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I always find it interesting to watch the trickle down of news I find here on HN. I live in a very, very, very conservative part of the US. It always goes the s

I always find it interesting to watch the trickle down of news I find here on HN. I live in a very, very, very conservative part of the US. It always goes the same; see fake thing called out for being fake on HN. One week later, hear rumblings related to the fake thing in my community. One week after that, hear people openly talking about how that fake thing is true, but Google/MSM don't want you to hear about it. Such as: Zelensky is a nazi, the Ukraine war is all CGI, anything related to Hillary or Bill Clinton (yes still), and so on and so forth. Information dissemination must be similar to fluid dynamics. It just has to be.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
diarrhea 5y ago
> Information dissemination must be similar to fluid dynamics. It just has to be. If you include reactions, sure. But regular fluid dynamics very much leaves the substance intact. Water flows down a stream and is still water at the end.
- Freak_NL 5y ago
  I think there might be a sewage plant or two having overflow issues in the clear mountain stream of this analogy (your username is on-topic in this case).
- phkahler 5y ago
  >> Water flows down a stream and is still water at the end. Even that has fish shit added.
- t_mann 5y ago
  There are actual models for this, I think they're often similar to a spin glass.
- kwhitefoot 5y ago
  Perhaps there are models of waterway pollution that could shed light on it?
peakaboo 5y ago
Try reddit, it's much faster than hacker news on these things.
- jcranberry 5y ago
  usually the pattern is in reverse on reddit government doesn't want you to hear people -> subject matter expert sees -> informs that information is faulty -> minority fight against the tide Although usually this follows the covid lab grown pattern where the fight against the tide crowd usually treats their info as 100% certain which muddies the water when informed opinions have varying confidence levels.
- lostgame 5y ago
  I don't know that I can recommend Reddit as a legitimate news source. You'd really have to make sure you're hitting the right subreddits. :/
crate_barre 5y ago
Information dissemination must be similar to fluid dynamics. It just has to be. It’s simpler and more insidious than that. I’ll use the old Eleanor Roosevelt quote: "Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people." Most people are not that intellectual and probably spent most of their life gossiping. They wouldn’t know how to even discuss certain topics if the low hanging fruit of gossip and conspiracy wasn’t available to them to add something in a social interaction. Take Reddit for example, some of them wouldn’t even know what to say if they couldn’t add that one immediate punch line (followed by sequential punchlines by other people). If you take this away, they will literally have no way of joining the convo. They won’t be able to come up with an angle, ask a probing question, entertain an alternative perspective, provide analogues or metaphors, they’d simply have no voice. It’s akin to providing these people with ‘what do you think about the weather today?’ as a lifeline in casual social interaction.
- pengstrom 5y ago
  This seems unnecessarily elitist. I mean, I would be glad if I could get away with just discussing theory and ideas, but reality and practical matters gets in the way. We vote for people, we evaluate people from events.
  - intrasight 5y ago
    Exactly. We elect people not ideas.
    - jokethrowaway 5y ago
      This is highly debatable. Politicians generally channel ideas in order to get elected - and then screw everyone over once they have power for 4 years.
  - kaba0 5y ago
    Also, whether one likes Reddit or not, it has a huge userbase, and each subreddit is pretty much different than another. There are plenty of subreddits with really interesting comment chains.
trentnix 5y ago
I live in a very, very, very conservative part of the country and it’s nothing like the caricature you just mentioned. It is, though, safe, polite, and friendly. And people are happy to leave other people alone.
- bavent 5y ago
  [flagged]
  - odonnellryan 5y ago
    It is rare for people to handle different and uncomfortable well, but some people handle it really poorly.
  - snarf21 5y ago
    There is a certain group of people that are adamant that others obey a codified set of laws that they give lip service to. It is sad that the world has become such and openly hateful place. Part of the issue is that hate is very profitable and the infotainment and social media companies continue to cash in.
  - caffeine 5y ago
    Have you tried living in any liberal part of the country? People there don’t just think they should dictate what you do, but also what you think!
    - jonnycomputer 5y ago
      I think that is generally true everywhere. People are against censorship, except when they're for it. They're for religious freedom, except for "those people". They're for free speech, except when you say things they don't like. I've not seen one group that values their own speech, their own beliefs, their own values, actions and communities, that doesn't undervalue the speech, beliefs, values and communities of other people.
      - 5y ago
odonnellryan 5y ago
The Clinton stuff is really funny. HN is not really the place for heated political commentary but there is deep irony there with regards to how a certain portion of the population responds to criticism of Trump and his policies (lately, mostly surrounding Ukraine and denying them aid) and how often they bring up the Clintons.
- Graffur 5y ago
  I have been on HN for years now. I don't recall anything in particular that would fall into "The Clinton stuff". What are you talking about?
  - odonnellryan 5y ago
    Oh not on HN sorry. I meant in the context of general conservative discourse. I have friends and family who bring up the Clintons a lot.
    - spywaregorilla 5y ago
      The right wing political machine made Hillary Clinton out to be the devil. They, correctly, anticipated her run for president after Obama, and spent years making her out to be the worst person in America before she even began campaigning. The result is many conservative circles are still obsessed with her even though she is relatively unimportant.
      - InitialLastName 5y ago
        That demonizing started way before the 2016 lead-up; until Obama came into the foreground she was also a clear front-runner for the 2008 election, so the machine was targeting her even then. I've noted this before, but being in the public eye for too long tends to be really bad news for presidential hopefuls in the US (Biden being the exception that proves the rule in that he eked out a win against a wildly unpopular incumbent who was actively discouraging his own supporters from voting).
a3oB 5y ago
I, too, live in a very conservative area. > Zelensky is a nazi Considering Trump voters have a history of being called Nazi for the affiliation, I don't see it as a stretch to call Zelensky one for the Ukrainian "Azov Battalion." Think of it as the sword cutting both ways. > the Ukraine war is all CGI This one I see constantly... folks expect 4K quality LiveLeak material to be streaming out of Ukraine. Truth be told I'm surprised at the relative dearth of material, but there's still enough floating around social media to make this one rather laughable. > anything related to Hillary or Bill Clinton Oddly, I haven't heard anything on this one. Though I have seen a meme going around referring to Biden, Romney, Pelosi, and Kerry having "children involved in the UA energy business." This, at least partially false, but with a rooting in the truth... Hunter Biden as well as advisors / associates of the others have all done business in the UA energy sector. I'm still not quite sure how and why Biden's handling of the former UA prosecutor that had an investigation going against Burisma which employed Hunter isn't a larger political scandal. All in all there does seem an age gap (IME) with your typical Boomer / Fox types spreading the garbage content, folks towards the Millenial side don't.
- soco 5y ago
  "isn't a larger political scandal" - somehow I have the feeling, nowadays only wacky assertions are able to trigger big discussions (and big feelings). Lots of things having a grain of sense are left aside, maybe for being not ridiculous enough...
- doomslice 5y ago
  Whether intentional or not, the way you presented these (including the one about CGI) is how these sorts of conspiracies get wings and spread. "Oh of course this is not true... except for maybe this little sliver here..." That's the thing that gets latched onto and eventually the conspiracy nuts argue the whole thing must be true.
  - a3oB 5y ago
    > That's the thing that gets latched onto and eventually the conspiracy nuts argue the whole thing must be true. Exactly how things operate, "Project Northwoods was true, therefore the government is bad, therefore very real 'Government Program X' is bad" is the general algorithm. With that said, I'm hacker. I seek the truth and will discuss it regardless of whether some wingnut seizes on it to make a false assumption. I also have no problem attempting to correct the Boomer Doomers I run into at work and in life... they're just usually happy to go "Oh well, fair enough..." and then go back to watching whatever it is they're on about. Cotdamn Gell-Mann Amnesia
paganel 5y ago
> Zelensky is a nazi, He's not a Nazi, of course, him being of Jewish ancestry, but it did raise some questions for me when a Russian bomb (that killed about 20 civilians) did its thing in Kyiv very close to a boulevard named after Bandera. Bandera is of course a war criminal and a Nazi collaborator. That thing with a Kyiv boulevard being named after a war criminal and a Nazi collaborator you don't see in the MSM. The bombing took place here [1], you can see the Bandera-named avenue just close by. [1] https://www.google.com/maps/place/50%C2%B029'19.1%22N+30%C2%B028'08.5%22E/@50.4887235,30.4685035,377m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x0:0xb8287fbf2b6219be!8m2!3d50.48863!4d30.469019 https://www.google.com/maps/place/50%C2%B029'19.1%22N+30%C2%...
- RobertMiller 5y ago
  > He's not a Nazi, of course, him being of Jewish ancestry, That is strong evidence that he isn't, but short of proof. A counterexample from California: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Unz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Unz
  - MetaWhirledPeas 5y ago
    We have no proof you are not a Nazi either. Let's assume you are, just to be safe. And maybe we can write a few blogs about it and drum up a following?
    - RobertMiller 5y ago
      I do not believe Zelensky is a Nazi. The evidence against it is much stronger than the evidence for it. Your ire against me is misdirected.
      - CRConrad 5y ago
        > Your ire against me is misdirected. Insofar as it was ire against your implication that "there is no proof against it" would somehow validate the insinuation, it wasn't. And, sorry, even if you claim that that wasn't what you meant to do, the mere mention of it does imply that. We don't (AFAIK) have absolute proof that the Moon isn't (mainly) made of green cheese, either (those moon rocks the astronauts brought back could just be part of a thin rock crust over the cheese[1]), but what does it imply if I throw out the claim "We don't have proof that the Moon isn't made of green cheese!" in a general discussion about cosmology? ___ [1]: Aha, so "Moon Pie" should be a cheese pie!
bingohbangoh 5y ago
After the Gulf of Tonkin [0] and Nayirah Testimony [1], is it really surprising that people don't believe the mainstream media on war anymore? [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_of_Tonkin_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_of_Tonkin_incident [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nayirah_testimony https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nayirah_testimony
- MisterTea 5y ago
  What do either of these incidents have to do with trust in the media? Both incidents were fabrications of the government. In both cases the media was a tool used by government to spread the lies.
  - bingohbangoh 5y ago
    > One week after that, hear people openly talking about how that fake thing is true, but Google/MSM don't want you to hear about it. There is an implication by the OP that people in very conservative parts of the state don't believe Google / MSM and point to deep fakes instead. In the past, they would've been more receptive to the MSM who could've debunked this. I posted these two incidents to show that the MSM did, in fact, lie in the past and this may be shaping why people don't believe them now but instead go online looking for "the truth."
    - Loughla 5y ago
      Bingo. And I'm all for skepticism, and I understand a healthy skepticism. BUT What is a problem, though, is that their sources are always things like americafreedompatriot, thetruereporter or other similar blog bullshit that claim to have 'the truth' (my personal favorite is welovetrump that's definitely unbiased). My experience is they tend to look for sources that feel good and agree with what they believe, then use that as truth. No critical thinking.
tablespoon 5y ago
> I always find it interesting to watch the trickle down of news I find here on HN. I live in a very, very, very conservative part of the US. It always goes the same; see fake thing called out for being fake on HN. One week later, hear rumblings related to the fake thing in my community. One week after that, hear people openly talking about how that fake thing is true, but Google/MSM don't want you to hear about it. The the root cause for that is probably the extreme distrust of the "MSM" that's been cultivated for decades. The ironic thing is many of the rank-and-file of those people think that distrust gives them greater access to the truth, when in reality it just makes them easier to lie to.
- stingraycharles 5y ago
  > The ironic thing is many of the rank-and-file of those people think that distrust gives them greater access to the truth, when in reality it just makes them easier to lie to. Care to elaborate? Intuitively what you're saying sounds plausible, but not why that would be the case.
  - simonh 5y ago
    They are primed to ignore any contrary evidence, that would disprove lies they are being told, that they see on MSM or in fact anywhere. Once they believe a specific channel of information or community is the only one they can trues, they can be sold on anything.
  - SamBam 5y ago
    What the last few years has really brought into sharp focus is that many people who distrust "official sources" (mainstream media, scientists, etc) seem to unquestioningly accept fringe sources, so long as it matches their prior beliefs. Many of these same people consider themselves "skeptics" because they instinctively distrust the official sources.
  - notahacker 5y ago
    (i) "this is the sort if story that, if true, would be widely reported by mainstream media or at least mainstream media of a certain political persuasion" is a pretty good heuristic for discarding stuff that sounds plausible and really big but is only reported on the comment section of AltFreeIndyInfo.net (ii) if you can't believe mainstream media, it's hard to search for information that might contradict $radicaltheory, never mind trust someone else's thoroughly researched and sourced one. So even if it's a pretty wild theory that lots of other stuff seems to contradict and very little seems to corroborate, how can we be sure it isn't a coverup. Scepticism about well established facts leads to agnosticism about the veracity of well-established fiction. (iii)"if you tell people this and they laugh at you and say it's ridiculous it's because they're the credulous idiots who believe anything they read in certain sources" is a very powerful meme. (iv) people who don't believe in certain sources still tend to want to get stuff they can believe in from somewhere, and the average website that concurs that MSM is not to be trusted and embraces the meme that its reader base are the true freethinking sceptics publishes considerably more fake news and terrible takes than the mainstream media
engineeringwoke 5y ago
> Information dissemination must be similar to fluid dynamics. It just has to be. As similar as fluid dynamics are to a functional public education system
nonrandomstring 5y ago
> Information dissemination must be similar to fluid dynamics. It just has to be. Heisenberg supposedly said "When I meet God I’m going to ask him about relativity and turbulence. I think he'll only have an answer for the first".
ryangittins 5y ago
"A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes."
snorkel 5y ago
Whenever I stumble into a political conversation with someone who prefers to live in an alternate news reality, I find it effective to not argue back at them, but rather out-flank them: inform them that not only are they correct, but also I read that insert-like-minded-improvised-obviously-ridiculous-nonsense-here and say it with all sincerity ... and then let them respond with "Well ... I'm not sure about that ..." and then insist it's true "because I saw it on Faceboook somewhere" ... and then repeat until they realize they have been out-crazied.
- notahacker 5y ago
  I like this idea in theory, but suspect I'd be depressed how often people actually agreed with my attempt to outcrazy them in practice.
- kbelder 5y ago
  What's funny is they're doing the same to you.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

diarrhea 5y ago

> Information dissemination must be similar to fluid dynamics. It just has to be. If you include reactions, sure. But regular fluid dynamics very much leaves the substance intact. Water flows down a stream and is still water at the end.

Freak_NL 5y ago
I think there might be a sewage plant or two having overflow issues in the clear mountain stream of this analogy (your username is on-topic in this case).
phkahler 5y ago
>> Water flows down a stream and is still water at the end. Even that has fish shit added.
t_mann 5y ago
There are actual models for this, I think they're often similar to a spin glass.
kwhitefoot 5y ago
Perhaps there are models of waterway pollution that could shed light on it?

peakaboo 5y ago

Try reddit, it's much faster than hacker news on these things.

jcranberry 5y ago
usually the pattern is in reverse on reddit government doesn't want you to hear people -> subject matter expert sees -> informs that information is faulty -> minority fight against the tide Although usually this follows the covid lab grown pattern where the fight against the tide crowd usually treats their info as 100% certain which muddies the water when informed opinions have varying confidence levels.
lostgame 5y ago
I don't know that I can recommend Reddit as a legitimate news source. You'd really have to make sure you're hitting the right subreddits. :/

crate_barre 5y ago

Information dissemination must be similar to fluid dynamics. It just has to be. It’s simpler and more insidious than that. I’ll use the old Eleanor Roosevelt quote: "Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people." Most people are not that intellectual and probably spent most of their life gossiping. They wouldn’t know how to even discuss certain topics if the low hanging fruit of gossip and conspiracy wasn’t available to them to add something in a social interaction. Take Reddit for example, some of them wouldn’t even know what to say if they couldn’t add that one immediate punch line (followed by sequential punchlines by other people). If you take this away, they will literally have no way of joining the convo. They won’t be able to come up with an angle, ask a probing question, entertain an alternative perspective, provide analogues or metaphors, they’d simply have no voice. It’s akin to providing these people with ‘what do you think about the weather today?’ as a lifeline in casual social interaction.

pengstrom 5y ago
This seems unnecessarily elitist. I mean, I would be glad if I could get away with just discussing theory and ideas, but reality and practical matters gets in the way. We vote for people, we evaluate people from events.
- intrasight 5y ago
  Exactly. We elect people not ideas.
  - jokethrowaway 5y ago
    This is highly debatable. Politicians generally channel ideas in order to get elected - and then screw everyone over once they have power for 4 years.
- kaba0 5y ago
  Also, whether one likes Reddit or not, it has a huge userbase, and each subreddit is pretty much different than another. There are plenty of subreddits with really interesting comment chains.

trentnix 5y ago

I live in a very, very, very conservative part of the country and it’s nothing like the caricature you just mentioned. It is, though, safe, polite, and friendly. And people are happy to leave other people alone.

bavent 5y ago
[flagged]
- odonnellryan 5y ago
  It is rare for people to handle different and uncomfortable well, but some people handle it really poorly.
- snarf21 5y ago
  There is a certain group of people that are adamant that others obey a codified set of laws that they give lip service to. It is sad that the world has become such and openly hateful place. Part of the issue is that hate is very profitable and the infotainment and social media companies continue to cash in.
- caffeine 5y ago
  Have you tried living in any liberal part of the country? People there don’t just think they should dictate what you do, but also what you think!
  - jonnycomputer 5y ago
    I think that is generally true everywhere. People are against censorship, except when they're for it. They're for religious freedom, except for "those people". They're for free speech, except when you say things they don't like. I've not seen one group that values their own speech, their own beliefs, their own values, actions and communities, that doesn't undervalue the speech, beliefs, values and communities of other people.
    - 5y ago

odonnellryan 5y ago

The Clinton stuff is really funny. HN is not really the place for heated political commentary but there is deep irony there with regards to how a certain portion of the population responds to criticism of Trump and his policies (lately, mostly surrounding Ukraine and denying them aid) and how often they bring up the Clintons.

Graffur 5y ago
I have been on HN for years now. I don't recall anything in particular that would fall into "The Clinton stuff". What are you talking about?
- odonnellryan 5y ago
  Oh not on HN sorry. I meant in the context of general conservative discourse. I have friends and family who bring up the Clintons a lot.
  - spywaregorilla 5y ago
    The right wing political machine made Hillary Clinton out to be the devil. They, correctly, anticipated her run for president after Obama, and spent years making her out to be the worst person in America before she even began campaigning. The result is many conservative circles are still obsessed with her even though she is relatively unimportant.
    - InitialLastName 5y ago
      That demonizing started way before the 2016 lead-up; until Obama came into the foreground she was also a clear front-runner for the 2008 election, so the machine was targeting her even then. I've noted this before, but being in the public eye for too long tends to be really bad news for presidential hopefuls in the US (Biden being the exception that proves the rule in that he eked out a win against a wildly unpopular incumbent who was actively discouraging his own supporters from voting).

a3oB 5y ago

I, too, live in a very conservative area. > Zelensky is a nazi Considering Trump voters have a history of being called Nazi for the affiliation, I don't see it as a stretch to call Zelensky one for the Ukrainian "Azov Battalion." Think of it as the sword cutting both ways. > the Ukraine war is all CGI This one I see constantly... folks expect 4K quality LiveLeak material to be streaming out of Ukraine. Truth be told I'm surprised at the relative dearth of material, but there's still enough floating around social media to make this one rather laughable. > anything related to Hillary or Bill Clinton Oddly, I haven't heard anything on this one. Though I have seen a meme going around referring to Biden, Romney, Pelosi, and Kerry having "children involved in the UA energy business." This, at least partially false, but with a rooting in the truth... Hunter Biden as well as advisors / associates of the others have all done business in the UA energy sector. I'm still not quite sure how and why Biden's handling of the former UA prosecutor that had an investigation going against Burisma which employed Hunter isn't a larger political scandal. All in all there does seem an age gap (IME) with your typical Boomer / Fox types spreading the garbage content, folks towards the Millenial side don't.

soco 5y ago
"isn't a larger political scandal" - somehow I have the feeling, nowadays only wacky assertions are able to trigger big discussions (and big feelings). Lots of things having a grain of sense are left aside, maybe for being not ridiculous enough...
doomslice 5y ago
Whether intentional or not, the way you presented these (including the one about CGI) is how these sorts of conspiracies get wings and spread. "Oh of course this is not true... except for maybe this little sliver here..." That's the thing that gets latched onto and eventually the conspiracy nuts argue the whole thing must be true.
- a3oB 5y ago
  > That's the thing that gets latched onto and eventually the conspiracy nuts argue the whole thing must be true. Exactly how things operate, "Project Northwoods was true, therefore the government is bad, therefore very real 'Government Program X' is bad" is the general algorithm. With that said, I'm hacker. I seek the truth and will discuss it regardless of whether some wingnut seizes on it to make a false assumption. I also have no problem attempting to correct the Boomer Doomers I run into at work and in life... they're just usually happy to go "Oh well, fair enough..." and then go back to watching whatever it is they're on about. Cotdamn Gell-Mann Amnesia

paganel 5y ago

> Zelensky is a nazi, He's not a Nazi, of course, him being of Jewish ancestry, but it did raise some questions for me when a Russian bomb (that killed about 20 civilians) did its thing in Kyiv very close to a boulevard named after Bandera. Bandera is of course a war criminal and a Nazi collaborator. That thing with a Kyiv boulevard being named after a war criminal and a Nazi collaborator you don't see in the MSM. The bombing took place here [1], you can see the Bandera-named avenue just close by. [1] https://www.google.com/maps/place/50%C2%B029'19.1%22N+30%C2%B028'08.5%22E/@50.4887235,30.4685035,377m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x0:0xb8287fbf2b6219be!8m2!3d50.48863!4d30.469019 https://www.google.com/maps/place/50%C2%B029'19.1%22N+30%C2%...

RobertMiller 5y ago
> He's not a Nazi, of course, him being of Jewish ancestry, That is strong evidence that he isn't, but short of proof. A counterexample from California: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Unz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Unz
- MetaWhirledPeas 5y ago
  We have no proof you are not a Nazi either. Let's assume you are, just to be safe. And maybe we can write a few blogs about it and drum up a following?
  - RobertMiller 5y ago
    I do not believe Zelensky is a Nazi. The evidence against it is much stronger than the evidence for it. Your ire against me is misdirected.
    - CRConrad 5y ago
      > Your ire against me is misdirected. Insofar as it was ire against your implication that "there is no proof against it" would somehow validate the insinuation, it wasn't. And, sorry, even if you claim that that wasn't what you meant to do, the mere mention of it does imply that. We don't (AFAIK) have absolute proof that the Moon isn't (mainly) made of green cheese, either (those moon rocks the astronauts brought back could just be part of a thin rock crust over the cheese[1]), but what does it imply if I throw out the claim "We don't have proof that the Moon isn't made of green cheese!" in a general discussion about cosmology? ___ [1]: Aha, so "Moon Pie" should be a cheese pie!

bingohbangoh 5y ago

After the Gulf of Tonkin [0] and Nayirah Testimony [1], is it really surprising that people don't believe the mainstream media on war anymore? [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_of_Tonkin_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_of_Tonkin_incident [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nayirah_testimony https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nayirah_testimony

MisterTea 5y ago
What do either of these incidents have to do with trust in the media? Both incidents were fabrications of the government. In both cases the media was a tool used by government to spread the lies.
- bingohbangoh 5y ago
  > One week after that, hear people openly talking about how that fake thing is true, but Google/MSM don't want you to hear about it. There is an implication by the OP that people in very conservative parts of the state don't believe Google / MSM and point to deep fakes instead. In the past, they would've been more receptive to the MSM who could've debunked this. I posted these two incidents to show that the MSM did, in fact, lie in the past and this may be shaping why people don't believe them now but instead go online looking for "the truth."
  - Loughla 5y ago
    Bingo. And I'm all for skepticism, and I understand a healthy skepticism. BUT What is a problem, though, is that their sources are always things like americafreedompatriot, thetruereporter or other similar blog bullshit that claim to have 'the truth' (my personal favorite is welovetrump that's definitely unbiased). My experience is they tend to look for sources that feel good and agree with what they believe, then use that as truth. No critical thinking.

tablespoon 5y ago

> I always find it interesting to watch the trickle down of news I find here on HN. I live in a very, very, very conservative part of the US. It always goes the same; see fake thing called out for being fake on HN. One week later, hear rumblings related to the fake thing in my community. One week after that, hear people openly talking about how that fake thing is true, but Google/MSM don't want you to hear about it. The the root cause for that is probably the extreme distrust of the "MSM" that's been cultivated for decades. The ironic thing is many of the rank-and-file of those people think that distrust gives them greater access to the truth, when in reality it just makes them easier to lie to.

stingraycharles 5y ago
> The ironic thing is many of the rank-and-file of those people think that distrust gives them greater access to the truth, when in reality it just makes them easier to lie to. Care to elaborate? Intuitively what you're saying sounds plausible, but not why that would be the case.
- simonh 5y ago
  They are primed to ignore any contrary evidence, that would disprove lies they are being told, that they see on MSM or in fact anywhere. Once they believe a specific channel of information or community is the only one they can trues, they can be sold on anything.
- SamBam 5y ago
  What the last few years has really brought into sharp focus is that many people who distrust "official sources" (mainstream media, scientists, etc) seem to unquestioningly accept fringe sources, so long as it matches their prior beliefs. Many of these same people consider themselves "skeptics" because they instinctively distrust the official sources.
- notahacker 5y ago
  (i) "this is the sort if story that, if true, would be widely reported by mainstream media or at least mainstream media of a certain political persuasion" is a pretty good heuristic for discarding stuff that sounds plausible and really big but is only reported on the comment section of AltFreeIndyInfo.net (ii) if you can't believe mainstream media, it's hard to search for information that might contradict $radicaltheory, never mind trust someone else's thoroughly researched and sourced one. So even if it's a pretty wild theory that lots of other stuff seems to contradict and very little seems to corroborate, how can we be sure it isn't a coverup. Scepticism about well established facts leads to agnosticism about the veracity of well-established fiction. (iii)"if you tell people this and they laugh at you and say it's ridiculous it's because they're the credulous idiots who believe anything they read in certain sources" is a very powerful meme. (iv) people who don't believe in certain sources still tend to want to get stuff they can believe in from somewhere, and the average website that concurs that MSM is not to be trusted and embraces the meme that its reader base are the true freethinking sceptics publishes considerably more fake news and terrible takes than the mainstream media

engineeringwoke 5y ago

> Information dissemination must be similar to fluid dynamics. It just has to be. As similar as fluid dynamics are to a functional public education system

nonrandomstring 5y ago

> Information dissemination must be similar to fluid dynamics. It just has to be. Heisenberg supposedly said "When I meet God I’m going to ask him about relativity and turbulence. I think he'll only have an answer for the first".

ryangittins 5y ago

"A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes."

snorkel 5y ago

Whenever I stumble into a political conversation with someone who prefers to live in an alternate news reality, I find it effective to not argue back at them, but rather out-flank them: inform them that not only are they correct, but also I read that insert-like-minded-improvised-obviously-ridiculous-nonsense-here and say it with all sincerity ... and then let them respond with "Well ... I'm not sure about that ..." and then insist it's true "because I saw it on Faceboook somewhere" ... and then repeat until they realize they have been out-crazied.

notahacker 5y ago
I like this idea in theory, but suspect I'd be depressed how often people actually agreed with my attempt to outcrazy them in practice.
kbelder 5y ago
What's funny is they're doing the same to you.