4 ms·

No, in fact I do want to read an interview with the Google Manifesto guy. I totally understand why you want to filter those out from your life, and I also want

No, in fact I do want to read an interview with the Google Manifesto guy. I totally understand why you want to filter those out from your life, and I also want to filter a lot of things out of my life too. But that's our problem, not the media's. I think the job of journalism is to give you what needs to be heard instead of what you want to hear. Being unbiased is not easy so I think at least media needs to provide as many sides of the story as possible so that each value judgment cancels out and the consumer can make the right decision based on complete set of information. The problem with the current mainstream media is that every one of them has become "Buzzfeed"ified, which means they try very hard to optimize content AND their interpretation to cater to their existing audience. This is why you see acceleration in polarization. And this is why you see so many people sharing articles talking shit about Hilary Clinton or Donald Trump. They just want to be reinforced with content AND value judgment of what they want to believe in. This is human nature and we as consumers cannot easily change to act rationally because we have other better things to do in our lives than focusing every waking hour of our lives into useless political debate or whatever that's being marketed through the media. This is why I think this is journalism's job. I no longer can trust any one side coverage of a single story so have started following multiple sources just so i can make a sane judgment on anything that's happening around me. You should try that too, it's amazing how almost always different parties write extremely different interpretation of the same objective static fact that doesn't need to be sensationalized. Maybe many people may want to live in the matrix and just believe what they want to believe, but personally I do want to know exactly what I'm being fed and don't want to brainwashed with propaganda. I realize this is something that's not easily possible within the traditional centralized organizational structure (because they have to make money) which is why I think the new decentralized trust-less technologies may be able to help.

acdha 9y ago
You want to read an interview with the Google Manifesto guy not because it’s not propaganda but because it’s propaganda you agree with: massive political agenda, big claims unsupported by evidence or logic, designed to sound science-y to people without prior experience with the issue, etc. — that’s worse on every axis than the journalists you’ve been attacking. This also neatly sums up why “tell every side” is the same disastrous pitfall it’s been since creationists were advancing it on USENET. Expertise and facts matter, and on many issues they’re very unevenly distrusted. On things like climate change, evolution, etc. increasing the number of sides is simply increasing the number of known-incorrect things you’re exposed to, and most people lack the time or background to tell them apart, especially when many of them are actively being gamed by people who stand to profit from spreading those falsehoods.
- peoplewindow 9y ago
  I think your post is indicative of the problem journalists face here. Manifesto Guy was backed up by actual scientists who spoke out to say he'd got the science right, he provided many citations of scientific papers, most of what he wrote was about Google's own culture anyway (and those parts were clearly supported by leaked communications), and in interviews he dwelled on his own firing - a fact. To you it's just "science-y sounding" and "unsupported by evidence or logic". But what he said is all true. You can read the studies or look at the statistics yourself. There is a clear imbalance in interest (vs ability) between genders in the field of computer science. By denying this you make yourself the gender-science equivalent of a climate change denier.
  - acdha 9y ago
    > Manifesto Guy was backed up by actual scientists who spoke out to say he'd got the science right, he provided many citations of scientific papers, Thanks for inadvertently providing a great example for why this is so hard: what you said is wrong but recognizing that requires time – simply reading that turgid slog of an essay, recognizing the difference between a blog post or option piece (i.e. most of his citations) and peer reviewed publications in respected journals (of which he cited almost none), reading the few cited papers to see how they supported the claim being made and whether those results had been upheld or were suspect within the field (most of the remaining items), and using a logical framework to tell whether they were even relevant to the issue being discussed. That’s a lot of work and most people are going to skip it in favor of picking the side closest to what they already believe, or which is the most entertainingly written, as you did. Most people are going to look at the issue, decide it’s too complicated and find something else, missing the fact that there’s far more scientific consensus among people who actually study the issue at hand. As an example of what that looks like, consider https://medium.com/@tweetingmouse/the-truth-has-got-its-boots-on-what-the-evidence-says-about-mr-damores-google-memo-bc93c8b2fdb9 https://medium.com/@tweetingmouse/the-truth-has-got-its-boot... – someone went to the trouble of figuring out original sources, analyzing specific claims, citing everything … and the most common complaint was that it was too long. At some point, it’s unreasonable to expect a general audience to follow the details of a big topic and that’s where journalists act as a useful filter finding relevant experts and filtering out the guys with degrees in other fields speculating wildly.

acdha 9y ago

You want to read an interview with the Google Manifesto guy not because it’s not propaganda but because it’s propaganda you agree with: massive political agenda, big claims unsupported by evidence or logic, designed to sound science-y to people without prior experience with the issue, etc. — that’s worse on every axis than the journalists you’ve been attacking. This also neatly sums up why “tell every side” is the same disastrous pitfall it’s been since creationists were advancing it on USENET. Expertise and facts matter, and on many issues they’re very unevenly distrusted. On things like climate change, evolution, etc. increasing the number of sides is simply increasing the number of known-incorrect things you’re exposed to, and most people lack the time or background to tell them apart, especially when many of them are actively being gamed by people who stand to profit from spreading those falsehoods.

peoplewindow 9y ago
I think your post is indicative of the problem journalists face here. Manifesto Guy was backed up by actual scientists who spoke out to say he'd got the science right, he provided many citations of scientific papers, most of what he wrote was about Google's own culture anyway (and those parts were clearly supported by leaked communications), and in interviews he dwelled on his own firing - a fact. To you it's just "science-y sounding" and "unsupported by evidence or logic". But what he said is all true. You can read the studies or look at the statistics yourself. There is a clear imbalance in interest (vs ability) between genders in the field of computer science. By denying this you make yourself the gender-science equivalent of a climate change denier.
- acdha 9y ago
  > Manifesto Guy was backed up by actual scientists who spoke out to say he'd got the science right, he provided many citations of scientific papers, Thanks for inadvertently providing a great example for why this is so hard: what you said is wrong but recognizing that requires time – simply reading that turgid slog of an essay, recognizing the difference between a blog post or option piece (i.e. most of his citations) and peer reviewed publications in respected journals (of which he cited almost none), reading the few cited papers to see how they supported the claim being made and whether those results had been upheld or were suspect within the field (most of the remaining items), and using a logical framework to tell whether they were even relevant to the issue being discussed. That’s a lot of work and most people are going to skip it in favor of picking the side closest to what they already believe, or which is the most entertainingly written, as you did. Most people are going to look at the issue, decide it’s too complicated and find something else, missing the fact that there’s far more scientific consensus among people who actually study the issue at hand. As an example of what that looks like, consider https://medium.com/@tweetingmouse/the-truth-has-got-its-boots-on-what-the-evidence-says-about-mr-damores-google-memo-bc93c8b2fdb9 https://medium.com/@tweetingmouse/the-truth-has-got-its-boot... – someone went to the trouble of figuring out original sources, analyzing specific claims, citing everything … and the most common complaint was that it was too long. At some point, it’s unreasonable to expect a general audience to follow the details of a big topic and that’s where journalists act as a useful filter finding relevant experts and filtering out the guys with degrees in other fields speculating wildly.