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> The vast majority of journalism is accurate Without agreeing or disagreeing with you, I want to ask: Do you not realize how shaky of a claim this is? Even if

> The vast majority of journalism is accurate Without agreeing or disagreeing with you, I want to ask: Do you not realize how shaky of a claim this is? Even if you did somehow know this to be true, why would anybody believe that you know this? Have you somehow both consumed the vast majority of journalism and known enough to judge its veracity (presumably without relying on other journalism)? You would have to be a subject matter expert in just about everything, as well as somehow spend more than 24 hours a day consuming news for your claim to be at all credible.

christianqchung 2y ago
> Without agreeing or disagreeing with you You disagree, and pretending otherwise is pointless. > Do you not realize how shaky of a claim this is? How many things do you actually verify in your life? That's not how society or facts work, you rely on others to verify things for you. Do you run tests on your car tire rubber to ensure the properties of the material, and in the process reverify the entirety of materials science and molecular chemistry starting from scratch, or are you sane and trust experts? If journalism is so inaccurate, I can write a script to pick any amount of random articles from the New York Times dating back several decades, and you can try to find factual inaccuracies in a random selection of articles. Hint: it's not going to be in your favor, because contrary to popular belief, the news room is not the same thing as the opinion section. It's also not going to be in your favor because the vast majority of reported news is trivially verifiable by other sources. Picking a few topics a year where this is not the case is only proving me right, if I'm wrong, find 100 false narratives on the scale of the Iraq war in the last month on the news room of the New York Times. > Even if you did somehow know this to be true, why would anybody believe that you know this? Who said I'm the expert? I trust institutions because the default for intuitions in America is that they are generally accurate. The accuracy rate of institutions being below 100% is not a reason to behave as if it is 0%. Again, do you not trust sports reporting on who won? > Have you somehow both consumed the vast majority of journalism and known enough to judge its veracity (presumably without relying on other journalism)? No, because I'm not an expert, I listen to experts. Why make a weird made up situation? > You would have to be a subject matter expert in just about everything, as well as somehow spend more than 24 hours a day consuming news for your claim to be at all credible. This mentality is why conspiracy theories are so widespread, because non domain experts like you think you know better than experts on average. Now you're either going to tell me conspiracy theories are all true, or it's scientists fault for being bad communicators (the correct option). If the former, then you can use the alien time travel machines or whatever to tell my future self I was wrong.
- ifyoubuildit 2y ago
  > You disagree, and pretending otherwise is pointless. I don't know if I disagree, so I'm not sure why you think you know that either. My point here is that your claim as stated is indefensible. > I can write a script to pick any amount of random articles from the New York Times dating back several decades, and you can try to find factual inaccuracies in a random selection of articles. Now you're actually saying something. You made a prediction that could be tested. You're assuming the outcome for some reason, but the first part is great. > No, because I'm not an expert, I listen to experts. Why make a weird made up situation? So did some expert tell you that the vast majority of journalism is accurate? Because it sounds more like it's your gut feeling. Which is fine, it just doesn't make for a very compelling argument. > This mentality is [...] I don't know anything about any of that. I'm just wondering what the receipts are for your very broad claim. Is it just "journalists are experts, I trust experts, therefore the vast majority of journalism is accurate"? That's at least well formed, but are all journalists experts? Are all experts trustworthy? What is considered journalism (is a blogger a journalist? Some would say yes. They're probably not all experts, right?)
  - christianqchung 2y ago
    This is going nowhere, and all you do in your free time is argue with studies according to your own post history (or do I need to cite a study on this very obvious fact?). In any case I'm assuming you don't believe in sports reporters now out of paranoia as I've asked twice now, otherwise you do believe in it because it doesn't challenge your zero-trust society politics.
    - ifyoubuildit 2y ago
      > This is going nowhere Hard to argue with that. > In any case I'm assuming you don't believe in sports reporters I'm not much of a spectator sport guy, but sports reporters are easy to trust: for the most part, they aren't reporting anything important enough to care too much about the accuracy, and you can just go to the games and see for yourself if you do. That doesn't work as easily with say foreign policy reporters, who could tell you it rained skittles in Kiev on Monday, and you just have to take their word unless you want to step into a warzone.

christianqchung 2y ago

> Without agreeing or disagreeing with you You disagree, and pretending otherwise is pointless. > Do you not realize how shaky of a claim this is? How many things do you actually verify in your life? That's not how society or facts work, you rely on others to verify things for you. Do you run tests on your car tire rubber to ensure the properties of the material, and in the process reverify the entirety of materials science and molecular chemistry starting from scratch, or are you sane and trust experts? If journalism is so inaccurate, I can write a script to pick any amount of random articles from the New York Times dating back several decades, and you can try to find factual inaccuracies in a random selection of articles. Hint: it's not going to be in your favor, because contrary to popular belief, the news room is not the same thing as the opinion section. It's also not going to be in your favor because the vast majority of reported news is trivially verifiable by other sources. Picking a few topics a year where this is not the case is only proving me right, if I'm wrong, find 100 false narratives on the scale of the Iraq war in the last month on the news room of the New York Times. > Even if you did somehow know this to be true, why would anybody believe that you know this? Who said I'm the expert? I trust institutions because the default for intuitions in America is that they are generally accurate. The accuracy rate of institutions being below 100% is not a reason to behave as if it is 0%. Again, do you not trust sports reporting on who won? > Have you somehow both consumed the vast majority of journalism and known enough to judge its veracity (presumably without relying on other journalism)? No, because I'm not an expert, I listen to experts. Why make a weird made up situation? > You would have to be a subject matter expert in just about everything, as well as somehow spend more than 24 hours a day consuming news for your claim to be at all credible. This mentality is why conspiracy theories are so widespread, because non domain experts like you think you know better than experts on average. Now you're either going to tell me conspiracy theories are all true, or it's scientists fault for being bad communicators (the correct option). If the former, then you can use the alien time travel machines or whatever to tell my future self I was wrong.

ifyoubuildit 2y ago
> You disagree, and pretending otherwise is pointless. I don't know if I disagree, so I'm not sure why you think you know that either. My point here is that your claim as stated is indefensible. > I can write a script to pick any amount of random articles from the New York Times dating back several decades, and you can try to find factual inaccuracies in a random selection of articles. Now you're actually saying something. You made a prediction that could be tested. You're assuming the outcome for some reason, but the first part is great. > No, because I'm not an expert, I listen to experts. Why make a weird made up situation? So did some expert tell you that the vast majority of journalism is accurate? Because it sounds more like it's your gut feeling. Which is fine, it just doesn't make for a very compelling argument. > This mentality is [...] I don't know anything about any of that. I'm just wondering what the receipts are for your very broad claim. Is it just "journalists are experts, I trust experts, therefore the vast majority of journalism is accurate"? That's at least well formed, but are all journalists experts? Are all experts trustworthy? What is considered journalism (is a blogger a journalist? Some would say yes. They're probably not all experts, right?)
- christianqchung 2y ago
  This is going nowhere, and all you do in your free time is argue with studies according to your own post history (or do I need to cite a study on this very obvious fact?). In any case I'm assuming you don't believe in sports reporters now out of paranoia as I've asked twice now, otherwise you do believe in it because it doesn't challenge your zero-trust society politics.
  - ifyoubuildit 2y ago
    > This is going nowhere Hard to argue with that. > In any case I'm assuming you don't believe in sports reporters I'm not much of a spectator sport guy, but sports reporters are easy to trust: for the most part, they aren't reporting anything important enough to care too much about the accuracy, and you can just go to the games and see for yourself if you do. That doesn't work as easily with say foreign policy reporters, who could tell you it rained skittles in Kiev on Monday, and you just have to take their word unless you want to step into a warzone.