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> It's so important to the function of our society to have an informed population, but we don't, and it's because of the consistent lying that is done by journa

> It's so important to the function of our society to have an informed population, but we don't, and it's because of the consistent lying that is done by journalists that we don't. Are you sure it's that important to have an informed citizenry? I'd say we've never had one, anywhere. We've had some people being informed, sure, but the masses have never been informed well. They've been lead and entertained. If it's that important, how have we made it this far? What's more important for a nation than the media informing people is the media being on the same page and projecting a similar image. Of course, you want them to not report that aliens have landed when they haven't, but you certainly don't want only half of them reporting it. I don't believe that the facts really matter that much overall. But if you lose the "shared reality", you're losing cohesion.

Shared404 6y ago
So what you're saying is you think 1984 is the ideal outcome?
- luckylion 6y ago
  No, what I'm saying is that you're now seeing what happens when it's not 1984. Similar to this whole human microphone thing they did a few years back at Occupy Wall Street. It works great when all the repeaters repeat the message and do so in sync. It doesn't work at all when they all just yell whatever it is they think is best. Then the audience isn't getting the actual message, and many parts of the audience aren't even getting the same message as their neighbors. Some hear "go left", others hear "go right", some get "we should all stay here" and the rest gets some kind of talk about why soup is better than sandwiches. Needless to say that they won't get anything done that way. Media are reality-mirrors. It's fine if your mirror is a bit dirty, dull or not hung perfectly flat (it's distorting reality, but it's close enough to be useful as a mirror), but if your mirror consists of six different fun house mirrors that are also moving about, it's a shitty mirror and it doesn't work as a mirror.
  - Shared404 6y ago
    > No, what I'm saying is that you're now seeing what happens when it's not 1984. So 1984 is better than what we have now? > Then the audience isn't getting the actual message, and many parts of the audience aren't even getting the same message as their neighbors. Some hear "go left", others hear "go right", some get "we should all stay here" and the rest gets some kind of talk about why soup is better than sandwiches. Needless to say that they won't get anything done that way. People choosing their own filter bubbles is orthogonal to the issue of the media. Just because someone chooses to ignore alternate perspectives, doesn't mean they don't exist. > Media are reality-mirrors. It's fine if your mirror is a bit dirty, dull or not hung perfectly flat (it's distorting reality, but it's close enough to be useful as a mirror), but if your mirror consists of six different fun house mirrors that are also moving about, it's a shitty mirror and it doesn't work as a mirror. I don't think _most_ of the current media would be a "fun house mirror". I would argue most of it are mirrors from different perspectives, so you can get a bigger picture by looking in multiple.
    - luckylion 6y ago
      > So 1984 is better than what we have now? The dystopian version? No, I don't think so. I'm also not talking about anything else but shared reality. "We've always been at war with Eastasia" is a problem itself, but it's less problematic for the country than half of the country believing we're at war with Eastasia and the other half believing we're at war with Eurasia, and both halves actively waging their wars. > Just because someone chooses to ignore alternate perspectives, doesn't mean they don't exist. Of course, but they're not choosing, and they don't exist for them. That's perfectly fine as long as you don't need people from multiple realities to work together, which we kind of need.
      - Shared404 6y ago
        I want to start by saying that I saw this comment this morning, and have been thinking about it all day. Thank you for commenting this, and sticking around to defend your point. I do have a couple of comments. First, a system like you are describing is going to be highly efficient. However, this is not always a good thing. As you increase efficiency, in almost any system you will decrease robustness [0]. While this may be fine in a startup or some software project, for a society, this seems extremely dangerous. Second, I disagree with the concept of everyone having their own reality. Everyone has their own perception of reality, and may or may not be able to perceive/conceive the reality of someone else's perception, but there is still only one authoritative, physical truth (Well, at least on a scale macro enough for this conversation). Third, even if you control all of the media (via government for example), you still will not be able to control everyone's perception of reality. See for example China or North Korea, which I believe are the two systems closest to control of the media in the manner you are describing. In China. Despite their total control of the media, there are still citizens who think differently and have a different perception of reality. The only reason that these citizens follow along with the common goal, is because of the threat of force against them or their families if they don't. For the fourth, I'm going to borrow your war example. If half the country believes in the war in Eurasia and carries it out, and half the country believes in the war in Eastasia and carries it out, are not both sides partially correct? In that case, would they not be better served by seeing the entire truth of the situation, instead of being limited to news sources that serve only one of the stories? Of course, I do believe that the news should consist of facts, and possibly the interpretation thereof. However, this cannot be trusted to enforcement by government. In addition, since there is no way to stop news organizations from interpreting the facts, would we not be better served by having multiple organizations each provide individual interpretations? That way, we can see multiple possible "realities/perceptions" and chose which we think is the most accurate. [0] https://taylorpearson.me/interestingtimes/robustness-efficiency-tradeoff/ https://taylorpearson.me/interestingtimes/robustness-efficie...
lukeramsden 6y ago
> We've had some people being informed, sure, but the masses have never been informed well. They've been lead and entertained. If it's that important, how have we made it this far? Your whole comment isn't exactly wrong, but what's worked in the past does not constitute a guaranteed path forward. We've also never had a populous with such ready access to information, both raw and interpreted, before.
- luckylion 6y ago
  That's true, but I'm not sure that that's different from before either. As technology and wealth progressed, that has likely been true plenty of times. I'm not convinced that anything has fundamentally changed, and I don't think that the population made decisions by being informed. Instead, they were being informed and that formed their decision. Does it matter that we now have 8000 TV channels readily available? Is that meaningfully different from having 50? Sure, we now have the internet which is theoretically a two-way-medium (but for most users, it's one-way), and that may change some things and make the whole system more fragile, because it's much harder to control a narrative and suppress information now, but I don't see it changing the basic relationship between citizenry and media (at least not yet).
nickthemagicman 6y ago
There's a place for cohesion but I don't think the news is it.
grawprog 6y ago
>What's more important for a nation than the media informing people is the media being on the same page and projecting a similar image So like this? https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/02/business/media/sinclair-news-anchors-script.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/02/business/media/sinclair-n... > I don't believe that the facts really matter that much overall. But if you lose the "shared reality", you're losing cohesion. So you'd rather live in a made up fantasy world as long as we all share the same made up fantasy world? I just can't understand how people can think like this... 1984 should really be assigned reading for everyone in high school.
- SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
  Misinformation is another thing entirely. The media shouldn't publish lies. But if half the population reads "here's all the ways these guys are ruining the country", and other half reads "here's all the ways those guys are ruining the country", it's not obvious to me that's an improvement over reading nothing at all. Consumers of both outlets are being informed, but they're being informed in a toxic way which won't help them or anyone else.
- luckylion 6y ago
  > So like this? Well, yes. I mean, we've had that in a more sophisticated way for the longest time via press agencies. They deliver the news to the media companies, the editors rewrite it a bit to match their audience's taste and add a bit of opinion, but the basic facts are the same. Sinclair was probably just too cheap to spend the extra few bucks to hire somebody to write 20 scripts that have the same content but aren't worded the same. > So you'd rather live in a made up fantasy world as long as we all share the same made up fantasy world? I'd prefer if we all shared reality. But we have a terrible hard time finding out what reality even is, and if you read any kind of media, you're certainly not learning about reality, you're just learning about whatever reality the media thinks is real (or wants you to think is real). And in that case, yeah, a shared fantasy is better than many fantasies. You can communicate about a shared fantasy reality. You'll have a hard time communicating when you don't share reality.
  - 6y ago

Shared404 6y ago

So what you're saying is you think 1984 is the ideal outcome?

luckylion 6y ago
No, what I'm saying is that you're now seeing what happens when it's not 1984. Similar to this whole human microphone thing they did a few years back at Occupy Wall Street. It works great when all the repeaters repeat the message and do so in sync. It doesn't work at all when they all just yell whatever it is they think is best. Then the audience isn't getting the actual message, and many parts of the audience aren't even getting the same message as their neighbors. Some hear "go left", others hear "go right", some get "we should all stay here" and the rest gets some kind of talk about why soup is better than sandwiches. Needless to say that they won't get anything done that way. Media are reality-mirrors. It's fine if your mirror is a bit dirty, dull or not hung perfectly flat (it's distorting reality, but it's close enough to be useful as a mirror), but if your mirror consists of six different fun house mirrors that are also moving about, it's a shitty mirror and it doesn't work as a mirror.
- Shared404 6y ago
  > No, what I'm saying is that you're now seeing what happens when it's not 1984. So 1984 is better than what we have now? > Then the audience isn't getting the actual message, and many parts of the audience aren't even getting the same message as their neighbors. Some hear "go left", others hear "go right", some get "we should all stay here" and the rest gets some kind of talk about why soup is better than sandwiches. Needless to say that they won't get anything done that way. People choosing their own filter bubbles is orthogonal to the issue of the media. Just because someone chooses to ignore alternate perspectives, doesn't mean they don't exist. > Media are reality-mirrors. It's fine if your mirror is a bit dirty, dull or not hung perfectly flat (it's distorting reality, but it's close enough to be useful as a mirror), but if your mirror consists of six different fun house mirrors that are also moving about, it's a shitty mirror and it doesn't work as a mirror. I don't think _most_ of the current media would be a "fun house mirror". I would argue most of it are mirrors from different perspectives, so you can get a bigger picture by looking in multiple.
  - luckylion 6y ago
    > So 1984 is better than what we have now? The dystopian version? No, I don't think so. I'm also not talking about anything else but shared reality. "We've always been at war with Eastasia" is a problem itself, but it's less problematic for the country than half of the country believing we're at war with Eastasia and the other half believing we're at war with Eurasia, and both halves actively waging their wars. > Just because someone chooses to ignore alternate perspectives, doesn't mean they don't exist. Of course, but they're not choosing, and they don't exist for them. That's perfectly fine as long as you don't need people from multiple realities to work together, which we kind of need.
    - Shared404 6y ago
      I want to start by saying that I saw this comment this morning, and have been thinking about it all day. Thank you for commenting this, and sticking around to defend your point. I do have a couple of comments. First, a system like you are describing is going to be highly efficient. However, this is not always a good thing. As you increase efficiency, in almost any system you will decrease robustness [0]. While this may be fine in a startup or some software project, for a society, this seems extremely dangerous. Second, I disagree with the concept of everyone having their own reality. Everyone has their own perception of reality, and may or may not be able to perceive/conceive the reality of someone else's perception, but there is still only one authoritative, physical truth (Well, at least on a scale macro enough for this conversation). Third, even if you control all of the media (via government for example), you still will not be able to control everyone's perception of reality. See for example China or North Korea, which I believe are the two systems closest to control of the media in the manner you are describing. In China. Despite their total control of the media, there are still citizens who think differently and have a different perception of reality. The only reason that these citizens follow along with the common goal, is because of the threat of force against them or their families if they don't. For the fourth, I'm going to borrow your war example. If half the country believes in the war in Eurasia and carries it out, and half the country believes in the war in Eastasia and carries it out, are not both sides partially correct? In that case, would they not be better served by seeing the entire truth of the situation, instead of being limited to news sources that serve only one of the stories? Of course, I do believe that the news should consist of facts, and possibly the interpretation thereof. However, this cannot be trusted to enforcement by government. In addition, since there is no way to stop news organizations from interpreting the facts, would we not be better served by having multiple organizations each provide individual interpretations? That way, we can see multiple possible "realities/perceptions" and chose which we think is the most accurate. [0] https://taylorpearson.me/interestingtimes/robustness-efficiency-tradeoff/ https://taylorpearson.me/interestingtimes/robustness-efficie...

lukeramsden 6y ago

> We've had some people being informed, sure, but the masses have never been informed well. They've been lead and entertained. If it's that important, how have we made it this far? Your whole comment isn't exactly wrong, but what's worked in the past does not constitute a guaranteed path forward. We've also never had a populous with such ready access to information, both raw and interpreted, before.

luckylion 6y ago
That's true, but I'm not sure that that's different from before either. As technology and wealth progressed, that has likely been true plenty of times. I'm not convinced that anything has fundamentally changed, and I don't think that the population made decisions by being informed. Instead, they were being informed and that formed their decision. Does it matter that we now have 8000 TV channels readily available? Is that meaningfully different from having 50? Sure, we now have the internet which is theoretically a two-way-medium (but for most users, it's one-way), and that may change some things and make the whole system more fragile, because it's much harder to control a narrative and suppress information now, but I don't see it changing the basic relationship between citizenry and media (at least not yet).

nickthemagicman 6y ago

There's a place for cohesion but I don't think the news is it.

grawprog 6y ago

>What's more important for a nation than the media informing people is the media being on the same page and projecting a similar image So like this? https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/02/business/media/sinclair-news-anchors-script.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/02/business/media/sinclair-n... > I don't believe that the facts really matter that much overall. But if you lose the "shared reality", you're losing cohesion. So you'd rather live in a made up fantasy world as long as we all share the same made up fantasy world? I just can't understand how people can think like this... 1984 should really be assigned reading for everyone in high school.

SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
Misinformation is another thing entirely. The media shouldn't publish lies. But if half the population reads "here's all the ways these guys are ruining the country", and other half reads "here's all the ways those guys are ruining the country", it's not obvious to me that's an improvement over reading nothing at all. Consumers of both outlets are being informed, but they're being informed in a toxic way which won't help them or anyone else.
luckylion 6y ago
> So like this? Well, yes. I mean, we've had that in a more sophisticated way for the longest time via press agencies. They deliver the news to the media companies, the editors rewrite it a bit to match their audience's taste and add a bit of opinion, but the basic facts are the same. Sinclair was probably just too cheap to spend the extra few bucks to hire somebody to write 20 scripts that have the same content but aren't worded the same. > So you'd rather live in a made up fantasy world as long as we all share the same made up fantasy world? I'd prefer if we all shared reality. But we have a terrible hard time finding out what reality even is, and if you read any kind of media, you're certainly not learning about reality, you're just learning about whatever reality the media thinks is real (or wants you to think is real). And in that case, yeah, a shared fantasy is better than many fantasies. You can communicate about a shared fantasy reality. You'll have a hard time communicating when you don't share reality.
- 6y ago