4 ms·
I'm wondering if we're talking past each other because each of us has a different idea what "delegating" means in this discussion. I'm not against consulting va
by patrec 8y ago
I'm wondering if we're talking past each other because each of us has a different idea what "delegating" means in this discussion. I'm not against consulting various "fact checking" services to help inform my opinion and help uncover pointers to relevant evidence I can follow up on my own if I wish to. I would however neither trust their impartiality, nor believe that they have some inherent magical expertise that would make them vastly better at those evaluations than me (in both cases: what would the selection function for this look like and why wouldn't it equally apply to news in the first place? News sources don't thrive by giving their readers hard to swallow, non-partisan facts and evaluation – they are inherently tribal).
But "delegating" to me means completely offloading some task to a third party, even if it's one you've vetted before and maybe periodically check on.
To me, delegation in this sense for what news sources I expose myself to offends both reason and civic virtue.
I don't believe in the existence of particularly trustworthy new sources with broad coverage. That such trust is misplaced is easy to verify by picking a few particular examples where you can dig in a bit yourself. Therefore one should be able to get useful information from people one disagrees with or even believes to be evil or dishonest, as long as they're at least periodically willing to make cogent, evidence based arguments. I can despise Tucker Carlson and still agree with him on his evaluation of Max Boot, by looking up the evidence he presents and validating if it supports his claims. Same with Chomsky, Engelhardt etc.