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Well, fact-checking works if it's done impartially. So, if you want to fairly fact-check a political debate, each side should have their own team of researchers

Well, fact-checking works if it's done impartially. So, if you want to fairly fact-check a political debate, each side should have their own team of researchers/fact-checkers being equally able to object to an argument made by the opposing party. Due process, sort of, kind of. But I don't think I've ever seen that done actually. Usually, fact checkers are akin to Reddit moderators. Technically independent, but with one important twist. These are people that have a lot of free time and are willing to spend it doing unpaid (or underpaid) work. And that's a huge bias. Big enough to question impartiality, if you ask me.

mcmcmc 2y ago
Having two parties with opposing biases and incentives doesn’t magically cancel out and become impartial. That’s the opposite of impartiality.
- roenxi 2y ago
  Although true, it isn't a very useful observation. "How do I find someone impartial to this matter?" is one of the great unsolved questions that the lawyers have to deal with. Up there with "what is true?". If anything that is one of the big promises of AI systems. Maybe we can have adjudication that is both extremely intelligent and provably biased towards consistency, facts and evidence. SHA256sum-ed and torrented around for inspection. It'd be a game changer for fact checking instead of the highly falliable groups that we have right now.
  - margalabargala 2y ago
    As you will see if you ask DeepSeek about notable events which happened in Tiananmen Square, AI systems are perfectly capable of failing to provide impartiality or facts. Any model that claims to do so simply is failing to state the biases of the person who trained it, and the biases of the data upon which it was trained.
  - MrJohz 2y ago
    > Although true, it isn't a very useful observation. "How do I find someone impartial to this matter?" is one of the great unsolved questions that the lawyers have to deal with. Up there with "what is true?". Although true, this isn't a particularly useful observation either. It turns out we can define "true" very well for a lot of really useful stuff. We know the sky is blue. We know the sun rises. We know that two plus two equals four. And we know that anthropogenic climate change is a real thing that exists and is likely to have a large impact on our world. There are some things that we're less confident about, such as different projections for exactly how large an impact we're likely to experience, what the most efficient way to limit that impact is, who bears the responsibility for implementing those changes, and so on. Reasonable people can quibble over some of those details, and there are multiple valid ways of interpreting those facts. But we can very definitely - and completely objectively - fact check statements like "anthropogenic climate change does not exist" and "fossil fuels do not have an impact on our climate and environment".
    - roenxi 2y ago
      A lot of those are technically not true - the sky is frequently not blue, the sun doesn't actually rise and there are number systems where 2+2 does not equal 4 (eg, 2+2 = 1 in a mod 3 arithmetic). That sounds pedantic until people start disagreeing or implementing legal requirements that result in people needing to use the definitions. Eg, if there is a legal requirement to recognise that 2+2=4, is it ok to teach modular arithmetic? Especially if someone has a grudge against the teacher. Lawyers are more than happy to punish someone over a technicality.
      - myvoiceismypass 2y ago
        We are fucking doomed. We cannot even agree on the basics any more.
        chrsig 2y ago
        if it's any consolation, when the sky isn't blue, it's mostly because the ground is on fire. a situation which is exacerbated by anthropogenic climate change. so i mean, it's hard to agree on the basics when the basics are changing, I guess.
  - myvoiceismypass 2y ago
    AI just regurgitates what it learned from non experts.
- SeptiumMMX 2y ago
  That's the problem. Real humans in real world cannot be impartial and will always have biases. So if you expose the public to many different biased opinions and let them learn to recognize the biases and see past them, the "cumulative mindset" will be more objective and less prone to manipulation. But if you let one biased group decide what the majority is allowed to see, the public opinion will inevitably align with the interests of that group, and won't be necessary beneficial to the public. Have you noticed how in the past decade or two we have totally abandoned the pursuit of happiness through self-reliance and independence? How being depressed and outraged is normal, and is all but encouraged. This is all coming from the media actively shaping what gets into one's attention span and it will only be causing more and more misery with no end in sight. And this comes down to a very simple formula. Media likes people who will create content for free. People who are willing to do are often unhappy and have a mindset that causes unhappiness. Media broadcasting their content (to their own profit, of course) is popularizing that mindset and making more people miserable. Bingo!
  - NewJazz 2y ago
    That's a whole lot of conjecture.
  - wilg 2y ago
    > Have you noticed how in the past decade or two we have totally abandoned the pursuit of happiness through self-reliance and independence? No.
    - SeptiumMMX 2y ago
      Interesting. If you don't mind me asking, at what age do you plan to retire, what funds to you plan to use to cover the living expenses, and what skill set are you trying to pass to your kids so they will be able to afford moving out and staring their own families? I'm asking because things things are getting harder every year and the media has a permanent blind eye on them.
      - astrange 2y ago
- Clubber 2y ago
  >Having two parties with opposing biases and incentives doesn’t magically cancel out and become impartial. That’s the opposite of impartiality. No, but it's close. It's similar to a courtroom where you have a plaintiff and a defendant. Each party plays a roll on each issue that is up to debate. They plead their side and ultimately the citizenry is the jury. Unfortunately, in the political arena there aren't any rules for speech like in a courtroom; perjury for example. It's imperfect, but you won't ever find an impartial person or group, nor should you blindly take their word for it. It's an appeal to authority fallacy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority
- theendisney4 2y ago
  One will have a strong tendency to leave the easily challanged out.
hackyhacky 2y ago
The Trumpian opposition to fact checkers is not based on some principled disagreement of substance. Trump, and by extension Republicans, oppose fact checking because the facts are in contradiction to their goals. Trump himself exists in some post-modern environment where "facts" aren't real and all that matters is spin. He wants what he says to go unquestioned. That's why instead of having a debate about facts, supported by evidence, he simply seeks to remove facts from the discussion entirely.
- eastbound 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - anigbrowl 2y ago
    So why are they taking so much data offline?
  - ourmandave 2y ago
    Really? Greenpeace says it's because X platforms conspiracy theorists and climate change skeptics. [1] “But this tool, initially perceived as a new arena for free speech, has become a serious danger to it and to the respect for personal dignity,” point out organizations such as Cimade, France Nature Environment, Greenpeace France, and APF France Handicap in an op-ed published in Le Monde. Their primary concerns include “the lack of moderation and the configuration of algorithms” which “encourage the spread of hateful content and the circulation of conspiracy and climate skeptic theories.” [1] https://glassalmanac.com/87-french-groups-including-emmaus-greenpeace-exit-x-ex-twitter-heres-why/ https://glassalmanac.com/87-french-groups-including-emmaus-g...
  - hackyhacky 2y ago
    > Trump and the Republicans are very much in favor of checking facts. It is the opposite of censorship: Expose everything. You know that you're writing this in a post about how the current Republican administration has been scrubbing massive amounts of scientific data from government websites, right? I don't see how Greenpeace is at all relevant here.
eastbound 2y ago
The fact checkers’ own employer said that the fact checkers didn’t work because they were so heavily biased that the audience noticed it.
- hackyhacky 2y ago
  Translation: the audience is so biased that they automatically reject facts in conflict with their biases.
  - eastbound 2y ago
    No amount of showing you the mistakes in your papers works. “Women earn 52 cents on the dollar!” Same job? “Yes” No, look here. “But there is still this argument” — No, there isn’t, it’s been studied in that other study. You guys just always come back and cast doubt, but it’s only this: Doubt and finally, falsehoods.
    - hackyhacky 2y ago
      > You guys just always come back and cast doubt If that's your attitude, maybe you're the one with the preconvieved biases.
neumann 2y ago
Pretty confident that now that critical thinking has been thrown out the window and accountability has disappeared in political discourse this would just result in endless objections in any debate deliberately used to add noise and misdirect conversation. I don't know what the solution is in today's climate, but I suspect it no longer matters. America is post-truth and he who controls the data and pathways to information (Murdoch, Meta, Google) directly influences a large percentage of the people.
- worksonmine 2y ago
  > Pretty confident that now that critical thinking has been thrown out the window and accountability has disappeared in political discourse Politicians and the media have always lied about big and small details. The difference is that social media has made it easier to dispute, and now we started noticing it more. Now that they can't gatekeep the information anymore they adopted the word "misinformation" to deal with the problem. "It may be true, but it's misinformation, trust us, we have your best interests in mind". Remember the trusted news initiative from covid? That was an attempt to continue gatekeeping, anything from any other sources was considered false and unverified, and the global media all had the same talking points at the same time. It was terrifying to see how easy everyone conformed.
valunord 2y ago
Let's first work on eliminating political parties altogether, then let's work on eliminating bias.
- gadflyinyoureye 2y ago
  I like this idea, but doubt it works. People naturally coalesce around ideas. That cohesion is then call a political party. The only way to get rid of parties is to get rid of freedom of organization.
- chgs 2y ago
  The Republican Party has been eliminated, it’s been replaced by a dictator cult. Interestingly increasing numbers of young people want this.
theendisney4 2y ago
I like it, the legal system might be more suitable for putting the "truth" on trial than its current application. It will cost a bunch of money but we get something out of it.
w0m 2y ago
> Well, fact-checking works if it's done impartially. So, if you want to fairly fact-check a political debate, each side should have their own team of researchers/fact-checkers being equally able to object to an argument made by the opposing party. Due process, sort of, kind of. IIRC, This is mostly what Facebook did after the 2016 election; put together a non affiliated board and made sure it was populated by all sides - Facebook itself had no/minimal control over what said board did/decided; but all decisions were public. Zuck just gave in to 'community moderation' instead because "actual solutions" are considered a negative in today's political climate.

mcmcmc 2y ago

Having two parties with opposing biases and incentives doesn’t magically cancel out and become impartial. That’s the opposite of impartiality.

roenxi 2y ago
Although true, it isn't a very useful observation. "How do I find someone impartial to this matter?" is one of the great unsolved questions that the lawyers have to deal with. Up there with "what is true?". If anything that is one of the big promises of AI systems. Maybe we can have adjudication that is both extremely intelligent and provably biased towards consistency, facts and evidence. SHA256sum-ed and torrented around for inspection. It'd be a game changer for fact checking instead of the highly falliable groups that we have right now.
- margalabargala 2y ago
  As you will see if you ask DeepSeek about notable events which happened in Tiananmen Square, AI systems are perfectly capable of failing to provide impartiality or facts. Any model that claims to do so simply is failing to state the biases of the person who trained it, and the biases of the data upon which it was trained.
- MrJohz 2y ago
  > Although true, it isn't a very useful observation. "How do I find someone impartial to this matter?" is one of the great unsolved questions that the lawyers have to deal with. Up there with "what is true?". Although true, this isn't a particularly useful observation either. It turns out we can define "true" very well for a lot of really useful stuff. We know the sky is blue. We know the sun rises. We know that two plus two equals four. And we know that anthropogenic climate change is a real thing that exists and is likely to have a large impact on our world. There are some things that we're less confident about, such as different projections for exactly how large an impact we're likely to experience, what the most efficient way to limit that impact is, who bears the responsibility for implementing those changes, and so on. Reasonable people can quibble over some of those details, and there are multiple valid ways of interpreting those facts. But we can very definitely - and completely objectively - fact check statements like "anthropogenic climate change does not exist" and "fossil fuels do not have an impact on our climate and environment".
  - roenxi 2y ago
    A lot of those are technically not true - the sky is frequently not blue, the sun doesn't actually rise and there are number systems where 2+2 does not equal 4 (eg, 2+2 = 1 in a mod 3 arithmetic). That sounds pedantic until people start disagreeing or implementing legal requirements that result in people needing to use the definitions. Eg, if there is a legal requirement to recognise that 2+2=4, is it ok to teach modular arithmetic? Especially if someone has a grudge against the teacher. Lawyers are more than happy to punish someone over a technicality.
    - myvoiceismypass 2y ago
      We are fucking doomed. We cannot even agree on the basics any more.
      - chrsig 2y ago
        if it's any consolation, when the sky isn't blue, it's mostly because the ground is on fire. a situation which is exacerbated by anthropogenic climate change. so i mean, it's hard to agree on the basics when the basics are changing, I guess.
- myvoiceismypass 2y ago
  AI just regurgitates what it learned from non experts.
SeptiumMMX 2y ago
That's the problem. Real humans in real world cannot be impartial and will always have biases. So if you expose the public to many different biased opinions and let them learn to recognize the biases and see past them, the "cumulative mindset" will be more objective and less prone to manipulation. But if you let one biased group decide what the majority is allowed to see, the public opinion will inevitably align with the interests of that group, and won't be necessary beneficial to the public. Have you noticed how in the past decade or two we have totally abandoned the pursuit of happiness through self-reliance and independence? How being depressed and outraged is normal, and is all but encouraged. This is all coming from the media actively shaping what gets into one's attention span and it will only be causing more and more misery with no end in sight. And this comes down to a very simple formula. Media likes people who will create content for free. People who are willing to do are often unhappy and have a mindset that causes unhappiness. Media broadcasting their content (to their own profit, of course) is popularizing that mindset and making more people miserable. Bingo!
- NewJazz 2y ago
  That's a whole lot of conjecture.
- wilg 2y ago
  > Have you noticed how in the past decade or two we have totally abandoned the pursuit of happiness through self-reliance and independence? No.
  - SeptiumMMX 2y ago
    Interesting. If you don't mind me asking, at what age do you plan to retire, what funds to you plan to use to cover the living expenses, and what skill set are you trying to pass to your kids so they will be able to afford moving out and staring their own families? I'm asking because things things are getting harder every year and the media has a permanent blind eye on them.
    - astrange 2y ago
Clubber 2y ago
>Having two parties with opposing biases and incentives doesn’t magically cancel out and become impartial. That’s the opposite of impartiality. No, but it's close. It's similar to a courtroom where you have a plaintiff and a defendant. Each party plays a roll on each issue that is up to debate. They plead their side and ultimately the citizenry is the jury. Unfortunately, in the political arena there aren't any rules for speech like in a courtroom; perjury for example. It's imperfect, but you won't ever find an impartial person or group, nor should you blindly take their word for it. It's an appeal to authority fallacy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority
theendisney4 2y ago
One will have a strong tendency to leave the easily challanged out.

hackyhacky 2y ago

The Trumpian opposition to fact checkers is not based on some principled disagreement of substance. Trump, and by extension Republicans, oppose fact checking because the facts are in contradiction to their goals. Trump himself exists in some post-modern environment where "facts" aren't real and all that matters is spin. He wants what he says to go unquestioned. That's why instead of having a debate about facts, supported by evidence, he simply seeks to remove facts from the discussion entirely.

eastbound 2y ago
[flagged]
- anigbrowl 2y ago
  So why are they taking so much data offline?
- ourmandave 2y ago
  Really? Greenpeace says it's because X platforms conspiracy theorists and climate change skeptics. [1] “But this tool, initially perceived as a new arena for free speech, has become a serious danger to it and to the respect for personal dignity,” point out organizations such as Cimade, France Nature Environment, Greenpeace France, and APF France Handicap in an op-ed published in Le Monde. Their primary concerns include “the lack of moderation and the configuration of algorithms” which “encourage the spread of hateful content and the circulation of conspiracy and climate skeptic theories.” [1] https://glassalmanac.com/87-french-groups-including-emmaus-greenpeace-exit-x-ex-twitter-heres-why/ https://glassalmanac.com/87-french-groups-including-emmaus-g...
- hackyhacky 2y ago
  > Trump and the Republicans are very much in favor of checking facts. It is the opposite of censorship: Expose everything. You know that you're writing this in a post about how the current Republican administration has been scrubbing massive amounts of scientific data from government websites, right? I don't see how Greenpeace is at all relevant here.

eastbound 2y ago

The fact checkers’ own employer said that the fact checkers didn’t work because they were so heavily biased that the audience noticed it.

hackyhacky 2y ago
Translation: the audience is so biased that they automatically reject facts in conflict with their biases.
- eastbound 2y ago
  No amount of showing you the mistakes in your papers works. “Women earn 52 cents on the dollar!” Same job? “Yes” No, look here. “But there is still this argument” — No, there isn’t, it’s been studied in that other study. You guys just always come back and cast doubt, but it’s only this: Doubt and finally, falsehoods.
  - hackyhacky 2y ago
    > You guys just always come back and cast doubt If that's your attitude, maybe you're the one with the preconvieved biases.

neumann 2y ago

Pretty confident that now that critical thinking has been thrown out the window and accountability has disappeared in political discourse this would just result in endless objections in any debate deliberately used to add noise and misdirect conversation. I don't know what the solution is in today's climate, but I suspect it no longer matters. America is post-truth and he who controls the data and pathways to information (Murdoch, Meta, Google) directly influences a large percentage of the people.

worksonmine 2y ago
> Pretty confident that now that critical thinking has been thrown out the window and accountability has disappeared in political discourse Politicians and the media have always lied about big and small details. The difference is that social media has made it easier to dispute, and now we started noticing it more. Now that they can't gatekeep the information anymore they adopted the word "misinformation" to deal with the problem. "It may be true, but it's misinformation, trust us, we have your best interests in mind". Remember the trusted news initiative from covid? That was an attempt to continue gatekeeping, anything from any other sources was considered false and unverified, and the global media all had the same talking points at the same time. It was terrifying to see how easy everyone conformed.

valunord 2y ago

Let's first work on eliminating political parties altogether, then let's work on eliminating bias.

gadflyinyoureye 2y ago
I like this idea, but doubt it works. People naturally coalesce around ideas. That cohesion is then call a political party. The only way to get rid of parties is to get rid of freedom of organization.
chgs 2y ago
The Republican Party has been eliminated, it’s been replaced by a dictator cult. Interestingly increasing numbers of young people want this.

theendisney4 2y ago

I like it, the legal system might be more suitable for putting the "truth" on trial than its current application. It will cost a bunch of money but we get something out of it.

w0m 2y ago

> Well, fact-checking works if it's done impartially. So, if you want to fairly fact-check a political debate, each side should have their own team of researchers/fact-checkers being equally able to object to an argument made by the opposing party. Due process, sort of, kind of. IIRC, This is mostly what Facebook did after the 2016 election; put together a non affiliated board and made sure it was populated by all sides - Facebook itself had no/minimal control over what said board did/decided; but all decisions were public. Zuck just gave in to 'community moderation' instead because "actual solutions" are considered a negative in today's political climate.