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I find it hilarious that so much disinformation went into this article itself. The mischaracterizations of Fauci and the reckless, the poor sources that themsel

I find it hilarious that so much disinformation went into this article itself. The mischaracterizations of Fauci and the reckless, the poor sources that themselves are spin machines, all highlight a lot of the issues: a spectrum of people hell bent on manufacturing distrust in various institutions for their own gains, now co-adopted as an identity by the GOP. We need to find a way to fundamentally change the incentives in media, change the public’s expectation of separating opinion versus news, and remove the cancer(s) of “think tanks” that only serve to undermine and destroy.

prutschman 6y ago
How would you characterize the following statement by Dr. Fauci in terms of its transparency and honesty? I'm not asking whether "noble lies" are necessary, useful, appropriate, or a good or bad idea in the long run. I'm just asking about its transparency and honesty: “When polls said only about half of all Americans would take a vaccine, I was saying herd immunity would take 70 to 75 percent,” Dr. Fauci said. “Then, when newer surveys said 60 percent or more would take it, I thought, ‘I can nudge this up a bit,’ so I went to 80, 85.” -- source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/24/health/herd-immunity-covid-coronavirus.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/24/health/herd-immunity-covi...
- stonogo 6y ago
  This is how leadership works when you're not a dictator. It's essentially a never-ending negotiation with a faceless and mercurial second party. Someone in his position cannot issue mandates backed by force, and so persuasion and influence are the primary tools -- and setting goals people see as unachievable is not productive. As the prevailing opinion changes, a leader needs to account for that. He's trying to achieve a specific result -- maximum acceptance of the tools we hav to fight the disease -- and the idea that a scientist can just stand in front of a camera and make a statement one time and then expect three hundred million people to accept that information and act with maximum rationality is basically absurd. It's up to you to decide whether that makes him an asshole or not, but I think the fact that he's discussing it with reporters says a lot about his transparency and honesty all by itself.
  - chordalkeyboard 6y ago
    > This is how leadership works when you're not a dictator. It's essentially a never-ending negotiation with a faceless and mercurial second party. I’ve had leaders that misrepresented facts in order to obtain compliance, as Fauci has, and leaders that were honest with me. I know which I prefer and I know which is considered ethical.
    - prox 6y ago
      What facts where misrepresented? He gave a range of numbers that seemed likely by him.
      - chordalkeyboard 6y ago
        >> “When polls said only about half of all Americans would take a vaccine, I was saying herd immunity would take 70 to 75 percent,” Dr. Fauci said. “Then, when newer surveys said 60 percent or more would take it, I thought, ‘I can nudge this up a bit,’ so I went to 80, 85.” He’s clearly saying he changed his statement based on the compliance of the population and not medical research. He misrepresented the medical consensus as to what percentage of the population would need to be vaccinated in order to achieve herd immunity.
  - brobdingnagians 6y ago
    A scientist's first commitment should be to evidence based truth. They should tell it how it is, then the leaders can figure out how to get there. If scientific papers came to a conclusion based on what people are willing to accept or what is popular, we'd rarely find anything surprising to advance science. Lying isn't science. Telling people to follow the science while your top scientist lies about what the science is-- that isn't healthy and it will make sure the average person starts to distrust the "science". If he's willing to lie about that, what else is he lying about?
    - matwood 6y ago
      What exactly is he lying about here? He's shifting up with new science and as his opinion shifts. "In the pandemic’s early days, Dr. Fauci tended to cite the same 60 to 70 percent estimate that most experts did. About a month ago, he began saying “70, 75 percent” in television interviews. And last week, in an interview with CNBC News, he said “75, 80, 85 percent” and “75 to 80-plus percent.”" "In a telephone interview the next day, Dr. Fauci acknowledged that he had slowly but deliberately been moving the goal posts. He is doing so, he said, partly based on new science, and partly on his gut feeling that the country is finally ready to hear what he really thinks." The problem Dr. Fauci and other scientist have is if they share their opinions and then evidence comes out that makes them change their opinions, they have people who will call them liars and pull quotes out of context. But, this is exactly how science works. > the average person starts to distrust the "science" Unfortunately the average person doesn't understand science and that is why they distrust it. I still see people citing papers relating SARS1 is killed by hydroxychlorqine in vitro, ignoring all the papers describing RCTs in vivo dealing with SARS2.
- matwood 6y ago
  Talk about taking a quote out of context. Best to just read the whole article, but right after he also says. “We need to have some humility here,” he added. “We really don’t know what the real number is. I think the real range is somewhere between 70 to 90 percent. But, I’m not going to say 90 percent.” Herd immunity is also a moving target based on a lot of factors. Hopefully it doesn't reach measles level requirement.
  - dabbledash 6y ago
    So, the honest and direct answer at the outset would have been to state his actual belief: “70 - 90%, but we don’t know” If you’re massaging your answers to questions based on what people want to hear, you better hope they don’t find out.
  - NotSammyHagar 6y ago
    We know now based on people getting it twice and new variants that look to be easier to get that the herd immunity strategy would just lead to more misery.
    - jtbayly 6y ago
      Herd immunity is literally the point of mass vaccines.
      - stjohnswarts 6y ago
        He's talking about just letting the virus run free with no attempt to vaccinate, lock down, or wearing masks. This is what a lot of people now think of that as. Basically what will be will be, the human species has survived this long. Yeah herd immunity is not that but that's obviously what a lot of media has portrayed it as lately.
- azinman2 6y ago
  I would characterize your quote as selective, and this is just from the article (we don’t know the full story). He said it partially changed based on the science, and partially on political reality. I don’t know if that was the right thing or not for him to do. However, you’re omitting: “We need to have some humility here,” he added. “We really don’t know what the real number is. I think the real range is somewhere between 70 to 90 percent. But, I’m not going to say 90 percent.” So it’s really an educated guess, and he took a lower estimate. People don’t do well with ranged and errors— just look at how stocks move based upon whether they beat or not their analyst estimates in quarterly reports… they almost always are within the range stipulated but people pick the middle value and hold everything to it. None of this would cause me to characterize him as untrustworthy. We need far more Faucis in this world.
  - stjohnswarts 6y ago
    Yeah a lot of the same people who are trying to tear him down are the same who voted for and continue to support a President that has been easily counted to have 30,000+ completely untrue/outright deliberately false statements in the past 4 years.
prox 6y ago
Here is a quote from Bannon and paragraph from the intercept: Is it all a plan, another kind of elaborate conspiracy? Nothing so elegant. As Steve Bannon kindly told us, the informational strategy of the Trump era has always been to “flood the zone with shit.” Four years later, we can see what this looks like in practice. It makes no sense, and that’s just fine by the likes of Bannon, and Kenney as well. Because if you want to keep waging war on the Earth’s life-supporting ecology, a great way to do it is to deliberately pollute its democracy-supporting information ecology. In fact, the pollution is the point. Source: https://theintercept.com/2020/12/08/great-reset-conspiracy/ https://theintercept.com/2020/12/08/great-reset-conspiracy/
rufus_foreman 6y ago
>> We need to There is no we here. I do not believe in the things you believe in.
- jkhdigital 6y ago
  “The word "We" is as lime poured over men, which sets and hardens to stone, and crushes all beneath it, and that which is white and that which is black are lost equally in the grey of it. It is the word by which the depraved steal the virtue of the good, by which the weak steal the might of the strong, by which the fools steal the wisdom of the sages.” from Anthem by Ayn Rand
  - z3ncyberpunk 6y ago
    cringe quoting ayn rand, ooof
JackFr 6y ago
It’s shocking to me that people can’t remember literally one year ago when among others Dr Fauci told us that wearing masks was ineffective in stopping the spread of the virus. We understand why he did it, there was an absolute crisis of PPE and there was fear that medical staff wouldn’t be able to get any masks because of regular folks hoarding. That’s fine. No one is denying that he’s a very smart, well-intentioned health scientist doing his absolute best to help the country. But don’t pretend he didn’t say what he said. He said it on 60 Minutes, and he explained why he said it months later to the Washington Post. Here’s the real problem — despite his good intentions, when people in authority tell you that they had, or perhaps still have to, lie to you “for your own good” — that’s not a hallmark of a free society. That is the hallmark of an authority which considers the public a problem to be dealt with and it dissolves trust.
- deathlight 6y ago
  >When the Director of the CDC asserts an opinion, she has to optimize for two things - being right, and keeping power. If she doesn't optimize for the second, she gets replaced as CDC Director by someone who does. That means she's trying to solve a harder problem than Zvi is, and it makes sense that sometimes, despite having more resources than Zvi, she does worse at it. >... >I realize it doesn't sound like it, but I'm trying to excuse the CDC here. I'm not just saying they're corrupt. I'm saying they have to deal with the inevitable amount of corruption which it takes to be part of a democratic government, and they're handling it as well as they can under the circumstances. >... >Dr. Fauci (and WebMD) are legibly good (or at least legibly okay). They sit on a giant golden throne, with a giant neon arrow pointing to them saying "TRUST THIS GUY". If a random shmuck who doesn't know anything about anything Googles "who should I trust about COVID?", Google will return Dr. Fauci's name. This is a position of great power; Dr. Fauci is able to make decisions that will affect billions of dollars in wealth, Senate seats, Twitter likes, and other extremely valuable resources. Thousands of people who would prefer that they get the dollars and seats and likes will be gunning for him. In order to stay on that throne, Dr. Fauci will need to get and keep lots of powerful allies (plus be the sort of person who thinks in terms of how to get allies rather than being minimaxed for COVID-prediction). Quotes from https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/webmd-and-the-tragedy-of-legible https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/webmd-and-the-tragedy-.... I think it's a good read overall, maybe a bit long for some. I share your concerns for apparent bad public policy. Having a government that messes things up and then patronizingly dodges all criticism while lapping up unearned praise (looking at you Cuomo) is frustrating and makes people lose faith in experts and "the system". The general social and media environment we live in today is definitely not helping.
noahtallen 6y ago
Definitely. This article isn't about "disinformation and dissent", or even about why "the war on disinformation" is bad. Instead, the author seems to be waging his own war on misinformation -- it's just that the misinformation comes from everyone else. This is emblematic of the "conservative" response to the "liberal" response to misinformation. As an example, Trump was clearly the most visible (and therefore most impactful) source of COVID disinformation in the US. The liberal response was to say that this was dangerous because people would not take the virus seriously. However, the author instead blames Fauci and the CDC for our poor response. Apparently, revising one's statements based on new information counts as lying. If part of this article is to point out why we cannot trust our institutions (and hence why we get misinformation), why not point out the most impactful sources of misinformation? The author says the following: > misinformation and disinformation naturally abound when there is very little trust in sense-making institutions More importantly, disinformation naturally abounds when a sense-making institution is itself spewing disinformation. This, however, does not seem to be important to the author. The clearest example of why the author's examples do not support his thesis is his take on Fauci, the CDC, and WHO. If we are to solve our issues with public discourse and better seek the truth, we must be good at changing our minds when new evidence comes to light. The author instead seems to claim that public official revising their guidelines counts as lying and misinformation. Instead, we could consider this the paragon for truth: we revise our beliefs when the evidence indicates we should. Though I think this article nearly entirely misses the mark, and that the author is severely misguided in his thesis, there are still nuggets I agree with: > Yet rather than take responsibility for poorly-informed policy decisions, the common refrain from public institutions has been to blame everyday Americans. Absolutely agree with this. Everyday Americans can hardly be blamed for this situation, IMO. The blame needs to the source of the disinformation and the source of inconsistent policies. I'll certainly agree that our public health officials should have done a better job with communication, even with the heavy amount of disinformation from the president. > When the only acceptable information is that approved by the ruling administration, there can be no meaningful check on state power. I absolutely agree on this too. Clearly, government censorship is not a good idea. A good example is the personality cult around Trump: many of his supporters do not care what he does. Anything approved by Trump is accepted as fact, and if this group of people had more power, it would become very difficult to check. We absolutely should be very wary of anything which gives the government control over information. And finally, I'll agree with @azinman2 from the parent comment: > We need to find a way to fundamentally change the incentives in media So true. The incentive of media (both social media and news media) is focused wholly on engagement and driving clicks for advertisers. This is fundamentally opposed to the search for truth. It only serves to increase the amount of incendiary media, which increases polarization, etc. It is a terrible situation, and I think we often underestimate the consequences. I'll happily agree that media should not be trusted, simply because the incentive to report truth does not exist (or at least is trumped by the incentive to make money).
bjourne 6y ago
Perhaps you can explain what you think is disinformation in the article? Because the whole point of his article was that shouting "Disinformation!" is a fallacious argument.
- pnt12 6y ago
  I'd start by questioning why the article critizes Biden and Obama while defending Trump, who is famous for calling any news that made him look bad 'fake news'.
curlypaul924 6y ago
What if we could gamify rating news articles as truthful and unbiased? So take a NY Times article, you get points for everything you find that isn't 100% correct, whether it's a typo or a mischaracterization. You get more points for finding something in a mainstream publication, fewer points if it is fringe. More bonus points if you are the first to find an error. There are some obvious obstacles like bias being subjective and how do you prevent journalists from getting points from their own articles and how do you do moderation but I think these are solvable problems. Just a thought I had earlier today when I read your comment. I thought what you said was very insightful.
- dllthomas 6y ago
  So I claim an inaccuracy... how do we decide whether I get rewarded? How do we be sure that process isn't abused/gamed/influenced? Why can't we wire that process up to production of news in the first place? The gamification seems redundant.
  - cudgy 6y ago
    Easy. “We” fact-check the fact-checkers that checked the facts of the fact-checkers who stated the facts that the fact-checker checked.
    - curlypaul924 6y ago
      I think you meant this as a joke, but yes, that's exactly right. It's fact checkers all the way down.
  - curlypaul924 6y ago
    The gamification is to get more people involved. I can't change the way news is produced, because I don't produce news. But I could make meta-news, which seems to be what riles people up on social media. I agree that figuring out when to reward users is the hard part. My best solution at the moment is to do something like slashdot/HN/reddit/others with upvotes, moderation, and meta-moderation, but I don't think there is any system completely impervious to manipulation.
atotic 6y ago
I agree that the article has not been written in good faith. It cherry-picks facts to portray media, government as incompetent institutions we cannot trust. Trump has demonstrably lied about COVID 100s of times, and CDC has tried to give best advice science can (while being muzzled by Trump). Instead of focussing on COVID disinformation campaign waged by Trump, author goes after one statement where Dr. Fauci said something questionable. What I find interesting was the fact that on COVID: - 36% of Americans claim to trust the CDC - 30% of Americans claim to trust Trump 30% Americans are willing to believe demonstrably false things, even when it is a matter of life and death. I did not expect this. But I also did not expect French to be anti-vaxers. This whole experience has been one giant adjustment to my priors.

prutschman 6y ago

How would you characterize the following statement by Dr. Fauci in terms of its transparency and honesty? I'm not asking whether "noble lies" are necessary, useful, appropriate, or a good or bad idea in the long run. I'm just asking about its transparency and honesty: “When polls said only about half of all Americans would take a vaccine, I was saying herd immunity would take 70 to 75 percent,” Dr. Fauci said. “Then, when newer surveys said 60 percent or more would take it, I thought, ‘I can nudge this up a bit,’ so I went to 80, 85.” -- source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/24/health/herd-immunity-covid-coronavirus.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/24/health/herd-immunity-covi...

stonogo 6y ago
This is how leadership works when you're not a dictator. It's essentially a never-ending negotiation with a faceless and mercurial second party. Someone in his position cannot issue mandates backed by force, and so persuasion and influence are the primary tools -- and setting goals people see as unachievable is not productive. As the prevailing opinion changes, a leader needs to account for that. He's trying to achieve a specific result -- maximum acceptance of the tools we hav to fight the disease -- and the idea that a scientist can just stand in front of a camera and make a statement one time and then expect three hundred million people to accept that information and act with maximum rationality is basically absurd. It's up to you to decide whether that makes him an asshole or not, but I think the fact that he's discussing it with reporters says a lot about his transparency and honesty all by itself.
- chordalkeyboard 6y ago
  > This is how leadership works when you're not a dictator. It's essentially a never-ending negotiation with a faceless and mercurial second party. I’ve had leaders that misrepresented facts in order to obtain compliance, as Fauci has, and leaders that were honest with me. I know which I prefer and I know which is considered ethical.
  - prox 6y ago
    What facts where misrepresented? He gave a range of numbers that seemed likely by him.
    - chordalkeyboard 6y ago
      >> “When polls said only about half of all Americans would take a vaccine, I was saying herd immunity would take 70 to 75 percent,” Dr. Fauci said. “Then, when newer surveys said 60 percent or more would take it, I thought, ‘I can nudge this up a bit,’ so I went to 80, 85.” He’s clearly saying he changed his statement based on the compliance of the population and not medical research. He misrepresented the medical consensus as to what percentage of the population would need to be vaccinated in order to achieve herd immunity.
- brobdingnagians 6y ago
  A scientist's first commitment should be to evidence based truth. They should tell it how it is, then the leaders can figure out how to get there. If scientific papers came to a conclusion based on what people are willing to accept or what is popular, we'd rarely find anything surprising to advance science. Lying isn't science. Telling people to follow the science while your top scientist lies about what the science is-- that isn't healthy and it will make sure the average person starts to distrust the "science". If he's willing to lie about that, what else is he lying about?
  - matwood 6y ago
    What exactly is he lying about here? He's shifting up with new science and as his opinion shifts. "In the pandemic’s early days, Dr. Fauci tended to cite the same 60 to 70 percent estimate that most experts did. About a month ago, he began saying “70, 75 percent” in television interviews. And last week, in an interview with CNBC News, he said “75, 80, 85 percent” and “75 to 80-plus percent.”" "In a telephone interview the next day, Dr. Fauci acknowledged that he had slowly but deliberately been moving the goal posts. He is doing so, he said, partly based on new science, and partly on his gut feeling that the country is finally ready to hear what he really thinks." The problem Dr. Fauci and other scientist have is if they share their opinions and then evidence comes out that makes them change their opinions, they have people who will call them liars and pull quotes out of context. But, this is exactly how science works. > the average person starts to distrust the "science" Unfortunately the average person doesn't understand science and that is why they distrust it. I still see people citing papers relating SARS1 is killed by hydroxychlorqine in vitro, ignoring all the papers describing RCTs in vivo dealing with SARS2.
matwood 6y ago
Talk about taking a quote out of context. Best to just read the whole article, but right after he also says. “We need to have some humility here,” he added. “We really don’t know what the real number is. I think the real range is somewhere between 70 to 90 percent. But, I’m not going to say 90 percent.” Herd immunity is also a moving target based on a lot of factors. Hopefully it doesn't reach measles level requirement.
- dabbledash 6y ago
  So, the honest and direct answer at the outset would have been to state his actual belief: “70 - 90%, but we don’t know” If you’re massaging your answers to questions based on what people want to hear, you better hope they don’t find out.
- NotSammyHagar 6y ago
  We know now based on people getting it twice and new variants that look to be easier to get that the herd immunity strategy would just lead to more misery.
  - jtbayly 6y ago
    Herd immunity is literally the point of mass vaccines.
    - stjohnswarts 6y ago
      He's talking about just letting the virus run free with no attempt to vaccinate, lock down, or wearing masks. This is what a lot of people now think of that as. Basically what will be will be, the human species has survived this long. Yeah herd immunity is not that but that's obviously what a lot of media has portrayed it as lately.
azinman2 6y ago
I would characterize your quote as selective, and this is just from the article (we don’t know the full story). He said it partially changed based on the science, and partially on political reality. I don’t know if that was the right thing or not for him to do. However, you’re omitting: “We need to have some humility here,” he added. “We really don’t know what the real number is. I think the real range is somewhere between 70 to 90 percent. But, I’m not going to say 90 percent.” So it’s really an educated guess, and he took a lower estimate. People don’t do well with ranged and errors— just look at how stocks move based upon whether they beat or not their analyst estimates in quarterly reports… they almost always are within the range stipulated but people pick the middle value and hold everything to it. None of this would cause me to characterize him as untrustworthy. We need far more Faucis in this world.
- stjohnswarts 6y ago
  Yeah a lot of the same people who are trying to tear him down are the same who voted for and continue to support a President that has been easily counted to have 30,000+ completely untrue/outright deliberately false statements in the past 4 years.

prox 6y ago

Here is a quote from Bannon and paragraph from the intercept: Is it all a plan, another kind of elaborate conspiracy? Nothing so elegant. As Steve Bannon kindly told us, the informational strategy of the Trump era has always been to “flood the zone with shit.” Four years later, we can see what this looks like in practice. It makes no sense, and that’s just fine by the likes of Bannon, and Kenney as well. Because if you want to keep waging war on the Earth’s life-supporting ecology, a great way to do it is to deliberately pollute its democracy-supporting information ecology. In fact, the pollution is the point. Source: https://theintercept.com/2020/12/08/great-reset-conspiracy/ https://theintercept.com/2020/12/08/great-reset-conspiracy/

rufus_foreman 6y ago

>> We need to There is no we here. I do not believe in the things you believe in.

jkhdigital 6y ago
“The word "We" is as lime poured over men, which sets and hardens to stone, and crushes all beneath it, and that which is white and that which is black are lost equally in the grey of it. It is the word by which the depraved steal the virtue of the good, by which the weak steal the might of the strong, by which the fools steal the wisdom of the sages.” from Anthem by Ayn Rand
- z3ncyberpunk 6y ago
  cringe quoting ayn rand, ooof

JackFr 6y ago

It’s shocking to me that people can’t remember literally one year ago when among others Dr Fauci told us that wearing masks was ineffective in stopping the spread of the virus. We understand why he did it, there was an absolute crisis of PPE and there was fear that medical staff wouldn’t be able to get any masks because of regular folks hoarding. That’s fine. No one is denying that he’s a very smart, well-intentioned health scientist doing his absolute best to help the country. But don’t pretend he didn’t say what he said. He said it on 60 Minutes, and he explained why he said it months later to the Washington Post. Here’s the real problem — despite his good intentions, when people in authority tell you that they had, or perhaps still have to, lie to you “for your own good” — that’s not a hallmark of a free society. That is the hallmark of an authority which considers the public a problem to be dealt with and it dissolves trust.

deathlight 6y ago
>When the Director of the CDC asserts an opinion, she has to optimize for two things - being right, and keeping power. If she doesn't optimize for the second, she gets replaced as CDC Director by someone who does. That means she's trying to solve a harder problem than Zvi is, and it makes sense that sometimes, despite having more resources than Zvi, she does worse at it. >... >I realize it doesn't sound like it, but I'm trying to excuse the CDC here. I'm not just saying they're corrupt. I'm saying they have to deal with the inevitable amount of corruption which it takes to be part of a democratic government, and they're handling it as well as they can under the circumstances. >... >Dr. Fauci (and WebMD) are legibly good (or at least legibly okay). They sit on a giant golden throne, with a giant neon arrow pointing to them saying "TRUST THIS GUY". If a random shmuck who doesn't know anything about anything Googles "who should I trust about COVID?", Google will return Dr. Fauci's name. This is a position of great power; Dr. Fauci is able to make decisions that will affect billions of dollars in wealth, Senate seats, Twitter likes, and other extremely valuable resources. Thousands of people who would prefer that they get the dollars and seats and likes will be gunning for him. In order to stay on that throne, Dr. Fauci will need to get and keep lots of powerful allies (plus be the sort of person who thinks in terms of how to get allies rather than being minimaxed for COVID-prediction). Quotes from https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/webmd-and-the-tragedy-of-legible https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/webmd-and-the-tragedy-.... I think it's a good read overall, maybe a bit long for some. I share your concerns for apparent bad public policy. Having a government that messes things up and then patronizingly dodges all criticism while lapping up unearned praise (looking at you Cuomo) is frustrating and makes people lose faith in experts and "the system". The general social and media environment we live in today is definitely not helping.

noahtallen 6y ago

Definitely. This article isn't about "disinformation and dissent", or even about why "the war on disinformation" is bad. Instead, the author seems to be waging his own war on misinformation -- it's just that the misinformation comes from everyone else. This is emblematic of the "conservative" response to the "liberal" response to misinformation. As an example, Trump was clearly the most visible (and therefore most impactful) source of COVID disinformation in the US. The liberal response was to say that this was dangerous because people would not take the virus seriously. However, the author instead blames Fauci and the CDC for our poor response. Apparently, revising one's statements based on new information counts as lying. If part of this article is to point out why we cannot trust our institutions (and hence why we get misinformation), why not point out the most impactful sources of misinformation? The author says the following: > misinformation and disinformation naturally abound when there is very little trust in sense-making institutions More importantly, disinformation naturally abounds when a sense-making institution is itself spewing disinformation. This, however, does not seem to be important to the author. The clearest example of why the author's examples do not support his thesis is his take on Fauci, the CDC, and WHO. If we are to solve our issues with public discourse and better seek the truth, we must be good at changing our minds when new evidence comes to light. The author instead seems to claim that public official revising their guidelines counts as lying and misinformation. Instead, we could consider this the paragon for truth: we revise our beliefs when the evidence indicates we should. Though I think this article nearly entirely misses the mark, and that the author is severely misguided in his thesis, there are still nuggets I agree with: > Yet rather than take responsibility for poorly-informed policy decisions, the common refrain from public institutions has been to blame everyday Americans. Absolutely agree with this. Everyday Americans can hardly be blamed for this situation, IMO. The blame needs to the source of the disinformation and the source of inconsistent policies. I'll certainly agree that our public health officials should have done a better job with communication, even with the heavy amount of disinformation from the president. > When the only acceptable information is that approved by the ruling administration, there can be no meaningful check on state power. I absolutely agree on this too. Clearly, government censorship is not a good idea. A good example is the personality cult around Trump: many of his supporters do not care what he does. Anything approved by Trump is accepted as fact, and if this group of people had more power, it would become very difficult to check. We absolutely should be very wary of anything which gives the government control over information. And finally, I'll agree with @azinman2 from the parent comment: > We need to find a way to fundamentally change the incentives in media So true. The incentive of media (both social media and news media) is focused wholly on engagement and driving clicks for advertisers. This is fundamentally opposed to the search for truth. It only serves to increase the amount of incendiary media, which increases polarization, etc. It is a terrible situation, and I think we often underestimate the consequences. I'll happily agree that media should not be trusted, simply because the incentive to report truth does not exist (or at least is trumped by the incentive to make money).

bjourne 6y ago

Perhaps you can explain what you think is disinformation in the article? Because the whole point of his article was that shouting "Disinformation!" is a fallacious argument.

pnt12 6y ago
I'd start by questioning why the article critizes Biden and Obama while defending Trump, who is famous for calling any news that made him look bad 'fake news'.

curlypaul924 6y ago

What if we could gamify rating news articles as truthful and unbiased? So take a NY Times article, you get points for everything you find that isn't 100% correct, whether it's a typo or a mischaracterization. You get more points for finding something in a mainstream publication, fewer points if it is fringe. More bonus points if you are the first to find an error. There are some obvious obstacles like bias being subjective and how do you prevent journalists from getting points from their own articles and how do you do moderation but I think these are solvable problems. Just a thought I had earlier today when I read your comment. I thought what you said was very insightful.

dllthomas 6y ago
So I claim an inaccuracy... how do we decide whether I get rewarded? How do we be sure that process isn't abused/gamed/influenced? Why can't we wire that process up to production of news in the first place? The gamification seems redundant.
- cudgy 6y ago
  Easy. “We” fact-check the fact-checkers that checked the facts of the fact-checkers who stated the facts that the fact-checker checked.
  - curlypaul924 6y ago
    I think you meant this as a joke, but yes, that's exactly right. It's fact checkers all the way down.
- curlypaul924 6y ago
  The gamification is to get more people involved. I can't change the way news is produced, because I don't produce news. But I could make meta-news, which seems to be what riles people up on social media. I agree that figuring out when to reward users is the hard part. My best solution at the moment is to do something like slashdot/HN/reddit/others with upvotes, moderation, and meta-moderation, but I don't think there is any system completely impervious to manipulation.

atotic 6y ago

I agree that the article has not been written in good faith. It cherry-picks facts to portray media, government as incompetent institutions we cannot trust. Trump has demonstrably lied about COVID 100s of times, and CDC has tried to give best advice science can (while being muzzled by Trump). Instead of focussing on COVID disinformation campaign waged by Trump, author goes after one statement where Dr. Fauci said something questionable. What I find interesting was the fact that on COVID: - 36% of Americans claim to trust the CDC - 30% of Americans claim to trust Trump 30% Americans are willing to believe demonstrably false things, even when it is a matter of life and death. I did not expect this. But I also did not expect French to be anti-vaxers. This whole experience has been one giant adjustment to my priors.