7 ms·

If you're not always looking for independent alternative sources of information and cross-checking claims from different sources while also looking for internal

If you're not always looking for independent alternative sources of information and cross-checking claims from different sources while also looking for internal self-consistency then of course you're going to end up with a skewed perspective on reality engineered by some group of professional propagandists. Whether these PR specialists are working for governments or corporations in China, Russia or America is sort of besides the point. There is a set of skills that's needed to objectively classify information that's found on the Internet or in other media sources (yes including books). Any rational democractic society would be wise to teach these skills to people from an early age, although certain groups (religious fundamentalists, corporate advertisers, government authoritarians etc.) would oppose this for obvious reasons. The authoritarian elitist crowd doesn't seem to like it when the unwashed masses develop these skills; they'd prefer to have a population of brainwashed zombies who get all their propaganda from a government-provided list of 'acceptable sources' and who don't have the cognitive capacities and practical skills needed to independently test claims for veracity.

overthrow 4y ago
Certain groups? I think everyone in government, in all parties, would oppose that education - because their own propaganda would become less effective too. Do you think those in power would ever go out of their way to help people learn about gerrymandering, ranked choice voting, or the pitfalls of a two-party system?
- lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 4y ago
  They did specify government "authoritarians". It's not much of a stretch to think that they don't believe "everyone in government" is an authoritarian.
- pydry 4y ago
  >Do you think those in power would ever go out of their way to help people learn about gerrymandering, ranked choice voting They tend to be more fine with this sort of thing if the fix isn't on the cards politically. E.g. you will see some nuclear attacks on the idea of raising the minimum wage from the media when it is being debated in Congress, while that same media will often fawn over political pipe dreams like basic income. The Russian bots will pull this trick where they set up, e.g. a facebook page for "proud Texan cowboy dads" and then funnel innocuous stuff they will agree with 99% of the time and then 1% of the time push stuff that really matters to them ("why are we sending yet more money to Ukraine when proud Texans at home are suffering!"). This isn't controversial to state. I think it's clear that they do this - what is controversial to state is that this is exactly what the rest of the "legitimate" media does exactly the same thing on behalf of the oligarchy who own it.
- tstrimple 4y ago
  Except that they do talk about rcv and gerrymandering. And the two party system is intrinsically linked to our "preferred" voting method. If no one in power is talking about RCV how is it being implemented in various states? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranked-choice_voting_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranked-choice_voting_in_the_Un... If no one is talking about gerrymandering, why have some states implemented independent redistricting? https://redistricting.lls.edu/national-overview/?colorby=Institution&level=Congress&cycle=2020 https://redistricting.lls.edu/national-overview/?colorby=Ins... It was one political party which proposed and supported the Freedom to Vote Act and the For the People Act which would have made political gerrymandering illegal across the country and increased access to voting and exactly one of our parties who stood against it. I know people like to pretend they are above politics and will "both sides" everything to death. But all you have to do is look at what is being proposed and who is supporting what with their votes to see past that FUD.
winternett 4y ago
The battle is lost already in many ways... We have let many companies become so embedded that if they backed out there would be no other options for the services and infrastructure they provide (this even includes news services, and especially includes social media services). Right now ELon Musk is applying dangerously dictatorial tactics in turning Twitter from a free service into a paid service.. Years after the entire world has become invested into it as a new and communication tool... Many will say it's his right to do whatever he wants, but those are the same people too short sighted to understand how Nestle controls water in foreign countries... We are all plagued by that short sightedness and greed, while there are far better answers to things like this while still operating in a capitalistic system. We all give far too much credit to the authoritarian elitist crowd. If you are born into so much money that you can fail multiple times and simply rebuild, you're NOT a genius. We need to stop deluding everyone with this supremacy narrative, because it's just fueling monopolies and inequality and destroying opportunity in our world. Just being aware about how news is being manipulated, and scanning multiple sources to determine truth isn't enough... We need to place proper expectations on government to reign in companies and tax the wealthy properly, while also reducing lower and middle class tax rates, otherwise, this is all a new version of covert mental control and opportunistic indentured labor. Get rid of "bosses" that ideal is far too outdated for progress, Not even the president is properly respected by congress anyway, so we need to update our business models to a more democratic leadership ecosystem.
- noelherrick 4y ago
  Something I've been chewing on is legitimacy by process vs. outcome (means vs. end). We have far too long said if the means are done fairly (Musk bought Twitter legitimately, Zuck founded and unilaterally controls Facebook mostly legally), then we have to accept the outcome, even if that outcome is detrimental to the wider society. We just have to stop accepting that. Corporate law, money, etc. are all made up and are sold to the wider population as net boons to society. Why can't we dissolve and/or nationalize companies when they cease to be beneficial or have distinct negatives? Copyright, patents, LLCs, publicly-traded companies, etc., all nominally exist to benefit society at large. They're not supposed to be this game of "I called shotgun so suck it!"
2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
I'm tired of this ludicrous insinuation that a free and independent press either doesn't exist or if it does it should never be trusted. I regularly read opposing viewpoints or even self criticism in the established media. Your claims are wild and impossible to disprove.
- alldayeveryday 4y ago
  [dead]
- lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 4y ago
  I don't think your experience is mutually exclusive with theirs. Do you think "you're not always looking for independent alternative sources of information and cross-checking claims from different sources" as per OP's comment?
- trinsic2 4y ago
  What specific claims are wild and impossible to disprove? I didn't see anything of that in the above statement. Only, don't rely on once source for your information. Also the article, paired with the tone of this site, causes me to second guess the premise because it looks like this site writes a lot of sensation pieces, similar to daily mail which does in fact, skew the facts to get people to be polarized. There is an article on Wikipedia banning source information from Daily Mail [1] that you would do well to read as this site seems to fall right under that spectrum. [1]: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/feb/08/wikipedia-bans-daily-mail-as-unreliable-source-for-website https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/feb/08/wikipedia...
  - switchbak 4y ago
    That is true, but this particular author is from F.I.R.E. - a nonprofit free speech advocacy group. You can probably assume that such a group would present a particular kind of opinion. Quite the pivot for Sarah McLaughlin :P
  - 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
    > The authoritarian elitist crowd doesn't seem to like it when the unwashed masses develop these skills; they'd prefer to have a population of brainwashed zombies who get all their propaganda from a government-provided list of 'acceptable sources' and who don't have the cognitive capacities and practical skills needed to independently test claims for veracity. How about this deluge of conspiracy claims?
smolder 4y ago
It's very expensive (a lot of work) to be so rigorous in verifying information. Forgoing trust is expensive, whether we're on this subject or talking about Proof of Work algorithms. It'd be great if we had trustworthy institutions who could distill the truth for us (hah!) but of course if such an institution accumulates public trust, that naturally makes them a target for capture by propagandists.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 4y ago
  This is a genuinely fascinating[0] problem that's become more impactful with the ease of spreading messages and the importance of public opinion. I see both sides of it in how I want to believe[1] that I know truthful facts (which I attempt to accomplish with what I believe[1] to be healthy skepticism) and how effortful it can be to (attempt to[1]) achieve that. [0] It feels a little wrong to say "fascinating" given the gruesome methods by which some choose to hold on to their control of information. It is nonetheless something which often captures my attention. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_bias So many possibilities!
  - pydry 4y ago
    Sadly there is practically no profit potential in solving this problem and capitalism has a tendency to drive it to ruin. People will pay you - both directly and indirectly - to shift the opinions of others. That can be wildly profitable. People are reluctant to pay for access to informative and genuinely objective news and information, though. It either gets treated as a public good that is nurtured with public money or strict rules (e.g. fairness doctrine) or the river of information gets filled up with toxic sludge that becomes fertile breeding ground even for flat earth conspiracies.
- ekanes 4y ago
  I think a lot of that is a description of what journalism is and should be.
chasing 4y ago
I believe the term for this kind of argument is "whataboutism."
- pphysch 4y ago
  [flagged]
jstarfish 4y ago
> The authoritarian elitist crowd doesn't seem to like it when the unwashed masses develop these skills; they'd prefer to have a population of brainwashed zombies who get all their propaganda from a government-provided list of 'acceptable sources' and who don't have the cognitive capacities and practical skills needed to independently test claims for veracity. While I agree with you, I don't think challenging this is wise. A large number of people lack the fundamental intellect required for critical thinking. Give them a nugget of truth (or even a total falsehood) and they will extrapolate it to the point of an entire ideology (QAnon)...because they're smarter than the rest of us idiots, see. They have critical thinking skills! Thanks to the internet anybody can appoint themselves a source of truth, which just results in chaos. A mentally-ill loudmouth can turn entire segments of the country against itself (and I'm not even taking potshots at anybody in particular). Fewer sources of information is better domestic policy for the masses. Let the critical thinkers seek out third-party sources to do their own verification. Let the masses eat from a common trough so they don't cause a stampede.
- jabradoodle 4y ago
  One of my favorite quotes, Isaac Asimov: If knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance that we can solve them.
anonymouskimmer 4y ago
A non-skewed perspective on reality requires knowing everything. Even if this was possible, no one has the time to do it. Not even the propagandists. What's important is identifying what is important to you, and understanding all of the factors and facts related primarily to that, and a few of the ones related secondarily to that. Then you can spot check some of these other factors and facts to determine their accuracy and validity.
mjmsmith 4y ago
How is a population of brainwashed zombies who get all their propaganda from a government-provided list of 'acceptable sources' worse than a population of brainwashed zombies who get all their propaganda from, say, Newsmax and OAN?
klysm 4y ago
I’m unsure why the word epistemology is omitted from these conversations so frequently. Fundamentally I feel that’s the underlying thing that’s difficult
- swayvil 4y ago
  That is what we're looking at, in a word. The quality of our knowledge-getting. What we need is some kind of automated process for ensuring that the knowledge that the machine poops out is of the highest possible quality. Something that checks it every step of the way, from observation to cheeseburger.
ravenstine 4y ago
This state of information isn't the least bit new, but for some reason many of us are treating it like it is. Wealthy families, corporations, politicians, banks, and so on have always had their hands in what we get to see. The very idea that foreign enemy nations use propaganda has itself been used as a propaganda tactic many times. What's troublesome for the public is that the culture does not instill a healthy level of individualism when it comes to interpreting information; we are encouraged to trust experts and to otherwise follow one of two distinct camps on any given topic. People don't believe they have time to understand things on their own, nor do they believe they have the capacity to do so. In actuality, this is nonsense, given how many people manage to at least pass through high school, and how much time adults spend consuming entertainment. In their defense, it takes an inordinate amount of work to sift through the detritus that makes up at least 80% of prose on the internet; most articles simply can't get to the point, but I guess creative writing majors need something to do. I truly think the best thing for the average person right now is to not take information-for-sale seriously. They are better off knowing less, not more. The idea that information has a linearly distributed benefit is a fallacy. The more information, the more vectors for pathological information.
- chc 4y ago
  Do you believe it is possible for one person to understand multiple topics in different fields as well as the experts in those fields? That seems like a massive unspoken assumption in your point of view here. If not, it seems like some level of trust in experts is the only possible way to know much about the world beyond the rudiments.
  - pixl97 4y ago
    Yea, I always hear the "learn everything yourself, don't trust experts", and it makes little sense to me. I research an insane amount of things and read massive volumes of books, and videos on how to do things.... After this immense amount of learning I still know that I just know a drop in the bucket of what there is to know. I would have to just spend all my time learning, and I'd never get shit done Maybe what these people are trying to say poorly is "Try to learn enough about a topic that you can pick an actual expert out, rather than a bullshit salesman", but after talking to enough of these 'rugged individualist', I think what they are mostly saying (silently) is "Get ready to screw me over because I am massively over confident in my abilities"
lysozyme 4y ago
If I may suggest a way to train yourself up on this, I’d like to suggest an approach which I learned from the writer Francine Prose in one of her composition courses. The method is simply this: for half a year, every week, go and find the same news story from three different publishers and read all three versions. Do this solidly 25 times and you will begin to see the outlines of exactly the set of skills that you need to objectively classify information that’s found on the Internet. This is a simple and highly effective training technique that uses the mass variety of news sites on the Internet for an educational purpose. Once you begin to see and compare the narratives underlying most “news”, they will be impossible to un-see
- TurkishPoptart 4y ago
  >go and find the same news story from three different publishers and read all three versions. The problem with this is, if the three publishers have been funded by the same pharmaceutical company, NGO, or intelligence agency, they are likely to produce nearly-identical stories on $PARTICULAR_ISSUE.
  - 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
    Alright, and what do you suggest? There seems to be some wild push to make people never believe anything and degrade the role of the press as things are in an authoritarian system. Very interesting derailments in this comment section about an article that speaks poorly of authoritarians such as Xi.
    - TurkishPoptart 4y ago
      Well I think parent's comment is now obsolete. The new truth is going to be a blurry middle ground between establishment media, independent media (substack, Twitter-based disclosures), and public scientific disclosures.
ChancyChance 4y ago
The unwashed masses that led J6 "did their own research" yet still qualify as brainwashed zombies. There's so much shit in the channels and so much polarization that appealing to people learning how to think critically will fix everything is one of the biggest myths of the 21st century. And in my opinion, this attitude is wildly elitist. Because lets face it, critical thinking is only something a small %age of humans are good at, and I don't include myself it that sub-population and I'm pretty goddamn smart, smart enough to know when I'm stupid.
jollofricepeas 4y ago
I disagree heavily. Your story of zombies, elitism, and government conspiracy is intriguing. I will also agree that propaganda is a thing. BUT… The real culprit is the HUMAN BRAIN. 1. Strong information and media literacy are correlated primarily to psychological well-being. 2. The work of Amos Tversky, Daniel Kahneman, Paul Zak, and countless experts in behavioral economics, media literacy, and psychology have done studies demonstrating how the brain makes cognition error regardless of a persons education or socioeconomic status when handling various types of input. 3. People’s reasoning abilities are deficient with respect to the laws of logic and probability which obviously impacts their ability to be information or media literate. 4. It’s not a problem that has an obvious financial benefit to the organization or person who solves it by providing training or engineering a pill for it. SOURCES: - https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.584689/full https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.5846... - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6282480/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6282480/ - https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/09610006221142032 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/096100062211420... - https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/how_stories_change_brain https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/how_stories_ch...
- photochemsyn 4y ago
  I must strongly disagree with #3 at least: > "People’s reasoning abilities are deficient with respect to the laws of logic and probability which obviously impacts their ability to be information or media literate." My whole point, which most responses have ignored, is that the skills needed to test media claims for veracity are learnable, trainable, understandable, etc. I mean, not a single comment has addressed the notion of internal self-consistency, which in mathematical terms is called, 'contradiction'. A person who claims it's okay for them to steal from their neighbor, but not for their neighbor to steal from them, can safely be laughed out of the room.
dennis_jeeves1 4y ago
>Any rational democractic society would be wise to teach these skills to people from an early age Not doable, because you require at least an IQ of 110 to see through the lies. Half of the population has a below average IQ, the number is significantly larger if one way to consider an IQ 110 to be the threshold and this means they are always gullible and susceptible to the propaganda of the government.
Haga 4y ago
[dead]
xnx 4y ago
Information literacy is a sorely needed skill. Too much schooling has turned into job training instead of more fundamental skills.

overthrow 4y ago

Certain groups? I think everyone in government, in all parties, would oppose that education - because their own propaganda would become less effective too. Do you think those in power would ever go out of their way to help people learn about gerrymandering, ranked choice voting, or the pitfalls of a two-party system?

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 4y ago
They did specify government "authoritarians". It's not much of a stretch to think that they don't believe "everyone in government" is an authoritarian.
pydry 4y ago
>Do you think those in power would ever go out of their way to help people learn about gerrymandering, ranked choice voting They tend to be more fine with this sort of thing if the fix isn't on the cards politically. E.g. you will see some nuclear attacks on the idea of raising the minimum wage from the media when it is being debated in Congress, while that same media will often fawn over political pipe dreams like basic income. The Russian bots will pull this trick where they set up, e.g. a facebook page for "proud Texan cowboy dads" and then funnel innocuous stuff they will agree with 99% of the time and then 1% of the time push stuff that really matters to them ("why are we sending yet more money to Ukraine when proud Texans at home are suffering!"). This isn't controversial to state. I think it's clear that they do this - what is controversial to state is that this is exactly what the rest of the "legitimate" media does exactly the same thing on behalf of the oligarchy who own it.
tstrimple 4y ago
Except that they do talk about rcv and gerrymandering. And the two party system is intrinsically linked to our "preferred" voting method. If no one in power is talking about RCV how is it being implemented in various states? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranked-choice_voting_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranked-choice_voting_in_the_Un... If no one is talking about gerrymandering, why have some states implemented independent redistricting? https://redistricting.lls.edu/national-overview/?colorby=Institution&level=Congress&cycle=2020 https://redistricting.lls.edu/national-overview/?colorby=Ins... It was one political party which proposed and supported the Freedom to Vote Act and the For the People Act which would have made political gerrymandering illegal across the country and increased access to voting and exactly one of our parties who stood against it. I know people like to pretend they are above politics and will "both sides" everything to death. But all you have to do is look at what is being proposed and who is supporting what with their votes to see past that FUD.

winternett 4y ago

The battle is lost already in many ways... We have let many companies become so embedded that if they backed out there would be no other options for the services and infrastructure they provide (this even includes news services, and especially includes social media services). Right now ELon Musk is applying dangerously dictatorial tactics in turning Twitter from a free service into a paid service.. Years after the entire world has become invested into it as a new and communication tool... Many will say it's his right to do whatever he wants, but those are the same people too short sighted to understand how Nestle controls water in foreign countries... We are all plagued by that short sightedness and greed, while there are far better answers to things like this while still operating in a capitalistic system. We all give far too much credit to the authoritarian elitist crowd. If you are born into so much money that you can fail multiple times and simply rebuild, you're NOT a genius. We need to stop deluding everyone with this supremacy narrative, because it's just fueling monopolies and inequality and destroying opportunity in our world. Just being aware about how news is being manipulated, and scanning multiple sources to determine truth isn't enough... We need to place proper expectations on government to reign in companies and tax the wealthy properly, while also reducing lower and middle class tax rates, otherwise, this is all a new version of covert mental control and opportunistic indentured labor. Get rid of "bosses" that ideal is far too outdated for progress, Not even the president is properly respected by congress anyway, so we need to update our business models to a more democratic leadership ecosystem.

noelherrick 4y ago
Something I've been chewing on is legitimacy by process vs. outcome (means vs. end). We have far too long said if the means are done fairly (Musk bought Twitter legitimately, Zuck founded and unilaterally controls Facebook mostly legally), then we have to accept the outcome, even if that outcome is detrimental to the wider society. We just have to stop accepting that. Corporate law, money, etc. are all made up and are sold to the wider population as net boons to society. Why can't we dissolve and/or nationalize companies when they cease to be beneficial or have distinct negatives? Copyright, patents, LLCs, publicly-traded companies, etc., all nominally exist to benefit society at large. They're not supposed to be this game of "I called shotgun so suck it!"

2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago

I'm tired of this ludicrous insinuation that a free and independent press either doesn't exist or if it does it should never be trusted. I regularly read opposing viewpoints or even self criticism in the established media. Your claims are wild and impossible to disprove.

alldayeveryday 4y ago
[dead]
lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 4y ago
I don't think your experience is mutually exclusive with theirs. Do you think "you're not always looking for independent alternative sources of information and cross-checking claims from different sources" as per OP's comment?
trinsic2 4y ago
What specific claims are wild and impossible to disprove? I didn't see anything of that in the above statement. Only, don't rely on once source for your information. Also the article, paired with the tone of this site, causes me to second guess the premise because it looks like this site writes a lot of sensation pieces, similar to daily mail which does in fact, skew the facts to get people to be polarized. There is an article on Wikipedia banning source information from Daily Mail [1] that you would do well to read as this site seems to fall right under that spectrum. [1]: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/feb/08/wikipedia-bans-daily-mail-as-unreliable-source-for-website https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/feb/08/wikipedia...
- switchbak 4y ago
  That is true, but this particular author is from F.I.R.E. - a nonprofit free speech advocacy group. You can probably assume that such a group would present a particular kind of opinion. Quite the pivot for Sarah McLaughlin :P
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
  > The authoritarian elitist crowd doesn't seem to like it when the unwashed masses develop these skills; they'd prefer to have a population of brainwashed zombies who get all their propaganda from a government-provided list of 'acceptable sources' and who don't have the cognitive capacities and practical skills needed to independently test claims for veracity. How about this deluge of conspiracy claims?

smolder 4y ago

It's very expensive (a lot of work) to be so rigorous in verifying information. Forgoing trust is expensive, whether we're on this subject or talking about Proof of Work algorithms. It'd be great if we had trustworthy institutions who could distill the truth for us (hah!) but of course if such an institution accumulates public trust, that naturally makes them a target for capture by propagandists.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 4y ago
This is a genuinely fascinating[0] problem that's become more impactful with the ease of spreading messages and the importance of public opinion. I see both sides of it in how I want to believe[1] that I know truthful facts (which I attempt to accomplish with what I believe[1] to be healthy skepticism) and how effortful it can be to (attempt to[1]) achieve that. [0] It feels a little wrong to say "fascinating" given the gruesome methods by which some choose to hold on to their control of information. It is nonetheless something which often captures my attention. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_bias So many possibilities!
- pydry 4y ago
  Sadly there is practically no profit potential in solving this problem and capitalism has a tendency to drive it to ruin. People will pay you - both directly and indirectly - to shift the opinions of others. That can be wildly profitable. People are reluctant to pay for access to informative and genuinely objective news and information, though. It either gets treated as a public good that is nurtured with public money or strict rules (e.g. fairness doctrine) or the river of information gets filled up with toxic sludge that becomes fertile breeding ground even for flat earth conspiracies.
ekanes 4y ago
I think a lot of that is a description of what journalism is and should be.

chasing 4y ago

I believe the term for this kind of argument is "whataboutism."

pphysch 4y ago
[flagged]

jstarfish 4y ago

> The authoritarian elitist crowd doesn't seem to like it when the unwashed masses develop these skills; they'd prefer to have a population of brainwashed zombies who get all their propaganda from a government-provided list of 'acceptable sources' and who don't have the cognitive capacities and practical skills needed to independently test claims for veracity. While I agree with you, I don't think challenging this is wise. A large number of people lack the fundamental intellect required for critical thinking. Give them a nugget of truth (or even a total falsehood) and they will extrapolate it to the point of an entire ideology (QAnon)...because they're smarter than the rest of us idiots, see. They have critical thinking skills! Thanks to the internet anybody can appoint themselves a source of truth, which just results in chaos. A mentally-ill loudmouth can turn entire segments of the country against itself (and I'm not even taking potshots at anybody in particular). Fewer sources of information is better domestic policy for the masses. Let the critical thinkers seek out third-party sources to do their own verification. Let the masses eat from a common trough so they don't cause a stampede.

jabradoodle 4y ago
One of my favorite quotes, Isaac Asimov: If knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance that we can solve them.

anonymouskimmer 4y ago

A non-skewed perspective on reality requires knowing everything. Even if this was possible, no one has the time to do it. Not even the propagandists. What's important is identifying what is important to you, and understanding all of the factors and facts related primarily to that, and a few of the ones related secondarily to that. Then you can spot check some of these other factors and facts to determine their accuracy and validity.

mjmsmith 4y ago

How is a population of brainwashed zombies who get all their propaganda from a government-provided list of 'acceptable sources' worse than a population of brainwashed zombies who get all their propaganda from, say, Newsmax and OAN?

klysm 4y ago

I’m unsure why the word epistemology is omitted from these conversations so frequently. Fundamentally I feel that’s the underlying thing that’s difficult

swayvil 4y ago
That is what we're looking at, in a word. The quality of our knowledge-getting. What we need is some kind of automated process for ensuring that the knowledge that the machine poops out is of the highest possible quality. Something that checks it every step of the way, from observation to cheeseburger.

ravenstine 4y ago

This state of information isn't the least bit new, but for some reason many of us are treating it like it is. Wealthy families, corporations, politicians, banks, and so on have always had their hands in what we get to see. The very idea that foreign enemy nations use propaganda has itself been used as a propaganda tactic many times. What's troublesome for the public is that the culture does not instill a healthy level of individualism when it comes to interpreting information; we are encouraged to trust experts and to otherwise follow one of two distinct camps on any given topic. People don't believe they have time to understand things on their own, nor do they believe they have the capacity to do so. In actuality, this is nonsense, given how many people manage to at least pass through high school, and how much time adults spend consuming entertainment. In their defense, it takes an inordinate amount of work to sift through the detritus that makes up at least 80% of prose on the internet; most articles simply can't get to the point, but I guess creative writing majors need something to do. I truly think the best thing for the average person right now is to not take information-for-sale seriously. They are better off knowing less, not more. The idea that information has a linearly distributed benefit is a fallacy. The more information, the more vectors for pathological information.

chc 4y ago
Do you believe it is possible for one person to understand multiple topics in different fields as well as the experts in those fields? That seems like a massive unspoken assumption in your point of view here. If not, it seems like some level of trust in experts is the only possible way to know much about the world beyond the rudiments.
- pixl97 4y ago
  Yea, I always hear the "learn everything yourself, don't trust experts", and it makes little sense to me. I research an insane amount of things and read massive volumes of books, and videos on how to do things.... After this immense amount of learning I still know that I just know a drop in the bucket of what there is to know. I would have to just spend all my time learning, and I'd never get shit done Maybe what these people are trying to say poorly is "Try to learn enough about a topic that you can pick an actual expert out, rather than a bullshit salesman", but after talking to enough of these 'rugged individualist', I think what they are mostly saying (silently) is "Get ready to screw me over because I am massively over confident in my abilities"

lysozyme 4y ago

If I may suggest a way to train yourself up on this, I’d like to suggest an approach which I learned from the writer Francine Prose in one of her composition courses. The method is simply this: for half a year, every week, go and find the same news story from three different publishers and read all three versions. Do this solidly 25 times and you will begin to see the outlines of exactly the set of skills that you need to objectively classify information that’s found on the Internet. This is a simple and highly effective training technique that uses the mass variety of news sites on the Internet for an educational purpose. Once you begin to see and compare the narratives underlying most “news”, they will be impossible to un-see

TurkishPoptart 4y ago
>go and find the same news story from three different publishers and read all three versions. The problem with this is, if the three publishers have been funded by the same pharmaceutical company, NGO, or intelligence agency, they are likely to produce nearly-identical stories on $PARTICULAR_ISSUE.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
  Alright, and what do you suggest? There seems to be some wild push to make people never believe anything and degrade the role of the press as things are in an authoritarian system. Very interesting derailments in this comment section about an article that speaks poorly of authoritarians such as Xi.
  - TurkishPoptart 4y ago
    Well I think parent's comment is now obsolete. The new truth is going to be a blurry middle ground between establishment media, independent media (substack, Twitter-based disclosures), and public scientific disclosures.

ChancyChance 4y ago

The unwashed masses that led J6 "did their own research" yet still qualify as brainwashed zombies. There's so much shit in the channels and so much polarization that appealing to people learning how to think critically will fix everything is one of the biggest myths of the 21st century. And in my opinion, this attitude is wildly elitist. Because lets face it, critical thinking is only something a small %age of humans are good at, and I don't include myself it that sub-population and I'm pretty goddamn smart, smart enough to know when I'm stupid.

jollofricepeas 4y ago

I disagree heavily. Your story of zombies, elitism, and government conspiracy is intriguing. I will also agree that propaganda is a thing. BUT… The real culprit is the HUMAN BRAIN. 1. Strong information and media literacy are correlated primarily to psychological well-being. 2. The work of Amos Tversky, Daniel Kahneman, Paul Zak, and countless experts in behavioral economics, media literacy, and psychology have done studies demonstrating how the brain makes cognition error regardless of a persons education or socioeconomic status when handling various types of input. 3. People’s reasoning abilities are deficient with respect to the laws of logic and probability which obviously impacts their ability to be information or media literate. 4. It’s not a problem that has an obvious financial benefit to the organization or person who solves it by providing training or engineering a pill for it. SOURCES: - https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.584689/full https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.5846... - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6282480/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6282480/ - https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/09610006221142032 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/096100062211420... - https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/how_stories_change_brain https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/how_stories_ch...

photochemsyn 4y ago
I must strongly disagree with #3 at least: > "People’s reasoning abilities are deficient with respect to the laws of logic and probability which obviously impacts their ability to be information or media literate." My whole point, which most responses have ignored, is that the skills needed to test media claims for veracity are learnable, trainable, understandable, etc. I mean, not a single comment has addressed the notion of internal self-consistency, which in mathematical terms is called, 'contradiction'. A person who claims it's okay for them to steal from their neighbor, but not for their neighbor to steal from them, can safely be laughed out of the room.

dennis_jeeves1 4y ago

>Any rational democractic society would be wise to teach these skills to people from an early age Not doable, because you require at least an IQ of 110 to see through the lies. Half of the population has a below average IQ, the number is significantly larger if one way to consider an IQ 110 to be the threshold and this means they are always gullible and susceptible to the propaganda of the government.

Haga 4y ago

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xnx 4y ago

Information literacy is a sorely needed skill. Too much schooling has turned into job training instead of more fundamental skills.