7 ms·

Great. That way you have absolutely no basis to make any decision on. It’s utterly impossible to verify even a tiny bit of the information you rely on every da

Great. That way you have absolutely no basis to make any decision on. It’s utterly impossible to verify even a tiny bit of the information you rely on every day from first principle. If you don’t find some way to establish trust, you’re almost literally lost in the wilderness (if you include Google Maps and all map makers in your “trust no one” shtick).

roenxi 7y ago
I'd put it to you that ignoring information in the media and living life based on what is going on in your immediate community would be a surprisingly effective strategy. There is an interesting debate over the morality of that lifestyle. It could easily be a net improvement over the current equilibrium of large, coordinated tribal groups. A thing is not automatically good by virtue of being supported by a large group. For example, someone ignoring the print media would have missed decades of turned-out-to-be-inaccurate dietary advice.
- olivermarks 7y ago
  Ralph Dobelli had a terrific piece in the UK Guardian recommending exactly this. I subsequently read his book which I thought was excellent. https://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/apr/12/news-is-bad-rolf-dobelli https://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/apr/12/news-is-bad-ro... Surprising to see this article printed in the corporate media since it cannibalizes their advertising eyeballs...
  - matt4077 7y ago
    Dobelli’s drivel is almost verbatim plagiarism of Taleb, by the way. And it’s published by “corporate media” as well.
    - olivermarks 7y ago
      I've read that Dobelli and Taleb had a major falling out. Not clear who is plagiarizing who and not terribly important for me. I thought Dobelli's book was excellent and not 'drivel' but each to their own
hammock 7y ago
>It’s utterly impossible to verify even a tiny bit of the information you rely on every day from first principle. Does it matter? If you resolve always to ACT from first principle, and put your trust in God, why worry about who is lying to you and who is not? Would you treat a liar with less compassion? Would you question God's plan?
- DoofusOfDeath 7y ago
  Can you restate your post? I'm having trouble understanding it.
  - hammock 7y ago
    If you believe that, in the end, good prevails over evil (which maybe you don't); if you believe that stacks of lies create a house of cards that must come down eventually; if you believe that the truth always comes out; if you believe in karma or just deserts - then, by acting out of solid principle (universal truths like being honest, loving your neighbor, forgiving your enemy, service of others) you will in the end encounter peace, prosperity and salvation - regardless of how others treat you, regardless of the cards you are dealt in life, regardless of whether information from others turns out to be good or bad. You might worry that a friend (or newspaper) is taking advantage of you. But if you allow that to make you cynical and selfish with your own actions, it won't lead to good things.
- dwaltrip 7y ago
  Appealing to god's alleged plan won't get you much mileage here.
  - DoofusOfDeath 7y ago
    I find HN conversations more interesting when we don't filter by worldview.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
ovi256 7y ago
This is a stated goal of Russian anti-Western propaganda. Spread the narrative that all news outlets are equally untrustworthy, and that Western news consumers cannot ever be informed. NATO and the EU have started anti-fake-news efforts to combat this narrative. It was all over EU facebook ads a while ago.
- coldtea 7y ago
  It's also an equally stated goal of Western propaganda: that everything that doesn't favor mainstream views and new outlets is "Russian propaganda". I'm not Russian (you don't have to believe me, but surely you can find some non Russians in your vicinity with the same ideas that wasn't instilled by ...trolls in them), and I find all news outlets are equally untrustworthy. In fact, I find outlets like the "national inquirer" even more trustworthy that rags like NYT and the Guardian, because at least they deal with frivolous stuff, and don't drag whole countries to war to promote their elite's enemy du jour (from WMDs to Collusion, and lots of stuff years before -- if you follow the news for decades, it's more like 1984's "We've always been war with Eurasia"). The case with Russians and NATO is like the old adage: "This beast is very mean: it will fight back when it's attacked.". NATO has been surrounding Russia with bases, and satellite states (using countries like Georgia, changing regimes, etc) ever since the "end" of the Cold War, and they're supposed to just sit back and take it. Because for some reason the US, 10.000 miles away should have say and "strategic interests" in the region (and all over the world where it meddles), but Russia shouldn't have strategic interests in its own borders (including places with ethnic Russian population present). Only populations naive about politics, that can't follow anything in world affairs besides the crude breakdowns of news "pundits" can ever buy this stuff. >NATO and the EU have started anti-fake-news efforts to combat this narrative. It was all over EU facebook ads a while ago. That sentence reads like a complete parody. "Bad X have you fooled with propaganda, but NATO and EU will sort you out with the truth -- Facebook said so".
  - ovi256 7y ago
    >Bad X have you fooled with propaganda, but NATO and EU will sort you out with the truth You're overreading intent where there is little. How else could one state the bare fact that NATO and the EU have started these efforts ? Facebook didn't "say" anything beyond showing the EU anti-fake news ads in EU countries. Feels like you're really fishing here.
coldtea 7y ago
>Great. That way you have absolutely no basis to make any decision on. No basis is better than a bad basis. At least you're not duped into thinking you have a basis. >It’s utterly impossible to verify even a tiny bit of the information you rely on every day from first principle. Doesn't have to be "first principles" (no need to reinvent math for example). Tons of informations we rely on can be verified quite easily with a little personal effort, and some good foundational reading on undisputed stuff (like mathematics, physics, biology, and so on). For example, you don't need to become a doctor to not be duped by BS fad diets pushed by the media -- you just need to know enough nutrition basics, easily doable (and useful in itself). And if something (e.g. fracking) is important for you, you can study the literature (starting with books, including university handbooks -- not internet posts, not articles, and not mere scientific papers of random research on the matter), talk to some experts directly (it's not impossible, I've talked with experts in lots of different matters), talk to people in communities nearby, affected, etc, and draw your own conclusions.
- ithkuil 7y ago
  Then summarize what you learned and write about it so other people can learn it too ... oh shit now you're a journalist
  - olivermarks 7y ago
    The salaried FTP and freelance role of 'journalist' is almost invariably defined by creating material about specific agendas for corporate media mastheads.
  - coldtea 7y ago
    No, you could be a popular science author. The problem is that few journalists are that, and the majority of media are not just full of uninformed journalists, but also pushers of various interests (political party affiliations, government lobbying, private interests, industry lobbies, the newspaper's owner, advertisers, etc).
- matt4077 7y ago
  The endless debate on nutrition is exactly because effect sizes and latency are too small and too large, respectively, to easily establish causality. Without relying on the corrupt narrative by big corporate media, you’d be happily ingesting lead and blaming evil spirits for the inability of your children to do arithmetic.
BeetleB 7y ago
"Question everything" doesn't mean never accept anything. It means not to take it at face value. It means "Check if you can get independent corroboration". And it's not literal. I'm sure he does trust map makers. People in my life have ended up in the national news for various reasons. The first time it happened was the first time I really read the news heavily. You learn a lot from doing that: Plenty of clearly wrong reporting. I say "clearly" from a personal perspective - I knew the people involved, and knew details about their lives that the news just plain got wrong. This wasn't malice - it was sloppiness. The interesting thing is that once one major news organization reports it incorrectly, others follow suit. In a few cases, some of the smaller (regional) news outfits actually got the details right. When you see that happen in front of you, then of course you'll be skeptical of whatever else you see on the news. And it's not trivial to corroborate from multiple sources, as they often copy from one another and invest very little in independent fact checking. The corollary is: When a story isn't big enough (e.g. it gets only one news story and isn't stretched out over time), you really should just ignore it, as you have no way to verify the information. If you examine the news a lot, you'll realize that for most stories, there is little incentive to get the details right - especially if there aren't powerful counterforces. If the NY Times decides to write a sloppy story against Apple, then Apple is big enough to counter. And even if they didn't counter, other news agencies will have an incentive to counter. Of if you have a story on a polarizing topic, you can expect pushback and fact checking. But when you have a story about someone who isn't famous getting arrested for some misdeed, and even if it becomes national news, likely no one will call out sloppy reporting - as long as it is not a polarizing issue. And most news stories are one-offs.
Consultant32452 7y ago
There's a short list of things the news media get right, and a few anti-patterns they use which imo intentionally confuse. The major media outlets are pretty good at providing transcripts or video of events. They are terrible at summarizing. If there's a news headline that someone said/did something that seems outlandish, 9/10 they didn't say/do that, or what they said makes perfect sense in context (Recent example: A major politician is not going to publicly support infanticide). Always read/watch the source material, preferably from multiple sources because the media will tend to edit out context (recent example: Covington kids). If I can't be bothered to read/watch the source material, then the alleged story wasn't important enough for me to be upset. I can behave as if I'd never even heard of such a thing. Never believe unattributed/anonymous statements. You should assume any quote that does not have a real person's name attributed to it is a lie. Sometimes it will be true, but not often enough to matter. If it is true, and it's a concern of actual importance, real evidence will surface eventually. Wait for this to actually happen. Always assume statements made by officials in the lying industry is a lie. That's NSA, CIA, FBI, DHS, etc. The media tends to report, "X official said Y" in such a way that we're supposed to assume Y is a fact now. But the media is almost never critical of these statements and there is often on supporting evidence provided. If it's not important enough to potentially reveal secret techniques by showing me the evidence, it's not a big enough deal for me to care what you said about it. I'm not anti-CIA/NSA/etc. but I understand their role is sometimes to lie to me in order to further some greater agenda like promoting a war effort. Unless there's a world changing event going on right now, like 9/11 scale world changing event, avoid 24 hour and even daily news. These outlets are drug dealers, selling you an outrage high. Weekly news sources are much better. If a story isn't important enough to make it into the weekly news, it probably wasn't worth spending time on in the first place. Also, being a weekly publication means more of the story has unfolded, and the corrections are more likely to already be baked in. In the 24 hour news cycle, the outrage hot-take gets spread around, and then nobody ever sees the correction/retraction.
hirundo 7y ago
Argumentum ad hominem / trust is not the only way to evaluate the truth of statements.

roenxi 7y ago

I'd put it to you that ignoring information in the media and living life based on what is going on in your immediate community would be a surprisingly effective strategy. There is an interesting debate over the morality of that lifestyle. It could easily be a net improvement over the current equilibrium of large, coordinated tribal groups. A thing is not automatically good by virtue of being supported by a large group. For example, someone ignoring the print media would have missed decades of turned-out-to-be-inaccurate dietary advice.

olivermarks 7y ago
Ralph Dobelli had a terrific piece in the UK Guardian recommending exactly this. I subsequently read his book which I thought was excellent. https://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/apr/12/news-is-bad-rolf-dobelli https://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/apr/12/news-is-bad-ro... Surprising to see this article printed in the corporate media since it cannibalizes their advertising eyeballs...
- matt4077 7y ago
  Dobelli’s drivel is almost verbatim plagiarism of Taleb, by the way. And it’s published by “corporate media” as well.
  - olivermarks 7y ago
    I've read that Dobelli and Taleb had a major falling out. Not clear who is plagiarizing who and not terribly important for me. I thought Dobelli's book was excellent and not 'drivel' but each to their own

hammock 7y ago

>It’s utterly impossible to verify even a tiny bit of the information you rely on every day from first principle. Does it matter? If you resolve always to ACT from first principle, and put your trust in God, why worry about who is lying to you and who is not? Would you treat a liar with less compassion? Would you question God's plan?

DoofusOfDeath 7y ago
Can you restate your post? I'm having trouble understanding it.
- hammock 7y ago
  If you believe that, in the end, good prevails over evil (which maybe you don't); if you believe that stacks of lies create a house of cards that must come down eventually; if you believe that the truth always comes out; if you believe in karma or just deserts - then, by acting out of solid principle (universal truths like being honest, loving your neighbor, forgiving your enemy, service of others) you will in the end encounter peace, prosperity and salvation - regardless of how others treat you, regardless of the cards you are dealt in life, regardless of whether information from others turns out to be good or bad. You might worry that a friend (or newspaper) is taking advantage of you. But if you allow that to make you cynical and selfish with your own actions, it won't lead to good things.
dwaltrip 7y ago
Appealing to god's alleged plan won't get you much mileage here.
- DoofusOfDeath 7y ago
  I find HN conversations more interesting when we don't filter by worldview.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]

ovi256 7y ago

This is a stated goal of Russian anti-Western propaganda. Spread the narrative that all news outlets are equally untrustworthy, and that Western news consumers cannot ever be informed. NATO and the EU have started anti-fake-news efforts to combat this narrative. It was all over EU facebook ads a while ago.

coldtea 7y ago
It's also an equally stated goal of Western propaganda: that everything that doesn't favor mainstream views and new outlets is "Russian propaganda". I'm not Russian (you don't have to believe me, but surely you can find some non Russians in your vicinity with the same ideas that wasn't instilled by ...trolls in them), and I find all news outlets are equally untrustworthy. In fact, I find outlets like the "national inquirer" even more trustworthy that rags like NYT and the Guardian, because at least they deal with frivolous stuff, and don't drag whole countries to war to promote their elite's enemy du jour (from WMDs to Collusion, and lots of stuff years before -- if you follow the news for decades, it's more like 1984's "We've always been war with Eurasia"). The case with Russians and NATO is like the old adage: "This beast is very mean: it will fight back when it's attacked.". NATO has been surrounding Russia with bases, and satellite states (using countries like Georgia, changing regimes, etc) ever since the "end" of the Cold War, and they're supposed to just sit back and take it. Because for some reason the US, 10.000 miles away should have say and "strategic interests" in the region (and all over the world where it meddles), but Russia shouldn't have strategic interests in its own borders (including places with ethnic Russian population present). Only populations naive about politics, that can't follow anything in world affairs besides the crude breakdowns of news "pundits" can ever buy this stuff. >NATO and the EU have started anti-fake-news efforts to combat this narrative. It was all over EU facebook ads a while ago. That sentence reads like a complete parody. "Bad X have you fooled with propaganda, but NATO and EU will sort you out with the truth -- Facebook said so".
- ovi256 7y ago
  >Bad X have you fooled with propaganda, but NATO and EU will sort you out with the truth You're overreading intent where there is little. How else could one state the bare fact that NATO and the EU have started these efforts ? Facebook didn't "say" anything beyond showing the EU anti-fake news ads in EU countries. Feels like you're really fishing here.

coldtea 7y ago

>Great. That way you have absolutely no basis to make any decision on. No basis is better than a bad basis. At least you're not duped into thinking you have a basis. >It’s utterly impossible to verify even a tiny bit of the information you rely on every day from first principle. Doesn't have to be "first principles" (no need to reinvent math for example). Tons of informations we rely on can be verified quite easily with a little personal effort, and some good foundational reading on undisputed stuff (like mathematics, physics, biology, and so on). For example, you don't need to become a doctor to not be duped by BS fad diets pushed by the media -- you just need to know enough nutrition basics, easily doable (and useful in itself). And if something (e.g. fracking) is important for you, you can study the literature (starting with books, including university handbooks -- not internet posts, not articles, and not mere scientific papers of random research on the matter), talk to some experts directly (it's not impossible, I've talked with experts in lots of different matters), talk to people in communities nearby, affected, etc, and draw your own conclusions.

ithkuil 7y ago
Then summarize what you learned and write about it so other people can learn it too ... oh shit now you're a journalist
- olivermarks 7y ago
  The salaried FTP and freelance role of 'journalist' is almost invariably defined by creating material about specific agendas for corporate media mastheads.
- coldtea 7y ago
  No, you could be a popular science author. The problem is that few journalists are that, and the majority of media are not just full of uninformed journalists, but also pushers of various interests (political party affiliations, government lobbying, private interests, industry lobbies, the newspaper's owner, advertisers, etc).
matt4077 7y ago
The endless debate on nutrition is exactly because effect sizes and latency are too small and too large, respectively, to easily establish causality. Without relying on the corrupt narrative by big corporate media, you’d be happily ingesting lead and blaming evil spirits for the inability of your children to do arithmetic.

BeetleB 7y ago

"Question everything" doesn't mean never accept anything. It means not to take it at face value. It means "Check if you can get independent corroboration". And it's not literal. I'm sure he does trust map makers. People in my life have ended up in the national news for various reasons. The first time it happened was the first time I really read the news heavily. You learn a lot from doing that: Plenty of clearly wrong reporting. I say "clearly" from a personal perspective - I knew the people involved, and knew details about their lives that the news just plain got wrong. This wasn't malice - it was sloppiness. The interesting thing is that once one major news organization reports it incorrectly, others follow suit. In a few cases, some of the smaller (regional) news outfits actually got the details right. When you see that happen in front of you, then of course you'll be skeptical of whatever else you see on the news. And it's not trivial to corroborate from multiple sources, as they often copy from one another and invest very little in independent fact checking. The corollary is: When a story isn't big enough (e.g. it gets only one news story and isn't stretched out over time), you really should just ignore it, as you have no way to verify the information. If you examine the news a lot, you'll realize that for most stories, there is little incentive to get the details right - especially if there aren't powerful counterforces. If the NY Times decides to write a sloppy story against Apple, then Apple is big enough to counter. And even if they didn't counter, other news agencies will have an incentive to counter. Of if you have a story on a polarizing topic, you can expect pushback and fact checking. But when you have a story about someone who isn't famous getting arrested for some misdeed, and even if it becomes national news, likely no one will call out sloppy reporting - as long as it is not a polarizing issue. And most news stories are one-offs.

Consultant32452 7y ago

There's a short list of things the news media get right, and a few anti-patterns they use which imo intentionally confuse. The major media outlets are pretty good at providing transcripts or video of events. They are terrible at summarizing. If there's a news headline that someone said/did something that seems outlandish, 9/10 they didn't say/do that, or what they said makes perfect sense in context (Recent example: A major politician is not going to publicly support infanticide). Always read/watch the source material, preferably from multiple sources because the media will tend to edit out context (recent example: Covington kids). If I can't be bothered to read/watch the source material, then the alleged story wasn't important enough for me to be upset. I can behave as if I'd never even heard of such a thing. Never believe unattributed/anonymous statements. You should assume any quote that does not have a real person's name attributed to it is a lie. Sometimes it will be true, but not often enough to matter. If it is true, and it's a concern of actual importance, real evidence will surface eventually. Wait for this to actually happen. Always assume statements made by officials in the lying industry is a lie. That's NSA, CIA, FBI, DHS, etc. The media tends to report, "X official said Y" in such a way that we're supposed to assume Y is a fact now. But the media is almost never critical of these statements and there is often on supporting evidence provided. If it's not important enough to potentially reveal secret techniques by showing me the evidence, it's not a big enough deal for me to care what you said about it. I'm not anti-CIA/NSA/etc. but I understand their role is sometimes to lie to me in order to further some greater agenda like promoting a war effort. Unless there's a world changing event going on right now, like 9/11 scale world changing event, avoid 24 hour and even daily news. These outlets are drug dealers, selling you an outrage high. Weekly news sources are much better. If a story isn't important enough to make it into the weekly news, it probably wasn't worth spending time on in the first place. Also, being a weekly publication means more of the story has unfolded, and the corrections are more likely to already be baked in. In the 24 hour news cycle, the outrage hot-take gets spread around, and then nobody ever sees the correction/retraction.

hirundo 7y ago

Argumentum ad hominem / trust is not the only way to evaluate the truth of statements.