7 ms·

Trusting sources and verifying information is actually an incredibly hard game. Being too credulous leaves you open to misinformation, but on the other hand, be

by taneq 6y ago

Trusting sources and verifying information is actually an incredibly hard game. Being too credulous leaves you open to misinformation, but on the other hand, being uncritically skeptical leads to the current "fake news" environment where (to those involved) no source is credible and we might as well all just believe whatever meets our preconceptions and dismiss the rest.

colordrops 6y ago
Do you have a suggestion or thesis? It's not so hard that it couldn't be taught to average humans. Even if it was extremely hard, it should still be taught, considering its importance.
- tsimionescu 6y ago
  The problem is that, for many topics, there just isn't a reliable source to go to. Sure, if you want information on scientific topics, you have very good options - go to one of the celebrated journals and read some papers, or at least the press releases from those same journals. When it comes to current domestic affairs (has there been massive election fraud in the US? is ANTIFA terrorizing the US?) then the mainstream media is a trustworthy source. However, if you want to know about the effects of NAFTA, or US policy on Venezuela and how useful it is, or Russian involvement in the US elections, or trickle-down economics, or the benefits of a stimulus package etc, then the NYT, the Economist, and Breitbart are about as likely to give you a trust-worthy picture. So where can you look to, as an average citizen without time to conduct your own research on each topic you potentially care about? I don't think there is any good answer. Society absolutely needs a new independent, small-scale, un-elitist media. "Factory journals" and such - small organizations that are not owned by any powers that be, where a few people can spend the time to digest other sources and try to come up with a more accurate picture. Not multi-million dollar ad-based industrial media (NYT), and not activist propagandist media (Breitbart) - that is always going to be far too heavily biased to have any hope of being a trust-worthy source of information on most topics that they can feasibly ignore. And in case you don't believe me that most US media is a horrible source of information on the outside world, please find one single article on the biggest worker's strike in world history, that happened in January of this year in India. Edit: to be clear: I'm not in any way claiming that Breitbart is a credible news organization to any extent similar to the NYT or Economist. Breitbart are a disgusting organization whose aim is misinformation, and lying comes naturally to them; the NYT and Economist and others like them do have journalistic practices and actually care about the truth, and are excellent sources for some kinds of news - they just have massive biases in certain other areas, especially on foreign and economic policy, where they are not trustworthy, but even then I wouldn't expect outright lies.
  - jrumbut 6y ago
    I really agree with your point that you need to have a way to know what to believe and that there are serious blind spots. But I think a small, un-elite media is exactly where the problem is right now. All these blogs and YouTube channels that wants to spread the truth, then discover you can make money pushing conspiracy, have actually been crowding out actual journalistic organizations that have actual reporters. To me, they are the spiritual successors of the small journals which would have great original reporting on local labor or environmental issues and would also casually report on medical myths and other pet causes of the authors. I'm not sure what the answer is though and I think you're making some great points here.
    - tsimionescu 6y ago
      > But I think a small, un-elite media is exactly where the problem is right now. All these blogs and YouTube channels that wants to spread the truth, then discover you can make money pushing conspiracy, have actually been crowding out actual journalistic organizations that have actual reporters. > To me, they are the spiritual successors of the small journals which would have great original reporting on local labor or environmental issues and would also casually report on medical myths and other pet causes of the authors. These are very good points, that I'll have to think about more.
  - zo1 6y ago
    The mainstream media is a trustworthy source regarding election fraud and Antifa's terrorist activities? And "Breitbart are a disgusting organization whose aim is misinformation"? It's not so much that the main stream media outlets lie about facts. They misrepresent them because they have a bias and a specific opinion on matters that it's so obvious to anyone that isn't on the left. Which is why people flock to other sources such as Breitbart, which at the very least, spins and interprets the events/info with a right-leaning worldview. The overarching problem is that journalism has become a forum of opinion rather than facts + helping readers understand complex topics by digesting it for them. And it's no wonder we're becoming polarized, because we pick the "opinion" we like, rather than being given the facts and going with it, regardless from which source we get it.
- taneq 6y ago
  Not really. It's hard in the "NP hard" sense, not the "calculus is hard" sense. We don't have answers and there probably aren't any. The best you can do is cross-reference everything you know, take into account the degree to which you can verify each thing independently, and try and come up with some correlations between different sources to establish a web of credibility. Unfortunately, experience has shown that regular humans just don't do this.
- lobotryas 6y ago
  You act as if there is a singular truth that can be divined from any set of circumstances. You and I can review the same set of events and even if we agree on the facts come to different conclusions. Does that mean you did something wrong just because I disagree with you?
  - colordrops 6y ago
    No, I'm not suggesting there is a single truth. I'm suggesting that people think critically and keep an open mind that perhaps they are wrong or don't know the whole picture.
- Miraste 6y ago
  > It's not so hard that it couldn't be taught to average humans. What makes you believe this? I can't think of a time in history when the average person could critically evaluate information successfully.
somesortofsystm 6y ago
One should only trust named, identified sources. The age of anonymous sources in mainstream media needs to end, because an anonymous source is not a source. Yes, sources should be protected. But there should be mechanisms in place to protect sources who identify themselves that do not require the gullible public to just believe what they were told, because an authority said it was okay to believe something an anonymous person said about something. Maybe this is something that the crypto/cert folks should address - a means of verifying that a source has been properly and adequately identified, without revealing the details required to target that individual for harassment/assassination/etc. A media clearing house for sources, or a blockchain ...
- raxxorrax 6y ago
  But we also had the Russian election manipulation talk without any named source and evidence and it was widely believed.
  - somesortofsystm 6y ago
    I categorize that situation as mass hysteria, personally, another mutation of the 'red-baiting' McCarthy'ism that hasn't escaped American culture, which needs enemies to justify its trillion dollar investment in death machines. It served mostly as a mechanism for Americans to deflect from the real issues with their election: the Democrats fielded a corrupt, criminal candidate who could not defeat an also-corrupt, despicable ex-reality TV star. So, blame Russia. And therefore, a perfectly good example for why people should demand sources be revealed when it comes to issues of state election security. Otherwise, we will continue to be ruled by duplicitous subterfuge instead of verifiable facts.
raxxorrax 6y ago
This was the perspective that set the course for current actions, but the situation got worse.
cannedslime 6y ago
I feel like if media didnt seem conglomerated and opinionated, none of this would ever have been an issue. The problem is that globally, media has become aligned in its objectives, languages etc. to the point where anyone with just a shred of critical thinking would at least be skeptical about the quality of truth from mass media. This is partly because american NGOs have orchestrated a huge indoctrination effort among journalists on a global scale. I have worked for national media for a little under a decade and every place I worked, there was journalists participating in stuff from "open societies foundation". The quality of journalism has reached such a low that when tourists are group raped for hours and then are finally decapitated by religious fanatics (Any other description would not be allowed in media anymore, but you know who) who film and put it on the internet. they use terms like "Found with injuries on their neck". And then our police and media do everything they can to stop the real horrific truth from surfacing. No wonder people stop believing a word and become overly skeptical. Honestly I think its a sign of health that people become skeptical regarding mass media. It would be even healthier if the general populace started to dismantle the power structures that dictates our dystopian future.

by taneq 6y ago

colordrops 6y ago

Do you have a suggestion or thesis? It's not so hard that it couldn't be taught to average humans. Even if it was extremely hard, it should still be taught, considering its importance.

tsimionescu 6y ago
The problem is that, for many topics, there just isn't a reliable source to go to. Sure, if you want information on scientific topics, you have very good options - go to one of the celebrated journals and read some papers, or at least the press releases from those same journals. When it comes to current domestic affairs (has there been massive election fraud in the US? is ANTIFA terrorizing the US?) then the mainstream media is a trustworthy source. However, if you want to know about the effects of NAFTA, or US policy on Venezuela and how useful it is, or Russian involvement in the US elections, or trickle-down economics, or the benefits of a stimulus package etc, then the NYT, the Economist, and Breitbart are about as likely to give you a trust-worthy picture. So where can you look to, as an average citizen without time to conduct your own research on each topic you potentially care about? I don't think there is any good answer. Society absolutely needs a new independent, small-scale, un-elitist media. "Factory journals" and such - small organizations that are not owned by any powers that be, where a few people can spend the time to digest other sources and try to come up with a more accurate picture. Not multi-million dollar ad-based industrial media (NYT), and not activist propagandist media (Breitbart) - that is always going to be far too heavily biased to have any hope of being a trust-worthy source of information on most topics that they can feasibly ignore. And in case you don't believe me that most US media is a horrible source of information on the outside world, please find one single article on the biggest worker's strike in world history, that happened in January of this year in India. Edit: to be clear: I'm not in any way claiming that Breitbart is a credible news organization to any extent similar to the NYT or Economist. Breitbart are a disgusting organization whose aim is misinformation, and lying comes naturally to them; the NYT and Economist and others like them do have journalistic practices and actually care about the truth, and are excellent sources for some kinds of news - they just have massive biases in certain other areas, especially on foreign and economic policy, where they are not trustworthy, but even then I wouldn't expect outright lies.
- jrumbut 6y ago
  I really agree with your point that you need to have a way to know what to believe and that there are serious blind spots. But I think a small, un-elite media is exactly where the problem is right now. All these blogs and YouTube channels that wants to spread the truth, then discover you can make money pushing conspiracy, have actually been crowding out actual journalistic organizations that have actual reporters. To me, they are the spiritual successors of the small journals which would have great original reporting on local labor or environmental issues and would also casually report on medical myths and other pet causes of the authors. I'm not sure what the answer is though and I think you're making some great points here.
  - tsimionescu 6y ago
    > But I think a small, un-elite media is exactly where the problem is right now. All these blogs and YouTube channels that wants to spread the truth, then discover you can make money pushing conspiracy, have actually been crowding out actual journalistic organizations that have actual reporters. > To me, they are the spiritual successors of the small journals which would have great original reporting on local labor or environmental issues and would also casually report on medical myths and other pet causes of the authors. These are very good points, that I'll have to think about more.
- zo1 6y ago
  The mainstream media is a trustworthy source regarding election fraud and Antifa's terrorist activities? And "Breitbart are a disgusting organization whose aim is misinformation"? It's not so much that the main stream media outlets lie about facts. They misrepresent them because they have a bias and a specific opinion on matters that it's so obvious to anyone that isn't on the left. Which is why people flock to other sources such as Breitbart, which at the very least, spins and interprets the events/info with a right-leaning worldview. The overarching problem is that journalism has become a forum of opinion rather than facts + helping readers understand complex topics by digesting it for them. And it's no wonder we're becoming polarized, because we pick the "opinion" we like, rather than being given the facts and going with it, regardless from which source we get it.
taneq 6y ago
Not really. It's hard in the "NP hard" sense, not the "calculus is hard" sense. We don't have answers and there probably aren't any. The best you can do is cross-reference everything you know, take into account the degree to which you can verify each thing independently, and try and come up with some correlations between different sources to establish a web of credibility. Unfortunately, experience has shown that regular humans just don't do this.
lobotryas 6y ago
You act as if there is a singular truth that can be divined from any set of circumstances. You and I can review the same set of events and even if we agree on the facts come to different conclusions. Does that mean you did something wrong just because I disagree with you?
- colordrops 6y ago
  No, I'm not suggesting there is a single truth. I'm suggesting that people think critically and keep an open mind that perhaps they are wrong or don't know the whole picture.
Miraste 6y ago
> It's not so hard that it couldn't be taught to average humans. What makes you believe this? I can't think of a time in history when the average person could critically evaluate information successfully.

somesortofsystm 6y ago

One should only trust named, identified sources. The age of anonymous sources in mainstream media needs to end, because an anonymous source is not a source. Yes, sources should be protected. But there should be mechanisms in place to protect sources who identify themselves that do not require the gullible public to just believe what they were told, because an authority said it was okay to believe something an anonymous person said about something. Maybe this is something that the crypto/cert folks should address - a means of verifying that a source has been properly and adequately identified, without revealing the details required to target that individual for harassment/assassination/etc. A media clearing house for sources, or a blockchain ...

raxxorrax 6y ago
But we also had the Russian election manipulation talk without any named source and evidence and it was widely believed.
- somesortofsystm 6y ago
  I categorize that situation as mass hysteria, personally, another mutation of the 'red-baiting' McCarthy'ism that hasn't escaped American culture, which needs enemies to justify its trillion dollar investment in death machines. It served mostly as a mechanism for Americans to deflect from the real issues with their election: the Democrats fielded a corrupt, criminal candidate who could not defeat an also-corrupt, despicable ex-reality TV star. So, blame Russia. And therefore, a perfectly good example for why people should demand sources be revealed when it comes to issues of state election security. Otherwise, we will continue to be ruled by duplicitous subterfuge instead of verifiable facts.

raxxorrax 6y ago

This was the perspective that set the course for current actions, but the situation got worse.

cannedslime 6y ago

I feel like if media didnt seem conglomerated and opinionated, none of this would ever have been an issue. The problem is that globally, media has become aligned in its objectives, languages etc. to the point where anyone with just a shred of critical thinking would at least be skeptical about the quality of truth from mass media. This is partly because american NGOs have orchestrated a huge indoctrination effort among journalists on a global scale. I have worked for national media for a little under a decade and every place I worked, there was journalists participating in stuff from "open societies foundation". The quality of journalism has reached such a low that when tourists are group raped for hours and then are finally decapitated by religious fanatics (Any other description would not be allowed in media anymore, but you know who) who film and put it on the internet. they use terms like "Found with injuries on their neck". And then our police and media do everything they can to stop the real horrific truth from surfacing. No wonder people stop believing a word and become overly skeptical. Honestly I think its a sign of health that people become skeptical regarding mass media. It would be even healthier if the general populace started to dismantle the power structures that dictates our dystopian future.