 ms·

I get a little bit of exposure to white nationalist blogs since they are occasionally quoted by neoreactionary blogs. I don't agree with their normative conclus

I get a little bit of exposure to white nationalist blogs since they are occasionally quoted by neoreactionary blogs. I don't agree with their normative conclusions at all, but their factual claims seem reasonably accurate. There was a great article on this recently: http://hurryupharry.org/2016/11/27/who-gave-us-post-truth-conspiracy-culture-and-the-alt-right/ http://hurryupharry.org/2016/11/27/who-gave-us-post-truth-co... Some years ago, a friend sent me a shocking article. It said hundreds of British girls were being systematically gang-raped by Muslim gangs. It claimed this was being covered-up. I’ve never had time for conspiracy theories, especially when they look as hateful as those in the article....I wrote a curt reply to my friend: “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t send me made-up crap from neo-Nazi websites”. Some months later, I read the seminal exposé of the (mainly) ethnic-Pakistani grooming gang phenomenon by Andrew Norfolk in The Sunday Times. Of all the people pushing for Facebook to suppress "fake news", I've not heard a single one that had a plausible mechanism to make sure true stories like this don't also get suppressed.

pjc50 10y ago
The whole Rotherham grooming business is one of those things that really ought to have had a national inquiry to establish what happened and punish the guilty and the negligent. Instead it's seemingly vanished from mainstream public discussion. Can we even name any of the victims? Or even any of the perpetrators? It's going to be like Hillsborough or Orgreave but for the right instead of the left: a historical injustice flag to wave for decades. Ignoring it is a massive disaster for race relations.
lovich 10y ago
I agree with your point that theres not really a solution anyones putting forth that prevents false positives, but I wouldn't agree that its entirely necessary. You are never going to get a system that is 100% accurate so I feel it would be better to focus on being as accurate as possible. This would involve false positives and negatives to some degree. What degree that should be isn't apparent yet, but I don't think that 100% accuracy is realistic
- nitrogen 10y ago
  The solution to imperfect binary true/false decisions is to stop making binary decisions, and instead provide a probability and confidence interval (dressed in non-mathematician-friendly UI), with several references to verifications or refutations.
- yummyfajitas 10y ago
  I think that the costs of giving back control to the mainstream media drastically exceed the benefits of stopping some misinformation. I'd prefer the whole truth mixed with lies to a partial truth that is also mixed with lies (what we had before when the mainstream media controlled everything).
  - lovich 10y ago
    And that's an argument I can understand

pjc50 10y ago

The whole Rotherham grooming business is one of those things that really ought to have had a national inquiry to establish what happened and punish the guilty and the negligent. Instead it's seemingly vanished from mainstream public discussion. Can we even name any of the victims? Or even any of the perpetrators? It's going to be like Hillsborough or Orgreave but for the right instead of the left: a historical injustice flag to wave for decades. Ignoring it is a massive disaster for race relations.

lovich 10y ago

I agree with your point that theres not really a solution anyones putting forth that prevents false positives, but I wouldn't agree that its entirely necessary. You are never going to get a system that is 100% accurate so I feel it would be better to focus on being as accurate as possible. This would involve false positives and negatives to some degree. What degree that should be isn't apparent yet, but I don't think that 100% accuracy is realistic

nitrogen 10y ago
The solution to imperfect binary true/false decisions is to stop making binary decisions, and instead provide a probability and confidence interval (dressed in non-mathematician-friendly UI), with several references to verifications or refutations.
yummyfajitas 10y ago
I think that the costs of giving back control to the mainstream media drastically exceed the benefits of stopping some misinformation. I'd prefer the whole truth mixed with lies to a partial truth that is also mixed with lies (what we had before when the mainstream media controlled everything).
- lovich 10y ago
  And that's an argument I can understand