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I think the issue is really whether people can make up their own minds. Early on it seems there was this idea that you could simply give people the facts, and t

I think the issue is really whether people can make up their own minds. Early on it seems there was this idea that you could simply give people the facts, and they could decide for themselves what to think. This seems to not be the case. Both in the sense of whether people can think for themselves, and whether anyone thinks they can. How often do you see a comment that blames public opinion on the media? For me, it's all the time. Now that everyone thinks that people will just think what they're told, you have a paternal class of writers who feel they need to be very vocal in what they direct people's opinions towards. It's clear that if you think people can't think for themselves, persuading them of one opinion or another is going to look very different from if you thought they were rational agents that just looked at evidence.

dfxm12 6y ago
Early on it seems there was this idea that you could simply give people the facts, and they could decide for themselves what to think. This seems to not be the case. Yeah, people say they want objectivity, that they want facts, but then they'll complain about bias when they read that their opinion on something is objectively not based in fact. As an example, how many people are complaining about objectivity, while also refusing to even entertain the idea that someone who says "COVID-19 is a hoax" is a liar?
rodiger 6y ago
Facts without the corresponding counter are incredibly powerful at being "accurate" but still swaying opinion towards a bad take. Modern media abuses this. There are facts to support most viewpoints, but most can also be readily attributed to other factors. However, when presented in certain lenses it's near impossible to tell who is correct (without going off and doing independent research).
- makomk 6y ago
  Careful use of facts can even convince people of things that are out-and-out untrue. For example, at least for a while everyone on HN seemed convinced that the US coronavirus testing program must obviously have been sabotaged because we couldn't even catch up with South Korea in tests per capita - people kept on pointing to that one specific fact, even though it wasn't true and hadn't been in a good while. This was the result of hard, deliberate work by the American media. It started when America genuinely was behind South Korea and the media pointed to this as the reason they'd supposedly contained the coronavirus without locking down (they hadn't, of course). Then when the US started catching up with South Korea, passing them in both total tests and testing rate per capita, all the usual publications ran fact checks insisting it was false to claim that the US was testing more people for coronavirus because they'd tested less people per capita. When even that was passed, the media carefully avoided mentioning it, using other comparisons such as test positivity rate to argue that the US coronavirus testing was still behind South Korea. (In reality this wasn't actually measuring the scale of coronavirus testing at all - South Korea had reached that low positivity rate by using a partial lockdown to drop the number of cases and were coming to the end of that lockdown.) Anyone Googling for information on the false claim would find only the outdated fact checks, which even their authors must've known weren't going to be true for long given the trajectory back then. Not only that, when Trump pointed out in a press conference that in reality the US had passed South Korea in this, the New York Times even ran a news headline claiming he was lying... and if you read the article, their basis for claiming this was that there were still a few other countries carrying out more coronavirus tests per capita than the US. (Which was technically true but irrelevant, particularly since most of the larger ones also had worse coronavirus outbreaks than the US so it clearly wasn't doing them much good.)
watwut 6y ago
Early journalism was highly opinionated and inflammatory. There was period where objectivity was defined as asking both sides and then being seemingly neutral. But it is debatable how objective it was and how much it was just shared consensus. But tabloids always existed even during that period. And they were not objective at all.
- dfxm12 6y ago
  There was period where objectivity was defined as asking both sides and then being seemingly neutral. Unfortunately, that period is still here. A lot of cable news is based on this idea, for example. Of course, most issues are way more nuanced than just two sides, and to be frank, even in the context of being objective, not each argument deserves to be represented. Consider a debate about treating creationism and evolution as equal when talking about science curriculum in schools, as an example. It would still be an objective stance to not even consider teaching creationism as science...
IIAOPSW 6y ago
The weak form of the hypothesis is that a sizeable minority really can't / won't think for themselves. Suppose just 15% of people really will just go along with whatever is fed to them. This minority of non-thinkers would be more electorally important than every traditional minority.

dfxm12 6y ago

Early on it seems there was this idea that you could simply give people the facts, and they could decide for themselves what to think. This seems to not be the case. Yeah, people say they want objectivity, that they want facts, but then they'll complain about bias when they read that their opinion on something is objectively not based in fact. As an example, how many people are complaining about objectivity, while also refusing to even entertain the idea that someone who says "COVID-19 is a hoax" is a liar?

rodiger 6y ago

Facts without the corresponding counter are incredibly powerful at being "accurate" but still swaying opinion towards a bad take. Modern media abuses this. There are facts to support most viewpoints, but most can also be readily attributed to other factors. However, when presented in certain lenses it's near impossible to tell who is correct (without going off and doing independent research).

makomk 6y ago
Careful use of facts can even convince people of things that are out-and-out untrue. For example, at least for a while everyone on HN seemed convinced that the US coronavirus testing program must obviously have been sabotaged because we couldn't even catch up with South Korea in tests per capita - people kept on pointing to that one specific fact, even though it wasn't true and hadn't been in a good while. This was the result of hard, deliberate work by the American media. It started when America genuinely was behind South Korea and the media pointed to this as the reason they'd supposedly contained the coronavirus without locking down (they hadn't, of course). Then when the US started catching up with South Korea, passing them in both total tests and testing rate per capita, all the usual publications ran fact checks insisting it was false to claim that the US was testing more people for coronavirus because they'd tested less people per capita. When even that was passed, the media carefully avoided mentioning it, using other comparisons such as test positivity rate to argue that the US coronavirus testing was still behind South Korea. (In reality this wasn't actually measuring the scale of coronavirus testing at all - South Korea had reached that low positivity rate by using a partial lockdown to drop the number of cases and were coming to the end of that lockdown.) Anyone Googling for information on the false claim would find only the outdated fact checks, which even their authors must've known weren't going to be true for long given the trajectory back then. Not only that, when Trump pointed out in a press conference that in reality the US had passed South Korea in this, the New York Times even ran a news headline claiming he was lying... and if you read the article, their basis for claiming this was that there were still a few other countries carrying out more coronavirus tests per capita than the US. (Which was technically true but irrelevant, particularly since most of the larger ones also had worse coronavirus outbreaks than the US so it clearly wasn't doing them much good.)

watwut 6y ago

Early journalism was highly opinionated and inflammatory. There was period where objectivity was defined as asking both sides and then being seemingly neutral. But it is debatable how objective it was and how much it was just shared consensus. But tabloids always existed even during that period. And they were not objective at all.

dfxm12 6y ago
There was period where objectivity was defined as asking both sides and then being seemingly neutral. Unfortunately, that period is still here. A lot of cable news is based on this idea, for example. Of course, most issues are way more nuanced than just two sides, and to be frank, even in the context of being objective, not each argument deserves to be represented. Consider a debate about treating creationism and evolution as equal when talking about science curriculum in schools, as an example. It would still be an objective stance to not even consider teaching creationism as science...

IIAOPSW 6y ago

The weak form of the hypothesis is that a sizeable minority really can't / won't think for themselves. Suppose just 15% of people really will just go along with whatever is fed to them. This minority of non-thinkers would be more electorally important than every traditional minority.