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English-language reporting on the matter has been so bad that my mother is worried for my safety. I can believe it. So, on the one hand, it often seems like H

English-language reporting on the matter has been so bad that my mother is worried for my safety. I can believe it. So, on the one hand, it often seems like HN spends way too much time absorbed with inside-baseball conversations on the design of social news. How do we keep social-media communities intelligent and informative? How do we prevent them from being constantly trolled, dominated by sugar-coated memetic fluff (e.g. "things on fire"), spammed by marketers, or deliberately hijacked by paid sockpuppets, fanatical propagandists, and well-funded PR campaigns? We go on and on about this stuff, routinely. But on the other hand, we worry about these things because they are important, and because we still haven't done enough. Especially in the USA, our failed media infrastructure is a very big problem. It creates an environment where everyone is either perpetually ignorant or perpetually afraid, or both, and it fuels random acts of sabotage and irrationality, and it serves as a constant drag on our civilization's energy. So when, as an engineer, I think about ways to advance my favorite design and engineering projects - smart civic design, renewable energy, robotic exploration of space, cheap and widespread applied genetics, popular appreciation of science, promotion of the creative arts - it always seems to come down to education and information. Here we have an example: Why, in a world where we can build a global information system like this one, must patio11, with obvious reluctance, spend so much time restating the obvious? (And, indeed, he must spend this time, because the alternative is that many of our friends, and relatives, and especially our parents run around like Chicken Little.)

gbhn 16y ago
Thanks for this post. The suppression of bullshit is a glaring hole in our media environment. It's at least moderately plausible that intelligent and informed posts like Patrick's here can now get very wide distribution thanks to the internet. But what we don't have is a good way to incent the more hairspray-reliant members of the media sphere to read things like this and become informed.
Natsu 16y ago
People seek the most exciting news. The most outrageous headlines get the clicks, even from people who should know they're exaggerations. If you want to fix the news, start there.
elptacek 16y ago
I guess it goes without saying that this very thoughtfully composed post also implies is that it's not only the media infrastructure that is failed. But the answer is written into the post as well: be involved. Apparently everyone in Japan has a duty in times of crisis, and it's not something opted into. I am genuinely jealous, after reading this post. In that I would love for _my_ country to have its shit together to this degree. That, also, goes without saying.
- pokjhnboi 16y ago
  I live in a city of 2M people directly opposite the pacific from this. Our 50 person earthquake response team was disbanded last year after an investigation into police funding. Of course since we are mostly on reclaimed land which will liquefy, all our drinking and firefighting water comes into the city across 2 ancient bridges and very few of the buildings have been earthquake retrofitted we aren't worried about the loss of 50 search and rescue people.
- defen 16y ago
  Japanese society is also ethnically homogenous (which increases trust and social capital - see http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9477.2007.00176.x/full http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9477.2007....), hierarchical, and strongly favors social harmony over individual expression. I'm not convinced that a country like the U.S. could be as well prepared as Japan seems to be. I'm not saying we couldn't eventually overcome a similar scale disaster, but I think Japan is always going to have us beat in the immediate to short term aftermath.
  - elptacek 16y ago
    "...strongly favors social harmony over individual expression." I like how you put that. It describes my experience with Switzerland as well. I remember the pros and cons of being an American ex-pat there -- it could be quite rigid at times. As I get older, however, my frustration with this dichotomy appears to be growing. Individual expression can get off my lawn.

gbhn 16y ago

Thanks for this post. The suppression of bullshit is a glaring hole in our media environment. It's at least moderately plausible that intelligent and informed posts like Patrick's here can now get very wide distribution thanks to the internet. But what we don't have is a good way to incent the more hairspray-reliant members of the media sphere to read things like this and become informed.

Natsu 16y ago

People seek the most exciting news. The most outrageous headlines get the clicks, even from people who should know they're exaggerations. If you want to fix the news, start there.

elptacek 16y ago

I guess it goes without saying that this very thoughtfully composed post also implies is that it's not only the media infrastructure that is failed. But the answer is written into the post as well: be involved. Apparently everyone in Japan has a duty in times of crisis, and it's not something opted into. I am genuinely jealous, after reading this post. In that I would love for _my_ country to have its shit together to this degree. That, also, goes without saying.

pokjhnboi 16y ago
I live in a city of 2M people directly opposite the pacific from this. Our 50 person earthquake response team was disbanded last year after an investigation into police funding. Of course since we are mostly on reclaimed land which will liquefy, all our drinking and firefighting water comes into the city across 2 ancient bridges and very few of the buildings have been earthquake retrofitted we aren't worried about the loss of 50 search and rescue people.
defen 16y ago
Japanese society is also ethnically homogenous (which increases trust and social capital - see http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9477.2007.00176.x/full http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9477.2007....), hierarchical, and strongly favors social harmony over individual expression. I'm not convinced that a country like the U.S. could be as well prepared as Japan seems to be. I'm not saying we couldn't eventually overcome a similar scale disaster, but I think Japan is always going to have us beat in the immediate to short term aftermath.
- elptacek 16y ago
  "...strongly favors social harmony over individual expression." I like how you put that. It describes my experience with Switzerland as well. I remember the pros and cons of being an American ex-pat there -- it could be quite rigid at times. As I get older, however, my frustration with this dichotomy appears to be growing. Individual expression can get off my lawn.