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> For the longest time Wikipedia claimed Bitcoin was a pyramid scheme [citation needed] Checked the entire edit history of the article with wiki blame. The ph

by sago 8y ago

> For the longest time Wikipedia claimed Bitcoin was a pyramid scheme [citation needed] Checked the entire edit history of the article with wiki blame. The phrase 'Pyramid scheme' I could find has been added four times. The first two referred to a specific bitcoin-based third-party scam, which was removed in 2012 when the scam was old news. The second two refer to the multiply-cited opinion of prominent economists, and are presented with disagreement. It was added removed and added again in short order. > CNN is practically a byword at this point for biased misleading nonsense That is far cry from it being demonstrated. When fact-checked, it ranks among more accurate news sources. The usual rejoiner is that fact-checking can't be trusted. It is striking how much we live in an era of fear, uncertainty and doubt over truth. And it is stoked much like your comment: some vague innuendo, unsubstantiated claims, false equivalence, and gaslighting of evidence. Saying something I don't like, is not the same as saying something false. Though our inherent cognitive biases would love us to believe that, and our toxic politics often demands we claim so.

repolfx 8y ago
Sorry, I was mis-remembering, Wikipedia claimed it was a ponzi scheme. The rest still applies. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=196238.0 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=196238.0 I'd note that this: The second two refer to the multiply-cited opinion of prominent economists, and are presented with disagreement doesn't make any difference to my opinion. Who cares if they're economists? Either something meets a definition or it doesn't. That is far cry from it being demonstrated. When fact-checked, it ranks among more accurate news sources. The usual rejoiner is that fact-checking can't be trusted. I would be fascinated to see who claimed this and how reliable their fact checking is. Because yes, literally anyone can call themselves a fact checker and then announce their views to be 'fact'. I've noticed more than once some person or site claiming to be a 'fact checker' and then engaging in very dodgy behaviour. The ones that try to give 5 star ratings to claims seem most susceptible to this. Anything beyond a binary yes/no is too tempting for people to insert their own opinions and views. BBC "reality check" is notorious for this. And it is stoked much like your comment: some vague innuendo, unsubstantiated claims, false equivalence, and gaslighting of evidence. Quit with the ad hominem. My post wasn't a scientific article - it was reporting my own experience with fact checking various different outlets. But fine, I'll raise the bar. If you really believe that these cable news outlets are more honest than average, then please go read Greenwald for a while and explain how they keep publishing false stories by their own admission, that are always false in support of the same narrative. https://theintercept.com/2018/08/28/cnn-credibly-accused-of-lying-to-its-audience-about-a-key-claim-in-its-blockbuster-cohen-story-refuses-to-comment/ https://theintercept.com/2018/08/28/cnn-credibly-accused-of-... https://theintercept.com/2018/07/08/msnbc-does-not-merely-permit-fabrications-against-democratic-party-critics-it-encourages-and-rewards-them/ https://theintercept.com/2018/07/08/msnbc-does-not-merely-pe... https://theintercept.com/2017/12/09/the-u-s-media-yesterday-suffered-its-most-humiliating-debacle-in-ages-now-refuses-all-transparency-over-what-happened/ https://theintercept.com/2017/12/09/the-u-s-media-yesterday-... This one has a very good collection of juxtaposed stories https://theintercept.com/2018/02/12/dutch-official-admits-lying-about-meeting-with-putin-is-fake-news-used-by-russia-or-about-russia/ https://theintercept.com/2018/02/12/dutch-official-admits-ly... I read lots of news sites from across the spectrum. Perhaps it helps that I'm not American so a lot of what happens there is merely interesting, rather than something threatening urgent impact on my own life. There is very little difference between them all. New York Times is not better than Fox News is not worse than CNN, and so on. The journalists at all these places feel strongly that it's OK to mislead people if it's in support of the 'right' cause.
- sago 8y ago
  > For the longest time Wikipedia claimed Bitcoin was a pyramid scheme > Wikipedia claimed it was a ponzi scheme. The rest still applies. It was added to a list of Ponzi schemes with the qualification "Bitcoin has been called a Ponzi scheme" and a citation to an article on April 11, 2013. It was deleted on May 7 that year, in the very next edit to touch it. Your characterisation seems to me tendentious in the extreme. > Who cares if they're economists? Anyone who understands that knowledge is not syntactic, and that expertise trumps word lawyering. > Quit with the ad hominem. I apologise if you felt it was so. Nothing I said referred to any personal quality of you or anyone else. It was intended as purely an attack on the argument you made. The opposite of ad hominem. > The journalists at all these places feel strongly that it's OK to mislead people if it's in support of the 'right' cause. [citation needed]
  - repolfx 8y ago
    Here's another discussion of the same Wikipedia problem of calling Bitcoin a ponzi scheme from 2012: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=123760.0 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=123760.0 As you can see, people were arguing with some editor who kept sitting on the page. It was an on-going problem that lasted a long time. I wish I didn't have to keep repeatedly backing this claim up. OK, I mixed up pyramid and ponzi scheme, but the original point is sound (and "economists agree" isn't a valid argument given that plenty of economists also disagree, and being an economist doesn't automatically make someone right anyway). Sigh. Nothing I said referred to any personal quality of you or anyone else I'm not sure how to interpret "gaslighting the evidence". From what I understand "gaslighting" is an insulting verb that means an activity someone is engaged in, to deliberately confuse other people. That's not at all my intent. As for your last paragraph, that's what this entire thread is about. Look at how media outlets consistently get certain subjects factually wrong, again and again and as Greenwald puts it "always wrong in the same direction". These aren't random mistakes caused by simple carelessness. They keep happening because journalists want them to happen - if they didn't the mistakes wouldn't be so correlated, or so consistent, or so frequently replicated across so many outlets, and they'd put in place more robust systems to stop them.
User23 8y ago
The self evident primary purpose of the various news platforms is not to inform, but rather to persuade. Persuading persons to buy things is their primary source of revenue. They also routinely work with public relations firms. Finally the editors and other staff all have their own views and like most persons most of them must like the idea of persuading others to agree with them. The on-air behavior of news anchors on election night in 2016 completely destroyed the fiction of their impartiality. Had the election gone the other way we would have seen an equally crass display of triumphalism. I don’t see how any intellectually honest person can fail to believe, regardless of views, that the various news sources are all biased, because it’s observably true.

by sago 8y ago

repolfx 8y ago

Sorry, I was mis-remembering, Wikipedia claimed it was a ponzi scheme. The rest still applies. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=196238.0 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=196238.0 I'd note that this: The second two refer to the multiply-cited opinion of prominent economists, and are presented with disagreement doesn't make any difference to my opinion. Who cares if they're economists? Either something meets a definition or it doesn't. That is far cry from it being demonstrated. When fact-checked, it ranks among more accurate news sources. The usual rejoiner is that fact-checking can't be trusted. I would be fascinated to see who claimed this and how reliable their fact checking is. Because yes, literally anyone can call themselves a fact checker and then announce their views to be 'fact'. I've noticed more than once some person or site claiming to be a 'fact checker' and then engaging in very dodgy behaviour. The ones that try to give 5 star ratings to claims seem most susceptible to this. Anything beyond a binary yes/no is too tempting for people to insert their own opinions and views. BBC "reality check" is notorious for this. And it is stoked much like your comment: some vague innuendo, unsubstantiated claims, false equivalence, and gaslighting of evidence. Quit with the ad hominem. My post wasn't a scientific article - it was reporting my own experience with fact checking various different outlets. But fine, I'll raise the bar. If you really believe that these cable news outlets are more honest than average, then please go read Greenwald for a while and explain how they keep publishing false stories by their own admission, that are always false in support of the same narrative. https://theintercept.com/2018/08/28/cnn-credibly-accused-of-lying-to-its-audience-about-a-key-claim-in-its-blockbuster-cohen-story-refuses-to-comment/ https://theintercept.com/2018/08/28/cnn-credibly-accused-of-... https://theintercept.com/2018/07/08/msnbc-does-not-merely-permit-fabrications-against-democratic-party-critics-it-encourages-and-rewards-them/ https://theintercept.com/2018/07/08/msnbc-does-not-merely-pe... https://theintercept.com/2017/12/09/the-u-s-media-yesterday-suffered-its-most-humiliating-debacle-in-ages-now-refuses-all-transparency-over-what-happened/ https://theintercept.com/2017/12/09/the-u-s-media-yesterday-... This one has a very good collection of juxtaposed stories https://theintercept.com/2018/02/12/dutch-official-admits-lying-about-meeting-with-putin-is-fake-news-used-by-russia-or-about-russia/ https://theintercept.com/2018/02/12/dutch-official-admits-ly... I read lots of news sites from across the spectrum. Perhaps it helps that I'm not American so a lot of what happens there is merely interesting, rather than something threatening urgent impact on my own life. There is very little difference between them all. New York Times is not better than Fox News is not worse than CNN, and so on. The journalists at all these places feel strongly that it's OK to mislead people if it's in support of the 'right' cause.

sago 8y ago
> For the longest time Wikipedia claimed Bitcoin was a pyramid scheme > Wikipedia claimed it was a ponzi scheme. The rest still applies. It was added to a list of Ponzi schemes with the qualification "Bitcoin has been called a Ponzi scheme" and a citation to an article on April 11, 2013. It was deleted on May 7 that year, in the very next edit to touch it. Your characterisation seems to me tendentious in the extreme. > Who cares if they're economists? Anyone who understands that knowledge is not syntactic, and that expertise trumps word lawyering. > Quit with the ad hominem. I apologise if you felt it was so. Nothing I said referred to any personal quality of you or anyone else. It was intended as purely an attack on the argument you made. The opposite of ad hominem. > The journalists at all these places feel strongly that it's OK to mislead people if it's in support of the 'right' cause. [citation needed]
- repolfx 8y ago
  Here's another discussion of the same Wikipedia problem of calling Bitcoin a ponzi scheme from 2012: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=123760.0 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=123760.0 As you can see, people were arguing with some editor who kept sitting on the page. It was an on-going problem that lasted a long time. I wish I didn't have to keep repeatedly backing this claim up. OK, I mixed up pyramid and ponzi scheme, but the original point is sound (and "economists agree" isn't a valid argument given that plenty of economists also disagree, and being an economist doesn't automatically make someone right anyway). Sigh. Nothing I said referred to any personal quality of you or anyone else I'm not sure how to interpret "gaslighting the evidence". From what I understand "gaslighting" is an insulting verb that means an activity someone is engaged in, to deliberately confuse other people. That's not at all my intent. As for your last paragraph, that's what this entire thread is about. Look at how media outlets consistently get certain subjects factually wrong, again and again and as Greenwald puts it "always wrong in the same direction". These aren't random mistakes caused by simple carelessness. They keep happening because journalists want them to happen - if they didn't the mistakes wouldn't be so correlated, or so consistent, or so frequently replicated across so many outlets, and they'd put in place more robust systems to stop them.

User23 8y ago

The self evident primary purpose of the various news platforms is not to inform, but rather to persuade. Persuading persons to buy things is their primary source of revenue. They also routinely work with public relations firms. Finally the editors and other staff all have their own views and like most persons most of them must like the idea of persuading others to agree with them. The on-air behavior of news anchors on election night in 2016 completely destroyed the fiction of their impartiality. Had the election gone the other way we would have seen an equally crass display of triumphalism. I don’t see how any intellectually honest person can fail to believe, regardless of views, that the various news sources are all biased, because it’s observably true.