4 ms·

Would you trust HN as a source of information?

by alganet 1y ago

bell-cot 1y ago
More than most of the Press.
PaulHoule 1y ago
I trust some things I see on HN, I distrust other things.
- alganet 1y ago
  If I rephrased your comment as you saying that "It is entirely up to the reader to decide if things on HN can be trusted or not", would you agree with that statement? In light of that interpretation, can you say the same about the press? (that it is entirely up to the reader to decide?)
  - PaulHoule 1y ago
    Yes. The situation with the press is far worse than you think for structural reasons, it's a bit naive that you're asking this kind of question at all. I'm old enough that I've had an experience where an "event" (French theorists would say l' événement) happens and -- I watch it live on TV -- I watch it again on the evening news -- I read about it in the daily paper the next day -- I read about it in a weekly paper (say The Economist) next week -- I read about it in a monthly paper (say The Atlantic) next month And then 25-30 years later a book comes out that is meticulous researched, they looked over all the primary sources, they interviewed everyone they could, etc. The picture of l' événement that I get from that book is entirely different than the picture that I recall having at the time, some of that is drift in my memories, some of that is the failure of my meaning making at the time, some of that is errors of commission, omission, connotation and denotation on the part of the media. I take the blame for my memory (although everybody's memory drifts over time), but the media + the meaning making process are fairly considered to be a system, and it doesn't work well. To back this up -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Armies_of_the_Night https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Armies_of_the_Night -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear_and_Loathing_on_the_Campaign_Trail_%2772 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear_and_Loathing_on_the_Campa... -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_Fictions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_Fictions (anything by Didion!) -- https://www.worldradiohistory.com/BOOKSHELF-ARH/News/The-Information-Machines-Bagdikian-1971.pdf https://www.worldradiohistory.com/BOOKSHELF-ARH/News/The-Inf... (1971 book that predicted you'd be reading the news on the WWW around 1980 or so -- the author prepared a report for the RAND corporation and was really angry and bitter that the media industry didn't want to make the investments to make it happen... and thus was the origin story of a legendary critic of the media who is more famous for https://www.amazon.com/effete-conspiracy-other-crimes-press/dp/B0006WNYAU https://www.amazon.com/effete-conspiracy-other-crimes-press/... and https://www.amazon.com/New-Media-Monopoly-Completely-Chapters/dp/0807061875 https://www.amazon.com/New-Media-Monopoly-Completely-Chapter...)
    - alganet 1y ago
      It seems that you're approaching this from a "mature" standpoint against a perceived "truth at all costs" standpoint, which is commonplace. Although a little bit more verbose, you're answer could be summed up to "You're naive and idealist, little boy" without loosing meaning. It has more words but the same amount of basic emotional architecture. It reveals what you believe I think about the press role in society. You filled in the gaps with your imagination of what I am and popular personas. Let's say I'm less idealistic than you imagine me to be. I could even reverse this, right? Say that you're the idealistic for believing that a new platform could avoid the mistakes of the past, but I'll only mention that in passage (I'm not assuming you're naive). If we're all adults here, there's no reason to hide or misdirect anything. Let's consider the whole history of press then, since you came up with it. Its many turns to questionable attitude and comebacks, the many interests that might be influencing it. Do you think HN deserves to be in that same category? I think it's an interesting question if we exclude these obvious cul de sacs ("it's about censorship", "it's about naive idealism", etc). We should not avoid it.
      - PaulHoule 1y ago
        There is no greater enemy of the truth than the use of the phrase “the truth”. This is a basic problem in logic and philosophy, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del%27s_incompleteness_theorems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del%27s_incompleteness_... Where adding an operator that can determine the logical truth of a statement breaks the system. At a bellyfeel level consider “9/11 truther”. There is no truth, only seduction https://monoskop.org/images/9/96/Baudrillard_Jean_Seduction.pdf https://monoskop.org/images/9/96/Baudrillard_Jean_Seduction.... There is no “little boy” about it but I don’t think your question is really a productive question to ask. In that there are no journalists, nobody pounding the pavement to get facts, interview people, etc, HN is not “the press”. Particularly there is no editor-in-chief. A counter to that is that you will find people writing on HN (like Mailer) about their experiences vibe coding or developing photographs or what went down at the third last startup they worked at. That is mostly ‘true’ in the Norman Mailer sense or the lucid bits of that Hunter S. Thompson bit and might be all the more ‘true’ if it goes off the rails once in a while the way Hunter did even if it departs from conventionally defined factually. Hunter and Mailer both emphasize the gap between the personal account which is more ‘real’ in a certain sense than ‘objective’ journalism. That Bagdikian book has one of the most damning critiques of the media I’ve ever seen —- the editor of a small town newspaper he just 6 seconds to look at an AP newswire study and decide if it is ‘fit to print’ which is an act of violence against the very fabric of reality. Baudrillard’s next book https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulacra_and_Simulation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulacra_and_Simulation is an attempt to shit on the word ‘real’ the way that wolves shit on a trap in that the words ‘true’ and ‘real’ (not to mention ‘trustworthy’) are frequently used in attempts to deceive. From that perspective we have been in a post-apocalyptic environment for quite some time, at least 1970 if not 1945 or 1870. However problematic you think the media is, the reality is so much worse and it is not a function of who owns it or works it or bias on a left/right access it is a structural property of the system itself.

Would you trust HN as a source of information?

bell-cot 1y ago

More than most of the Press.

PaulHoule 1y ago

I trust some things I see on HN, I distrust other things.

alganet 1y ago
If I rephrased your comment as you saying that "It is entirely up to the reader to decide if things on HN can be trusted or not", would you agree with that statement? In light of that interpretation, can you say the same about the press? (that it is entirely up to the reader to decide?)
- PaulHoule 1y ago
  Yes. The situation with the press is far worse than you think for structural reasons, it's a bit naive that you're asking this kind of question at all. I'm old enough that I've had an experience where an "event" (French theorists would say l' événement) happens and -- I watch it live on TV -- I watch it again on the evening news -- I read about it in the daily paper the next day -- I read about it in a weekly paper (say The Economist) next week -- I read about it in a monthly paper (say The Atlantic) next month And then 25-30 years later a book comes out that is meticulous researched, they looked over all the primary sources, they interviewed everyone they could, etc. The picture of l' événement that I get from that book is entirely different than the picture that I recall having at the time, some of that is drift in my memories, some of that is the failure of my meaning making at the time, some of that is errors of commission, omission, connotation and denotation on the part of the media. I take the blame for my memory (although everybody's memory drifts over time), but the media + the meaning making process are fairly considered to be a system, and it doesn't work well. To back this up -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Armies_of_the_Night https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Armies_of_the_Night -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear_and_Loathing_on_the_Campaign_Trail_%2772 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear_and_Loathing_on_the_Campa... -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_Fictions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_Fictions (anything by Didion!) -- https://www.worldradiohistory.com/BOOKSHELF-ARH/News/The-Information-Machines-Bagdikian-1971.pdf https://www.worldradiohistory.com/BOOKSHELF-ARH/News/The-Inf... (1971 book that predicted you'd be reading the news on the WWW around 1980 or so -- the author prepared a report for the RAND corporation and was really angry and bitter that the media industry didn't want to make the investments to make it happen... and thus was the origin story of a legendary critic of the media who is more famous for https://www.amazon.com/effete-conspiracy-other-crimes-press/dp/B0006WNYAU https://www.amazon.com/effete-conspiracy-other-crimes-press/... and https://www.amazon.com/New-Media-Monopoly-Completely-Chapters/dp/0807061875 https://www.amazon.com/New-Media-Monopoly-Completely-Chapter...)
  - alganet 1y ago
    It seems that you're approaching this from a "mature" standpoint against a perceived "truth at all costs" standpoint, which is commonplace. Although a little bit more verbose, you're answer could be summed up to "You're naive and idealist, little boy" without loosing meaning. It has more words but the same amount of basic emotional architecture. It reveals what you believe I think about the press role in society. You filled in the gaps with your imagination of what I am and popular personas. Let's say I'm less idealistic than you imagine me to be. I could even reverse this, right? Say that you're the idealistic for believing that a new platform could avoid the mistakes of the past, but I'll only mention that in passage (I'm not assuming you're naive). If we're all adults here, there's no reason to hide or misdirect anything. Let's consider the whole history of press then, since you came up with it. Its many turns to questionable attitude and comebacks, the many interests that might be influencing it. Do you think HN deserves to be in that same category? I think it's an interesting question if we exclude these obvious cul de sacs ("it's about censorship", "it's about naive idealism", etc). We should not avoid it.
    - PaulHoule 1y ago
      There is no greater enemy of the truth than the use of the phrase “the truth”. This is a basic problem in logic and philosophy, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del%27s_incompleteness_theorems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del%27s_incompleteness_... Where adding an operator that can determine the logical truth of a statement breaks the system. At a bellyfeel level consider “9/11 truther”. There is no truth, only seduction https://monoskop.org/images/9/96/Baudrillard_Jean_Seduction.pdf https://monoskop.org/images/9/96/Baudrillard_Jean_Seduction.... There is no “little boy” about it but I don’t think your question is really a productive question to ask. In that there are no journalists, nobody pounding the pavement to get facts, interview people, etc, HN is not “the press”. Particularly there is no editor-in-chief. A counter to that is that you will find people writing on HN (like Mailer) about their experiences vibe coding or developing photographs or what went down at the third last startup they worked at. That is mostly ‘true’ in the Norman Mailer sense or the lucid bits of that Hunter S. Thompson bit and might be all the more ‘true’ if it goes off the rails once in a while the way Hunter did even if it departs from conventionally defined factually. Hunter and Mailer both emphasize the gap between the personal account which is more ‘real’ in a certain sense than ‘objective’ journalism. That Bagdikian book has one of the most damning critiques of the media I’ve ever seen —- the editor of a small town newspaper he just 6 seconds to look at an AP newswire study and decide if it is ‘fit to print’ which is an act of violence against the very fabric of reality. Baudrillard’s next book https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulacra_and_Simulation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulacra_and_Simulation is an attempt to shit on the word ‘real’ the way that wolves shit on a trap in that the words ‘true’ and ‘real’ (not to mention ‘trustworthy’) are frequently used in attempts to deceive. From that perspective we have been in a post-apocalyptic environment for quite some time, at least 1970 if not 1945 or 1870. However problematic you think the media is, the reality is so much worse and it is not a function of who owns it or works it or bias on a left/right access it is a structural property of the system itself.