4 ms·

I think you're possibly misinterpreting it - the news article is unequivocally clear about what its sources are saying, the sources are the ones who are contrad

I think you're possibly misinterpreting it - the news article is unequivocally clear about what its sources are saying, the sources are the ones who are contradicting each other. We are so used to newspaper editorialization / tunnel vision that to see two disagreeing sources on the same page is surprising.

tptacek 5y ago
We don't have to parse sources or litigate whether they're "contradicting" each other. We can just look on Github at the data Lindell released.
- whatshisface 5y ago
  Observing that the people being quoted don't have a straight story between them is hardly litigation, it's a fairly pertinent indicator of the epistemic state of those involved. A newspaper intent on presenting a cohesive narrative and not confusing the reader would have paved over the contradictions, destroying this valuable signal by only printing quotes that agreed with each other. That's my point, that the author is doing something valuable, that may appear on the surface to be "bad writing," if judged the way we judge fiction, but is in fact good reporting.
  - tptacek 5y ago
    I don't read it that way. Read back to your first comment on the thread. You've depicted a live debate about whether Lindell has any evidence for his conspiracy theory. We have the data he released. The debate, to whatever extent it existed originally, is no longer live.
    - jollybean 5y ago
      I think you're misunderstanding the point the OP is making. He's talking about the nature of communication, not about the actual underlying facts of whether the data is gibberish or not. We know what happened in the election. We know roughly how well the vaccines are working and how safe they are. That's not the problem, the problem is how the information is presented, communicated, how clearly repudiated evidence can still be perpetuated as 'evidence'. In particular, the OP's point about how there are contradicting statements in the article is really interesting: this should be common as there are a lot of disagreements in the real world, and yet, we don't really see a lot of that in most journalism which betrays the fact that it's likely a lot of journalists are actually advocating for an idea, and selecting the quotes necessary to make that case. Which is more common than not. I have to admit personally being confused by the apparent duplicity of the quotes ... and it took me a minute to realize that this was actually valuable information, that we rarely see.

tptacek 5y ago

We don't have to parse sources or litigate whether they're "contradicting" each other. We can just look on Github at the data Lindell released.

whatshisface 5y ago
Observing that the people being quoted don't have a straight story between them is hardly litigation, it's a fairly pertinent indicator of the epistemic state of those involved. A newspaper intent on presenting a cohesive narrative and not confusing the reader would have paved over the contradictions, destroying this valuable signal by only printing quotes that agreed with each other. That's my point, that the author is doing something valuable, that may appear on the surface to be "bad writing," if judged the way we judge fiction, but is in fact good reporting.
- tptacek 5y ago
  I don't read it that way. Read back to your first comment on the thread. You've depicted a live debate about whether Lindell has any evidence for his conspiracy theory. We have the data he released. The debate, to whatever extent it existed originally, is no longer live.
  - jollybean 5y ago
    I think you're misunderstanding the point the OP is making. He's talking about the nature of communication, not about the actual underlying facts of whether the data is gibberish or not. We know what happened in the election. We know roughly how well the vaccines are working and how safe they are. That's not the problem, the problem is how the information is presented, communicated, how clearly repudiated evidence can still be perpetuated as 'evidence'. In particular, the OP's point about how there are contradicting statements in the article is really interesting: this should be common as there are a lot of disagreements in the real world, and yet, we don't really see a lot of that in most journalism which betrays the fact that it's likely a lot of journalists are actually advocating for an idea, and selecting the quotes necessary to make that case. Which is more common than not. I have to admit personally being confused by the apparent duplicity of the quotes ... and it took me a minute to realize that this was actually valuable information, that we rarely see.