9 ms·
Look at what happened with Rotten Tomatoes recently and Captain Marvel. Depending on your perspective, the site either erased ratings to erase a viewpoint or s
by mises 7y ago
Look at what happened with Rotten Tomatoes recently and Captain Marvel. Depending on your perspective, the site either erased ratings to erase a viewpoint or stopped a bunch of trolling brigaders. This happens over and over. I don't trust the opinion of the mob any more than I trust the opinion of a news outlet.
- SolaceQuantum 7y agoActual question and not sarcasm: Where, in your opinion, should one acquire knowledge of current events?
- xfitm3 7y agoAP News.
- empath75 7y agoThe difficult truth that no one wants to acknowledge is that determining the truth when confronted with contradictory sources requires intelligence, critical thinking and education. The reason the us was so vulnerable to fake news is that we’ve spent the last several generations educating our children to be compliant consumers that don’t question authority or use critical thinking skills. The funny thing about this thread is I bet that half of the people think of very different things that the other half when they think of fake news.
- SketchySeaBeast 7y agoWhat's the difference between using your "intelligence, critical thinking and education" and using your bias?
- TeMPOraL 7y agoIntelligence, critical thinking and education are debiasing tools.
- ModernMech 7y agoDepends on the type of education, really. I know intelligent people (one who won 1st place at ISEF) who believe the Earth is 6000 years old thanks to their religious education. Or take me for example. I was raised to believe that Christopher Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 1492 and discovered America. End of story. Education gave me that bias. Then I went on to learn that the Civil War was fought over "state's rights". Education gave me that bias. So it seems to me some (most?) education is a bias inducing tool.
- Veen 7y agoBias and false beliefs aren't the same thing.
- ModernMech 7y agoThe sum of one's beliefs, false or otherwise, is one's bias.
- jpfed 7y agoIt is possible, though, to take a wrong idea- or even just a slightly incomplete impression- and use your intelligence to run very far with it. Amusing example: my son refused, for a couple years, to learn single-digit addition facts. He already understood that there was no limit to the number of integers, but since he didn't know that single-digit addition facts could be composed to add arbitrarily large numbers, he silently reasoned that the infinitude of integers doomed any attempt to learn addition. Everyone talking about specific addition problems was a chump! He just went on for a couple grades thinking everyone was stupidly wasting their time before we had a conversation that unearthed his reasoning. And that wasn't even starting with an incorrect belief- just some missing information. Imagine the sorts of explosions you could get yourself into starting with one of those and reasoning as far as you can with it!
- ska 7y agoIf you have those skills and are doing it right, it will lead you to change your thinking on things an appreciable amount of the time. Sometimes quite radically. Following your biases will never do this.
- SketchySeaBeast 7y agoBut how do you know that that is what you're actually doing? I don't think anyone can be truly objective.
- Veen 7y agoBecause there are rules of logic, reasoning, and evidence that are independent of your biases. You have to learn them and become skilled at applying them to sources of information (something that everyone should be learning in school).
- SketchySeaBeast 7y agoSo which particular logical heuristics would you apply to determining if a nation was in fact in recession, and what the causes of that recession were? The simple model works when you're dealing with proving that your cat is on fire, it's much harder when the topic gets complicated.
- empath75 7y agoComplicated topics that you know little about should entail a lot of uncertainty and that’s fine. Nobody needs to know everything about everything.
- SketchySeaBeast 7y agoBut then how are you supposed to make decision in regards to which political candidate has the best response to the problem?
- ddingus 7y agoRobust and frequent conversation.
- SolaceQuantum 7y agoAgain, actually serious here: With who? I cannot discuss politics in the workplace, and my peer group is focused on interests where the general culture is against discussing the gov't's current affairs or about other current events due to "bringing politics into it" concerns. I am also highly introverted and do not desire to take on more social circles, as this isn't an actual intense interest of mine. I'd just like to be kept abreast of events when they occur, within the context of their occurence. Actually, edit: How is this different from 'mob' news?
- brighter2morrow 7y agoWhy do you want to keep track of current affairs?
- manfredo 7y agoI'm pretty surprised at this question. Why woudn't people keep track of current affairs? Failure to do so is to be ignorant of what is happening in the world.
- 0xffff2 7y agoI've long since stopped actively following current events. My only source of news is what percolates through from other outlets (HN, things important/culturally relevant enough to get mentioned in Youtube videos, etc). I would flip the question. Why would I want to keep track of current affairs? The vast majority of the things happening in the world have no impact on my life whatsoever. Even really big things like the Mueller report really don't have any impact on my day-to-day life (NB: I am a US citizen). I do research on individual ballot propositions when it comes time to vote. I virtually always vote for third party candidates or no-one at all, but if a political party I actually support ever gains enough prominence to have a chance of winning I'll do my due diligence on their individual candidates too. Aside from that, who cares?
- Dirlewanger 7y agoReading news from both conservative and liberal outlets. For every page visit you give to New Republic and Politico, give one to the National Review and the American Conservative. The truth is somewhere in the middle. Edit: that's right, downvote me you HN Bay Area liberal cocksuckers for even suggesting to read a conservative outlet. I know, it makes one literally a Nazi. Can't wait for the Big One to send the entire Bay Area into the sea and have all of you perish along with it.
- SketchySeaBeast 7y agoSo now you've determined that the truth is somewhere from "president trump is amazing" to "president trump is a crook" - what has that bought you? What's in the middle of that? You haven't made the problem smaller.
- JoshTriplett 7y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_to_moderation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_to_moderation
- AnthonyMouse 7y agoThat's forest vs. trees though. If you read some left-leaning publications you'll be told that warming is caused by humans releasing greenhouse gasses at a massive scale. If you read some right-leaning publications they'll tell you that it's all caused by the sun. If you read some right-leaning publications you'll be told that the problematic expansion in consumer debt has been caused by low interest rates, explicit government subsidies for borrowing, and tax, social assistance and liability disincentives for working people to earn additional income or save rather than spending. If you read some left-leaning publications they'll tell you that it's all caused by racism and sexism. In each case one side is telling stories for political advantage and you don't get the truth by averaging the propaganda with the facts. But if you stop listening to one side because it was wrong on one issue, you stop listening to that side when it's right on a different one.
- 7y ago
- malandrew 7y agoRead articles on an issue from as many sources with different angles as possible then: - take the facts the all sources with competing perspectives agree on as likely to be the truth - for facts that appear highly relevant but only appear articles with one perspective, but omitted in articles with an opposing perspective, seek out primary evidence to corroborate the evidence. Every time they turn out to be true, give trust points to the ones that included it and subtract trust points from the ones that omitted it. If they turn out to be false or distorted, do the opposite. - discard everything that is obviously opinion, conjecture, etc. - then rinse and repeat, building an internal model of trustworthiness for different sources and update those models as the trustworthiness of those different sources change over time.
- SolaceQuantum 7y ago"- then rinse and repeat, building an internal model of trustworthiness for different sources and update those models as the trustworthiness of those different sources change over time." Are there not news verification products out there that I can use instead? I'm not a journalist. I don't have the education to find very specific claims sources that aren't other news articles. eg. Where am I supposed to go hunting for an exact quote stated by a politician on video except from another news cast recording the event?
- Veen 7y ago> Are there not news verification products How would a "news verification" service work? It would just be journalists verifying the work of other journalists. There are fact checking platforms, but, again, it's journalists all the way down, at least until you hit primary sources like scientific papers, at which point you have a slightly different verification problem. At a certain point, you have to accept that your information about current events is going to come from journalists, which is why it's necessary to cross-check it and understand how you might be mislead.
- manfredo 7y agoA few simple guidelines: * Diversify your information inputs both in terms of leaning, but also format and platform. I read the Economist, New York Times, and WSJ. I also watch YouTubers (Philip de Franco is one of my staples), read Hacker News and Reddit. I also listen to podcasts. * Try and find the primary sources when possible. Preferably, view the primary sources before reading the news coverage. This will help you judge the primary source without being primed to think one way or another. * Look at the sources and references provided by the media you're reading. Good ones will link to primary sources as much as possible. Poor ones will often not link to primary sources - often this is because they are misrepresenting the source and if they linked to them then readers would see this deception.
- SolaceQuantum 7y agoI actually did try to diversity my information inputs, but I am not one for YouTube or podcasts (cognitive weirdnesses with human voice comprehension). I also tried to diversity the angles of which I read things, but I couldn't read Fox News anymore after their website had a gif of someone getting hit by a car on their front page.
- manfredo 7y agoYeah, on principle I should read genuinely conservative outlet like Fox but I can't really stomache it. I've found that Quillete [1] does at least a good job of challenging me on my predominantly liberal beliefs, and does so in a way that's palatable. It's a pretty niche site, only 1-3 new articles a day, so not really news per-se. 1. https://quillette.com/ https://quillette.com/
- lordgrenville 7y agoIf you can't stomach Fox (quite fair), give Ramesh Ponnuru or Ross Douthat a shot. I don't always agree with them, but I can always at least respect their point of view.
- mises 7y agoHonestly, I try to read both sides and triangulate. Wall Street Journal is good, though editorials are right-leaning. I like reason too; libertarian bias. Daily Wire isn't bad. Tim Pool has a podcast that includes decent commentary. I balance with Jacobin and Mother Jones, though I disagree with almost every thing they say. CNBC has good business content. Reuters isn't bad for breaking news. Over all, I'd say CNBC and WSJ are best for current events. If you've got any recommendations for good outlets, I'd appreciate it. Always looking for more.
- CharlesColeman 7y ago>> mises 4 hours ago >> ... I don't trust the opinion of the mob any more than I trust the opinion of a news outlet. > Actual question and not sarcasm: Where, in your opinion, should one acquire knowledge of current events? https://mises.org https://mises.org, of course! /s
- mises 7y agoWhy do people keep ripping on my username? I've seen others involving socialism, anarchy, etc; and don't really care. Mises was a smart guy with good opinions, though you're free to disagree. In all seriousness, mises.org is good for current commentary, if not breaking news.
- dang 7y agoIt's because your username is an ideological provocation. I'm sure you didn't mean it to be, but it actually would be helpful to switch to something else, because it's regularly triggering people into taking threads off topic. (In boring directions. Taking threads off topic in interesting directions is fine, though much rarer.) Would you mind emailing us at hn@ycombinator.com so we can change it for you?
- thrower123 7y agoBecause people just love to rip on names if they have nothing more substantial to add. Look at every thread ever about CockroachDB.