5 ms·

You weren't having fun at other's expense, you were had just like everyone else. You never said it wasn't a hoax because you didn't know it was a hoax. There

by fnid 17y ago

You weren't having fun at other's expense, you were had just like everyone else. You never said it wasn't a hoax because you didn't know it was a hoax. There are two lessons to be had from this, and the recent facebook fax hoax 1) Traditional Journalism is good because they do fact checking and blogs do not. 2) The real time web is easily hackable. People don't take the time to do research. They just read and accept. Slower news helps it be more real. Most of what comes into our brains now is just forgotten anyway. It may actually be better for us to read stuff a week or two after it comes out so it has time to be vetted by the community. We may be doing ourselves a disservice by staying so "up" on the news because we could be polluting our brains with false information. We should be in constant doubt of everything we read on blogs, but unfortunately, we are not.

joe_the_user 17y ago
How exactly can you be so sure about whether or not electromagnetic was "had"? How can you know for certain why he didn't say it was a hoax? Btw, the thing was immediately tagged as a hoax on Slashdot, too quickly for me to even think on my own whether it made sense or not...
- fnid 17y ago
  I can't be 100% sure, but here's why I believe he was had. First, this community is one in which he would be rewarded more for outing a hoax than he would get from some internal desire to "have fun at others expense." That kind of thing doesn't go over well here. There's also a saying, "He who says the most in an argument is in the wrong." electromagnetic spoke a lot to "cover his trail." I believe he was hopeful that the hoax was not a hoax. I was had too, I thought, wow, that's clever, if it's true the world will change. I was hopeful. It's okay to be wrong. I suppose you could say I believe he was had as well, because of intuition. Intuition is knowing something without knowing how you know it. I don't believe he would have spent so much time supporting the idea if he thought it was a hoax. He even back-peddled a little bit by saying "What I said was true even if this isn't true." If he believed it was a hoax, why not say, "This is probably a hoax, but here's the science..."
  - jacquesm 17y ago
    > First, this community is one in which he would be rewarded more for outing a hoax than he would get from some internal desire to "have fun at others expense." That kind of thing doesn't go over well here. I think that is exactly what makes it more rather than less likely that he's telling the truth. It's an honest admission that could get him some flak. After all, why admit to this now if it wasn't the truth. With a moniker like electromagnetic and a fair amount of accurate knowledge at his disposal he threw off enough 'good stuff' to confuse the hell out of me. I had to go to some trouble to get the "'wtf', this guy seems to know what he's talking about, so how come he defends it?" feeling out of my system. I actually suspected that he was doing it on purpose but I wasn't brave enough to call him out on it. And I don't feel bad for admitting that, I really think that it was a pretty good prank. When he said 'it is true, even it if isn't true' that is exactly what it is. The basic principle is sound, this implementation is absolutely not. FWIW, I've been a member of fieldlines for many years and one of our pet activities there is to debunk bullshit renewable energy schemes. Another thing that threw me off was that they claimed to be using some kind of solvent, but then when I got to the bit where it worked indoors I realized it must certainly be a hoax, or at least a gross misunderstanding of electro-chemical processes. The 'has to be moist' was a pretty bad sign that something else was going on here, the metals another (hair being a pretty much perfect insulator). So, after all that the only questions remaining are: How do they do it ? No way those fluorescent lamps are staying lit without some additional source of energy spliced in there somehow. Are they themselves still deluded by their invention ? (hard to imagine, given the above) Are they aware of the basic flaws and are they keeping up a pretense hoping the media attention will die off (that usually doesn't take very long), or are they in too deep now ? And congratulations to electromagnetic on a pretty good prank, to quote GWB, fool me once ... ;)
pg 17y ago
There are two lessons to be had from this, and the recent facebook fax hoax 1) Traditional Journalism is good because they do fact checking and blogs do not. What? The original story was published by the Daily Mail, and it appears to have been debunked by a blogger.
- DanielBMarkham 17y ago
  Let's not even mention the fact that on the day it was debunked, CNN was running a story about a terrorist attack on Washington, D.C. that turned out to be a Coast Guard training exercise. http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2009/09/white-house-blames-media-for-scare-resulting-from-coast-guard-exercise.html http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2009/09/white-house-...
  - fnid 17y ago
    The exception proves the rule? A blogger righted the issue with Dan Rather a couple years ago as well. I suppose we have to look at the majority case here and the majority of bloggers are regurgitators. The news regurgitates a lot too. I have lost a lot of faith in our institution of media lately. The journalistic ethic is going in the toilet because it doesn't spur ratings...
    - jacquesm 17y ago
      There are several 'classes' of bloggers. There are those who do their homework, have writing skills and do their utmost to produce quality content, there are the plagiarists that will copy whole blogs verbatim and pass them off as their own, in between there is everything else. To put all bloggers in the same corner is the same as saying that all people are unethical. The 'majority' may be right, it may be off but my feeling is that there is plenty of excellent content out there and plenty of crap. I wouldn't be so fast to discard the majority, especially in other languages than English the amount of regurgitation is less than you'd expect. Regurgitators = thinly veiled plagiarism, what in school would be called 'rewriting' instead of 'writing'. And newspapers that print bloomberg or reuters stories are also regurgitators.

by fnid 17y ago

joe_the_user 17y ago

How exactly can you be so sure about whether or not electromagnetic was "had"? How can you know for certain why he didn't say it was a hoax? Btw, the thing was immediately tagged as a hoax on Slashdot, too quickly for me to even think on my own whether it made sense or not...

fnid 17y ago
I can't be 100% sure, but here's why I believe he was had. First, this community is one in which he would be rewarded more for outing a hoax than he would get from some internal desire to "have fun at others expense." That kind of thing doesn't go over well here. There's also a saying, "He who says the most in an argument is in the wrong." electromagnetic spoke a lot to "cover his trail." I believe he was hopeful that the hoax was not a hoax. I was had too, I thought, wow, that's clever, if it's true the world will change. I was hopeful. It's okay to be wrong. I suppose you could say I believe he was had as well, because of intuition. Intuition is knowing something without knowing how you know it. I don't believe he would have spent so much time supporting the idea if he thought it was a hoax. He even back-peddled a little bit by saying "What I said was true even if this isn't true." If he believed it was a hoax, why not say, "This is probably a hoax, but here's the science..."
- jacquesm 17y ago
  > First, this community is one in which he would be rewarded more for outing a hoax than he would get from some internal desire to "have fun at others expense." That kind of thing doesn't go over well here. I think that is exactly what makes it more rather than less likely that he's telling the truth. It's an honest admission that could get him some flak. After all, why admit to this now if it wasn't the truth. With a moniker like electromagnetic and a fair amount of accurate knowledge at his disposal he threw off enough 'good stuff' to confuse the hell out of me. I had to go to some trouble to get the "'wtf', this guy seems to know what he's talking about, so how come he defends it?" feeling out of my system. I actually suspected that he was doing it on purpose but I wasn't brave enough to call him out on it. And I don't feel bad for admitting that, I really think that it was a pretty good prank. When he said 'it is true, even it if isn't true' that is exactly what it is. The basic principle is sound, this implementation is absolutely not. FWIW, I've been a member of fieldlines for many years and one of our pet activities there is to debunk bullshit renewable energy schemes. Another thing that threw me off was that they claimed to be using some kind of solvent, but then when I got to the bit where it worked indoors I realized it must certainly be a hoax, or at least a gross misunderstanding of electro-chemical processes. The 'has to be moist' was a pretty bad sign that something else was going on here, the metals another (hair being a pretty much perfect insulator). So, after all that the only questions remaining are: How do they do it ? No way those fluorescent lamps are staying lit without some additional source of energy spliced in there somehow. Are they themselves still deluded by their invention ? (hard to imagine, given the above) Are they aware of the basic flaws and are they keeping up a pretense hoping the media attention will die off (that usually doesn't take very long), or are they in too deep now ? And congratulations to electromagnetic on a pretty good prank, to quote GWB, fool me once ... ;)

pg 17y ago

There are two lessons to be had from this, and the recent facebook fax hoax 1) Traditional Journalism is good because they do fact checking and blogs do not. What? The original story was published by the Daily Mail, and it appears to have been debunked by a blogger.

DanielBMarkham 17y ago
Let's not even mention the fact that on the day it was debunked, CNN was running a story about a terrorist attack on Washington, D.C. that turned out to be a Coast Guard training exercise. http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2009/09/white-house-blames-media-for-scare-resulting-from-coast-guard-exercise.html http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2009/09/white-house-...
- fnid 17y ago
  The exception proves the rule? A blogger righted the issue with Dan Rather a couple years ago as well. I suppose we have to look at the majority case here and the majority of bloggers are regurgitators. The news regurgitates a lot too. I have lost a lot of faith in our institution of media lately. The journalistic ethic is going in the toilet because it doesn't spur ratings...
  - jacquesm 17y ago
    There are several 'classes' of bloggers. There are those who do their homework, have writing skills and do their utmost to produce quality content, there are the plagiarists that will copy whole blogs verbatim and pass them off as their own, in between there is everything else. To put all bloggers in the same corner is the same as saying that all people are unethical. The 'majority' may be right, it may be off but my feeling is that there is plenty of excellent content out there and plenty of crap. I wouldn't be so fast to discard the majority, especially in other languages than English the amount of regurgitation is less than you'd expect. Regurgitators = thinly veiled plagiarism, what in school would be called 'rewriting' instead of 'writing'. And newspapers that print bloomberg or reuters stories are also regurgitators.