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In another thread, a person replying to a Google blog said software is about trust, because a person can't read millions of lines of source. Once trust is brok

In another thread, a person replying to a Google blog said software is about trust, because a person can't read millions of lines of source. Once trust is broken it's hard to get back. So maybe news is also about trust. Hard to put the toothpaste back in the tube.

grigjd3 8y ago
The problem I see with a trust model like this is that too often, people treat trust as a binary option rather than a scale. Like, "do I trust my android phone?" is not a yes/no proposition. I trust that it likely reports the time accurately. I do not think it a secure operating system. It has a history of reliably connecting to the internet, though it occassionally gets stuck and I need to reboot it. If I am stuck with a binary view of trust, which so many people seem to do, I either naively ignore the device's failures or I refuse to admit it's successes.
- creaghpatr 8y ago
  People conflate fake news with biased analysis too. There's a difference between (in the NYT specifically) the first and second bullet point. If you look at any major headline story in the NYT- the first bullet is always the story, what factually happened, and the second one is the 'spin' which is where the alleged bias is found. Readers can still get value out of that first bullet even if they discount the second one- but it does get tedious at a certain level.
dnomad 8y ago
> because a person can't read millions of lines of source. But a person can read millions of lines of source code. It's perfectly possible given enough time and with a solid team you can do it in 90 days. Trust is not the problem. Nobody actually needs trust any more. It's a 19th century concept. Modern markets select away inefficient and unpredictable collaboration protocols like trust and replaces them with violence, transparency, and pervasive surveillance. The problem is the lack of verifiability. The vast majority of what comes out of the American media is unverifiable nonsense. Take out all the anonymous sources, leaked but undisclosed emails, "he said, she said", baseless speculation and the ever popular "reporting of reporting" (where media entity A reports on X simply because media entity B reports X -- even though X is pure bullshit) and what you'd be left with is the market data and live events. TFA is probably right that most Americans are hopelessly biased. But this may be the natural result of a media diet that is so completely lacking in basic verifiable information. Any conman knows if you ask people to believe X without evidence they will only believe it if they want to believe it (and they will believe it much more strongly than they would if you had presented evidence). Do this enough times and you can train people to believe anything, again without a shred of evidence. The end result is a nation of media consumers trained from a very young age to accept information without evidence so long as that information confirms their own ideology.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- repolfx 8y ago
  A lot of information is verifiable, it's just people don't do it. You're right that it's often because they want to believe. Read any story that involves Russia and spend a few minutes doing fact checking. Or check back after a week. You'll find the story is very likely to be factually wrong and might have been retracted. You don't need anything more than Google to reveal that the stories are false, sometimes not even that - just reading the story carefully and watching for internal contradictions is sufficient. But almost everyone I meet believes these stories completely. For some reason lots of people desperately want to believe that Russia is the bogeyman. They not only won't use simple and easy tools available to them, they actually get upset when other people do it.

grigjd3 8y ago

The problem I see with a trust model like this is that too often, people treat trust as a binary option rather than a scale. Like, "do I trust my android phone?" is not a yes/no proposition. I trust that it likely reports the time accurately. I do not think it a secure operating system. It has a history of reliably connecting to the internet, though it occassionally gets stuck and I need to reboot it. If I am stuck with a binary view of trust, which so many people seem to do, I either naively ignore the device's failures or I refuse to admit it's successes.

creaghpatr 8y ago
People conflate fake news with biased analysis too. There's a difference between (in the NYT specifically) the first and second bullet point. If you look at any major headline story in the NYT- the first bullet is always the story, what factually happened, and the second one is the 'spin' which is where the alleged bias is found. Readers can still get value out of that first bullet even if they discount the second one- but it does get tedious at a certain level.

dnomad 8y ago

> because a person can't read millions of lines of source. But a person can read millions of lines of source code. It's perfectly possible given enough time and with a solid team you can do it in 90 days. Trust is not the problem. Nobody actually needs trust any more. It's a 19th century concept. Modern markets select away inefficient and unpredictable collaboration protocols like trust and replaces them with violence, transparency, and pervasive surveillance. The problem is the lack of verifiability. The vast majority of what comes out of the American media is unverifiable nonsense. Take out all the anonymous sources, leaked but undisclosed emails, "he said, she said", baseless speculation and the ever popular "reporting of reporting" (where media entity A reports on X simply because media entity B reports X -- even though X is pure bullshit) and what you'd be left with is the market data and live events. TFA is probably right that most Americans are hopelessly biased. But this may be the natural result of a media diet that is so completely lacking in basic verifiable information. Any conman knows if you ask people to believe X without evidence they will only believe it if they want to believe it (and they will believe it much more strongly than they would if you had presented evidence). Do this enough times and you can train people to believe anything, again without a shred of evidence. The end result is a nation of media consumers trained from a very young age to accept information without evidence so long as that information confirms their own ideology.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
repolfx 8y ago
A lot of information is verifiable, it's just people don't do it. You're right that it's often because they want to believe. Read any story that involves Russia and spend a few minutes doing fact checking. Or check back after a week. You'll find the story is very likely to be factually wrong and might have been retracted. You don't need anything more than Google to reveal that the stories are false, sometimes not even that - just reading the story carefully and watching for internal contradictions is sufficient. But almost everyone I meet believes these stories completely. For some reason lots of people desperately want to believe that Russia is the bogeyman. They not only won't use simple and easy tools available to them, they actually get upset when other people do it.