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Josef bugman posted:Allow me to quote the first paragraph of the first post of this thread: I feel like I'm not following here. I think, previously you said you wanted to treat this evolutionarily, not revolutionarily. But we can delineate things even if we treat them as evolutionary. E.g. We can distinguish between humans and chimpanzees even they both share a common ancestor and we can distinguish between different human ancestors, albeit the boundaries between any two can be blurry. Media literacy could be much lower now than thirties years ago (deeply sceptical there), but that could still be evolutionary. Could you give a brief explanation of how you would distinguish something as being revolutionary vs. evolutionary?
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# ? Apr 30, 2021 20:54 |
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# ? May 13, 2024 07:09 |
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Literally Kermit posted:Hitting “jump to last post” instead of reading hundreds of replies from your last unread post is a form of noise, isn’t it? If you're doing it because of the derails then in this metaphor this would be best conceptualized as the data loss caused by the noise, not the noise itself. Essentially missing the good posts (signal) because they're getting lost when you filter out the derail (noise) by skipping ahead.
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# ? Apr 30, 2021 20:59 |
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I think I can reduce what Murgos and Jarmak were talking about to some real world events to help characterize terms. Maybe I'm showing my rear end since I'm coming at this fresh and I'm clueless about any relevant academic work, but I think I've got a good media example. You guys may remember something about coin flips and the Iowa Democratic caucus in 2016. After the caucus, the Des Moines Register put out an article that caused problems. Here it is: https://www.desmoinesregister.com/s...-flip/79680342/ From context I'll get into in a minute, we can infer that the intended message here was of the form of a human interest story discussing a quirk of how things can happen at the Iowa caucus. The point was to explain how coin flips were used to resolve selection of county level delegates when some participants wandered off. Hey, look at our quaint way of doing things in Iowa, now please give us clicks and ad revenue. In encoding this idea by writing it out in English language text posted to the internet, they introduced noise that really disrupted delivery of the intended message. Take a look at the final paragraphs: quote:Party officials recommended they settle the dispute with a coin toss. We have a big unintended message here: that an unlikely but possible thing happened, and one side won six out of six coin flips. It's also not clear from the text whether the word "reported" there is invoking some kind of journalistic activity and/or integrity or not. There is also a source of what Murgos referenced as attenuation here in the course of transmission. Unless the reader mouses over and clicks through those links, they won't notice that the referenced sources here are all tweets. Some are from actual reporters and some aren't, some have video and some don't. One is a private account and the tweet cannot be seen. That intended message component is lost in transmission if the reader just looks at the paragraph, and is still lost for the last one even if they do click through. It's easy to miss (or on retransmission, omit) that the source here is poo poo the reporter in question saw people post on twitter. Then the message is received and decoded (read), and we have a further source of noise introduced, when many readers took the article to say something that it does not directly say: that a total of six coin flips happened, and that the Des Moines Register, a paper of record in the state and presumably reliable source of information, had confirmed that. So as a result of this article, a bunch of readers came to the belief that Clinton had been reported as winning six out of six coin tosses to determine delegates at the precinct level (or another level!). Some of those readers were in the media, and promptly set about retransmitting what they thought was their accurate understanding of the message, such as via this Marketwatch article: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/coin-toss-broke-6-clinton-sanders-deadlocks-in-iowa-and-hillary-won-each-time-2016-02-02 quote:While it was hard to call a winner between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders last night, it’s easy to say who was luckier. And there we have it, media reporting that "media reports" were saying things that no one reporter really actually said. Cue all the pundits navel gazing about probabilities and coin flips, accusations of corruption or malfeasance in the caucus, people thinking Hillary won a whole caucus that came down to coin flips, and all of it was completely loving off base. Here's the followup article from the Des Moines Register after everyone having kittens for a few days, which is a big part of the context I mentioned at the start for interpreting all this: https://www.desmoinesregister.com/s...flips/79784762/ quote:The actual number of caucus precincts in which a coin flip helped decide the allocation of delegates is unknown and may remain unknown. And that means the impact those coin flips had on the final result of the razor-thin race between Sanders and Hillary Clinton is likely to remain unknown as well. While a few outlets modified or pulled articles or printed followups, the whole media had pretty much moved on by the next day. With the twin harms that, (1) due to sloppy and widely amplified initial reporting, many people came to a false belief about what happened, and (2) attention was diverted from another story that could've been the focus of attention, which is that information tracking and app usage at the caucus sure looked like an unverifiable clusterfuck. I don't think it's relitigating the 2020 primary (please don't) to say maybe we'd have been better off if that bit got the attention. If I blew it with terms or there's otherwise a better way to characterize a step there, that should at least be a decent media-event related springboard for the conversation. eviltastic fucked around with this message at 00:31 on May 1, 2021 |
# ? May 1, 2021 00:16 |
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That's a fantastic example eviltastic. It's true, you're not using the terminology as S&W would use it, but I think so long as we recognize that we're not doing so (most of their theory's applications are for data compression and redundancy), it's fine as long as we're able to be internally consistent. For the record, here's a scan of the book. I think the relative confusion may be cleared up by this quote: quote:If noise is introduced, then the received message contains certain distortions, certain errors, certain extraneous material, that would certainly lead one to say that the received message exhibits, because of the effects of the noise, an increased uncertainty. But if the uncertainty is increased, the information is increased, and this sounds as though the noise were beneficial! My point is that the model as introduced for this thread only characterizes noise as one source of issues in mediated communication, and in practice other ones, of intent, context, coding, and decoding, across the process of multiple phases of mediation, are also concerns when we deal with media.
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# ? May 1, 2021 03:00 |
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Related to this thread, here is a really great resource/framework for media literacy in general: http://www.medialit.org/sites/default/files/14B_CCKQPoster+5essays.pdfquote:Five Key Questions of Media Literacy I've used this in several of my classes this year in light of the COVID-19 pandemic and the deluge of misinformation, hot takes, and "press release" articles masquerading as BREAKING SCIENCE. I think I'll continue to use this as one of my opening class activities each semester, it's really valuable for students in our current media environment. Usually I give them an article relevant to the class topic and have them work in groups to analyze the piece, then come back and discuss it as a class. Something like that, highly recommended for educators.
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# ? May 1, 2021 03:44 |
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^^^^ [Edit] Intended to quote that, and forgot. That's really good stuff, and should be a required part of everyone's education.Ytlaya posted:...no, the point is that facts on their own are meaningless, because the meaning derived from them is dependent upon a person's ideology/worldview (and its accompanying assumptions). People with bad assumptions can (and frequently do) end up coming to bad/wrong conclusions using technically-true information. This is just another "people thresher" argument. "Facts on their own" are a foundation. Facts are not signs or instructions, but tools. You can choose to attempt building a hospital or a deathcamp from them, but if you use facts (rather than lies/distortions/falsehoods/misunderstandings) what you build will be stronger. (And note that the racist ideals that were partially at work as a rationale to construct deathcamps were very much *not* facts--the only potential facts involved were "these monstrous deeds might increase my chances of retaining power".) eviltastic posted:[coinflips] I wrote up a long rant about 7 years ago that's relevant here, I think. Feel free to scroll like the wind if you don't care--I'll quote it to make it easy. TL; DR - A big part of this equation is that social media has simplified concentration and refinement of Stupid poo poo For Fringe People (and given those people a greater appearance of legitimacy). This enables unlikely poo poo like the election of a failed con-man to the highest office in the country. poo poo from 2013 posted:I've been doing some thinking about various forms of idiocy (e.g. racism, sexism, conspiracy theories, and radical political leanings (right AND left) that tend to turn everything into Us and Them), and wondering why, in a time where information is so readily available, so many misguided individuals insist on hanging onto ignorance. aas Bandit fucked around with this message at 18:23 on May 2, 2021 |
# ? May 2, 2021 18:14 |
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aas Bandit posted:TL; DR - A big part of this equation is that social media has simplified concentration and refinement of Stupid poo poo For Fringe People (and given those people a greater appearance of legitimacy). This enables unlikely poo poo like the election of a failed con-man to the highest office in the country. What makes you uniquely qualified to speak on the "brokenness" of other people? Your post and the blog quote both assume a position of moral and factual authority that are never earned. What makes those other "crazy" people wrong and in a bubble, and what is it that makes your communities (online and otherwise) not part of their own bubble? In that whole long post you point out several flaws of internet structure and examples of how people can be disconnected from reality by them, but you never even confront the possibility that your own communities may be one of those. Trump voters were idiots pulled in by a con man but... Biden voters weren't? What politician isn't a con artist? It is the job of every politician to make themselves universally liked, and to fool people into believing that they will get something out of voting that politician into office. If the only thing they get is warm fuzzies, they have been conned. Every time we vote we are getting conned. We are not better than the Trump voters. If anyone in this scenario has the moral high ground, it's the people who don't vote, because they realize there is no move that they can take that is not serving the interests of a con artist. Your constant assertion that They Are The Stupid People but that you are separate and above them is really gross and exposes your complete inability to see flaws in your own perspective.
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# ? May 2, 2021 20:34 |
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You contridict yourself instantly after your central argument, and screaming nihilism to justify ideology does not change basic facts or make your assertions correct. Vvv you aren't the one trying to justify nihilism to ignore facts and your assertions that nothing matters because of your personal feelings. UCS Hellmaker fucked around with this message at 21:18 on May 2, 2021 |
# ? May 2, 2021 20:48 |
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^^^Not sure if that's for me or Taffer? That's a whole lot of questions (and assumptions, for that matter). Taffer posted:What makes you uniquely qualified to speak on the "brokenness" of other people? Taffer posted:you never even confront the possibility that your own communities may be one of those. I'm not sure why you thought I was somehow "above it all" or speaking from some position of infallibility. Do I think I'm right, in general? Of course I do, or else I'd never accomplish anything (or hate myself constantly, which would amount to the same thing). Everyone thinks they're right to some extent (outside of pure and knowing grift, or destruction for the sake of destruction). But I also know that I could be wrong about any number of things. That's why knowledge of facts and sources and ongoing evaluation of your own and others' views is necessary--it makes poo poo better. Taffer posted:What politician isn't a con artist?...Every time we vote we are getting conned. Taffer posted:Your constant assertion that They Are The Stupid People but that you are separate and above them is really gross and exposes your complete inability to see flaws in your own perspective. Calling out someone for being stupid, gullible, and/or an rear end in a top hat isn't mutually exclusive with that. If you want to be supportive of those folks, you do you. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ aas Bandit fucked around with this message at 21:12 on May 2, 2021 |
# ? May 2, 2021 21:04 |
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Taffer posted:Trump voters were idiots pulled in by a con man but... Biden voters weren't? What politician isn't a con artist? It is the job of every politician to make themselves universally liked, and to fool people into believing that they will get something out of voting that politician into office. If the only thing they get is warm fuzzies, they have been conned. Every time we vote we are getting conned. We are not better than the Trump voters. If anyone in this scenario has the moral high ground, it's the people who don't vote, because they realize there is no move that they can take that is not serving the interests of a con artist. The difference is that there is a logical argument for Trump voters being conned: some white Obama voters in dying rust belt towns thought he would do things to bring back jobs, but he didn't and just did generic Republican policies with even more racism. I'm not sure I agree that they were conned (unclear that thinking Trump would bring back jobs is actually why they voted Trump) but it's at least fact based and follows from the premises. As far as I can tell, the full extent of the argument that Biden voters were cheated is "all politicians are equally bad but I am above it all because I am very smart". Like Discendo Vox said in the OP, assuming that everything is equally bad just results in you throwing out everything that disagrees with your preconceptions, because it isn't possible to be equally skeptical of everything.
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# ? May 2, 2021 22:29 |
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James Garfield posted:The difference is that there is a logical argument for Trump voters being conned: some white Obama voters in dying rust belt towns thought he would do things to bring back jobs, but he didn't and just did generic Republican policies with even more racism. I'm not sure I agree that they were conned (unclear that thinking Trump would bring back jobs is actually why they voted Trump) but it's at least fact based and follows from the premises. What makes the believing the lies from Obama more fact-based than the lies from Trump? They both lied constantly. In fact there's an argument to be made that Trump was actually more honest about how he'd behave in government, because he didn't bother trying to keep up a facade of respectability. Either way, if the voters for either of them didn't get what they were promised or expected, they were conned, basically by definition. quote:As far as I can tell, the full extent of the argument that Biden voters were cheated is "all politicians are equally bad but I am above it all because I am very smart". No? We have 50 years of political history with this man, unless his personality suddenly changed overnight we know exactly how he'll behave in political office. If things he says run counter to that history, we have a very clear legacy to look at to make predictions. If they believe he would be the most progressive president since FDR, they were conned. Anyway, I'm not trying to turn this into an argument of "is Biden good or bad", just trying to make a point about media literacy and the behavior of politicians. I also want to make a really strong point here. I do not believe the people who were misled or conned are stupid. I believe this way for both Trump voters and Obama/Biden voters. We live in a media environment where finding some kind consistent narrative that can lead to good decisions is incredibly hard. I'm obsessed with finding good media sources and spend a far far greater time than the average person looking for and assessing them, and even still I believe that my media consumption is deeply flawed and leads me to all kinds of wrong assumptions. So no one who was mislead is stupid. But to the extent any of us are able, we should try to give others a strong sense of media literacy. Hence this thread, I guess. quote:Like Discendo Vox said in the OP, assuming that everything is equally bad just results in you throwing out everything that disagrees with your preconceptions, because it isn't possible to be equally skeptical of everything. I don't assume that everything is equally bad, but I do always assume that I am being lied to, to some degree. The structures of power and propaganda predictably lead to a certain type of person pursuing it. If you ask any random person if they'd want to run for office, even some small local office, they'll look at you like you're crazy. Even most political activists with extremely strong ideological beliefs that drive them very very rarely want to put themselves in that position. It takes a person who is more interested in gaining power and prestige than having privacy. It takes a person who is completely willing to lie and show confidence on things they're not confident on (because doubt doesn't get votes), and a myriad of other traits that make them a person who should be treated with extreme distrust. Could there be exceptions to this? Probably. But I see no reason to change my expectations of the powerful to be deferential based on possible exceptions, the onus is still on them to prove otherwise. But that doesn't mean they're all the same. I have and will continue to support candidates and politicians around the country who I believe are doing good things. But I just put no weight into what they say, only the actions they take, because I go in with the assumption that everything they say is dishonest. And more to the topic of the thread, that mindset is particularly important in our current media environment, which is manufacturing consent at astounding levels, practically tripping over themselves to praise the rhetoric of national figures, completely ignoring how frequently that rhetoric is in direct opposition to the actions of those figures.
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# ? May 2, 2021 23:08 |
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fool of sound posted:This thread is intended for goons to cooperatively improve their ability to navigate the fraught modern media landscape; assisting one another separate fact from editorial, guiding each other to quality information, and teach each other to avoid the pitfalls of confirmation bias. this article https://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/apr/12/news-is-bad-rolf-dobelli suggests it's better to avoid the modern media landscape altogether
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# ? May 4, 2021 07:16 |
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That’s an advertisement excerpt from some jackass’s magic solutions book, leading with a cite to noted charlatan Nassim Taleb.
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# ? May 4, 2021 13:37 |
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Discendo Vox posted:That’s an advertisement excerpt from some jackass’s magic solutions book, leading with a cite to noted charlatan Nassim Taleb. Said jackass's Wikipedia page is enlightening, and in no way self-edited. It also might be useful to effortpost on exactly how noted charlatans like Taleb manage to insert themselves into the media and the sort of rubbish they spew into it.
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# ? May 4, 2021 14:30 |
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now that's what I call media analysis and criticism! ad hominem objections aside, it's as well established that news is unhealthy as it is that twitter is. whether news addiction causes or is a symptom of mental illness is a moot point. lets get a stickied warning at the top of dnd warning people off posting here. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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# ? May 4, 2021 16:38 |
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So far this thread has mostly discussed media literacy and criticism broadly rather than focused discussion of specific articles/publications. I'll toss out this as an example for analysis and discussion: https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/andhra-pradesh/ap-strain-at-least-15-times-more-virulent/article34474035.ece I posted a short take in the COVID thread, I'll try and expand here. I'm coming at this from the perspective of a scientist who's done a fair bit of literature review relating to the pandemic over the last year. I'm not gonna spoiler my analysis because that seems kinda silly. I would however suggest that you read the article before you consider my analysis so you don't bias yourself from my Headline: COVID-19 | A.P. strain at least 15 times more virulent Lede: The new variant has shorter incubation period and the progress of the disease is much rapid Author: Sumit Bhattacharjee I'm not at all familiar with The Hindu as an outlet. Does the owner wield influence in Indian politics or have business interests? Are they pro/anti Modi and BJP to any significant extent? I can't find much about the author but glancing at the other articles he's written for The Hindu he seems to cover a very broad range of topics. I suspect not a science or pandemic-focused journalist? Anyway, let's get into the text: quote:While it is too early to state whether the new coronavirus variant discovered by CCMB (Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology) N440K, is the variant that is creating havoc in Visakhapatnam and other parts of the State, experts say the new prevalent variant, which is being called as the AP variant as it was first discovered in Kurnool, is at least 15 times more virulent than the earlier ones, and may be even stronger than the Indian variants of B1.617 and B1.618. quote:Divya Tej Sowpati, scientist at the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Hyderabad, and who closely works with genome sequencing of coronavirus said that the variant was closely related to the coronavirus lineage B.1.36 and had previously been linked to a spike in cases in several states of South India. "The defining mutation is N440K, a mutation that was known since last year and widely prevalent in Andhra Pradesh. When tested in cell culture studies, they appeared to spread quite quickly but that's not how it always plays out in the real world," he said in a phone conversation. quote:“We are still to ascertain, which strain is in circulation right now, as samples have been sent to CCMB for analysis. But one thing is certain that the variant at present which is in circulation in Visakhapatnam is quite different from what we have seen during the first wave last year,” said District Collector V. Vinay Chand, who has been updated by senior doctors in the health department. quote:Confirming the enhanced power of the virus, District COVID Special Officer and Principal of Andhra Medical College P.V. Sudhakar said, “We have observed that the new variant has shorter incubation period and the progress of the disease is much rapid. In the earlier cases, a patient affected with the virus would take at least a week to reach the hypoxia or dyspnea stage. But in the present context, patients are reaching the serious condition stage within three or four days. And that is why there is heavy pressure on beds with oxygen or ICU beds,” he said. What are the qualifications of these sources? I note that neither Chand in the previous quoted graph nor Sudhakar in this one are cited as medical professionals or scientists. Chand is a "District Collector... updated by senior doctors in the health department" and Sudhakar is "District COVID Special Officer and Principal of Andhra Medical College." Are these bureaucrats, government officials? quote:Experts also point out that unlike during the first wave, a shorter exposure is enough to acquire the virus, which enables an infected person to infect four to five persons, within a shorter contact span. Okay so Sudhakar is a doctor, that question of mine is at least partly answered. He makes a bunch of anecdotal claims, none of which are supported by any data or any other expert opinions. quote:According to the experts the bottomline is — this variant is highly unpredictable. "...this variant is highly unpredictable" could mean literally anything. My take is that this is a sensationalist article with zero supporting data. The claims in the headline and lede of it being 15x more virulent and having a shorter incubation period are supported only by anecdotes from two people and nothing else. There are bunch of vague attributions to "experts." I'm having flashbacks to Trump's "many people are saying." WHO are the experts making these claims? We're not even sure which variants are circulating. Maybe it's N440K! Let's fearmonger about that one!
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# ? May 6, 2021 06:40 |
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Someone suggested I post this here. https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RR400/RR453/RAND_RR453.pdf quote:Radicalisation in the digital era I think the following bit is relevant, because we see these exact same types of behaviors here on the forums. quote:In Chapter 3 we learned that the internet allows individuals to seek material that they are interested in, and to reject that which does not support their worldview. The internet can give the illusion of strength of consensus in numbers and, as such, can act as a normalising agent (Bjelopera, 2011). Of course, everyone thinks that it is other people who are close minded, and it is other spaces that are echo chambers, so the practical value of the paper's findings may be limited.
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# ? May 9, 2021 00:36 |
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Here's a great example of how to ID bad/manipulative sources. This is a tweet from the Hill posted at 11:13 AM EST today. https://twitter.com/thehill/status/1391410890260496386 Note how its intended to evoke the emotion of fear (of the rocket landing on you) and also outrage/anger at China (for being so careless). What's the one big thing the article is missing? https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-57045058 quote:The remains of a Chinese rocket that was hurtling back towards Earth have crashed into the Indian Ocean, the country's space agency says. The fact the rocket had already crashed safely in the Indian Ocean 12 hours earlier. They explicitly ignored what had already happened so they could fear-monger and get people to rage-click. This should be the prime example used of why The Hill is a very, very lovely source, to the point that I'd be in favor of banning posting their headlines/tweets entirely as they're explicitly designed to be misleading.
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# ? May 9, 2021 18:07 |
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axeil posted:Here's a great example of how to ID bad/manipulative sources. Your time zone math is a little off there, the hill sucks but unless I'm missing something you're off by an AM. Tweet is ~11am EST/ 4pm GMT Impact is listed as 2:24 AM GMT the following day.
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# ? May 9, 2021 20:21 |
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Jarmak posted:Your time zone math is a little off there, the hill sucks but unless I'm missing something you're off by an AM. https://twitter.com/US_SpaceCom/status/1391242693355835403?s=20
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# ? May 9, 2021 20:30 |
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Well maybe I'm the idiot, now I'm just confused.
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# ? May 9, 2021 20:40 |
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Jarmak posted:Well maybe I'm the idiot, now I'm just confused. The Hill tweet is from this morning. The article in the tweet is from last night though. If I did timezones correctly, the rocket crashed in the Indian Ocean half an hour after the article was published.
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# ? May 10, 2021 00:40 |
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Reflections85 posted:I feel like I'm not following here. I think, previously you said you wanted to treat this evolutionarily, not revolutionarily. But we can delineate things even if we treat them as evolutionary. I'm not the OP, but it seems like the main point is just that a bright line distinction doesn't make a lot of sense in this case or others - the same author can publish the same story on Twitter, Facebook, and the NYT at the same time, or subtly different articles in two different opinion sections, or whatever other combination - insofar as there has been a meaningful change, it has primarily been an increase in the number of uniquely-named sources an average person is exposed to, leading to much more difficulty establishing a given source as "reliable" as compared to in earlier eras. I believe someone mentioned earlier in the thread how a frequent elementary-school shortcut for source reliability was ".gov and .org are more reliable sources than .com or .net", but not only is that a bad heuristic for the obvious reasons, but the advent of custom top-level domains has made this even less applicable than it already was! However, it makes more sense to understand this as an pre-existing issue that has been exacerbated by the frequency of interactions than some brand-new problem - the issue is less that the heuristics were previously GOOD and more than you are more likely to run into conflicting sources or viewpoints that make you recognize that your heuristic wasn't working. Anyway, to pull away from the old derail and provide new content, the current situation in Israel and Palestine has been a great source of media literacy fuckery. A friend pointed out the initial change a few days ago, but the article kept getting changed and the follow-up articles have been just as bad: https://twitter.com/nyt_diff/status/1391786657536483330?s=20 The actual text of the article frames it as "both police and civilians injured" rather than doing anything to explain why the raid happened, and the following praragraph doesn't address the fact that East Jerusalem, where settlers have been using the Israeli legal system to displace inhabitants, is part of Palestine and not Israel to begin with - how do the police and courts claim jurisdiction there? They simply disregard the existence of the borders and act with impunity quote:The issue became a rallying cry for Palestinians, who saw the moves as ethnic cleansing and illegal, and right-wing Israeli Jews, who said they were fighting for their property as landowners while also attempting to ensure Jewish control over East Jerusalem. You have to scroll to the 23rd paragraph to get even an acknowledgement that the claim is disputed: quote:The march on Jerusalem Day, an annual event to mark the capture of East Jerusalem during the Arab-Israeli war in 1967, is seen by Palestinians as a provocation. Palestinians claim East Jerusalem as the capital of a future state. Israel annexed it after 1967, a claim most of the world does not recognize https://twitter.com/nyt_diff/status/1392267814635982854?s=20 https://twitter.com/nyt_diff/status/1392267826287816704?s=20 The NYT change tracker bot shows how coverage of the issue has gone from "Israel is instigating" to "causalities on both sides" by obscuring how disproportionately the deaths have been distributed in the title and abstract of their reporting. This has been a consistent trend across US reporting on I/P conflicts going way back, and is a notable reason why the US is basically the only major country that refuses to condemn Israel. It's worth noting that the original event, the attack by the IDF on congregants at a mosque on the final day of Ramadan, has been completely removed from the story to make it into a "rockets and air strikes" narrative rather than actually addressing the steps of escalation. BougieBitch fucked around with this message at 18:23 on May 12, 2021 |
# ? May 12, 2021 18:10 |
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The NYT change tracker is great, and it exists because the NYT is the most prominent not-obviously-trash outlet that constantly does this sort of fuckery, as well as a number of circular journalism tricks. Fox News and Politico and the Hill and any number of other outlets do this stuff to some extent, but it's remarkably common at the grey lady, and unusually outrageous. there's recent coverage of an interview question with mayoral candidate Andrew Yang that I may use to demonstrate circular reporting and framing effects. I/P and middle east topics in general are especially fraught, and especially on social media, because every single country or faction in the region has a particularly casual attitude toward investing in varying levels of propaganda and falsified information. It's hard to think of a better example of a category where twitter is extremely harmful. Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 21:01 on May 12, 2021 |
# ? May 12, 2021 20:57 |
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Discendo Vox posted:The NYT change tracker is great, and it exists because the NYT is the most prominent not-obviously-trash outlet that constantly does this sort of fuckery, as well as a number of circular journalism tricks. Fox News and Politico and the Hill and any number of other outlets do this stuff to some extent, but it's remarkably common at the grey lady, and unusually outrageous. there's recent coverage of an interview question with mayoral candidate Andrew Yang that I may use to demonstrate circular reporting and framing effects. What baffles me is the role of the headline writers. To begin with, their work gets read by a lot more people than the actual news stories, but they are, so far as I know, anonymous or at least obscure at most outlets. Has anyone ever actually written a plausible defense of this practice? Would the journalists writing the actual stories really do such a worse job of writing headlines? (The cynical explanation, of course, is that the story-writers would use headlines that weren't clickbaity enough, and that the obscuring of responsibility by the use of anonymous or near-anonymous headline writers is, from a news outlet's perspective, a feature rather than a bug.) Second of all, has anyone ever attempted to defend these kinds of headline/abstract changes, beyond wishy-washy generalizations? I can't help but wonder whether the responsible writers/editors are conscious of engaging in "spin" when they make changes like that.
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# ? May 12, 2021 21:55 |
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Silver2195 posted:What baffles me is the role of the headline writers. To begin with, their work gets read by a lot more people than the actual news stories, but they are, so far as I know, anonymous or at least obscure at most outlets. Has anyone ever actually written a plausible defense of this practice? Would the journalists writing the actual stories really do such a worse job of writing headlines? In at least some of the cases above it matches a general "breaking news" practice of adding more details to the same story as things develop in the same day (sticking to the habits from their paper publications, they generally make a new article for developments on subsequent days). I imagine there's some practical or institutional limit to the length of headlines or abstracts, so the argument is basically that the newest information is often the most newsworthy and therefore needs to be added to the headline and abstract as more paragraphs are added to the article itself. Of course, when that conveniently removes important contextual information like "who started it", or "which side are the deaths on" they aren't held accountable because there's no one reviewing these decisions for systematic bias or anything, it's just "practical" to use the version of the headline that gets the most engagement
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# ? May 12, 2021 22:27 |
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BougieBitch posted:In at least some of the cases above it matches a general "breaking news" practice of adding more details to the same story as things develop in the same day (sticking to the habits from their paper publications, they generally make a new article for developments on subsequent days). I imagine there's some practical or institutional limit to the length of headlines or abstracts, so the argument is basically that the newest information is often the most newsworthy and therefore needs to be added to the headline and abstract as more paragraphs are added to the article itself. Of course, when that conveniently removes important contextual information like "who started it", or "which side are the deaths on" they aren't held accountable because there's no one reviewing these decisions for systematic bias or anything, it's just "practical" to use the version of the headline that gets the most engagement I understand all that, more or less. Most headline/abstract changes from the @nyt_diff account are genuinely updating a story with new information, correcting grammatical errors, or trivial stylistic changes. But every so often you get edits that are clearly directed at changing the framing of a story.
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# ? May 12, 2021 23:02 |
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NYT had a push notification about the trampling in Israel that implied it was comparable to a Palestinian attack in scale. They described the 47 trampling deaths as "Among the largest number of human-caused deaths" or something along those lines. The obvious implication being that fifty Israelites dying is more typical of rocket attacks or bombings. I checked and yes, there was one attack that killed a similar number in the 70s.
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# ? May 13, 2021 12:10 |
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moths posted:NYT had a push notification about the trampling in Israel that implied it was comparable to a Palestinian attack in scale. That's pretty close to the total number killed in rocket attacks between 2004 and 2014. Or similarly, the total deaths of one of the recent "wars" was something like 60 on the Israeli side to over 1000 on the Palestinian side. That sort of ratio should bring to mind some of the world's worst atrocities, and for good reason Edit: was phone-posting, but circling back around with some of the actual numbers - 2008-9 Gaza "war": 13 Israeli deaths (4 from friendly fire), over 1000 Palestinian deaths including several hundred civilians 2014 "war": 73 Israeli deaths, over 2000 Palestinian deaths with the UN estimating 65% of those being civilians BougieBitch fucked around with this message at 16:56 on May 13, 2021 |
# ? May 13, 2021 16:50 |
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Conspiracy Theories: Goals, Need, Uncertainty, and you CAVEAT: This is not intended as a Complete Theory of Conspiracy Theories, (C)2021 Discendo Vox LLC. It's a takedown of one essay that includes a rough framework with some useful concepts that apply to other settings. It's not a complete explanation or some sort of set of laws. I wrote this whole thing in three hours, so please cut it some slack. I can do something citing the actual literature on scams, pseudoscience, false beliefs, etc, some other day. Introduction The September 11th attacks were a horrifying, publicly witnessed, scarring event on a previously unprecedented scale. People needed an explanation for the seeming senselessness of what was, for that generation in time and place, a uniquely psychologically harmful moment. The complexities of the event- official reports, structural engineering flight plans, the things not on camera, melting points and explosions and witness photographs and TV feeds, provided a framework of rabbitholes, alternate explanations, uncertainties, complexities...and through it all, there were people offering paid seminars and books and documentaries that could make it all make sense. The first, most important thing to recognize about conspiracy theories is they are difficult or impossible to falsify by their very nature. We do not know with 100% certainty, and pretty much cannot know that Covid-19 wasn't a lab escape. We will probably never be able to know exactly where the virus came from. So how does the conspiracy theory of a lab escape operate? My theses: 1. The original authors who develop and market a conspiracy theory may be true believers, but they will also usually have their own self-interested goals. 2. Individual believers are susceptible to the explanation of the theory because it satisfies a particular psychological need. 3. Uncertainty is the fuel of a conspiracy theory- it creates the space to work. Conspiracy theories offer certainty, even as they use the rhetorics and language of uncertainty to build their case. The authors and proponents of a theory are happy to work with any source of ambiguity available- putting their thumb on the scale of probabilities and limiting the presentation of facts to make the unlikely seem more probable. The "truth" of conspiracy provides clarity, a clarity that resolves or assuages the target's need- the need for clear action to solve the problem, the need for an explanation, the need for someone to blame, the need to feel safe. In doing so, they benefit the authors. Goals. Need. Uncertainty. With these concepts in mind, let's look at an essay by Nicholas Wade promoting the idea that Covid-19 was originally developed in a lab in Wuhan, PRC. Because of the length of the essay, (and because this is a rewrite of a looser refutation I performed on the phone a bit ago), I am not going to explain every way the piece builds uncertainty and exploits its audience's fears. Instead, I'll discuss the sources, provide a couple of examples, and discuss some specific ways that this theory works. https://nicholaswade.medium.com/origin-of-covid-following-the-clues-6f03564c038 Nicholas Wade and Medium as a source Nicholas Wade is a known entity; he writes for the New York Times on other scientific subjects (the NYT has a lot of problems with its science coverage, and Wade, a fan of "race science" is a great example of this, but that's a topic for another day). Wade has published books and recently written for the NYT. Wade is, like many pop science authors, a fountain of smart-seeming contrarian hot takes that translate well into dinner party conversations and overly influential lovely books. Why is he publishing a random essay on Medium? Well, Medium is the text equivalent of a TED talk; a credible platform with no real barrier to entry. The editorial standards of the site are nil, and material from the site has an air of direct authenticity. Great for self-promotion, or to generate language or ideas that you can then cite elsewhere. This makes it a great mediating source, especially if you want to launder or mediate an idea. Gosh, almost as if that's its business model, or if it were in its name or something. Perfect for a claim so stupid that even the NYT won't publish it. Claim Shifts Read the following quote carefully. quote:Before 2020, the rules followed by virologists in China and elsewhere required that experiments with the SARS1 and MERS viruses be conducted in BSL3 conditions. But all other bat coronaviruses could be studied in BSL2, the next level down. BSL2 requires taking fairly minimal safety precautions, such as wearing lab coats and gloves, not sucking up liquids in a pipette, and putting up biohazard warning signs. Yet a gain-of-function experiment conducted in BSL2 might produce an agent more infectious than either SARS1 or MERS. And if it did, then lab workers would stand a high chance of infection, especially if unvaccinated. I will leave to others whether this is an accurate depiction of BSL levels (putting it simply, "putting up biohazard warning signs" is deliberately understating BSL 2). Here are some decent resources to start with: https://absa.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/ABSA2020_Covid-19-dr3.pdf https://www.cdc.gov/cpr/infographics/biosafety.htm Let's look at how the factual claims get spun. quote:Much of Dr. Shi’s work on gain-of-function in coronaviruses was performed at the BSL2 safety level, as is stated in her publications and other documents. She has said in an interview with Science magazine that “The coronavirus research in our laboratory is conducted in BSL-2 or BSL-3 laboratories.” First, a scientist at the lab is quoted saying research at the site was done under BSL2 or 3 conditions. This is a direct source on the conditions in the lab, with supporting documents. It states that both BSL2 and BSL3 research was conducted. How is this reframed? How is uncertainty introduced, and then manipulated? quote:“It is clear that some or all of this work was being performed using a biosafety standard — biosafety level 2, the biosafety level of a standard US dentist’s office — that would pose an unacceptably high risk of infection of laboratory staff upon contact with a virus having the transmission properties of SARS-CoV-2,” says Dr. Ebright. "it's clear that some or all of this research was done at BSL2" is not the same as "coronavirus research was done at BSL-2 or BSL-3". (I also promise that dentist's offices are not BSL 2.) Before the outbreak, BSL-2 is pretty typical for general coronavirus sample research. Even now, things like sample testing for COVID detection is still done under BSL 2 conditions. This is representative of how the essay generally approaches direct statements of fact, especially from outside sources. The outside source is cited, but it's immediately spun and recontextualized to ensure that the audience doubts the original statement. What about the sympathetic sources? Who does Wade bring in to perform the spin? Checking Sources Who is this Richard Ebright fellow, anyway? Well, Ebright is a real, established, prominent molecular biology researcher, and he is also opposed to any genetic gain of function research- research modifying infectious diseases that could make them more...well, harmful, infectious, anything, basically. It's a genuinely complicated, messy subject in the sciences with major divides, and Ebright is one of the most prominent of the "absolutely not under any circumstances" speakers on this subject, to the point of academic caricature. Publicly funded gain of function research was banned until a moratorium on funding ended in 2017. I should note that it was always legal, it just couldn't be funded. Ebright is a die-hard on this issue, and since the COVID-19 pandemic began he's been relentless in using it as a way to attack the idea of gain-of-function research. In doing so, he's also happy to attack any other related source of authority. quote:The moratorium specifically barred funding any gain-of-function research that increased the pathogenicity of the flu, MERS or SARS viruses. But then a footnote on p.2 of the moratorium document states that “An exception from the research pause may be obtained if the head of the USG funding agency determines that the research is urgently necessary to protect the public health or national security.” It would have been Collins' signature based on a staffer or Fauci's evaluation, and it would have been because of the previous wuhan viral outbreaks. Wade has, throughout the paper, specifically avoided mentioning that the reason Wuhan was the location of the research was because it was viewed as the place where these sorts of diseases were most likely to emerge on their own. He also doesn't offer any actual proof that gain-of-function research was occurring at the lab. Notice it's citing Ebright mischaracterizing things, "in an interview with Independent Science News". So, who are they? The Bioscience Resource Project Independent Science News is an outlet run by the Bioscience Resource Project. Their tax forms indicate that they're a shell organization, but their publications consist entirely of fearmongering about GMOs and promoting books by the organization's leaders. They also link to a broader constellation of alternative press outlets promoting poor research about everything from industrial agriculture to food dyes. This organization has published many, many articles quoting Wade and Ebright- each building on essays and articles from each other, using the other as reservoirs of authority. These are not the only examples of extremely suspect sources. The sources cited about conditions in the lab are cited to Trump administration officials, quoted following the 2020 election. The source editorial cited in favor of the lab theory is, well... take a close look at it. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10311-021-01211-0 Take a bit and click on the names of the authors. You'll note no credentials or publications in related areas, two "independent researchers", a guy with an LLC who had a genomic sequencing paper in 1988, someone related to said guy, etc. Also notice that the medium essay mimics and copies material from the article. The feedback loop of supporting claims and proposals aren't fully in sync, but they don't need to be. They just need to all tell you that something is up, something must be wrong. Working Backwards from Fear One of the major arguments in the article is the "furin cleavage site" section. Let's take it a part at a time. quote:The furin cleavage site is a minute part of the virus’s anatomy but one that exerts great influence on its infectivity. It sits in the middle of the SARS2 spike protein. It also lies at the heart of the puzzle of where the virus came from. What does this sentence say? What does it promise to tell the audience? quote:The spike protein has two sub-units with different roles. The first, called S1, recognizes the virus’s target, a protein called angiotensin converting enzyme-2 (or ACE2) which studs the surface of cells lining the human airways. The second, S2, helps the virus, once anchored to the cell, to fuse with the cell’s membrane. After the virus’s outer membrane has coalesced with that of the stricken cell, the viral genome is injected into the cell, hijacks its protein-making machinery and forces it to generate new viruses. What verbs are chosen to characterize this explanation of viral anatomy? How does it prime the audience for a particular explanation? quote:How then did SARS2 acquire its furin cleavage site? Either the site evolved naturally, or it was inserted by researchers at the S1/S2 junction in a gain-of-function experiment. The author reduces two possibilities into a binary. At this point the audience is already primed to believe one over the other - both by all the earlier parts of the essay, and because of the way these two options are loaded. One is perfunctory, and the other uses the same explanatory, factual language used in the previous paragraphs. quote:Consider natural origin first. Two ways viruses evolve are by mutation and by recombination. Mutation is the process of random change in DNA (or RNA for coronaviruses) that usually results in one amino acid in a protein chain being switched for another. Many of these changes harm the virus but natural selection retains the few that do something useful. Mutation is the process by which the SARS1 spike protein gradually switched its preferred target cells from those of bats to civets, and then to humans. Notice that Wade can't disprove a non-lab source. He can't even really say it's improbable! Instead, what he does is identify sources of uncertainty and emphasize them, framing them as demonstrating their own impossibility. "no great likelihood", "no evidence to suggest substantial", so far"...the language of uncertainty is used to cast the fact that the specific mechanism is unknown as affirmative evidence that a non-lab source is dubious. quote:That leaves a gain-of-function experiment. For those who think SARS2 may have escaped from a lab, explaining the furin cleavage site is no problem at all. “Since 1992 the virology community has known that the one sure way to make a virus deadlier is to give it a furin cleavage site at the S1/S2 junction in the laboratory,” writes Dr. Steven Quay, a biotech entrepreneur interested in the origins of SARS2. “At least eleven gain-of-function experiments, adding a furin site to make a virus more infective, are published in the open literature, including [by] Dr. Zhengli Shi, head of coronavirus research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.” Here's Dr. Quay's site. Feel free to judge his credibility for yourself. Dr. Quay has self-published a 200-page manifesto claiming to use bayesian analysis to prove that the virus was escaped from a vaccine trial. The furin cleavage site argument is reverse event probability reasoning; the author begins with the conclusion and rejects alternatives to demonstrate that it must be true in the absence of affirmative evidence. It's the equivalent of saying "What is the likelihood that I poo poo my pants? Someone must have put this poo poo there!" Wade partially acknowledges this, but does so specifically to further manipulate the audience's understanding of the probabilities involved: quote:“Yes, but your wording makes this sound unlikely — viruses are specialists at unusual events,” is the riposte of David L. Robertson, a virologist at the University of Glasgow who regards lab escape as a conspiracy theory. “Recombination is naturally very, very frequent in these viruses, there are recombination breakpoints in the spike protein and these codons appear unusual exactly because we’ve not sampled enough.” Wade does cite counterarguments, but only to further abuse the probablistic reasoning involved. Using doubt to promote doubt Effective conspiracists don't lead with the lizard people. They begin by sowing doubt and shifting perceptions. When a target is sufficiently uncertain, when their ability to explain the how and why is at its weakest, when their need for an explanation is at its strongest, it is only then that the author raises the image of a conspiracy to resolve their doubts and provide an explanation. quote:If the case that SARS2 originated in a lab is so substantial, why isn’t this more widely known? As may now be obvious, there are many people who have reason not to talk about it. The list is led, of course, by the Chinese authorities. But virologists in the United States and Europe have no great interest in igniting a public debate about the gain-of-function experiments that their community has been pursuing for years. "just asking questions" framing like this works by taking the uncertainty that the author has already established by misrepresenting facts, and leveraging it to promote the opposite outcome. The lack of mainstream media coverage becomes, all on its own, proof of the truth of the conspiracy. quote:Another reason, perhaps, is the migration of much of the media toward the left of the political spectrum. Because President Trump said the virus had escaped from a Wuhan lab, editors gave the idea little credence. They joined the virologists in regarding lab escape as a dismissible conspiracy theory. During the Trump Administration, they had no trouble in rejecting the position of the intelligence services that lab escape could not be ruled out. But when Avril Haines, President Biden’s director of National Intelligence, said the same thing, she too was largely ignored. This is not to argue that editors should have endorsed the lab escape scenario, merely that they should have explored the possibility fully and fairly. You gotta love a strong ending. If you just believe my theory, "the reckoning" will come and the true, secret villains will be caught. (Also Trump will be vindicated). Conclusions 1. Conspiracy theories are propagated by self-interest We do not know with 100% certainty, and pretty much cannot know that Covid-19 wasn't a lab escape. On some level, Nicholas Wade probably understands that fact. Wade is not a conservative nor a Trump supporter, nor is he a conventional sort of racist. Neither are the other people cited in this essay. It's not that the authors of this movement are racists or sinophobes; it's that they have no problem relying on and exploiting racism, along with the insecurity and fear of the moment to promote themselves and their own goals. Wade peddles hot takes professionally. Ebright is on a crusade against gain-of-function research. The alt-news people want to harvest donations, sell books, and promote an antimodern ideology they almost certainly believe. 2. Conspiracy theories feed on, and feed, uncertainty. We do not know with 100% certainty, and pretty much cannot know, that Covid-19 wasn't a lab escape. No matter how hard we dig into the facts, we wind up having to rely on the authority of others or incomplete explanations. This is true of basically any complex field; you need to rely on assumptions about the reliability of sources of information in media, in technology, in the cleanliness of the stuff you put into your body, in the safety of your car. It's always possible to dig down and identify a gap, an incomplete record, an area where, at least for right now, your knowledge isn't complete- and, indeed, where maybe no one has a complete answer. Conspiracy theories distort and emphasize these sources of uncertainty, creating rabbitholes to fall down and mountains from epistemological molehills. As sources of authority are rejected or substituted, as anchors are uprooted, it becomes harder and harder for the believer to know who or what to trust. Grifters and frauds exploit this situation, and design their messages so that their victims will also spread this uncertainty to others. 3. Conspiracy theories are driven by an underlying need. We do not know with 100% certainty, and pretty much cannot know, that Covid-19 wasn't a lab escape. From the outside, it can be appealing to look at a conspiracy theory and say "so what?" You may know that the origins of the virus, like who killed Kennedy, aren't important. If you're able to ask yourself that question, though, you're already not the target audience for that specific conspiracy theories. People who fall prey to conspiracy theories, to pseudoscience, to unfalsifiable ideologies and grifts, can't dismiss that question. They can't. The victim of the conspiracy theory has a hole that they need to fill, a fear or a loneliness or a sense of being unmoored. They need the explanation because it gives them a solution, a moral ordering, and in turn it also orders their own understanding of the world. The framework of the conspiracy provides a maladaptive filter through which they understand all of reality. The explanation, the order, the reckoning, are a bulwark against the uncertainties and insecurities of their existence. Unless they can find an alternate source of comfort that will satisfy their need, the ideology will continue to control them. When you read a conspiracy theory like this one, don't ask yourself "so what". Ask yourself, "what goal does this accomplish for its authors?" Ask yourself, "what need does this satisfy for its believers?" and then ask yourself, "what are my needs?" Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 23:56 on May 18, 2021 |
# ? May 15, 2021 05:51 |
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It feels unfair to call the lab leak hypothesis a "conspiracy theory" when it's considered a serious possibility, though not necessarily the most likely possibility, by plenty of experts up to and including the WHO Director-General. You do acknowledge that "We do not know with 100% certainty, and pretty much cannot know, that Covid-19 wasn't a lab escape," but I think there's a fundamental difference between the uncertainty here and the generalized, "can you be absolutely certain that the Queen isn't a lizard person?" kind of epistemic uncertainty exploited by conspiracy theorists (in the pejorative sense).
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# ? May 15, 2021 14:37 |
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The essay literally alleges an international conspiracy.
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# ? May 15, 2021 15:24 |
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Discendo Vox posted:The essay literally alleges an international conspiracy. I guess the "One can imagine the behind-the-scenes conversation" passage can be taken that way. But the core argument seems to be a convergence of interests rather than active collusion. In any case, you asked "So how does the conspiracy theory of a lab escape operate?" before introducing the piece in question, implying that every possible version of the lab leak hypothesis, not just Wade's, is a conspiracy theory. Silver2195 fucked around with this message at 15:49 on May 15, 2021 |
# ? May 15, 2021 15:41 |
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I find it very interesting that you wrote this huge post mortem on what is still very much an open question. Let's say that the lab leak hypothesis turns out to be true - something that is still entirely possible at this point. Would that not invalidate everything you've wrote here as these methods led you to the wrong conclusion? Would you not then be the one who fell for the conspiracy theory? Here, I can even answer your questions for you: "what goal does this accomplish for its authors?" If it was indeed a lab leak both US and China health officials would have an incentive to push the bat narrative to the press to cover their tracks. There are a lot of very angry people looking for someone to blame for covid and blaming it on nature will help diffuse those tensions. "what need does this satisfy for its believers?" "what are my needs?" This satisfies the need to be able to trust in authority, that those with the proper credentials always know what is going on and will always convey the truth. That you as a consumer of information are making the smart sensible choices unlike the fools who gobble up conspiracies. The entire exercise of this thread reminds me of the Zizek quote about how those who think they are beyond ideology are the ones most heavily steeped in it. Ideology is an inescapable function of the human condition. It cannot be transcended, so the point then is to embrace ideology in such a way that it furthers your goals. Likewise this idea that once you cut through the propaganda you will be left with the true authentic news is itself propaganda. It only ends up as justification for trusting authority. The point then is to accept that all media is propaganda, and to follow that propaganda which furthers your goals. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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# ? May 15, 2021 19:01 |
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is pepsi ok posted:The point then is to accept that all media is propaganda, and to follow that propaganda which furthers your goals. I agree with much of your post, but this is going way too far. You should at least make an effort to find the actual truth, even if you can never do so perfectly.
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# ? May 15, 2021 19:23 |
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is pepsi ok posted:The point then is to accept that all media is propaganda, and to follow that propaganda which furthers your goals. this line keeps coming up as part of some goons will to power kick, but you have to recognize that this line of thinking opens you to the risk of becoming baghdad bob
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# ? May 15, 2021 20:00 |
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Silver2195 posted:I agree with much of your post, but this is going way too far. You should at least make an effort to find the actual truth, even if you can never do so perfectly. I think the disconnect here is in thinking that propaganda means something like "lies" or "stories made up whole cloth". That's not what propaganda is though, and I'm not suggesting that all media is lies and there's no such thing as truth or anything like that. Propaganda is information formed into a narrative that's intended to lead you to a conclusion. In fact propaganda literally cannot function without truth. This is the reason why I'm trying to push back on the idea that we merely have to train ourselves to follow the facts - because you absolutely can construct a false narrative out of true facts. I do agree with you that it's our task to suss out what truth we can from media, but my argument is that this can only be done from the starting point of treating all media as propaganda. The idea here is to find the truth in the fiction rather than the truth beyond or underneath the fiction. The methods described here and in other places in D&D are all based around how to look for things that might discredit a source. Ok that's all well and good, but tell me then who are the good sources who always tell the truth? Why not just list those out and we will only listen to them? The problem, obviously, is that no such sources exist. To bring it back to Discendo Vox's post that I responded to, I'm sure their methodology of finding reasons not to trust the sources they listed about the lab leak hypothesis are sound. That's not what I'm taking issue with. My problem is the idea that once the chaff of bad/discredited sources has been separated out, then surely we are left with the wheat of truth. This is what led them to making the mistake (in my opinion, obviously) of concluding that the other side of the story must then be the true one when as I said before this is still very much an open question.
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# ? May 16, 2021 20:09 |
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quote:“Think for yourself” doesn’t mean rationalize more
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# ? May 16, 2021 21:02 |
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So I’ve been looking at this sentence: “Uncertainty is the fuel of a conspiracy theory- it creates the space to work” and I think I know how to communicate why I think this topic is always such a loaded one and why it’s an existential question. This is from a History of Christian thought; “A man like Epicurus - this is very interesting - who later was so much attacked by the Christians, that we have only fragments about him, was called soter by his pupils, the Greek word used in the New Testament which we translate by "savior.." Epicurus the philosopher was called a savior. What does this mean?... Men like Epicurus were called soters, saviors, because they liberated people from fear” I think this is the major element missing from the general analysis being presented here. Uncertainty, not knowing and the fear and anxiety that it creates is a matter of salvation. I’m not being metaphorical here. The most literal meaning of savior deals with the individual who liberate us from uncertainty. So when ones looks at people spreading false information another thing to think about is that the false information they are spreading is often tied up with “this saved me” and not in an abstract way. In a real way they might be getting the false information from a community that pulled them out of addiction, or saved their marriage , or gave them access to an education . It’s tied up with meaning, purpose, and identity. Understanding this is one way malign actors manipulate marginal people to spread this stuff for them. Bar Ran Dun fucked around with this message at 18:28 on May 19, 2021 |
# ? May 19, 2021 18:22 |
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# ? May 13, 2024 07:09 |
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Crossposting some fodder for the thread. The Treasury Department issued a report today about new measures for tax compliance. The reason it's in the news right now is that it mentions bitcoins. Naturally, media reporting is hyperventilating about the small portion of it that mentions crypto, and none of the rest. Clicking through the first articles to come up on google that weren't just some rando, I didn't see a one where the reporting was something other than hot garbage. I'm typing this up as everyone's racing to crank out their initial hot takes, so that may change. (fake edit: it did, for example this Reuters article is much better) Here is the announcement. I'm linking the webpage describing the report rather than direct linking the PDF as I did in USNews, because it shows the context that is being stripped from the news stories. Just glancing over this, you can immediately tell that this report is fundamentally not about cryptocurrencies. Anyone presenting it that way is being deliberately misleading. You won't find any direct mention of them on that announcement page. If you are familiar with crypto issues you'll immediately spot how it's going to come up because this is a report about how the IRS is trying to ramp up its enforcement efforts. But this is not a decision to crack down on cryptocurrencies. It is about efforts to crack down on tax evasion which, in part, implicate cryptocurrencies. This is the first article I saw on Google. It leads with quote:KEY POINTS: Here is the portion of text the article is referencing. quote:Still another significant concern is virtual currencies, which have grown to $2 trillion in market capitalization.58 Cryptocurrency already poses a significant detection problem by facilitating illegal activity broadly including tax evasion.59 So as far as the KEY POINTS go: The first is flat out unsupported. "Businesses that receive" is not the same thing as "any transfer". The author is either making an inference based on information not mentioned in the article, or is wrong. There's no effort to reconcile that point with the IRS saying "There are no new requirements on taxpayers," which would appear to contradict the claim. edit: I'm just gonna emphasize this point because it's why was annoyed and put this post together: Every outlet is using universal language to describe this reporting requirement. More responsible outlets are quoting the actual language, but even that Reuters piece I edited in above leads with this "all transfers" kind of phrasing. At first blush, it is much more plausible to me that we wind up seeing something like requirements for cash transactions and the current IRS form 8300, which does not cover all cash transfers. It should not be too much to ask for media outlets to make a very obvious comparison between how cash reporting is handled and how bitcoin transfers with the exact same reporting limit are handled. Particularly when the report itself invites that comparison. The second is a thing that is said within the report, but is not a key point of any sort. It's mentioned to lead you to believe that the IRS is very concerned about people using crypto to evade taxes now and as a result is somehow cracking down on crypto. That's not what the report says. It says not much business income is in cryptocurrencies, but that could change in the future, particularly given the other regulations that are coming down the pipe. The footnote in the report references early studies, and cites a 2013 study indicating that crypto is potentially useful for tax evasion. There is no claim there about present tax evasion using cryptocurrencies. We may all know cryptocurrencies are used to facilitate illegal transactions, and that many of those folks, the exchanges, and probably a fair few of the true believer crowd are not exactly giving appropriate governments their cut. But that's not the way the report characterizes the problem that they intend to address. The third key point has fuckall to do with anything the Treasury Department said. It's there because the author is padding the rest of the article as I write this with additional updated content related to cryptocurrency to get more clicks. More importantly, the article, at the time I first read it, didn't have this paragraph, which was added: quote:The Treasury Department’s release came as part of a broader announcement on the Biden administration’s efforts to crack down on tax evasion and promote better compliance. Among proposals officials are considering are bolstered IRS funding and technology, and more severe penalties for those who evade their obligations. The first way the article was presented, and the rhetoric it still uses, implies there's a cryptocurrency-focused crackdown when that's not happening. This blurb does note that there is in fact possibly a whole lot to talk about from this announcement that is actually not bitcoin related...but it still misses the goddamn point. The whole reason cryptocurrencies came up is that the IRS is trying to (and may actually for once have the cash to) modernize its enforcement efforts, and they want that to include a focus on increased third party reporting requirements. The IRS loves third party reporting requirements, because it gives them a second set of books to check against. And both people and businesses are a lot less likely to lie to the feds to protect someone else than they are to cook their own books. Here's the full context that precedes the bit everyone's talking about. quote:B. Increased Information Reporting Bolding mine, numbers are footnotes that I didn't plug in. If you are a tax nerd or care about tax enforcement, this is interesting stuff! They're dropping some big hints here about where they are going to be placing more emphasis on enforcement, and how they're going to do it. This is the real story, which could have an impact to the government's bottom line to the tune of tens or hundreds of billions of dollars. These requirements could be a big deal in some industries. Relegating it to a footnote of a conversation about the potential impact to bitcoins from somebody trying to get the coin exchanges to report things is hiding the ball for clicks. There's plenty of other fodder for comment in there too that's unrelated to bitcoins - regulation of tax preparers, the IRS's woes with its ancient system that predates the Commodore-64 by two decades, and so on. e: buncha edits to tighten up lazy language, sorry eviltastic fucked around with this message at 00:07 on May 21, 2021 |
# ? May 20, 2021 22:37 |