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"...If you take that approach and add Musk's source truthfulness rating[1]..." Not sure resurrecting Pravda is the best way to ascertain the veracity of facts

"...If you take that approach and add Musk's source truthfulness rating[1]..." Not sure resurrecting Pravda is the best way to ascertain the veracity of facts with authority. Pravda was a joke. That said, the unfortunate reality is that ALL of these proposals are predicated on trust. Do you trust whatever news source you are consuming? Do you trust whatever news source rating platform you are consuming? Etc etc. Nowadays, it's probably best just to accept that every article or comment you see on the internet is possibly part of a well tuned professional manipulation campaign. This goes DOUBLY for any article or comment that is even remotely political. Including this comment, your comment, and every other comment on this thread. That's just the nature of the world in which we currently live. A sad reality is that, in the end, we'll all be effectively choosing the sources, the data and the stories we wish to believe. And those choices will be largely informed by our pre-existing biases.

mc32 8y ago
Sure, I think he's frustrated with the media's reporting on him. And obvs the Pravda moniker was a tongue in cheek dig at them. Still, I'm intrigued by the idea of a news source rating system --like a seller's rating on Amazon, eBay. Obvs those are skewed and unscientific, but something along those lines will be better than what we have today. From the reaction from some journos, it's clear some don't like the idea being accountable for their reporting.
- notahacker 8y ago
  > Obvs those are skewed and unscientific, but something along those lines will be better than what we have today. Why? Surely what you'll actually get is one political faction dominating [parts of] the site and doing their utmost to downvote anything that contradicts their worldview to oblivion and (to a somewhat lesser extent) upvote probably false stuff that happens to support it. It's very much a winner-takes-all battle, because people that just want to read stuff or fact check aren't going to stick around if it obviously skews alt-right or far-left, and probably not even if it has an allegiance to one relatively moderate political coalition or another. If you want to know what a particular faction thinks are the important news stories of the day it probably has a subreddit anyway. The alternative to winner-takes-all is top-down curation, which is basically what the media does anyway, usually being more open about their partisanship, and I'm not sure write less unfavourable stuff about Elon Musk companies is the best starting point for curation. And if your site is started with the premise that the media cannot be trusted, there's a good chance the people that choose to spend most of their time there will be those with even less regard for truth and objectivity. (Case in point: As soon as Elon posted about "who owns the press", his timeline became dominated by people arguing that he meant "the Jews" who certainly had the numbers to drown out any useful observations Elon might actually have wanted make on the subject)
  - mc32 8y ago
    I think there is a large swath of Americans (presumable in other countries people feel the way) who are moderate and would welcome a news rating system. I'm talking about Bernie bros who broke for Trump, or Repubs who broke for Hillary, for example. I'm sure there are volumes of regular people who would like to know that what they are reading is based on fact, rather then interpretation. Just today, we had someone from the NYT RT a picture of illegal immigrants during the Obama admin and pinned it on Trump --when people called it out, he re-framed the issue. Of course with Musk it's about misrepresenting statistics and making mountain out of mole hills from minor production issues. Then there is the whole aspect of using a small unverified studies to call for one type of action or another in favor of one group or another. News have become something akin to a rumour mill and echo chamber than an organ which diffuses unframed news.
    - Natsu 8y ago
      Also, there are more than a few reporters who are tools of various intelligence agencies who wouldn't like some of the inferences that might be drawn. See also: Todd & Claire.
    - bilbo0s 8y ago
      "... I'm sure there are volumes of regular people who would like to know that what they are reading is based on fact, rather then interpretation..." How would a news ratings agency tell you that? The only thing ratings agencies tell you, is how the public voted on news agencies. (Or if the ratings agencies don't allow the public to vote, then the only thing they tell you is what THEY feel is "true".) Either way, they are no more worthy of our trust than the media outlets they purport to be "rating". It's EXTREMELY likely that they'll be just another cog in the machinery of professional manipulation campaigns. (For all we know, it's likely a professional manipulation campaign that wants to start the "ratings agency" in the first place.) That's just the reality of the world we live in right now. You just have to be skeptical of everything you see like that.
carapace 8y ago
Systems of elements that can trust each other are more efficient than systems of elements that cannot trust each other.
- bilbo0s 8y ago
  Sure, but that doesn't mean WE should trust said systems. Whether those systems trust each other or not is irrelevant to the question of whether or not I should trust them.
  - carapace 8y ago
    It's something to keep in mind when designing our own personal meta-strategies for how to deal with the [dis]information glut. As a global society we are starting to come to self-awareness, and confronting the need to distinguish between hallucinations and real sensory inputs. [1] We're in the situation of a person who has suddenly woken up after falling asleep while driving on the freeway. We have to clear away the cobwebs and dreamstuff, but quick, and get back in our lane and out of the way of that oncoming semi-truck. The global AI is already here, and it has people for neurons. Katsuhiro Yoneshige's service functions like a close-to-primary-perception locus of attention, compared to most news services which are more like idle daydreams. In this memetic evolutionary system, there's about to be a strong selective pressure towards fidelity in communications. (Cf. Musk's Pravda thrust.) [1] "Anatomy of an online misinformation network" (plos.org) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17173593 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17173593 This is on Public Library of Science analyzing what, in psychological terms , could be considered a neurosis in the global human psyche.
drunkenmonkey 8y ago
What if the development of an universal decision framework, which obviates sourcetrust, is the natural result of the calamity. I ask myself this sometimes.

mc32 8y ago

Sure, I think he's frustrated with the media's reporting on him. And obvs the Pravda moniker was a tongue in cheek dig at them. Still, I'm intrigued by the idea of a news source rating system --like a seller's rating on Amazon, eBay. Obvs those are skewed and unscientific, but something along those lines will be better than what we have today. From the reaction from some journos, it's clear some don't like the idea being accountable for their reporting.

notahacker 8y ago
> Obvs those are skewed and unscientific, but something along those lines will be better than what we have today. Why? Surely what you'll actually get is one political faction dominating [parts of] the site and doing their utmost to downvote anything that contradicts their worldview to oblivion and (to a somewhat lesser extent) upvote probably false stuff that happens to support it. It's very much a winner-takes-all battle, because people that just want to read stuff or fact check aren't going to stick around if it obviously skews alt-right or far-left, and probably not even if it has an allegiance to one relatively moderate political coalition or another. If you want to know what a particular faction thinks are the important news stories of the day it probably has a subreddit anyway. The alternative to winner-takes-all is top-down curation, which is basically what the media does anyway, usually being more open about their partisanship, and I'm not sure write less unfavourable stuff about Elon Musk companies is the best starting point for curation. And if your site is started with the premise that the media cannot be trusted, there's a good chance the people that choose to spend most of their time there will be those with even less regard for truth and objectivity. (Case in point: As soon as Elon posted about "who owns the press", his timeline became dominated by people arguing that he meant "the Jews" who certainly had the numbers to drown out any useful observations Elon might actually have wanted make on the subject)
- mc32 8y ago
  I think there is a large swath of Americans (presumable in other countries people feel the way) who are moderate and would welcome a news rating system. I'm talking about Bernie bros who broke for Trump, or Repubs who broke for Hillary, for example. I'm sure there are volumes of regular people who would like to know that what they are reading is based on fact, rather then interpretation. Just today, we had someone from the NYT RT a picture of illegal immigrants during the Obama admin and pinned it on Trump --when people called it out, he re-framed the issue. Of course with Musk it's about misrepresenting statistics and making mountain out of mole hills from minor production issues. Then there is the whole aspect of using a small unverified studies to call for one type of action or another in favor of one group or another. News have become something akin to a rumour mill and echo chamber than an organ which diffuses unframed news.
  - Natsu 8y ago
    Also, there are more than a few reporters who are tools of various intelligence agencies who wouldn't like some of the inferences that might be drawn. See also: Todd & Claire.
  - bilbo0s 8y ago
    "... I'm sure there are volumes of regular people who would like to know that what they are reading is based on fact, rather then interpretation..." How would a news ratings agency tell you that? The only thing ratings agencies tell you, is how the public voted on news agencies. (Or if the ratings agencies don't allow the public to vote, then the only thing they tell you is what THEY feel is "true".) Either way, they are no more worthy of our trust than the media outlets they purport to be "rating". It's EXTREMELY likely that they'll be just another cog in the machinery of professional manipulation campaigns. (For all we know, it's likely a professional manipulation campaign that wants to start the "ratings agency" in the first place.) That's just the reality of the world we live in right now. You just have to be skeptical of everything you see like that.

carapace 8y ago

Systems of elements that can trust each other are more efficient than systems of elements that cannot trust each other.

bilbo0s 8y ago
Sure, but that doesn't mean WE should trust said systems. Whether those systems trust each other or not is irrelevant to the question of whether or not I should trust them.
- carapace 8y ago
  It's something to keep in mind when designing our own personal meta-strategies for how to deal with the [dis]information glut. As a global society we are starting to come to self-awareness, and confronting the need to distinguish between hallucinations and real sensory inputs. [1] We're in the situation of a person who has suddenly woken up after falling asleep while driving on the freeway. We have to clear away the cobwebs and dreamstuff, but quick, and get back in our lane and out of the way of that oncoming semi-truck. The global AI is already here, and it has people for neurons. Katsuhiro Yoneshige's service functions like a close-to-primary-perception locus of attention, compared to most news services which are more like idle daydreams. In this memetic evolutionary system, there's about to be a strong selective pressure towards fidelity in communications. (Cf. Musk's Pravda thrust.) [1] "Anatomy of an online misinformation network" (plos.org) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17173593 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17173593 This is on Public Library of Science analyzing what, in psychological terms , could be considered a neurosis in the global human psyche.

drunkenmonkey 8y ago

What if the development of an universal decision framework, which obviates sourcetrust, is the natural result of the calamity. I ask myself this sometimes.