3 ms·
Good reading for the ever-dwindling group of people who like facts. I remember there was a friend of mine who was of the opposite political persuasion, general
by beej71 1y ago
Good reading for the ever-dwindling group of people who like facts.
I remember there was a friend of mine who was of the opposite political persuasion, generally, than myself. He posted something that was demonstrably wrong to Facebook. And I was embarrassed for him just as much as I be embarrassed for myself having posted something so inaccurate. So I offered a friendly correction, but he replied in an unexpected way. He said that the sentiment of the post was accurate, even if the post itself was not. And he left it up!
The facts of the case were absolutely irrelevant.
That was a decade ago. Since then, that attitude has clearly become more prevalent not just with your average Facebook poster, but also within the government and media themselves. For none of these groups does does "truth" support their goals; fact checking is a complete waste of time, and might even be detrimental.
- JohnMakin 1y agoYea, the issue is fewer and fewer people care about objective fact anymore. Reality is whatever you feel it is, or whatever you feel you want it to be, and the internet (the current iteration of it) is perfectly content to feed you that reality, and fake/real is becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish. I've also been in similar discussions and have since given up - even if you show incontrovertible evidence to the contrary, the response is often "well, this is what I believe." I'm not even talking about topics where there is some existing debate - like, things that cannot possibly be disputed, like that the earth is round (not hyperbole).
- nabakin 1y agoI wonder if there's something we can do. A social network that penalizes misinformation and rewards expert analysis. Something like that would never be as big as general social media but maybe it could be developed for a small set of users who care enough about truth to contribute to it and grow it over time
- Karrot_Kream 1y agoThe market is probably the best we have and that's a dismal bar. Predict wrong and lose money.
- MichaelDickens 1y ago> Yea, the issue is fewer and fewer people care about objective fact anymore. Is there any factual basis for this claim? I don't have any evidence, but I would speculate that if you got longitudinal data somehow, it would show that more people today care about objective fact than they did in 1950.
- JohnMakin 1y agoLook at american vaccine policy?
- projektfu 1y agoSen. JD Vance stood by his false claim that Haitian migrants were eating pets in Springfield, Ohio — an unsupported story that former President Donald Trump has also echoed on the debate stage and on social media. During a Sunday interview on CNN, the Ohio senator and Republican vice presidential nominee said his evidence for this claim was "the first-hand accounts of my constituents." He then went on to defend the dissemination of this false story. “The American media totally ignored this stuff until Donald Trump and I started talking about cat memes," Sen. Vance said. "If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that's what I'm going to do." https://www.npr.org/2024/09/15/nx-s1-5113140/vance-false-claims-haitian-migrants-pets https://www.npr.org/2024/09/15/nx-s1-5113140/vance-false-cla...
- oceansky 1y ago“Margaret, the rules were that you weren’t going to fact check.”
- throw54465665 1y ago[flagged]