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This reminded me of a YouTube clip I watched years ago. It was basically a retired KGB agent explaining how the media purposely puts out conflicting stories. Th

This reminded me of a YouTube clip I watched years ago. It was basically a retired KGB agent explaining how the media purposely puts out conflicting stories. This breaks the brain of the citizens, and they're unable to know what is true. We indeed see this here in the US. I can't tell you what is true or false (in media) objectively. I can choose what I want to believe is true, though.

pixl97 1y ago
Known as the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firehose_of_falsehood https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firehose_of_falsehood
- lt_snuffles 1y ago
  This wikipedia article needs some work.
  - ceejayoz 1y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Firehose_of_falsehood&action=edit https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Firehose_of_false...
  - free_bip 1y ago
    Be the change you wish to see in the world
    - cindyllm 1y ago
      [dead]
- th0ma5 1y ago
  I'd also put Gish Gallop in there somewhere as well. Or "unfalsifiable" is also certainly in the neighborhood.
throwaway894345 1y ago
I would expect to see conflicting narratives in any country with free press. Why would we expect different outlets with different biases to run consistent narratives?
- zubiaur 1y ago
  Deniability and having a response for different lines of criticism. It derails the critic who operates under the assumption of a consistent narrative and meaningful arguments. It gives the believer something to hold on under most scenarios. It removes truth and reality grounding from equation. Its diabolically effective. Edit after down votes: The paragraph above was meant on why would one expect conflicting narratives not from different sources, as the Parent Comment stated, but rather from supposedly official sources or propaganda outlets. My bad, must have read the comment on a hurry.
- oofbey 1y ago
  I agree it’s healthy for Americans to be more skeptical of journalism, especially the sources they think they trust. But a key difference between NYT and Xinhua in China is that NYT explicitly doesn’t want to be duped. Sure reporters are lazy and will run an article quickly about a breaking story they get from a government tip. But if they find out it was wrong the editors will be pissed and likely print an update or even retraction. That’s the key difference between independent media and government propaganda.
  - eighthourblink 1y ago
    which is fine and all but majority of people will take that first piece of news and not see the updated information / article piece. The damage is done at that point.
    - throwaway894345 1y ago
      Sure, the damage is done, but that doesn't make it _propaganda_.
  - yndoendo 1y ago
dumbfounder 1y ago
I don’t think it’s some master scheme. They are trying to make money more than anything else. So they distort the truth to what sells the most. That just happens to be one of two major ideologies that hate each other. The effect is the same, but the motivations, and thus how you counteract, are different.
- fuzzfactor 1y ago
  >They are trying to make money more than anything else. Who knows what some people will do these days, just for that. Well, we actually have a pretty good idea, without all the gory details. But I know what you mean, it's not too easy for multiple sources to be on the same page even when they really try sometimes. However, only the few most popular are what most people listen to, and those biggies are usually well aware of each others' stance. On an ongoing basis. And if a combined effort were to take place nothing else would have a chance. Sometimes even sharing personnel, concurrently and/or sequentially, which can also lay the groundwork for approaches that seem competitive but are really complementary. As designed with a single, possibly obscured agenda designed from the ground up to deceive. Things like this might be why "trust but verify" may have to be deprecated, and reversed to "verify and still be skeptical" if the propaganda keeps getting worse.
nostrademons 1y ago
> I can't tell you what is true or false (in media) objectively. The parenthetical is doing a lot of work. The only real truth is that which you experience with your own senses. For everything else, you are choosing to believe somebody else's truth. It's worth remembering that whenever you consume media.
- tracerbulletx 1y ago
  You can't really believe your own senses either. Science is our only systematic way to arrive at reliable information, you really can't know anything, but you can construct reproduceable experiments that increase your confidence enough that those facts can be relied upon to construct more complex theories by linking experimental results together, and those links increase your confidence because their co-occurrences help validate each other and when experimental results diverge you can also reduce your confidence deconstruct or iterate on the theory.
  - nostrademons 1y ago
    Science relies on our senses too - that's all the data we get. But yes, science is a way of compensating for bias in our individual perception and building durable models that make useful predictions even for phenomena we can't directly perceive. Be wary of overgeneralizing scientific conclusions, though. Science may say that the measles vaccine is 99.7% effective, but if your kid comes down with a rash 3 days after a high fever and a week after being exposed to a known measles case, it starts from head down, and they've got white spots in their mouth - congratulations, they're probably in the 0.3%. Likewise, science may say that men are on average better in spatial and mathematical reasoning than women, but if you meet a top-notch woman programmer in your job, believe your experience, not the science. That science makes a conclusion about the averages doesn't prevent you from having an outlier right in front of you.
    - tracerbulletx 1y ago
      Yes, also there's science the social system, and science the method. I'm only really speaking about the portion where senses are prone to a bunch of different failure modes, and science is a way to compile a bunch of sensory observations as a form of parity check or error correction mechanism. Science the social system also has failure modes, but the system is the only thing we have that has shown any actual progression in its results, and has a strong track record.
hamburglar 1y ago
One thing that’s interesting is that if you intentionally consume media with different viewpoints, you can often glean what’s true and what’s not by comparing how they each spin the story, because the opposite sides will almost never be in coordinated collusion about their misrepresentations.

pixl97 1y ago

Known as the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firehose_of_falsehood https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firehose_of_falsehood

lt_snuffles 1y ago
This wikipedia article needs some work.
- ceejayoz 1y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Firehose_of_falsehood&action=edit https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Firehose_of_false...
- free_bip 1y ago
  Be the change you wish to see in the world
  - cindyllm 1y ago
    [dead]
th0ma5 1y ago
I'd also put Gish Gallop in there somewhere as well. Or "unfalsifiable" is also certainly in the neighborhood.

throwaway894345 1y ago

I would expect to see conflicting narratives in any country with free press. Why would we expect different outlets with different biases to run consistent narratives?

zubiaur 1y ago
Deniability and having a response for different lines of criticism. It derails the critic who operates under the assumption of a consistent narrative and meaningful arguments. It gives the believer something to hold on under most scenarios. It removes truth and reality grounding from equation. Its diabolically effective. Edit after down votes: The paragraph above was meant on why would one expect conflicting narratives not from different sources, as the Parent Comment stated, but rather from supposedly official sources or propaganda outlets. My bad, must have read the comment on a hurry.
oofbey 1y ago
I agree it’s healthy for Americans to be more skeptical of journalism, especially the sources they think they trust. But a key difference between NYT and Xinhua in China is that NYT explicitly doesn’t want to be duped. Sure reporters are lazy and will run an article quickly about a breaking story they get from a government tip. But if they find out it was wrong the editors will be pissed and likely print an update or even retraction. That’s the key difference between independent media and government propaganda.
- eighthourblink 1y ago
  which is fine and all but majority of people will take that first piece of news and not see the updated information / article piece. The damage is done at that point.
  - throwaway894345 1y ago
    Sure, the damage is done, but that doesn't make it _propaganda_.
- yndoendo 1y ago

dumbfounder 1y ago

I don’t think it’s some master scheme. They are trying to make money more than anything else. So they distort the truth to what sells the most. That just happens to be one of two major ideologies that hate each other. The effect is the same, but the motivations, and thus how you counteract, are different.

fuzzfactor 1y ago
>They are trying to make money more than anything else. Who knows what some people will do these days, just for that. Well, we actually have a pretty good idea, without all the gory details. But I know what you mean, it's not too easy for multiple sources to be on the same page even when they really try sometimes. However, only the few most popular are what most people listen to, and those biggies are usually well aware of each others' stance. On an ongoing basis. And if a combined effort were to take place nothing else would have a chance. Sometimes even sharing personnel, concurrently and/or sequentially, which can also lay the groundwork for approaches that seem competitive but are really complementary. As designed with a single, possibly obscured agenda designed from the ground up to deceive. Things like this might be why "trust but verify" may have to be deprecated, and reversed to "verify and still be skeptical" if the propaganda keeps getting worse.

nostrademons 1y ago

> I can't tell you what is true or false (in media) objectively. The parenthetical is doing a lot of work. The only real truth is that which you experience with your own senses. For everything else, you are choosing to believe somebody else's truth. It's worth remembering that whenever you consume media.

tracerbulletx 1y ago
You can't really believe your own senses either. Science is our only systematic way to arrive at reliable information, you really can't know anything, but you can construct reproduceable experiments that increase your confidence enough that those facts can be relied upon to construct more complex theories by linking experimental results together, and those links increase your confidence because their co-occurrences help validate each other and when experimental results diverge you can also reduce your confidence deconstruct or iterate on the theory.
- nostrademons 1y ago
  Science relies on our senses too - that's all the data we get. But yes, science is a way of compensating for bias in our individual perception and building durable models that make useful predictions even for phenomena we can't directly perceive. Be wary of overgeneralizing scientific conclusions, though. Science may say that the measles vaccine is 99.7% effective, but if your kid comes down with a rash 3 days after a high fever and a week after being exposed to a known measles case, it starts from head down, and they've got white spots in their mouth - congratulations, they're probably in the 0.3%. Likewise, science may say that men are on average better in spatial and mathematical reasoning than women, but if you meet a top-notch woman programmer in your job, believe your experience, not the science. That science makes a conclusion about the averages doesn't prevent you from having an outlier right in front of you.
  - tracerbulletx 1y ago
    Yes, also there's science the social system, and science the method. I'm only really speaking about the portion where senses are prone to a bunch of different failure modes, and science is a way to compile a bunch of sensory observations as a form of parity check or error correction mechanism. Science the social system also has failure modes, but the system is the only thing we have that has shown any actual progression in its results, and has a strong track record.

hamburglar 1y ago

One thing that’s interesting is that if you intentionally consume media with different viewpoints, you can often glean what’s true and what’s not by comparing how they each spin the story, because the opposite sides will almost never be in coordinated collusion about their misrepresentations.