19 ms·

But these really aren't the type of lies that people consider fake news. Yeah, all the things you've written are facts, and their interpretations are what we ca

by yoavm 7y ago

But these really aren't the type of lies that people consider fake news. Yeah, all the things you've written are facts, and their interpretations are what we call opinions. I agree with you that all of these statements, since they're true, should be allowed without a question. People still need to think and be critical. I just took a look at a long list of lies by your current President. It has nothing to do with facts like the ones you've stated above. These are simply lies. You can't argue that it's some interpretation, or just half of the picture or anything like that. It's simply a bunch of words phrased as a fact but they never happened. I can't see anything good coming out of this for any country. It ruins the ability to have a real debate in a society, and I think it harmed America (not only of course) greatly. And one last thing - yes, it probably shouldn't be one person from one political side that decides what's completely false and shouldn't be published (or perhaps better, be corrected), but I don't think it should be so impossibly complicated to create a system in which representatives from all sides can do this together. America already has structures like this implemented.

Invictus0 7y ago
Every president has lied; they have reasons to do it. Maybe it's to avoid revealing classified information, or to gain a political or geopolitics advantage. It doesn't matter; lying is an essential part of statecraft. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/the-history-of-lies-on-the-campaign-trail https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/the-history-of-lies-on... Edit: I would appreciate if whoever is downvoting can please explain why they are doing so.
- cmrdporcupine 7y ago
  Yes, it does feel in large part that it's the crass and blatant nature of Trump's presentation that enrages, not just the actual content. As a Canadian I 'preferred' Obama, who ran on the line "change you can believe in" -- but he led the US empire substantially the same as any previous... and so this "can believe in" line, it really expresses a truth. The substantial piece was not that America would change, but that you could _believe_ in the fact that it would change. Little actually changed in America, at least from a distance. And once people stopped believing in the change... one gets Trump. Disgusting as he is, Trump really is "changing" America. And his lying is more transparent and blatant and crass, but also more theatrical and aggressive. It's weaponized.
navigatesol 7y ago
>I just took a look at a long list of lies by your current President. The idea that one side tells lies, and the other only truth is part of the problem here. >You can't argue that it's some interpretation, or just half of the picture or anything like that. It's simply a bunch of words phrased as a fact but they never happened. "Russian collusion" appears to fit this description, yet I still read about it every day. The entire political game is composed of stretching the facts to control the narrative. If you see it as one-sided, you're not paying attention.
- tripzilch 7y ago
  > > I just took a look at a long list of lies by your current President. > The idea that one side tells lies, and the other only truth is part of the problem here. This is just an observation about your current president, there is no "other side" to it.
- orthecreedence 7y ago
  > The idea that one side tells lies, and the other only truth is part of the problem here. Your divisive thinking is the problem here. Someone said that Trump lies, they didn't say "Republicans lie and dems don't," but that was somehow your interpretation of the statement that Trump lies (which is true of any president, yet you and I both know in our heart of hearts that he lies more than anybody by an overwhelming margin).
  - bigwavedave 7y ago
    I believe the parent was mistakenly interpreting "lies told by your president" (emphasis mine) to be a #NotMyPresident kind of attack from a citizen across the aisle as opposed to an observation from a non-citizen. It sounds like the parent thought gp was a democratic who was insinuating that the current president and his political party are the only president and party who've told lies so egregious compared to those told by any other president from across the aisle that they're the only ones of consequence. That's what I assume, but you know what they say about assumptions.
    - 7y ago
jaimeyap 7y ago
This. The march to authoritarianism accelerates when people accept the meme that the truth is unknowable. So they simply accept the reality put forth by the autocrat. The most basic kind of truths are facts. We at least need to agree on those as best we can first. And then apply critical thinking on the the squishier stuff on top.
- jlg23 7y ago
  > The most basic kind of truths are facts. Except for that for a lot of "facts", according to Rousseau, we already have 4 truths: what you say, what I say, what we agree upon and what really happened. So, while the pursuit of truth is important, I'd argue that respect towards each other even when we cannot agree is the most important thing.
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    Maybe we need to start teaching people to habitually attach provenance and confidence information to every fact (really: belief) they report, at least as much as practically possible? "Iraq had WMDs in 2000s" != "I strongly believe Iraq had WMDs in 2000s" != "I find it plausible that Iraq might have had WMDs in 2000s" != "According to that UN report, Iraq had WMDs in 2000s" != "According to NYT, which quotes that UN report, Iraq had WMDs", etc. A lot of problems are caused by people who say "X" when they should say "I strongly believe X", or "I think I read somewhere that X", or "I'm not sure, but I think X".
    - dhimes 7y ago
      Yes- intellectual dishonesty is at the root of this. When I was raised, the integrity of a "man's" word was a measure of the "goodness" of the person. Now, we hear things like "he said what he had to say" and a basic acceptance of lies if the person is on our side of the debate. It's depressing.
    - mkr-hn 7y ago
      I've tried to get into this habit. Qualifications are great too because when someone comes back to say "you said X! You lied!" you can remind them of how carefully you qualified your statement. This is Circle of Competence applied[0]. It's admitting what you know you don't know so you don't make mistakes by being overconfident. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circle_of_competence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circle_of_competence
spunker540 7y ago
I know trump tells a lot of blatant lies (I think most Americans recognize this), but if you’re a Trump fan you’ve been hearing Democrats calling Trump a traitor, a dictator, a Russian-pawn and colluder and a criminal long before any of those titles could be considered “facts” (they mostly still cannot be called facts, though the Ukraine call may have changed that). Yes Trump tells a lot of lies, but I also think each side of the aisle tends to ignore their own hyperbole (or at least fail to appreciate when the other side is hearing “lies”)
- tekkk 7y ago
  It's simple reciprocation from game-theory perspective: when the other party lies and gains advantage, you do it too. But I feel Republicans are way more untruthful than the Democrats and simply bring down the level of discussion for everyone. And I don't know why is it, that majority of Americans are so accustomed to lying that they tolerate it from politicians. In Finland if politicians get caught with outright lying, it's career-ending if it's bad enough. Prime ministers have resigned over it, party leaders seen their polls slump. In US if Republicans are caught lying (Democrats too I guess to lesser extent), it's a simple distraction and meh from public. Their supporters don't simply care and I guess are not capable of criticizing their own party. I've been recently thinking that what US has now isn't that far stretch from a single-party system since the parties in power don't really have to fear losing their support. There are no other options, so they can just pass the ball between each other, putting up a show and doing whatever since people can't really choose anything else. If your only option is picking between two assholes, which one you pick? And when the population doesn't know to demand change, what will happen? Nothing. Yes there are advantages with two-party system, but what I see it has really rotted the political discussion and ideologies into two boxes that can't possibly overlap. In multi-party systems coalition governments can be bit sluggish but at least they offer people a real opportunity for change, and letting go of the old, obsolete power structures. For a country that is so keen on free-market and unrestricted competition, you are awfully restricted in your choice of political parties.
  - spunker540 7y ago
    I know Trump is in a world of his own, but most often the “lies” are not lies to the speaker or the speaker’s fans. For example Obama’s “if you like your plan you can keep it” regarding Obamacare. It turned out not to be 100% true. To Democrats he was well-intentioned and over-optimistic and couldn’t deliver his promise (probably due to Republican obstructionism) while Republicans had always considered that a lie. If 50% of the country believes something is a lie and 50% believe it’s mostly true, is it really a lie? The truth is most political “lies” are only considered lies by the opposite party.
belorn 7y ago
If we go by polifact (https://www.politifact.com/personalities/ https://www.politifact.com/personalities/), the highest rated politician has a truth rating of 14%. From personal experience the issue we have with fake news is not caused by a president. It was the polarization from the 2016 election, which has resulted in people valuing the narrative over facts. Nothing was a clearer example to me personally when later that winter as I was participating in a conference located in Stockholm, which had a track title "Fake News", with an invited keynote speaker who was a previous board member of the wikipedia foundation. The keynote talk was made to present a narrative that media had failed to present information to the voting population about trumps scandals, and as evidence there was a image from a study showing survey result about what people knew about each candidate and their scandals. The conclusion was that if media had done their job then obviously the election would had ended correctly rather than electing Trump. The numbers were extremely biased against Clinton and fitted the narrative so perfectly that I got a bit suspicious. Looking at the recording of the talk afterward I noticed that the evidence had a reference printed inside it. A moment later I had the paper itself, and what do I find above the image? The researcher explicitly saying that anyone reading it should not draw any comparable conclusions about the numbers as the survey operated during a period of 9 months. The researcher noted that if they had done a new short survey closer to the election date then the numbers would look very differently. It pretty obvious that people can not answer a survey with knowledge of scandals that occur in the future. Fake news will continue as long we try to make facts fit a narrative, rather than first looking at the facts and then construct a theory about the world.
- fulafel 7y ago
  Does a fact checking website really tell you how often a person is truthful? Isn't it more like the falseyness % of accusations?
- mkr-hn 7y ago
  I still run into people convinced "leftist infighting" turned the election rather than the handful of votes in three states that really did it. People need better civics education. They find out about the Electoral College and can't believe it exists, or that a handful of votes for one person can offset millions of votes for the other. Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin are not leftist strongholds, where "infighting" might allow the Other to win, but people prefer the narrative that "Bernie Bros" ruined our beautiful democracy. Clinton got millions more votes, but it didn't matter. The Electoral College turning it doesn't fit the narrative they've been fed that people further to the left are responsible. You're right about polarization though. Less than 100k votes wouldn't matter if the country wasn't divided right down the middle. Choosing the future of our country shouldn't be a matter of who can influence a coin toss more.
SkyBelow 7y ago
>It has nothing to do with facts like the ones you've stated above. I don't think I can agree with this. When dealing with one group who is using facts to push a narrative/conclusion you think is false, it can become quite easy to push back without outright lies. Once misleading facts have been introduced into a discussion, the level of civility drops. That opens the door for the further drop into outright lies. Especially if one side feels they are less versed in manipulating statistics. I've spoken to many people who view lies of omission as being just as dishonest as outright lying, especially when done to manipulate someone (normally this involves when a child has lied to their parents and isn't related to anything political). As such, a lie of omission or selectively using facts has now introduced dishonesty into the conversation, making the other side feel like they are just using the standard that was already been set. >It ruins the ability to have a real debate in a society, and I think it harmed America (not only of course) greatly. I feel this occurs as soon as someone starts relying on presenting facts to push a certain narrative because it sends the message that it is now acceptable to have a dishonest conversation. At that point, any discussion changes into a matter of winning at any cost.
siruncledrew 7y ago
> People still need to think and be critical. My theory is this is exactly the value proposition various news companies provide - they do it for you. "We give you the Abstract and the Conclusion". If anything, that -hampers- critical thinking. It removes the need to apply logic and deduction to stuff that happens and just accept provided explanations of outcomes. Would we trust a Scientist if they only explained background and results of their experiment, and didn't discuss the actual methodology and analysis of what they did and how they did it? How is that much different from being a Magician? Or saying, "Trust me, I know I'm right"?
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
timtas 7y ago
Sorry but no, the sides cannot work together to dispassionately purge only clear falsehoods. Consider this case, hot off the presses. Yesterday Aaron Sorken wrote an open letter to Mark Zuckerberg in the New York Times in which he stated the following: "And right now, on your website, is an ad claiming that Joe Biden gave the Ukrainian attorney general a billion dollars not to investigate his son. Every square inch of that is a lie and it’s under your logo. That’s not defending free speech, Mark, that’s assaulting truth." Really? Sorken knows for sure that Biden was not self-dealing? Joe was totally not thinking about his son's half million dollar no-show job with a corrupt Ukranian firm when he ordered the Ukranian government to fire the guy who was investigating it? Wow, that's a really amazing level of access to the truth! No doubt Sorken has heard and completely believes the mainstream narrative: the prosecutor was himself corrupt and all right-thinking people wanted him removed. (Never mind it's entirely possible that this narrative is true, AND Biden was self-dealing.) My point is not to convince anyone that Biden was self-dealing. My point is that Sorken is calling objectively false something that is clearly plausible. This is how it goes. Most people are invested in narratives, and they are keen to suppress ideas that counter their preferred narrative. The idea that they will somehow draw clean lines between facts an interpretations has always been a foolish hope.
- yoavm 7y ago
  Wait, but if I know the story well enough, Trump didn't say that Biden might have offered Ukraine $1B. He simply said that he promised. And as far as we can all know, Biden promising $1B to Ukraine isn't a fact. Is it plausible? Sure. Can Trump suggest that it's a possibility? Of course. But had Trump suggested that Biden might have given $1B, people could judge it for what it is - an assumption. Instead, he presented it as fact, which it simply isn't. It seems to me that truth isn't so hard to find when one actually looks for it.

by yoavm 7y ago

Invictus0 7y ago

Every president has lied; they have reasons to do it. Maybe it's to avoid revealing classified information, or to gain a political or geopolitics advantage. It doesn't matter; lying is an essential part of statecraft. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/the-history-of-lies-on-the-campaign-trail https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/the-history-of-lies-on... Edit: I would appreciate if whoever is downvoting can please explain why they are doing so.

cmrdporcupine 7y ago
Yes, it does feel in large part that it's the crass and blatant nature of Trump's presentation that enrages, not just the actual content. As a Canadian I 'preferred' Obama, who ran on the line "change you can believe in" -- but he led the US empire substantially the same as any previous... and so this "can believe in" line, it really expresses a truth. The substantial piece was not that America would change, but that you could _believe_ in the fact that it would change. Little actually changed in America, at least from a distance. And once people stopped believing in the change... one gets Trump. Disgusting as he is, Trump really is "changing" America. And his lying is more transparent and blatant and crass, but also more theatrical and aggressive. It's weaponized.

navigatesol 7y ago

>I just took a look at a long list of lies by your current President. The idea that one side tells lies, and the other only truth is part of the problem here. >You can't argue that it's some interpretation, or just half of the picture or anything like that. It's simply a bunch of words phrased as a fact but they never happened. "Russian collusion" appears to fit this description, yet I still read about it every day. The entire political game is composed of stretching the facts to control the narrative. If you see it as one-sided, you're not paying attention.

tripzilch 7y ago
> > I just took a look at a long list of lies by your current President. > The idea that one side tells lies, and the other only truth is part of the problem here. This is just an observation about your current president, there is no "other side" to it.
orthecreedence 7y ago
> The idea that one side tells lies, and the other only truth is part of the problem here. Your divisive thinking is the problem here. Someone said that Trump lies, they didn't say "Republicans lie and dems don't," but that was somehow your interpretation of the statement that Trump lies (which is true of any president, yet you and I both know in our heart of hearts that he lies more than anybody by an overwhelming margin).
- bigwavedave 7y ago
  I believe the parent was mistakenly interpreting "lies told by your president" (emphasis mine) to be a #NotMyPresident kind of attack from a citizen across the aisle as opposed to an observation from a non-citizen. It sounds like the parent thought gp was a democratic who was insinuating that the current president and his political party are the only president and party who've told lies so egregious compared to those told by any other president from across the aisle that they're the only ones of consequence. That's what I assume, but you know what they say about assumptions.
  - 7y ago

jaimeyap 7y ago

This. The march to authoritarianism accelerates when people accept the meme that the truth is unknowable. So they simply accept the reality put forth by the autocrat. The most basic kind of truths are facts. We at least need to agree on those as best we can first. And then apply critical thinking on the the squishier stuff on top.

jlg23 7y ago
> The most basic kind of truths are facts. Except for that for a lot of "facts", according to Rousseau, we already have 4 truths: what you say, what I say, what we agree upon and what really happened. So, while the pursuit of truth is important, I'd argue that respect towards each other even when we cannot agree is the most important thing.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  Maybe we need to start teaching people to habitually attach provenance and confidence information to every fact (really: belief) they report, at least as much as practically possible? "Iraq had WMDs in 2000s" != "I strongly believe Iraq had WMDs in 2000s" != "I find it plausible that Iraq might have had WMDs in 2000s" != "According to that UN report, Iraq had WMDs in 2000s" != "According to NYT, which quotes that UN report, Iraq had WMDs", etc. A lot of problems are caused by people who say "X" when they should say "I strongly believe X", or "I think I read somewhere that X", or "I'm not sure, but I think X".
  - dhimes 7y ago
    Yes- intellectual dishonesty is at the root of this. When I was raised, the integrity of a "man's" word was a measure of the "goodness" of the person. Now, we hear things like "he said what he had to say" and a basic acceptance of lies if the person is on our side of the debate. It's depressing.
  - mkr-hn 7y ago
    I've tried to get into this habit. Qualifications are great too because when someone comes back to say "you said X! You lied!" you can remind them of how carefully you qualified your statement. This is Circle of Competence applied[0]. It's admitting what you know you don't know so you don't make mistakes by being overconfident. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circle_of_competence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circle_of_competence

spunker540 7y ago

I know trump tells a lot of blatant lies (I think most Americans recognize this), but if you’re a Trump fan you’ve been hearing Democrats calling Trump a traitor, a dictator, a Russian-pawn and colluder and a criminal long before any of those titles could be considered “facts” (they mostly still cannot be called facts, though the Ukraine call may have changed that). Yes Trump tells a lot of lies, but I also think each side of the aisle tends to ignore their own hyperbole (or at least fail to appreciate when the other side is hearing “lies”)

tekkk 7y ago
It's simple reciprocation from game-theory perspective: when the other party lies and gains advantage, you do it too. But I feel Republicans are way more untruthful than the Democrats and simply bring down the level of discussion for everyone. And I don't know why is it, that majority of Americans are so accustomed to lying that they tolerate it from politicians. In Finland if politicians get caught with outright lying, it's career-ending if it's bad enough. Prime ministers have resigned over it, party leaders seen their polls slump. In US if Republicans are caught lying (Democrats too I guess to lesser extent), it's a simple distraction and meh from public. Their supporters don't simply care and I guess are not capable of criticizing their own party. I've been recently thinking that what US has now isn't that far stretch from a single-party system since the parties in power don't really have to fear losing their support. There are no other options, so they can just pass the ball between each other, putting up a show and doing whatever since people can't really choose anything else. If your only option is picking between two assholes, which one you pick? And when the population doesn't know to demand change, what will happen? Nothing. Yes there are advantages with two-party system, but what I see it has really rotted the political discussion and ideologies into two boxes that can't possibly overlap. In multi-party systems coalition governments can be bit sluggish but at least they offer people a real opportunity for change, and letting go of the old, obsolete power structures. For a country that is so keen on free-market and unrestricted competition, you are awfully restricted in your choice of political parties.
- spunker540 7y ago
  I know Trump is in a world of his own, but most often the “lies” are not lies to the speaker or the speaker’s fans. For example Obama’s “if you like your plan you can keep it” regarding Obamacare. It turned out not to be 100% true. To Democrats he was well-intentioned and over-optimistic and couldn’t deliver his promise (probably due to Republican obstructionism) while Republicans had always considered that a lie. If 50% of the country believes something is a lie and 50% believe it’s mostly true, is it really a lie? The truth is most political “lies” are only considered lies by the opposite party.

belorn 7y ago

If we go by polifact (https://www.politifact.com/personalities/ https://www.politifact.com/personalities/), the highest rated politician has a truth rating of 14%. From personal experience the issue we have with fake news is not caused by a president. It was the polarization from the 2016 election, which has resulted in people valuing the narrative over facts. Nothing was a clearer example to me personally when later that winter as I was participating in a conference located in Stockholm, which had a track title "Fake News", with an invited keynote speaker who was a previous board member of the wikipedia foundation. The keynote talk was made to present a narrative that media had failed to present information to the voting population about trumps scandals, and as evidence there was a image from a study showing survey result about what people knew about each candidate and their scandals. The conclusion was that if media had done their job then obviously the election would had ended correctly rather than electing Trump. The numbers were extremely biased against Clinton and fitted the narrative so perfectly that I got a bit suspicious. Looking at the recording of the talk afterward I noticed that the evidence had a reference printed inside it. A moment later I had the paper itself, and what do I find above the image? The researcher explicitly saying that anyone reading it should not draw any comparable conclusions about the numbers as the survey operated during a period of 9 months. The researcher noted that if they had done a new short survey closer to the election date then the numbers would look very differently. It pretty obvious that people can not answer a survey with knowledge of scandals that occur in the future. Fake news will continue as long we try to make facts fit a narrative, rather than first looking at the facts and then construct a theory about the world.

fulafel 7y ago
Does a fact checking website really tell you how often a person is truthful? Isn't it more like the falseyness % of accusations?
mkr-hn 7y ago
I still run into people convinced "leftist infighting" turned the election rather than the handful of votes in three states that really did it. People need better civics education. They find out about the Electoral College and can't believe it exists, or that a handful of votes for one person can offset millions of votes for the other. Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin are not leftist strongholds, where "infighting" might allow the Other to win, but people prefer the narrative that "Bernie Bros" ruined our beautiful democracy. Clinton got millions more votes, but it didn't matter. The Electoral College turning it doesn't fit the narrative they've been fed that people further to the left are responsible. You're right about polarization though. Less than 100k votes wouldn't matter if the country wasn't divided right down the middle. Choosing the future of our country shouldn't be a matter of who can influence a coin toss more.

SkyBelow 7y ago

>It has nothing to do with facts like the ones you've stated above. I don't think I can agree with this. When dealing with one group who is using facts to push a narrative/conclusion you think is false, it can become quite easy to push back without outright lies. Once misleading facts have been introduced into a discussion, the level of civility drops. That opens the door for the further drop into outright lies. Especially if one side feels they are less versed in manipulating statistics. I've spoken to many people who view lies of omission as being just as dishonest as outright lying, especially when done to manipulate someone (normally this involves when a child has lied to their parents and isn't related to anything political). As such, a lie of omission or selectively using facts has now introduced dishonesty into the conversation, making the other side feel like they are just using the standard that was already been set. >It ruins the ability to have a real debate in a society, and I think it harmed America (not only of course) greatly. I feel this occurs as soon as someone starts relying on presenting facts to push a certain narrative because it sends the message that it is now acceptable to have a dishonest conversation. At that point, any discussion changes into a matter of winning at any cost.

siruncledrew 7y ago

> People still need to think and be critical. My theory is this is exactly the value proposition various news companies provide - they do it for you. "We give you the Abstract and the Conclusion". If anything, that -hampers- critical thinking. It removes the need to apply logic and deduction to stuff that happens and just accept provided explanations of outcomes. Would we trust a Scientist if they only explained background and results of their experiment, and didn't discuss the actual methodology and analysis of what they did and how they did it? How is that much different from being a Magician? Or saying, "Trust me, I know I'm right"?

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

timtas 7y ago

Sorry but no, the sides cannot work together to dispassionately purge only clear falsehoods. Consider this case, hot off the presses. Yesterday Aaron Sorken wrote an open letter to Mark Zuckerberg in the New York Times in which he stated the following: "And right now, on your website, is an ad claiming that Joe Biden gave the Ukrainian attorney general a billion dollars not to investigate his son. Every square inch of that is a lie and it’s under your logo. That’s not defending free speech, Mark, that’s assaulting truth." Really? Sorken knows for sure that Biden was not self-dealing? Joe was totally not thinking about his son's half million dollar no-show job with a corrupt Ukranian firm when he ordered the Ukranian government to fire the guy who was investigating it? Wow, that's a really amazing level of access to the truth! No doubt Sorken has heard and completely believes the mainstream narrative: the prosecutor was himself corrupt and all right-thinking people wanted him removed. (Never mind it's entirely possible that this narrative is true, AND Biden was self-dealing.) My point is not to convince anyone that Biden was self-dealing. My point is that Sorken is calling objectively false something that is clearly plausible. This is how it goes. Most people are invested in narratives, and they are keen to suppress ideas that counter their preferred narrative. The idea that they will somehow draw clean lines between facts an interpretations has always been a foolish hope.

yoavm 7y ago
Wait, but if I know the story well enough, Trump didn't say that Biden might have offered Ukraine $1B. He simply said that he promised. And as far as we can all know, Biden promising $1B to Ukraine isn't a fact. Is it plausible? Sure. Can Trump suggest that it's a possibility? Of course. But had Trump suggested that Biden might have given $1B, people could judge it for what it is - an assumption. Instead, he presented it as fact, which it simply isn't. It seems to me that truth isn't so hard to find when one actually looks for it.