2 ms·

Before this scandal basically no one knew or cared who the president of Harvard was. All of a sudden, we all have an opinion. I think the issue we have is not

Before this scandal basically no one knew or cared who the president of Harvard was. All of a sudden, we all have an opinion. I think the issue we have is not a culture restricting free speech, I think the issue is a media landscape that spoon feeds us emotional content to manipulate us. One thing we can all do right away is stop blaming left/right/woke/trumpers etc and be a little more critical on the news we're getting to suss out what's real vs propaganda.

lotsofpulp 3y ago
>Before this scandal basically no one knew or cared who the president of Harvard was. All of a sudden, we all have an opinion. This is how all new information works. And the highest ranking member of one of the highest ranking schools being a known cheater seems like a newsworthy thing (regardless of the motivation of those publicizing the information). It is signal rather than noise, in that it can provide a more accurate prior probability to people about the brand name of the school and people coming from it.
- twelfthnight 3y ago
  I hear you. It's good to point out and hold accountable people in positions of power who are corrupt. My argument is that (to me) I doubt a leader being corrupt is uncommon. Thus I think it's worth questioning why we are focusing so heavily on this one specific person versus a general story on corruption. For instance, does someone have an agenda against her identity or political views? That definitely doesn't exonerate her, but it's worth sensing if we the public are having our attention focused in a certain way in service of someone's agenda.
inglor_cz 3y ago
"Before this scandal basically no one knew or cared who the president of Harvard was." Possibly because Claudine Gay was an academic nobody with no other significant talents? Plenty of people knew who Lawrence Summers was. It is a similar story to Mozilla. Many programmers know who Brendan Eich is. How many people know the name of the current Mozilla director without googling? Me neither, the only thing I know about her is that she was chosen because she offended nobody. Hardly a recipe for standing out in a crowd of other gray mice.
latentcall 3y ago
Thank you for this comment. I know some fairly intelligent people who succumb to the us vs. them ideology and its disconcerting. I have to remember this propaganda is created by people with a very good understanding on how to trigger the outrage in everyone’s brain. People on all sides of the aisle are more alike than they want to admit right now. Just hoping people can turn the bullshit off someday.

lotsofpulp 3y ago

>Before this scandal basically no one knew or cared who the president of Harvard was. All of a sudden, we all have an opinion. This is how all new information works. And the highest ranking member of one of the highest ranking schools being a known cheater seems like a newsworthy thing (regardless of the motivation of those publicizing the information). It is signal rather than noise, in that it can provide a more accurate prior probability to people about the brand name of the school and people coming from it.

twelfthnight 3y ago
I hear you. It's good to point out and hold accountable people in positions of power who are corrupt. My argument is that (to me) I doubt a leader being corrupt is uncommon. Thus I think it's worth questioning why we are focusing so heavily on this one specific person versus a general story on corruption. For instance, does someone have an agenda against her identity or political views? That definitely doesn't exonerate her, but it's worth sensing if we the public are having our attention focused in a certain way in service of someone's agenda.

inglor_cz 3y ago

"Before this scandal basically no one knew or cared who the president of Harvard was." Possibly because Claudine Gay was an academic nobody with no other significant talents? Plenty of people knew who Lawrence Summers was. It is a similar story to Mozilla. Many programmers know who Brendan Eich is. How many people know the name of the current Mozilla director without googling? Me neither, the only thing I know about her is that she was chosen because she offended nobody. Hardly a recipe for standing out in a crowd of other gray mice.

latentcall 3y ago

Thank you for this comment. I know some fairly intelligent people who succumb to the us vs. them ideology and its disconcerting. I have to remember this propaganda is created by people with a very good understanding on how to trigger the outrage in everyone’s brain. People on all sides of the aisle are more alike than they want to admit right now. Just hoping people can turn the bullshit off someday.