5 ms·

> an objective source of truth An alternative source with different incentives and culture, not an objective one.

rectang 1y ago
That's technically true but underplays the extent to which company self-enforcement PR is malicious nonsense at odds with reality. Companies are amoral piles of money which will do anything to become larger piles of money, and will resolutely resist any interpretation of events which harms their narrow self-interest.
- monkeyelite 1y ago
  > and will resolutely resist any interpretation of events which harms their narrow self-interest. I don’t know any group who intentionally acts against their interests.
  - spauldo 1y ago
    Voters?
  - vharuck 1y ago
    People who donate money or time to charity. Volunteer firefighters. There's a massive list, really. Overall, kindness is a very common trait. Why else would we have so many countries with welfare programs, even for classes of citizens the majority will never belong to?
    - monkeyelite 1y ago
      Do you have any articles about firefighters voting to close or downsize the fire house?
  - ordu 1y ago
    Altruism is very real thing, with very real examples of behavior influenced by altruism. Moreover it altruism is not just something that people do, because they are culturally programmed to believe, that altruism exists. Examples of altruistic behavior are known for many species, including those, that cannot pass complex concepts from one generation to the next by telling fairy tales to their offspring. Economics tends to use model where every agent is a total egoistic rationalist, and likely it is one of the reasons why the society tolerate totally egoistic corporations. You claimed in other comment that you believe that everything is biased? Don't you think that economics biased you toward egoism?
    - monkeyelite 1y ago
      > Don't you think that economics biased you toward egoism? Yes. Economists and critics often do not recognize intangible rewards and incentives. > Altruism is very real thing, with very real examples of behavior influenced by altruism. Now do second order reasoning. I didn’t say nobody ever does anything for anybody else. I said organizations do not generally act and support information which is not in their interests.
      - zimpenfish 1y ago
        Minor nit - the word "generally" was not in "I don’t know any group who intentionally acts against their interests" which makes it a weaker (and more easily defended) claim than your original.
      - ordu 1y ago
        > I said organizations do not generally act and support information which is not in their interests. I can agree with this statement, but not with your original claim.
  - feoren 1y ago
    > I don’t know any group who intentionally acts against their interests. I do. I know a group of people that would happily let you shatter every window in their home if you also agreed to burn down the house of their brown-skinned neighbor next door. The same group of people that would cheerfully let you grope their own daughter's genitals if it meant that trans people suffered far worse. The same group of people who would gleefully give up their rights to due process if it meant that people who talk differently from them can be sent to prison camps en masse. The same group of people who cheer at the idea of letting the poor and sick die alone on the street, even as you do everything you can to keep them poor and sick themselves. This group will take any bargain against their own interests as long as others are suffering worse, and they will brag and cheer about it the whole time. And there are tens of millions of them.
kurikuri 1y ago
Nuance is not always a good thing. This type of nuance doesn’t forward the discussion in any way and, in this case, muddies the waters and leads to some odd implications. Sure, we can say there is no objective source of truth and chastise the author for using that word, but the term objective in this case has meaning that the author is trying to articulate… most likely that there is some overtly unbiased information source, in opposition to the information sourced from the company which has obvious incentives. Additionally, by stating that the CSB provides an ‘alternative source’ of truth, as a correction to an originally described objective one, you are (possibly inadvertently) claiming that the company is also providing a different source of truth, rhetorically raising the value of the information the company provides while lowering the value of the CSB information. Don’t be the person who adds nuance for the sake of nuance.
- monkeyelite 1y ago
  > there is some overtly unbiased information source, in opposition to the information sourced from the company which has obvious incentives. Yes I don’t believe in unbiased sources. I believe in multiple perspectives revealing aspects of the truth. > you are (possibly inadvertently) claiming that the company is also providing a different source of truth Correct. And I don’t buy the dichotomy you are framing of biased companies vs unbiased government. > Don’t be the person who adds nuance for the sake of nuance. The term “objective truth” was just thrown around. Might as well just say it’s an “absolutely good”. The level of discourse in these threads is science = good, agency with science in name = science. Cuts against agency = bad. What are the costs and benefits to this organization? It appears some sub threads have identified a possible overlap with other agency’s responsibility. It would be interesting to know the extent that is true.
  - ordu 1y ago
    > Yes I don’t believe in unbiased sources. I believe in multiple perspectives revealing aspects of the truth. It is just metaphysics. I like it also, but it is impractical. I find it useful to train my mind to see things from different angles, but it is useless to talk about concrete things. Can you find examples of a biased reports on CSB's youtube channel? If not, it is a good example of uselessness of metaphysics. If you are declaring all their reports biased, while being unable to show the bias, it is just empty words.
ordu 1y ago
Going this way we should ban the word "objective", because no knowledge can be objective, because you need a thinking subject to process raw data to create knowledge. Going this way we'll risk to end up in a world, where there is no truth and no falsehoods. All we'll have is something in between. It would take just one small step to say that any two opinions are equal in their utility. You know, it is like Kremlin propaganda targets idea of "independent media", pointing out that any media is not truly independent, it depends on someone or something. It gets its funding from somewhere, it is subject of some laws and of abuses of law. It needs to take into an account interests of sponsors and from those who wield power. The core message for Russians is: Kremlin propaganda can be bad, but no worse than anything else. Or it can be reworded as: anything is propaganda. Therefore you can relax and just watch news of state television, because you'll never know the truth no matter how hard you tried. It seems to me, that you are going in the same rough direction by rejecting objectiveness.
- esseph 1y ago
  We are living in a post-truth world, and more specifically, a post truth country in the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-truth_politics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-truth_politics https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/informed-societies/posttruth-world-misinformation-and-information-literacy-a-perspective-from-cognitive-science/22444A09EA786DF73DC07C9D02BD56A9 https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/informed-societies/post... https://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=14214 https://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=14214
  - ordu 1y ago
    Oh, it is all about dumb people who cannot navigate the current informational landscape. Or about people who relies on informational processing disabilities of others. It doesn't mean that smart people should reject the notions of truth and false.
    - esseph 1y ago
      Brilliant people make absolutely stupid decisions all the time - thinking you're not going to is the trap. It's not possible you could get caught in bullshit you _want_ to believe and _know_ is right, yeah? You and everybody else buddy.

That's technically true but underplays the extent to which company self-enforcement PR is malicious nonsense at odds with reality. Companies are amoral piles of money which will do anything to become larger piles of money, and will resolutely resist any interpretation of events which harms their narrow self-interest.

monkeyelite 1y ago
> and will resolutely resist any interpretation of events which harms their narrow self-interest. I don’t know any group who intentionally acts against their interests.
- spauldo 1y ago
  Voters?
- vharuck 1y ago
  People who donate money or time to charity. Volunteer firefighters. There's a massive list, really. Overall, kindness is a very common trait. Why else would we have so many countries with welfare programs, even for classes of citizens the majority will never belong to?
  - monkeyelite 1y ago
    Do you have any articles about firefighters voting to close or downsize the fire house?
- ordu 1y ago
  Altruism is very real thing, with very real examples of behavior influenced by altruism. Moreover it altruism is not just something that people do, because they are culturally programmed to believe, that altruism exists. Examples of altruistic behavior are known for many species, including those, that cannot pass complex concepts from one generation to the next by telling fairy tales to their offspring. Economics tends to use model where every agent is a total egoistic rationalist, and likely it is one of the reasons why the society tolerate totally egoistic corporations. You claimed in other comment that you believe that everything is biased? Don't you think that economics biased you toward egoism?
  - monkeyelite 1y ago
    > Don't you think that economics biased you toward egoism? Yes. Economists and critics often do not recognize intangible rewards and incentives. > Altruism is very real thing, with very real examples of behavior influenced by altruism. Now do second order reasoning. I didn’t say nobody ever does anything for anybody else. I said organizations do not generally act and support information which is not in their interests.
    - zimpenfish 1y ago
      Minor nit - the word "generally" was not in "I don’t know any group who intentionally acts against their interests" which makes it a weaker (and more easily defended) claim than your original.
    - ordu 1y ago
      > I said organizations do not generally act and support information which is not in their interests. I can agree with this statement, but not with your original claim.
- feoren 1y ago
  > I don’t know any group who intentionally acts against their interests. I do. I know a group of people that would happily let you shatter every window in their home if you also agreed to burn down the house of their brown-skinned neighbor next door. The same group of people that would cheerfully let you grope their own daughter's genitals if it meant that trans people suffered far worse. The same group of people who would gleefully give up their rights to due process if it meant that people who talk differently from them can be sent to prison camps en masse. The same group of people who cheer at the idea of letting the poor and sick die alone on the street, even as you do everything you can to keep them poor and sick themselves. This group will take any bargain against their own interests as long as others are suffering worse, and they will brag and cheer about it the whole time. And there are tens of millions of them.

kurikuri 1y ago

Nuance is not always a good thing. This type of nuance doesn’t forward the discussion in any way and, in this case, muddies the waters and leads to some odd implications. Sure, we can say there is no objective source of truth and chastise the author for using that word, but the term objective in this case has meaning that the author is trying to articulate… most likely that there is some overtly unbiased information source, in opposition to the information sourced from the company which has obvious incentives. Additionally, by stating that the CSB provides an ‘alternative source’ of truth, as a correction to an originally described objective one, you are (possibly inadvertently) claiming that the company is also providing a different source of truth, rhetorically raising the value of the information the company provides while lowering the value of the CSB information. Don’t be the person who adds nuance for the sake of nuance.

monkeyelite 1y ago
> there is some overtly unbiased information source, in opposition to the information sourced from the company which has obvious incentives. Yes I don’t believe in unbiased sources. I believe in multiple perspectives revealing aspects of the truth. > you are (possibly inadvertently) claiming that the company is also providing a different source of truth Correct. And I don’t buy the dichotomy you are framing of biased companies vs unbiased government. > Don’t be the person who adds nuance for the sake of nuance. The term “objective truth” was just thrown around. Might as well just say it’s an “absolutely good”. The level of discourse in these threads is science = good, agency with science in name = science. Cuts against agency = bad. What are the costs and benefits to this organization? It appears some sub threads have identified a possible overlap with other agency’s responsibility. It would be interesting to know the extent that is true.
- ordu 1y ago
  > Yes I don’t believe in unbiased sources. I believe in multiple perspectives revealing aspects of the truth. It is just metaphysics. I like it also, but it is impractical. I find it useful to train my mind to see things from different angles, but it is useless to talk about concrete things. Can you find examples of a biased reports on CSB's youtube channel? If not, it is a good example of uselessness of metaphysics. If you are declaring all their reports biased, while being unable to show the bias, it is just empty words.

ordu 1y ago

Going this way we should ban the word "objective", because no knowledge can be objective, because you need a thinking subject to process raw data to create knowledge. Going this way we'll risk to end up in a world, where there is no truth and no falsehoods. All we'll have is something in between. It would take just one small step to say that any two opinions are equal in their utility. You know, it is like Kremlin propaganda targets idea of "independent media", pointing out that any media is not truly independent, it depends on someone or something. It gets its funding from somewhere, it is subject of some laws and of abuses of law. It needs to take into an account interests of sponsors and from those who wield power. The core message for Russians is: Kremlin propaganda can be bad, but no worse than anything else. Or it can be reworded as: anything is propaganda. Therefore you can relax and just watch news of state television, because you'll never know the truth no matter how hard you tried. It seems to me, that you are going in the same rough direction by rejecting objectiveness.

esseph 1y ago
We are living in a post-truth world, and more specifically, a post truth country in the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-truth_politics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-truth_politics https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/informed-societies/posttruth-world-misinformation-and-information-literacy-a-perspective-from-cognitive-science/22444A09EA786DF73DC07C9D02BD56A9 https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/informed-societies/post... https://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=14214 https://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=14214
- ordu 1y ago
  Oh, it is all about dumb people who cannot navigate the current informational landscape. Or about people who relies on informational processing disabilities of others. It doesn't mean that smart people should reject the notions of truth and false.
  - esseph 1y ago
    Brilliant people make absolutely stupid decisions all the time - thinking you're not going to is the trap. It's not possible you could get caught in bullshit you _want_ to believe and _know_ is right, yeah? You and everybody else buddy.