5 ms·

They frequently do see things in that way - and they're wrong. In fact, they're worse than wrong, because many people see the dueling assertions of fact and giv

by gbrown 7y ago

They frequently do see things in that way - and they're wrong. In fact, they're worse than wrong, because many people see the dueling assertions of fact and give up on knowing the truth of a situation altogether. This is a classic disinformation technique. We do have the ability to determine truth from fiction, it just takes more work than cynically throwing up your hands and smugly concluding all sides are lying.

etangent 7y ago
The desire to "correct" other people who are wrong is the fundamental impulse of authoritarianism.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- dragonwriter 7y ago
  No, the desire to correct other people who are wrong is the fundamental impulse of pedantry. The desire to compel others to conform to one’s ideal of correctness is the fundamental impulse of authoritarianism. ...but also libertarianism, for a particular aspect of correctness.
  - claytongulick 7y ago
    Huh? Can you explain? My understanding is that the core value / principle of libertarianism is individual liberty. How do you derive compelling others from that?
    - Jamwinner 7y ago
      Yeah, I agreed until his comment went off the rails there. I have noticed a movement to try to brand libs as 'crypto-republicans' recently for whatever reason. Its okay, and rational to not only think along 2 (or 3 or 5) party lines.
    - dragonwriter 7y ago
      > My understanding is that the core value / principle of libertarianism is individual liberty. Yes, and libertarians tend to hold that it is right and proper (and even often define “violence” to exclude this use of force) to use any degree of force necessary to get others to observe the individual liberties libertarians see as essential.
- mwcampbell 7y ago
  > The desire to "correct" other people who are wrong is the fundamental impulse of authoritarianism. Maybe, but it's also the impulse of people who rightly care about the future of our shared world.
  - throwaway8879 7y ago
    Rightly according to your subjective experience.
  - etangent 7y ago
    > Maybe, but it's also the impulse of people who rightly care about the future of our shared world. Literally no authoritarian says "i want to suppress people because I'm evil mwahaha." Every single authoritarian says "i need to suppress this evil disinformation because i care about the future of our shared world---unlike you unworthy people who presumably don't care."
- Der_Einzige 7y ago
  Furthermore, it is rationalism which exists as the first non religious justification of hierarchy. Read Plato.
  - luckylion 7y ago
    "People are lying" - "They'd say that you are lying" - "BUT I AM RIGHT". That's not rationalism, that's just saying "I'm right, they are wrong, end of discussion".
    - gbrown 7y ago
      That's because this conversation is occurring in the abstract - surely you can think of examples which don't fall into your supposed pattern (flat earth, pizza parlors, etc.)
      - luckylion 7y ago
        But those are super edge cases, the vast super majority of things aren't clear cut at all. "Is that policy going to increase employment? Will it depress wages, and by how much?" Good luck with judging who's right and who's wrong.
        freeone3000 7y ago
        These "super edge cases" are happening monthly. THAT's the problem. The examples given weren't a historical review, they're a sampling of what happened in 2019! If these were in any way rare or outside the norm, I'd feel safe ignoring them, but even in cases of absolute truth and fact (jade in your vagina does not cure anything) we get a netflix series.
        luckylion 7y ago
        > These "super edge cases" are happening monthly. Yes, in a world with literally billions of people, you have a few millions who believe outlandish things. If that was the extent of the problem with polarization/toxicity on the internet (or public debate in general), I doubt we'd talk about it, and I'd be very happy with the state of the world. Those people have no large base, no stable membership, no money, no power. Focusing on them is like decrying the fall of science because 6yo Timmy still believes in Santa Clause.
- gbrown 7y ago
  So... would you consider that an argument against the sanctions levied against, for example, doctors who lie and fake data to stoke fears about vaccines and autism? What about fighting against conspiracy theories about the deep state and pizza parlors? There's a tendency to wishfully think that people are rational and should be expected to sort out their own information environment with no governmental influence whatsoever, but I don't buy it at all. We're predictably manipulable, emotional creatures, and we can decide rationally to improve our information environment without falling into your implicit slippery slope.
  - etangent 7y ago
    > would you consider that an argument against the sanctions levied against, for example, doctors who lie and fake data to stoke fears about vaccines and autism? Yes. I never said authoritarianism is bad. In fact, I probably consider myself an authoritarian.
- mmhsieh 7y ago
  also puritanism
tengbretson 7y ago
I definitely wasn't cynically throwing up my hands and smugly concluding all sides are lying. All I intended to do was demonstrate how cheap it is to call someone a liar on the internet. It costs nothing to the reputations of you or your "lying friend" to call one another a liar and thats why it doesn't mean anything. The sooner people realize this the better off we'll be.
- shadowgovt 7y ago
  My prediction is that this is what will, in the end, change; technology will advance far enough to severely de-anonymize online interaction, at which point one's reputation again comes into play and people will find there are consequences for thoughtless shitposting. It has begun to happen, with phenomena such as people being fired for Facebook or Twitter posts. It doesn't seem impossible to tie a sufficiently-advanced pattern-recognition network to the firehoses of data on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, et. al to automatically tie together the scraps of personal info people accidentally leave behind and severely compromise online anonymity. Be interesting if it happens.
  - tengbretson 7y ago
    Economically I think this will be huge. Reputation based economies are incredibly more efficient than regulatory ones. Theres no amount of regulatory compliance that can tell consumers the information they want in the way a 2 star average uber driver review does. On the social side I can't even imagine how destructive it could be. People (especially on HN) love to lament how restrictive and oppressing the "everyone knows everyone" small town life can be. So now that we have the anonymity online we can escape to, we've all turned around and started building the biggest "small town" imaginable! One with no escape.
    - shadowgovt 7y ago
      Exactly. Mostly because we've discovered that the small town is oppressive, but the Wild West is full of gangsters. ;)
  - 7y ago
AnimalMuppet 7y ago
> We do have the ability to determine truth from fiction, it just takes more work than cynically throwing up your hands and smugly concluding all sides are lying. It also takes more work than "But I'm right!" If you've done the research, if you know that you're correct, it's one thing. (Even then, not everyone who is incorrect is lying.) But it's a real temptation to say "I'm right, they're wrong, they're lying" when you haven't actually done the work to be sure you're right. I am prone to that temptation. You almost certainly are, too. So be careful. You can be the one in the wrong.
- gbrown 7y ago
  I don't disagree with anything you've said, but I often find myself in situations where I have gone out and tried carefully to understand what's true. When you've done the research, it's very frustrating to be confronted with exactly what you're describing.
  - AnimalMuppet 7y ago
    Sure. But even then, knowing that in other circumstances it can be you behaving that way can give a bit more empathy for the other person. That doesn't make it less frustrating, but it may help you handle it a bit more gracefully.
makomk 7y ago
They're not necessarily wrong. For example, one of the big anti-Brexit talking points beloved of both Corbyn and social media users before the election was that a trade deal with the US would mean maggots in orange juice. This also, as I recall, became part of the narrative about Brexit supporters being mislead, with the line being that they were sold all those false dreams and would get maggots instead. It was a complete and utter lie: https://fullfact.org/health/maggot-orange-juice-USA/ https://fullfact.org/health/maggot-orange-juice-USA/ And I really do mean a complete lie. This wasn't a dispute over creative redefinitions of terms like Boris' NHS funding claims, or some nitpick about a minor detail. Corbyn and a worryingly large chunk of the press took an example of US food safety regulations being unambiguously stricter than EU ones - of them placing all the same restrictions on food manufacturers that the EU does, plus more - and falsely claimed their regulations were weaker instead, using graphic, emotive, memorable language, and everyone believed and repeated this total inversion of the truth. The thing that gets me is that on some level, people must've known that US food isn't really unsafe. There's not some big movement of people who refuse to eat US food - by and large, everyone trusts food there as much as they would food here. The other thing is that despite this pretty much the entire press dropped the ball on this lie. (It is not even close to the only prominent anti-Brexit or anti-Tory lie they left unchallenged or outright made themselves.) Even Full Fact did initially - they actually helped spread the false claim themselves, and only came back to it a month or so later after it had spread across the internet multiple times and been used by Corbyn repeatedly in his campaigning.

by gbrown 7y ago

etangent 7y ago

The desire to "correct" other people who are wrong is the fundamental impulse of authoritarianism.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
dragonwriter 7y ago
No, the desire to correct other people who are wrong is the fundamental impulse of pedantry. The desire to compel others to conform to one’s ideal of correctness is the fundamental impulse of authoritarianism. ...but also libertarianism, for a particular aspect of correctness.
- claytongulick 7y ago
  Huh? Can you explain? My understanding is that the core value / principle of libertarianism is individual liberty. How do you derive compelling others from that?
  - Jamwinner 7y ago
    Yeah, I agreed until his comment went off the rails there. I have noticed a movement to try to brand libs as 'crypto-republicans' recently for whatever reason. Its okay, and rational to not only think along 2 (or 3 or 5) party lines.
  - dragonwriter 7y ago
    > My understanding is that the core value / principle of libertarianism is individual liberty. Yes, and libertarians tend to hold that it is right and proper (and even often define “violence” to exclude this use of force) to use any degree of force necessary to get others to observe the individual liberties libertarians see as essential.
mwcampbell 7y ago
> The desire to "correct" other people who are wrong is the fundamental impulse of authoritarianism. Maybe, but it's also the impulse of people who rightly care about the future of our shared world.
- throwaway8879 7y ago
  Rightly according to your subjective experience.
- etangent 7y ago
  > Maybe, but it's also the impulse of people who rightly care about the future of our shared world. Literally no authoritarian says "i want to suppress people because I'm evil mwahaha." Every single authoritarian says "i need to suppress this evil disinformation because i care about the future of our shared world---unlike you unworthy people who presumably don't care."
Der_Einzige 7y ago
Furthermore, it is rationalism which exists as the first non religious justification of hierarchy. Read Plato.
- luckylion 7y ago
  "People are lying" - "They'd say that you are lying" - "BUT I AM RIGHT". That's not rationalism, that's just saying "I'm right, they are wrong, end of discussion".
  - gbrown 7y ago
    That's because this conversation is occurring in the abstract - surely you can think of examples which don't fall into your supposed pattern (flat earth, pizza parlors, etc.)
    - luckylion 7y ago
      But those are super edge cases, the vast super majority of things aren't clear cut at all. "Is that policy going to increase employment? Will it depress wages, and by how much?" Good luck with judging who's right and who's wrong.
      - freeone3000 7y ago
        These "super edge cases" are happening monthly. THAT's the problem. The examples given weren't a historical review, they're a sampling of what happened in 2019! If these were in any way rare or outside the norm, I'd feel safe ignoring them, but even in cases of absolute truth and fact (jade in your vagina does not cure anything) we get a netflix series.
        luckylion 7y ago
        > These "super edge cases" are happening monthly. Yes, in a world with literally billions of people, you have a few millions who believe outlandish things. If that was the extent of the problem with polarization/toxicity on the internet (or public debate in general), I doubt we'd talk about it, and I'd be very happy with the state of the world. Those people have no large base, no stable membership, no money, no power. Focusing on them is like decrying the fall of science because 6yo Timmy still believes in Santa Clause.
gbrown 7y ago
So... would you consider that an argument against the sanctions levied against, for example, doctors who lie and fake data to stoke fears about vaccines and autism? What about fighting against conspiracy theories about the deep state and pizza parlors? There's a tendency to wishfully think that people are rational and should be expected to sort out their own information environment with no governmental influence whatsoever, but I don't buy it at all. We're predictably manipulable, emotional creatures, and we can decide rationally to improve our information environment without falling into your implicit slippery slope.
- etangent 7y ago
  > would you consider that an argument against the sanctions levied against, for example, doctors who lie and fake data to stoke fears about vaccines and autism? Yes. I never said authoritarianism is bad. In fact, I probably consider myself an authoritarian.
mmhsieh 7y ago
also puritanism

tengbretson 7y ago

I definitely wasn't cynically throwing up my hands and smugly concluding all sides are lying. All I intended to do was demonstrate how cheap it is to call someone a liar on the internet. It costs nothing to the reputations of you or your "lying friend" to call one another a liar and thats why it doesn't mean anything. The sooner people realize this the better off we'll be.

shadowgovt 7y ago
My prediction is that this is what will, in the end, change; technology will advance far enough to severely de-anonymize online interaction, at which point one's reputation again comes into play and people will find there are consequences for thoughtless shitposting. It has begun to happen, with phenomena such as people being fired for Facebook or Twitter posts. It doesn't seem impossible to tie a sufficiently-advanced pattern-recognition network to the firehoses of data on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, et. al to automatically tie together the scraps of personal info people accidentally leave behind and severely compromise online anonymity. Be interesting if it happens.
- tengbretson 7y ago
  Economically I think this will be huge. Reputation based economies are incredibly more efficient than regulatory ones. Theres no amount of regulatory compliance that can tell consumers the information they want in the way a 2 star average uber driver review does. On the social side I can't even imagine how destructive it could be. People (especially on HN) love to lament how restrictive and oppressing the "everyone knows everyone" small town life can be. So now that we have the anonymity online we can escape to, we've all turned around and started building the biggest "small town" imaginable! One with no escape.
  - shadowgovt 7y ago
    Exactly. Mostly because we've discovered that the small town is oppressive, but the Wild West is full of gangsters. ;)
- 7y ago

AnimalMuppet 7y ago

> We do have the ability to determine truth from fiction, it just takes more work than cynically throwing up your hands and smugly concluding all sides are lying. It also takes more work than "But I'm right!" If you've done the research, if you know that you're correct, it's one thing. (Even then, not everyone who is incorrect is lying.) But it's a real temptation to say "I'm right, they're wrong, they're lying" when you haven't actually done the work to be sure you're right. I am prone to that temptation. You almost certainly are, too. So be careful. You can be the one in the wrong.

gbrown 7y ago
I don't disagree with anything you've said, but I often find myself in situations where I have gone out and tried carefully to understand what's true. When you've done the research, it's very frustrating to be confronted with exactly what you're describing.
- AnimalMuppet 7y ago
  Sure. But even then, knowing that in other circumstances it can be you behaving that way can give a bit more empathy for the other person. That doesn't make it less frustrating, but it may help you handle it a bit more gracefully.

makomk 7y ago

They're not necessarily wrong. For example, one of the big anti-Brexit talking points beloved of both Corbyn and social media users before the election was that a trade deal with the US would mean maggots in orange juice. This also, as I recall, became part of the narrative about Brexit supporters being mislead, with the line being that they were sold all those false dreams and would get maggots instead. It was a complete and utter lie: https://fullfact.org/health/maggot-orange-juice-USA/ https://fullfact.org/health/maggot-orange-juice-USA/ And I really do mean a complete lie. This wasn't a dispute over creative redefinitions of terms like Boris' NHS funding claims, or some nitpick about a minor detail. Corbyn and a worryingly large chunk of the press took an example of US food safety regulations being unambiguously stricter than EU ones - of them placing all the same restrictions on food manufacturers that the EU does, plus more - and falsely claimed their regulations were weaker instead, using graphic, emotive, memorable language, and everyone believed and repeated this total inversion of the truth. The thing that gets me is that on some level, people must've known that US food isn't really unsafe. There's not some big movement of people who refuse to eat US food - by and large, everyone trusts food there as much as they would food here. The other thing is that despite this pretty much the entire press dropped the ball on this lie. (It is not even close to the only prominent anti-Brexit or anti-Tory lie they left unchallenged or outright made themselves.) Even Full Fact did initially - they actually helped spread the false claim themselves, and only came back to it a month or so later after it had spread across the internet multiple times and been used by Corbyn repeatedly in his campaigning.