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You may certainly hold the sentiment yourself but that offers no insight into whether it is valid. I have to wonder for example, do you research the claims of

You may certainly hold the sentiment yourself but that offers no insight into whether it is valid. I have to wonder for example, do you research the claims of every mainstream news article and if so what have you found? How accurate are they after you've researched their claims? What's the accuracy rate on mainstream news articles? How does that compare to the accuracy rate of "non-mainstream news articles?" I know if I had such a strongly held belief as this that I would want to investigate if my belief was correct or not and if not, change my belief.

TeMPOraL 7y ago
> You may certainly hold the sentiment yourself but that offers no insight into whether it is valid. I don't expect my holding the belief to be an evidence for its validity; I only said I hold it, and listed what I consider evidence in its favor - evidence you can verify independently, and draw your own conclusion. > I have to wonder for example, do you research the claims of every mainstream news article and if so what have you found? Not really, unless I have a particular interest in the topic. The times I did spend hours on my own research (usually because someone sent me an article in order to convince me of something), it usually turned out the article cherry-picked facts to draw an opposite conclusion from what's reasonable. I don't track this explicitly beyond knowing that, in those cases, bad articles vastly outnumber good articles. > What's the accuracy rate on mainstream news articles? How does that compare to the accuracy rate of "non-mainstream news articles?" It's not the question I'm trying to answer. I don't care much about "non-mainstream news" as some opposite category to "mainstream news". I only care about how much bullshit there is in any particular article I'm reading. And when generalizing over the samples I've observed, I came to the conclusion that most journalism isn't much different from blogging, except most bloggers don't have as much time pressure. > I know if I had such a strongly held belief as this that I would want to investigate if my belief was correct or not and if not, change my belief. I'm open to changing my belief on this one, but I'm not going to go out of my way on this. For one, because there are many other beliefs I'm working to verify, where verification has a bigger payoff. There's only so much time in the day. Secondly, this belief pays a very strong rent. I don't find myself confused about reality often by following it. If I did, it would be on the top of my verification list.
mikedilger 7y ago
Yes, you should always try to disprove your beliefs rather than to confirm them if you want to know if they are true. I've researched the claims of many "mainstream" news articles and found almost zero falsehoods which would stand up in a court of law (courts are very lax and consider many statements to be matters of opinion that I would consider to be matters of fact); however, I've found pretty much every article, most sentences have excessive manipulative framing that taints or spins a story, leading the reader towards beliefs which are very often untrue, unproven, or judgemental (normative). I noticed this as a teenager in the 1980s and deliberately tried to 'unspin' stories, but gave up after realizing how much work that was going to be. This isn't something that happened in the last four years... at least not for right-leaning people. Maybe it's a new idea to some left-leaning people (other than Noam Chomsky/Edward Herman). As for "non-mainstream" most of them are much worse, often containing actual provable falsehoods. But some of them do seem to be more accurate and less manipulative. I have to say "seem" because the ones I respect the most have the same biases that I do, so I can't see the mistakes as clearly.
- funkymike 7y ago
  > I noticed this as a teenager in the 1980s and deliberately tried to 'unspin' stories, but gave up after realizing how much work that was going to be. This struck a chord with me. Few specific lessons from school stuck with me. There was one though that was powerful enough that I have tried to not just remember it, but practice it ever since. The lesson was simply to watch the evening national news and pay special attention to words, phrasing, and tone that could sway the opinion of those watching, apart from the facts being presented, then describe what we found in class the following day. Even when seemingly just presenting the facts of the story you can almost always pick out the views of the presenter. The idea was to instill in people how to separate the facts from the opinions of those presenting the facts so one can form their own opinions. You can then also judge how honest the news source seems to be about their biases. A speech that is described as a "standard policy speech" compared to a "powerful appeal for change" can affect how people think of it, then discuss it with others. Only if we are paying attention to these details can we split out fact from opinion. Every source of news attempts to influence people. Everyone has opinions and they can come out in very subtle ways. The key for me is how open and honest they are about it. I think the problem we have today are so many news outlets that claim to be objective and unbiased when they are anything but, intentionally. Too many people never had the lesson I did and were never made to realize how much other people are trying to manipulate them, including (especially) those they trust.

TeMPOraL 7y ago

> You may certainly hold the sentiment yourself but that offers no insight into whether it is valid. I don't expect my holding the belief to be an evidence for its validity; I only said I hold it, and listed what I consider evidence in its favor - evidence you can verify independently, and draw your own conclusion. > I have to wonder for example, do you research the claims of every mainstream news article and if so what have you found? Not really, unless I have a particular interest in the topic. The times I did spend hours on my own research (usually because someone sent me an article in order to convince me of something), it usually turned out the article cherry-picked facts to draw an opposite conclusion from what's reasonable. I don't track this explicitly beyond knowing that, in those cases, bad articles vastly outnumber good articles. > What's the accuracy rate on mainstream news articles? How does that compare to the accuracy rate of "non-mainstream news articles?" It's not the question I'm trying to answer. I don't care much about "non-mainstream news" as some opposite category to "mainstream news". I only care about how much bullshit there is in any particular article I'm reading. And when generalizing over the samples I've observed, I came to the conclusion that most journalism isn't much different from blogging, except most bloggers don't have as much time pressure. > I know if I had such a strongly held belief as this that I would want to investigate if my belief was correct or not and if not, change my belief. I'm open to changing my belief on this one, but I'm not going to go out of my way on this. For one, because there are many other beliefs I'm working to verify, where verification has a bigger payoff. There's only so much time in the day. Secondly, this belief pays a very strong rent. I don't find myself confused about reality often by following it. If I did, it would be on the top of my verification list.

mikedilger 7y ago

Yes, you should always try to disprove your beliefs rather than to confirm them if you want to know if they are true. I've researched the claims of many "mainstream" news articles and found almost zero falsehoods which would stand up in a court of law (courts are very lax and consider many statements to be matters of opinion that I would consider to be matters of fact); however, I've found pretty much every article, most sentences have excessive manipulative framing that taints or spins a story, leading the reader towards beliefs which are very often untrue, unproven, or judgemental (normative). I noticed this as a teenager in the 1980s and deliberately tried to 'unspin' stories, but gave up after realizing how much work that was going to be. This isn't something that happened in the last four years... at least not for right-leaning people. Maybe it's a new idea to some left-leaning people (other than Noam Chomsky/Edward Herman). As for "non-mainstream" most of them are much worse, often containing actual provable falsehoods. But some of them do seem to be more accurate and less manipulative. I have to say "seem" because the ones I respect the most have the same biases that I do, so I can't see the mistakes as clearly.

funkymike 7y ago
> I noticed this as a teenager in the 1980s and deliberately tried to 'unspin' stories, but gave up after realizing how much work that was going to be. This struck a chord with me. Few specific lessons from school stuck with me. There was one though that was powerful enough that I have tried to not just remember it, but practice it ever since. The lesson was simply to watch the evening national news and pay special attention to words, phrasing, and tone that could sway the opinion of those watching, apart from the facts being presented, then describe what we found in class the following day. Even when seemingly just presenting the facts of the story you can almost always pick out the views of the presenter. The idea was to instill in people how to separate the facts from the opinions of those presenting the facts so one can form their own opinions. You can then also judge how honest the news source seems to be about their biases. A speech that is described as a "standard policy speech" compared to a "powerful appeal for change" can affect how people think of it, then discuss it with others. Only if we are paying attention to these details can we split out fact from opinion. Every source of news attempts to influence people. Everyone has opinions and they can come out in very subtle ways. The key for me is how open and honest they are about it. I think the problem we have today are so many news outlets that claim to be objective and unbiased when they are anything but, intentionally. Too many people never had the lesson I did and were never made to realize how much other people are trying to manipulate them, including (especially) those they trust.