8 ms·

For those who might not have twigged from the domain, this is published by the Cato Institute, a think-tank has a clearly stated agenda to promote libertarianis

by dpwm 9y ago

For those who might not have twigged from the domain, this is published by the Cato Institute, a think-tank has a clearly stated agenda to promote libertarianism. Whatever your stance on libertarianism in general, it's not hard to imagine that a communist state is a libertarian's worst nightmare from an ideological perspective and that we should probably view this with the same scepticism we might from an article put out by a hypothetical pro-DPRK think-tank.

AnimalMuppet 9y ago
Yes and no. Yes, these people may come from a biased starting point. But North Korea is objectively horrible, no matter what your ideological starting point. When you start from a biased starting point and it's bad enough to shock you, even though you were biased in the beginning, then it's really bad.
- staticautomatic 9y ago
  That's not how cognitive dissonance vis a vis confirmation bias works.
- dpwm 9y ago
  I think the podcast was designed to shock you. The person interviewed in the podcast has a name, which you can google. He seems to have made a career out of shocking audiences of news sources at how bad the DPRK is. It appears that most is sourced from the accounts of defectors. There are some truly horrible accounts, I think we can agree on that. However, we must accept that we do not know the motives of the defectors. If they are paid for defecting with a story, then it is in the defector's interest to produce a story. Most residents of the DPRK do not defect. Defectors are not necessarily a representative sample of the DPRK. We cannot know from defectors alone if that is because they desire to and cannot, or do not desire to. Incidentally, we were both led to that podcast by an account that is 48 days old, has at the time of writing contributed not one comment in this community and is one of many accounts that only posts links to only this domain. Before you dismiss this as ad-hominem, the point I am making is that this is part of an agenda. The agenda is ostensibly not about making money, but promoting an ideology. This is quite overt, yet it seems that source evaluation is not entering into critical thinking any more.
  - AnimalMuppet 9y ago
    > He seems to have made a career out of shocking audiences of news sources at how bad the DPRK is. It appears that most is sourced from the accounts of defectors. OK, but this podcast was primarily based on a personal visit to NK, plus a bunch of the NK's own propaganda. (Yes, they did discuss at least one NK defector, but that wasn't the primary topic of discussion.)
  - Cyberdog 9y ago
    Okay, to you and others questioning the motives of defectors on fiduciary grounds, remember that defecting is a high crime in North Korea, and a difficult task. Most defectors don't attempt to simply rush the North-South border, because it is highly patrolled and likely to get you shot at by the North side. Instead they take an arduous trip through China, avoiding Chinese authorities who will deport them back to North Korea if caught. The families of defectors become social pariahs back home, if not worse. Defection is literally a life-risking act, and not only for the defectors. So defectors have to be extremely motivated to take the risks they do, and such people tend to have a story, yes; perhaps they make parts of them up, but I don't think most of them would really need to. At any rate, avoiding the country becoming like North Korea, or avoiding normalized relations or acceptance of the Nork regime, isn't really a goal of most libertarians, in the sense that such things are already far from happening in the first place.
  - FabHK 9y ago
    > Most residents of the DPRK do not defect [...] We cannot know from defectors alone if that is because they desire to and cannot, or do not desire to. Not sure you're seriously proposing that there is some sort of epistemic uncertainty about the quality of life in the DPRK; so let's just be clear: there isn't. Yes, the Cato institute is part of the Koch-funded right wing propaganda machine, and yes, they have an agenda. Still, there's no doubt that the DPRK is a brutal, totalitarian dictatorship with an atrocious human rights record.
klibertp 9y ago
I've read the whole transcript - the word "communism" appears exactly once in a whole discussion. Overall the amount of ideology in the article is minimal and they focus on describing the situation of North Koreans. Additionally, most of the talking is done by Michael Malice, who is an author of the book in question (Dear Reader); is he, too, affiliated with that think-tank (honest question)? I don't know him, but from what I read just now he doesn't seem like a rabid ideologue.
- vkou 9y ago
  > I've read the whole transcript - the word "communism" appears exactly once in a whole discussion. > Overall the amount of ideology in the article is minimal That is an incredibly poor limtus test for determining ideological bias in a publication.
  - klibertp 9y ago
    Ok, I'm willing to learn. Could you cite the paragraphs from the talk which reveal the ideological bias in this publication?
    - vkou 9y ago
      I was criticising the test, not the publication. There's a few things about bias. It is incredibly difficult to detect it when it is biased towards your political/philosophical/etc views. It can happen through comission (Outright lies about verifiable facts), implication (Weasel wording, leading questions), or omission (Lack of context, mentioning but down-playing inconvenient facts). Simply scanning a piece for trigger words isn't an indicator for, or against bias. I personally think that TFA is pretty reasonable. There's a few important pieces of context that a few of their points are missing, but it's not supposed to be a seven thousand page treatise, nor is it supposed to reflect on our society. I just take issue with the test.
- bambax 9y ago
  The interviewee quotes Ayn Rand with no warning or precaution, which is kind of surprising.
tannhauser23 9y ago
Yeah, and Amnesty International is a group with a "clearly stated agenda" to promote human rights. We still tend to trust their reports. I can't believe you're equivocating the Cato Institute with a pro-DPRK think tank. It's not possible to defend the North Korean state honestly - by contrast, an organization dedicated to libertarianism has the motive to expose North Korea's unbelievable human rights abuses. They're not even the same ballpark.
- 3pt14159 9y ago
  Yeah I have many problems with libertarianism, but the Cato Institute is biased but accurate source of information. Taking certain positions, like being pro-DPRK, literally require sacrificing objective truth. There is no comparison.
  - dpwm 9y ago
    Since when was the Cato institute an accurate source of information?
    - empthought 9y ago
      Since its beginning? It doesn’t fabricate information; it just has a quirky interpretation of said information.
      - dpwm 9y ago
        If it's neither pushing an agenda nor trying to manipulate nor influence, why is it that submissions to libertarianism.org are being made mostly from two accounts that do not seem to otherwise engage in this community? No comments, no other posts, just posts to libertarianism.org. Whilst there's nothing specifically in the guidelines against the practice of accounts that just post to one website, the articles do tend to be inherently political and are at least pushing the guidelines in that respect. Even if we assume the accuracy of the information is unquestionable, a very high bar that even the most respected of sources do not meet, the behaviour seems shady and makes me deeply suspicious that they will be pulling at least some of the other tactics that can be employed to mislead. Does it not occur as strange to you that the majority of content on that site that gets posted here as stories is being posted by people who have no engagement with this community other than to post links to that website?
mschuster91 9y ago
> it's not hard to imagine that a communist state is a libertarian's worst nightmare from an ideological perspective No, an authoritarian communist state is the (ordinary) libertarian's worst nightmare. You can also have a libertarian communist state - it just hasn't been tried before... or maybe it did, who knows, but anyway all the revolution leaders got dependent on the power they had and decided to stick with it.
- boomboomsubban 9y ago
  Libertarianism is fairly focused on property rights, otherwise it would just be anarchy. Hard to combine that with a communist economy.
woodandsteel 9y ago
> we should probably view this with the same scepticism we might from an article put out by a hypothetical pro-DPRK think-tank. You're absolutely right. The report is highly biased, and North Korea is a far more just, humanitarian, and prosperous place than the article wants you to believe.

by dpwm 9y ago

AnimalMuppet 9y ago

Yes and no. Yes, these people may come from a biased starting point. But North Korea is objectively horrible, no matter what your ideological starting point. When you start from a biased starting point and it's bad enough to shock you, even though you were biased in the beginning, then it's really bad.

staticautomatic 9y ago
That's not how cognitive dissonance vis a vis confirmation bias works.
dpwm 9y ago
I think the podcast was designed to shock you. The person interviewed in the podcast has a name, which you can google. He seems to have made a career out of shocking audiences of news sources at how bad the DPRK is. It appears that most is sourced from the accounts of defectors. There are some truly horrible accounts, I think we can agree on that. However, we must accept that we do not know the motives of the defectors. If they are paid for defecting with a story, then it is in the defector's interest to produce a story. Most residents of the DPRK do not defect. Defectors are not necessarily a representative sample of the DPRK. We cannot know from defectors alone if that is because they desire to and cannot, or do not desire to. Incidentally, we were both led to that podcast by an account that is 48 days old, has at the time of writing contributed not one comment in this community and is one of many accounts that only posts links to only this domain. Before you dismiss this as ad-hominem, the point I am making is that this is part of an agenda. The agenda is ostensibly not about making money, but promoting an ideology. This is quite overt, yet it seems that source evaluation is not entering into critical thinking any more.
- AnimalMuppet 9y ago
  > He seems to have made a career out of shocking audiences of news sources at how bad the DPRK is. It appears that most is sourced from the accounts of defectors. OK, but this podcast was primarily based on a personal visit to NK, plus a bunch of the NK's own propaganda. (Yes, they did discuss at least one NK defector, but that wasn't the primary topic of discussion.)
- Cyberdog 9y ago
  Okay, to you and others questioning the motives of defectors on fiduciary grounds, remember that defecting is a high crime in North Korea, and a difficult task. Most defectors don't attempt to simply rush the North-South border, because it is highly patrolled and likely to get you shot at by the North side. Instead they take an arduous trip through China, avoiding Chinese authorities who will deport them back to North Korea if caught. The families of defectors become social pariahs back home, if not worse. Defection is literally a life-risking act, and not only for the defectors. So defectors have to be extremely motivated to take the risks they do, and such people tend to have a story, yes; perhaps they make parts of them up, but I don't think most of them would really need to. At any rate, avoiding the country becoming like North Korea, or avoiding normalized relations or acceptance of the Nork regime, isn't really a goal of most libertarians, in the sense that such things are already far from happening in the first place.
- FabHK 9y ago
  > Most residents of the DPRK do not defect [...] We cannot know from defectors alone if that is because they desire to and cannot, or do not desire to. Not sure you're seriously proposing that there is some sort of epistemic uncertainty about the quality of life in the DPRK; so let's just be clear: there isn't. Yes, the Cato institute is part of the Koch-funded right wing propaganda machine, and yes, they have an agenda. Still, there's no doubt that the DPRK is a brutal, totalitarian dictatorship with an atrocious human rights record.

klibertp 9y ago

I've read the whole transcript - the word "communism" appears exactly once in a whole discussion. Overall the amount of ideology in the article is minimal and they focus on describing the situation of North Koreans. Additionally, most of the talking is done by Michael Malice, who is an author of the book in question (Dear Reader); is he, too, affiliated with that think-tank (honest question)? I don't know him, but from what I read just now he doesn't seem like a rabid ideologue.

vkou 9y ago
> I've read the whole transcript - the word "communism" appears exactly once in a whole discussion. > Overall the amount of ideology in the article is minimal That is an incredibly poor limtus test for determining ideological bias in a publication.
- klibertp 9y ago
  Ok, I'm willing to learn. Could you cite the paragraphs from the talk which reveal the ideological bias in this publication?
  - vkou 9y ago
    I was criticising the test, not the publication. There's a few things about bias. It is incredibly difficult to detect it when it is biased towards your political/philosophical/etc views. It can happen through comission (Outright lies about verifiable facts), implication (Weasel wording, leading questions), or omission (Lack of context, mentioning but down-playing inconvenient facts). Simply scanning a piece for trigger words isn't an indicator for, or against bias. I personally think that TFA is pretty reasonable. There's a few important pieces of context that a few of their points are missing, but it's not supposed to be a seven thousand page treatise, nor is it supposed to reflect on our society. I just take issue with the test.
bambax 9y ago
The interviewee quotes Ayn Rand with no warning or precaution, which is kind of surprising.

tannhauser23 9y ago

Yeah, and Amnesty International is a group with a "clearly stated agenda" to promote human rights. We still tend to trust their reports. I can't believe you're equivocating the Cato Institute with a pro-DPRK think tank. It's not possible to defend the North Korean state honestly - by contrast, an organization dedicated to libertarianism has the motive to expose North Korea's unbelievable human rights abuses. They're not even the same ballpark.

3pt14159 9y ago
Yeah I have many problems with libertarianism, but the Cato Institute is biased but accurate source of information. Taking certain positions, like being pro-DPRK, literally require sacrificing objective truth. There is no comparison.
- dpwm 9y ago
  Since when was the Cato institute an accurate source of information?
  - empthought 9y ago
    Since its beginning? It doesn’t fabricate information; it just has a quirky interpretation of said information.
    - dpwm 9y ago
      If it's neither pushing an agenda nor trying to manipulate nor influence, why is it that submissions to libertarianism.org are being made mostly from two accounts that do not seem to otherwise engage in this community? No comments, no other posts, just posts to libertarianism.org. Whilst there's nothing specifically in the guidelines against the practice of accounts that just post to one website, the articles do tend to be inherently political and are at least pushing the guidelines in that respect. Even if we assume the accuracy of the information is unquestionable, a very high bar that even the most respected of sources do not meet, the behaviour seems shady and makes me deeply suspicious that they will be pulling at least some of the other tactics that can be employed to mislead. Does it not occur as strange to you that the majority of content on that site that gets posted here as stories is being posted by people who have no engagement with this community other than to post links to that website?

mschuster91 9y ago

> it's not hard to imagine that a communist state is a libertarian's worst nightmare from an ideological perspective No, an authoritarian communist state is the (ordinary) libertarian's worst nightmare. You can also have a libertarian communist state - it just hasn't been tried before... or maybe it did, who knows, but anyway all the revolution leaders got dependent on the power they had and decided to stick with it.

boomboomsubban 9y ago
Libertarianism is fairly focused on property rights, otherwise it would just be anarchy. Hard to combine that with a communist economy.

woodandsteel 9y ago

> we should probably view this with the same scepticism we might from an article put out by a hypothetical pro-DPRK think-tank. You're absolutely right. The report is highly biased, and North Korea is a far more just, humanitarian, and prosperous place than the article wants you to believe.