4 ms·

This seems like a fancy name for a hunch that may or may not actually be true. This could be a form of confirmation bias - like how it seems to rain when you h

This seems like a fancy name for a hunch that may or may not actually be true. This could be a form of confirmation bias - like how it seems to rain when you havent got your umbrella, because confirmation bias makes you remember the times you got caught in the rain more strongly then the times you actually had your umbrella and stayed dry. Similarly if someone is of the opinion that everything in the media is made-up, confirmation bias will mean they really notice articles that are wrong on areas that they know about. Whereas articles that are broadly correct in areas they know about will just pass by unremarkably. Then then on top of that, you've got the premature extrapolation that because you've spotted one incorrect article by one journalist, all the other articles by all the other journalists must also be the same. Not that I think the media are always right by any means. Obviously the media I consume are carefully picked so that I know I'm getting a reasonable sketch of reality, whereas the stuff everyone else is consuming is clearly made up dangerous nonsense* * probably biased. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases

brobdingnagians 8y ago
I was thinking it was more of a false appeal to authority, perpetrated by ourselves on ourselves. We tend to think of major media as very authoritative (even if we don't admit it to ourselves), and therefore tend to accept what they say. Books and permanent media seem to lend themselves to this. If something has a nice cover and was published and is widely distributed, we tend to think of it as authoritative and believe it more strongly, even when the evidence under a little thought might lead us to be more dubious.
- heavenlyblue 8y ago
  The reason major media is considered authoritarive is because it has to reach the widest audience possible. The fact that you’re visitig NH probably implies you are already in the top 10% bracket in terms if your earnings; which probably also implies you have access to more information. If major newspapers wrote in the language like of Foreign Policy - people wouldn’t read it. So what is authoritative? Authoritative for the ingelligencia, or authoritative for the masses?
- jerf 8y ago
  "We tend to think of major media as very authoritative (even if we don't admit it to ourselves)" One thing I've increasingly noticed over the past couple of years (and I think it's personal development, not any particular combination of news of the day) is the way the way we trust the mass media can make stories just disappear by simply not covering them. I'm not even merely talking about political stories disappearing or the media exerting bias; I mean even bigger than that. How many times have you read something interesting and would be interesting in reading about a followup story in a month or two? How often do you see that followup story? For instance, in the domain of science articles, how many times do you read about some preliminary result vs. an article discussing the field's reaction to some preliminary result? People simply and almost blindly take their cues about what's important from what the mass media is talking about, but if you examine even just what the mass media is putting out on its own terms it's hard to conclude that it's the truly most important stuff. Note my point here is about people moreso than the media. The media is forced to be biased by limited bandwidth. If you want to argue that they're biased beyond what that justifies, I will be right there with you, but that's not what my point here is about. My point here is that regardless of exactly how the bias manifests, how casually we tend to accept the mass media's output as the definition of what is important today, what the agenda is, what we all have to talk about, what we're going to screech at about each other on social media, etc.
  - hyperman1 8y ago
    I really noticed this in the recent EU Copyright article 11 and 13 debacle: Where were the media? Mostly they didn't even mention in. At the very last few days, there was some coverage, mostly about how great the new law was even if Google was trying to sabotage it by exerting control over the Internet unwashed masses and pirates. Not a word over possible negative effects.
    - drak0n1c 8y ago
      The media has defended the EU lately at the expense of coverage of flaws or critiques. Compare the volume of coverage for the positively received GDPR regulation compared to the coverage of negatively received Article 11 & 13. Both in the lead-up and post-passage there is a pattern of bias by omission.
marmaduke 8y ago
> confirmation bias makes you remember the times you got caught in the rain more strongly then the times you actually had your umbrella and stayed dry what is the pre-existing belief? did you mean to say sampling bias?
- codeulike 8y ago
  Hmm yeah maybe. For it to be confirmation bias you have to start out with the idea that it always rains when you havent got your brolly
- samatman 8y ago
  Folklore. One might hear one's parents saying such a thing many times before one is old enough to carry an umbrella.
rbanffy 8y ago
What are the odds of every James Bond movie getting all the tech stuff ludicrously wrong and, yet, getting all the spy parts perfectly right?
- saagarjha 8y ago
  James Bond is a fictionalized account. There was never any pretext of it attempting to be accurate.
- smsm42 8y ago
  Nobody expects James Bond movie to be factually correct. People do expect news media to be at least close to it. However, frequently they are worse than fiction movies (at least some of the fiction movies don't go out of their way to distort the narrative at the service of whatever agenda item the reporter feels like pushing).
rossdavidh 8y ago
I can say that, when I worked in the semiconductor industry, there was never a single article on the semiconductor industry (in a mainstream news publication) that did not have significant errors. Moreover, what we know of the economics of newsgathering suggests that in many cases the article was largely written for them an interested party, thus worse than sloppy: intentionally misleading, because basically disguised advertising.

brobdingnagians 8y ago

I was thinking it was more of a false appeal to authority, perpetrated by ourselves on ourselves. We tend to think of major media as very authoritative (even if we don't admit it to ourselves), and therefore tend to accept what they say. Books and permanent media seem to lend themselves to this. If something has a nice cover and was published and is widely distributed, we tend to think of it as authoritative and believe it more strongly, even when the evidence under a little thought might lead us to be more dubious.

heavenlyblue 8y ago
The reason major media is considered authoritarive is because it has to reach the widest audience possible. The fact that you’re visitig NH probably implies you are already in the top 10% bracket in terms if your earnings; which probably also implies you have access to more information. If major newspapers wrote in the language like of Foreign Policy - people wouldn’t read it. So what is authoritative? Authoritative for the ingelligencia, or authoritative for the masses?
jerf 8y ago
"We tend to think of major media as very authoritative (even if we don't admit it to ourselves)" One thing I've increasingly noticed over the past couple of years (and I think it's personal development, not any particular combination of news of the day) is the way the way we trust the mass media can make stories just disappear by simply not covering them. I'm not even merely talking about political stories disappearing or the media exerting bias; I mean even bigger than that. How many times have you read something interesting and would be interesting in reading about a followup story in a month or two? How often do you see that followup story? For instance, in the domain of science articles, how many times do you read about some preliminary result vs. an article discussing the field's reaction to some preliminary result? People simply and almost blindly take their cues about what's important from what the mass media is talking about, but if you examine even just what the mass media is putting out on its own terms it's hard to conclude that it's the truly most important stuff. Note my point here is about people moreso than the media. The media is forced to be biased by limited bandwidth. If you want to argue that they're biased beyond what that justifies, I will be right there with you, but that's not what my point here is about. My point here is that regardless of exactly how the bias manifests, how casually we tend to accept the mass media's output as the definition of what is important today, what the agenda is, what we all have to talk about, what we're going to screech at about each other on social media, etc.
- hyperman1 8y ago
  I really noticed this in the recent EU Copyright article 11 and 13 debacle: Where were the media? Mostly they didn't even mention in. At the very last few days, there was some coverage, mostly about how great the new law was even if Google was trying to sabotage it by exerting control over the Internet unwashed masses and pirates. Not a word over possible negative effects.
  - drak0n1c 8y ago
    The media has defended the EU lately at the expense of coverage of flaws or critiques. Compare the volume of coverage for the positively received GDPR regulation compared to the coverage of negatively received Article 11 & 13. Both in the lead-up and post-passage there is a pattern of bias by omission.

marmaduke 8y ago

> confirmation bias makes you remember the times you got caught in the rain more strongly then the times you actually had your umbrella and stayed dry what is the pre-existing belief? did you mean to say sampling bias?

codeulike 8y ago
Hmm yeah maybe. For it to be confirmation bias you have to start out with the idea that it always rains when you havent got your brolly
samatman 8y ago
Folklore. One might hear one's parents saying such a thing many times before one is old enough to carry an umbrella.

rbanffy 8y ago

What are the odds of every James Bond movie getting all the tech stuff ludicrously wrong and, yet, getting all the spy parts perfectly right?

saagarjha 8y ago
James Bond is a fictionalized account. There was never any pretext of it attempting to be accurate.
smsm42 8y ago
Nobody expects James Bond movie to be factually correct. People do expect news media to be at least close to it. However, frequently they are worse than fiction movies (at least some of the fiction movies don't go out of their way to distort the narrative at the service of whatever agenda item the reporter feels like pushing).

rossdavidh 8y ago

I can say that, when I worked in the semiconductor industry, there was never a single article on the semiconductor industry (in a mainstream news publication) that did not have significant errors. Moreover, what we know of the economics of newsgathering suggests that in many cases the article was largely written for them an interested party, thus worse than sloppy: intentionally misleading, because basically disguised advertising.