3 ms·

The discussion here is terrific. With high irony, this discussion misses the larger point: The NYt is part of old media. As for all old media, they are in t

by graycat 13y ago

The discussion here is terrific. With high irony, this discussion misses the larger point: The NYt is part of old media. As for all old media, they are in the ad business. As has long been common in old media, the purpose of a 'story' is to grab the readers by the heart, the gut, and below the belt, always below the shoulders, never between the ears. In particular, the NYT wants story 'themes' so that they will 'condition' their readers to accept that 'stories' in these themes can be realistic. Then the NYT can write silly stories in the themes, have their readers take the stories seriously, and, thus, have some special and especially effective ways to grab their readers by the heart, the gut, and below the belt. One of the themes is the 'environment' and a morality play of evil humans destroying the environment. That story goes back to the Mayans who killed people to pour their blood on a rock to keep the sun moving across the sky. Old religions of nature worship were similar. It's a special case of good versus evil, of sin, transgression, retribution, and, maybe, redemption, likely via sacrifice. Kill a lamb. Give up cars and walk. Etc. In this story it's the evil, and dumb and greedy, farmers 'messing around with powerful, dangerous, hostile forces of nature with consequences they can't possibly understand' and, thus, being a threat to all of us. So, the NYT pumps this stuff out. They have some conditioned, devoted readers who lap up this swill. It's not science, news, reporting, or investigative journalism. Instead it's just a nasty manipulation. Here at HN we would be fools to take such swill at face value and argue against its logic and science. The NYT doesn't care a hoot about logic or science but just the NYT manipulation and, then, their ad revenue.

tgb 13y ago
What article were you reading? The entire point of this was to connect the fact that antibiotics enable unusual animal growth to the possibility that antibiotics were enabling the unusual human growth that has been occurring these past few decades. This is a reasonably hypothesis that I, at least, had never considered but in retrospect seems like something that obviously should be investigated further. There is nothing moralistic about this. Sure, the article mentions in passing about drug-resistant strains but this was not about painting farmers as greedy dumb and evil. If this is a click-bait link it's one that feeds on our self-image issues and on passing the blame to others and things like that, not on some morality play environmentalism. You can find that in other articles if you want.
- graycat 13y ago
  You are very carefully, rationally, and objectively taking the article at face value; I'm not granting that the article deserves to be taken at face value. One reason is, the article is from the NYT which has burned me too often in the past. Another reason is that this thread did a really good job showing some of the severe rational weaknesses in the article -- the writing and thought here were much better than from the NYT. So, I reject that the article from tbe NYT was just an effort at rationalism and information. That hypothesis rejected, I look for another explanation -- the NYT is trying to jerk me around. Do I have solid proof? No, but doing some beautiful rationalism in the face of some low grade rationalism from the NYT begins to look like here at HN we are being manipulated and are being foolish.

by graycat 13y ago

tgb 13y ago

What article were you reading? The entire point of this was to connect the fact that antibiotics enable unusual animal growth to the possibility that antibiotics were enabling the unusual human growth that has been occurring these past few decades. This is a reasonably hypothesis that I, at least, had never considered but in retrospect seems like something that obviously should be investigated further. There is nothing moralistic about this. Sure, the article mentions in passing about drug-resistant strains but this was not about painting farmers as greedy dumb and evil. If this is a click-bait link it's one that feeds on our self-image issues and on passing the blame to others and things like that, not on some morality play environmentalism. You can find that in other articles if you want.

graycat 13y ago
You are very carefully, rationally, and objectively taking the article at face value; I'm not granting that the article deserves to be taken at face value. One reason is, the article is from the NYT which has burned me too often in the past. Another reason is that this thread did a really good job showing some of the severe rational weaknesses in the article -- the writing and thought here were much better than from the NYT. So, I reject that the article from tbe NYT was just an effort at rationalism and information. That hypothesis rejected, I look for another explanation -- the NYT is trying to jerk me around. Do I have solid proof? No, but doing some beautiful rationalism in the face of some low grade rationalism from the NYT begins to look like here at HN we are being manipulated and are being foolish.