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lol if you watch zuck's take on it his problem is the fact checkers ended up being biased.

by uncomplexity_ 2y ago

selfmodruntime 2y ago
They sometimes are. If you're using a biased source to fact-check, you're just transitively applying that bias.
- lucb1e 2y ago
  I do feel like there is a limit to how biased a source can be when it tries to be based in evidence, though. Nobody would disagree that 1+1=2, basic physics tells one that COVID is not spread by 5G towers, the climate has warmed enough that you can dump weather records into a spreadsheet and see the effect without needing to measure CO2 at all. That COVID causes disease and a warming climate causes more extreme weather is also rather easy to corroborate. Accepting the obvious is already a good starting point for deciding whether climate policy XYZ is good or not (combined with other basic facts and every party's proposals), but it seems to me that the current striving for unbiasedness leads to giving lunatics equal air time. Any amount of fact checking would at least remove this level of misinformedness
  - hackyhacky 2y ago
    > Nobody would disagree that 1+1=2, basic physics tells one that COVID is not spread by 5G towers, But yet people believe these things, and will believe a source that supports them. What's obvious to you is not obvious to others.
    - lucb1e 2y ago
      Nah come on, what you've cited is obvious to everyone but a delusional 0.001%. They do not need a podium for that
      - hackyhacky 2y ago
        You're not an American, so maybe you aren't aware how widespread conspiracy theories are in the US and how much they influence the public discourse. As a trivial example, the American Senate is currently interviewing the nominee for the head of Health and Human Services, which oversees the NIH, CDC, and FDA, among other agencies. The nominee, Robert F Kennedy Jr, has been very outspoken in his opinions, some of which are: Wi-Fi causes cancer and "leaky brain" Chemicals in the water supply could turn children transgender Antidepressants are to blame for school shootings AIDS is not be caused by HIV the Covid is designed to target white and black people but not Ashkenazi Jews This nominee will likely be approved. These opinions are shared by a significant body of people who voted for the president who nominated him.
        johnnyanmac 2y ago
        To give a much undeserved BOTD: I don't think he'll be approved because people really believe nor even trust RFO Jr. He will be approve to upkeep the status quo. A status quo to appeal to their voter base or to appeal to Trump or something like that. Almost nothing on the RFO appointment is rooted in facts.
        hackyhacky 2y ago
        > He will be approve to upkeep the status quo. A status quo to appeal to their voter base or to appeal to Trump or something like that. No, RFKJr will be approved because he was nominated by Donald Trump and Donald Trump has a total control of the Republican Party. That's all there is to it.
        johnnyanmac 2y ago
        I don't think it's that blatant. Even R's have limits when Gaetz got rejected. I don't think it's as rank and tow as implied. But yes, a lot of policy for R's will ba passed. We'll see how much insanity they Will tolerate when it comes to Trump destroying the economy. Rich people kinda need that.
        2y ago
    - johnnyanmac 2y ago
      Okay? Then you disprove their claims and their bad sources. If they don't want to understand that, there's nothing to do. They are not a reasonable audience to debate with logos at that point. Them denying nature's truth doesn't allieve them from nature's forces.
      - hackyhacky 2y ago
        Do you honestly think that people who believe these things will be swayed by facts and evidence? Go watch some flat earther videos on YouTube. Lots of people are very committed to a particular conclusion and have developed elaborate processes for disregarding evidence that would persuade a rational person. The US political system right now is built on believing easily disprovable lies. Unfortunately, their bad choices affect everyone.
        johnnyanmac 2y ago
        >Do you honestly think that people who believe these things will be swayed by facts and evidence? No I do not: >They are not a reasonable audience to debate with logos at that point. but if people insist on arguing, that's your approach. I just don't debate on Youtube. The people who matter aren't there anyway. Those people have to go through a slower process but one that doesn't care about the feelings of youtube comments complaining about Hilary emails (iroinc, isn't it?)
        hackyhacky 2y ago
        > The people who matter aren't there anyway. The people who matter are the ones who vote.
        johnnyanmac 2y ago
        We're past voting. The people who matter now are those who can stop the country from falling apart. But sure, if anyone feels they can change minds in 2 years before midterm, go for it. That is not where I am useful.
hackyhacky 2y ago
Maybe they are. The solution to this is to provide evidence in favor of your argument. That's how we used to resolve conflicting opinions: debates supported by evidence. Now, instead, we're simply getting rid of any attempt to decide what is factual, and instead let demagogues decide for us what is fact and what is not, without any evidence at all. Since evidence is now superfluous, why waste government money by providing it?
- theGnuMe 2y ago
  The internet was designed to be robust in the event of nuclear war. Maybe it’s time for distributed data caches. Maybe we encode it all in crypto currency.
  - tialaramex 2y ago
    No, it wasn't.
    - theGnuMe 2y ago
      Yes it was. Prove me wrong.
- _heimdall 2y ago
  I think the problem there is the powers granted to government rather than how today's people decide to wield it. Facts are never really decided, things can always change if we learn something new or just consider what we know from a different angle. The problem here is that anyone in charge can decide what they believe is fact and make very real, very impactful changes that they force on everyone else.
  - hackyhacky 2y ago
    > The problem here is that anyone in charge can decide what they believe is fact and make very real, very impactful changes that they force on everyone else. Sure, such is the nature of power. Thus has it always been. What's novel is not that people in charge can broadcast their favored view of facts, but that anyone can broadcast their favored view of facts, which has to led to the current demoralization crisis: in the presence of conflicting authorities, no one believes any facts anymore. Of course, some of the "facts" being broadcast are not, in fact, facts. The problem is that the flood of misinformation is so large, the force of echo chambers so strong, and the cynicism of consumers so great, that it is infeasible to produce persuasive evidence sufficient to make the truth more appealing than lies.

lol if you watch zuck's take on it his problem is the fact checkers ended up being biased.

selfmodruntime 2y ago

They sometimes are. If you're using a biased source to fact-check, you're just transitively applying that bias.

lucb1e 2y ago
I do feel like there is a limit to how biased a source can be when it tries to be based in evidence, though. Nobody would disagree that 1+1=2, basic physics tells one that COVID is not spread by 5G towers, the climate has warmed enough that you can dump weather records into a spreadsheet and see the effect without needing to measure CO2 at all. That COVID causes disease and a warming climate causes more extreme weather is also rather easy to corroborate. Accepting the obvious is already a good starting point for deciding whether climate policy XYZ is good or not (combined with other basic facts and every party's proposals), but it seems to me that the current striving for unbiasedness leads to giving lunatics equal air time. Any amount of fact checking would at least remove this level of misinformedness
- hackyhacky 2y ago
  > Nobody would disagree that 1+1=2, basic physics tells one that COVID is not spread by 5G towers, But yet people believe these things, and will believe a source that supports them. What's obvious to you is not obvious to others.
  - lucb1e 2y ago
    Nah come on, what you've cited is obvious to everyone but a delusional 0.001%. They do not need a podium for that
    - hackyhacky 2y ago
      You're not an American, so maybe you aren't aware how widespread conspiracy theories are in the US and how much they influence the public discourse. As a trivial example, the American Senate is currently interviewing the nominee for the head of Health and Human Services, which oversees the NIH, CDC, and FDA, among other agencies. The nominee, Robert F Kennedy Jr, has been very outspoken in his opinions, some of which are: Wi-Fi causes cancer and "leaky brain" Chemicals in the water supply could turn children transgender Antidepressants are to blame for school shootings AIDS is not be caused by HIV the Covid is designed to target white and black people but not Ashkenazi Jews This nominee will likely be approved. These opinions are shared by a significant body of people who voted for the president who nominated him.
      - johnnyanmac 2y ago
        To give a much undeserved BOTD: I don't think he'll be approved because people really believe nor even trust RFO Jr. He will be approve to upkeep the status quo. A status quo to appeal to their voter base or to appeal to Trump or something like that. Almost nothing on the RFO appointment is rooted in facts.
        hackyhacky 2y ago
        > He will be approve to upkeep the status quo. A status quo to appeal to their voter base or to appeal to Trump or something like that. No, RFKJr will be approved because he was nominated by Donald Trump and Donald Trump has a total control of the Republican Party. That's all there is to it.
        johnnyanmac 2y ago
        I don't think it's that blatant. Even R's have limits when Gaetz got rejected. I don't think it's as rank and tow as implied. But yes, a lot of policy for R's will ba passed. We'll see how much insanity they Will tolerate when it comes to Trump destroying the economy. Rich people kinda need that.
      - 2y ago
  - johnnyanmac 2y ago
    Okay? Then you disprove their claims and their bad sources. If they don't want to understand that, there's nothing to do. They are not a reasonable audience to debate with logos at that point. Them denying nature's truth doesn't allieve them from nature's forces.
    - hackyhacky 2y ago
      Do you honestly think that people who believe these things will be swayed by facts and evidence? Go watch some flat earther videos on YouTube. Lots of people are very committed to a particular conclusion and have developed elaborate processes for disregarding evidence that would persuade a rational person. The US political system right now is built on believing easily disprovable lies. Unfortunately, their bad choices affect everyone.
      - johnnyanmac 2y ago
        >Do you honestly think that people who believe these things will be swayed by facts and evidence? No I do not: >They are not a reasonable audience to debate with logos at that point. but if people insist on arguing, that's your approach. I just don't debate on Youtube. The people who matter aren't there anyway. Those people have to go through a slower process but one that doesn't care about the feelings of youtube comments complaining about Hilary emails (iroinc, isn't it?)
        hackyhacky 2y ago
        > The people who matter aren't there anyway. The people who matter are the ones who vote.
        johnnyanmac 2y ago
        We're past voting. The people who matter now are those who can stop the country from falling apart. But sure, if anyone feels they can change minds in 2 years before midterm, go for it. That is not where I am useful.

hackyhacky 2y ago

Maybe they are. The solution to this is to provide evidence in favor of your argument. That's how we used to resolve conflicting opinions: debates supported by evidence. Now, instead, we're simply getting rid of any attempt to decide what is factual, and instead let demagogues decide for us what is fact and what is not, without any evidence at all. Since evidence is now superfluous, why waste government money by providing it?

theGnuMe 2y ago
The internet was designed to be robust in the event of nuclear war. Maybe it’s time for distributed data caches. Maybe we encode it all in crypto currency.
- tialaramex 2y ago
  No, it wasn't.
  - theGnuMe 2y ago
    Yes it was. Prove me wrong.
_heimdall 2y ago
I think the problem there is the powers granted to government rather than how today's people decide to wield it. Facts are never really decided, things can always change if we learn something new or just consider what we know from a different angle. The problem here is that anyone in charge can decide what they believe is fact and make very real, very impactful changes that they force on everyone else.
- hackyhacky 2y ago
  > The problem here is that anyone in charge can decide what they believe is fact and make very real, very impactful changes that they force on everyone else. Sure, such is the nature of power. Thus has it always been. What's novel is not that people in charge can broadcast their favored view of facts, but that anyone can broadcast their favored view of facts, which has to led to the current demoralization crisis: in the presence of conflicting authorities, no one believes any facts anymore. Of course, some of the "facts" being broadcast are not, in fact, facts. The problem is that the flood of misinformation is so large, the force of echo chambers so strong, and the cynicism of consumers so great, that it is infeasible to produce persuasive evidence sufficient to make the truth more appealing than lies.