The New Age of shamelessness

[TomC]

I have not heard of any such courses, and certainly not in high school; But then, I went to high school more than four decades ago, so a lot has changed since my time.

So did I. And I don't remember such classes either.
The way I remember it, concepts like critical thinking and learning how to research and using skills like those to identify bullshit and live a good life were just kinda built in to the whole curriculum.
Tom

 

[steve_bank]

Teaching people to think critically?

You can teach critical thinking, but only a relatively few will actually learn it.

Same with math, science, music, art, bushiness, and engineering. Many get degrees with factual knowledge but only a percentage actually learn to apply it.

 

[Patooka]

The "norm" is not to learn much in college at all. About 65% of adult Americans never attain a bachelor's degree, slightly more than the percentage in the OECD as a whole, where about 40% attain such a qualification.

I have not heard of any such courses, and certainly not in high school; But then, I went to high school more than four decades ago, so a lot has changed since my time.

There was a syllabus about media bias in 2 unit English in the late 90's/early 2000s for HSC students. It was very basic - it explained the difference between an echo effect and echo chamber, the difference between state funded and state run, emotive journalism and a couple of episodes of Frontline (Breaking News to all the non Australians).

 

[Colonel Sanders]

My news/opinion channel is MSNBC; I wouldn't be able to watch Fox or One America for two minutes without losing my mind. I know people who get their news straight off their phone.

I can't even watch MSNBC. The last time I watched it was a love fest, softball throwing affair between AOC and Rachel Maddow.

I like AOC.

I like Maddow.

Yet it was cringe inducing and therefore unwatchable.

As for the smart phone, it's a blight on society as are internet news sites.

Read the headline and that's all anyone needs to know.

I will never stop repeating that we're in the intractable mess we're in because people don't take the time to sit down and take pleasure in reading books, newspapers, and news magazines.

I read the New York Times, and the Washington Post on my phone, and I used to read the Atlanta Journal Constitution on my phone, so I don't find reading the news on my phone to be a problem. Reading papers online means you get all the updates instantly without having to wait until the next paper edition. It depends on what you do with the internet. I also subscribe to Scientific American and I often read it on my phone if I'm out. SA also has some pretty good political articles and again, the online version gives you an opportunity to read updates and new studies.

I read books on my kindle, much easier than carrying around dead tree books, as the late DMB referred to them. When you're old you can adjust the font if you read online or on a kindle, so don't knock those things.

I like to watch Ari Melber on MSNBC. He's smart and imo, he's some good eye candy. A close friend mine agrees with me on that.

I'm not worried about us old folks. It's the young people that should concern everyone.

We grew up reading newspapers. On especially rough days I'd get a couple of newspapers after work, go into Black Angus, get big-ass glasses of beer and read through everything.

Gen Z in particular has been harmed by social media and pump & dump media. Even when they care about politics, they get their news in 20 second bites (bytes?) and if they actually read more than a paragraph it's something they already want to hear. They won't read anything that has even a whiff of an opinion they don't like.

The foregoing has applied to conservative American idiots since the dawn of the interwebs, so they got a jumpstart on black-hole dumbfuckery. For the most part they never read anything of substance anyway, but at least they either stayed aways from the voting booth or largely voted in their own best interests. If you ask these lackwits to read Hobbes or Rousseau it would be no different than giving them the blueprints to a nuclear power plant and telling them to go for it.

 

[DrZoidberg]

There is a lot of information available on the internet, for those who are willing to put in the work to investigate. But the vast majority don't do that, which is sad and dangerous as there is far more bullshit that populates the internet.

Yeah, but isn't that the whole point of enlightenment values and a success of freedom of information?

It sounds like you are arguing against this freedom, for our own good?

It might be for our own good. But I prefer the messiness. I don't have a good argument. I base my opinion on ideology, ie liberal values. Rather than what I identify as.. a pragmatic. Which is hypocritical of me. But it feels right. No, I don't have a good argument for the current mess

You appear to be mistaking libertarianism for liberty. In an effort to pursue liberty and democracy, we have diverted into a bizarre counterfactual world in which a core assumption is the anti-democratic idea that having power and wealth is what demonstrates an individual's worthiness to have power and wealth.

The lack of rules here is hypothetically freedom, but in practice it just gives people a voice weighted by their wealth and power. I can post literally anything on X (or I could if I had any desire to do so), and do can Elon Musk or Donald Trump. But whose xhits will be seen?

The whole system is riddled with positive feedback loops. Those who are heard, get heard. Everyone else gets nothing.

I don't think I have confused them. I honestly can't follow your logic. Capitalism and free market economics is not the same thing as a free disemination of information. If you don't like all of the current news sources you can just create your own with a near zero obstacle for entry.

No, the lack of rules isn't a hypothetical freedom. It's actual freedom. Yes, rich people get signal boosted more than poor people. But that's because more people care what they have to say. Not becuase they're buying reach. If you have a problem with that, then you have a problem with the rules of the culture you live in. We can't fix that with laws. Libertarianism is about laws. Not culture.

 

[DrZoidberg]

I have not heard of any such courses, and certainly not in high school; But then, I went to high school more than four decades ago, so a lot has changed since my time.

So did I. And I don't remember such classes either.
The way I remember it, concepts like critical thinking and learning how to research and using skills like those to identify bullshit and live a good life were just kinda built in to the whole curriculum.
Tom

First time I came across such an explicit course was in uni.

I heard a Swedish debate on this and a cognitive researcher said that it's a waste of time teaching kids younger than 16 critical thinking, because their brains aren't mature enough for it. He made good arguments.

 

[DrZoidberg]

My news/opinion channel is MSNBC; I wouldn't be able to watch Fox or One America for two minutes without losing my mind. I know people who get their news straight off their phone.

I can't even watch MSNBC. The last time I watched it was a love fest, softball throwing affair between AOC and Rachel Maddow.

I like AOC.

I like Maddow.

Yet it was cringe inducing and therefore unwatchable.

As for the smart phone, it's a blight on society as are internet news sites.

Read the headline and that's all anyone needs to know.

I will never stop repeating that we're in the intractable mess we're in because people don't take the time to sit down and take pleasure in reading books, newspapers, and news magazines.

I read the New York Times, and the Washington Post on my phone, and I used to read the Atlanta Journal Constitution on my phone, so I don't find reading the news on my phone to be a problem. Reading papers online means you get all the updates instantly without having to wait until the next paper edition. It depends on what you do with the internet. I also subscribe to Scientific American and I often read it on my phone if I'm out. SA also has some pretty good political articles and again, the online version gives you an opportunity to read updates and new studies.

I read books on my kindle, much easier than carrying around dead tree books, as the late DMB referred to them. When you're old you can adjust the font if you read online or on a kindle, so don't knock those things.

I like to watch Ari Melber on MSNBC. He's smart and imo, he's some good eye candy. A close friend mine agrees with me on that.

I'm not worried about us old folks. It's the young people that should concern everyone.

We grew up reading newspapers. On especially rough days I'd get a couple of newspapers after work, go into Black Angus, get big-ass glasses of beer and read through everything.

Gen Z in particular has been harmed by social media and pump & dump media. Even when they care about politics, they get their news in 20 second bites (bytes?) and if they actually read more than a paragraph it's something they already want to hear. They won't read anything that has even a whiff of an opinion they don't like.

The foregoing has applied to conservative American idiots since the dawn of the interwebs, so they got a jumpstart on black-hole dumbfuckery. For the most part they never read anything of substance anyway, but at least they either stayed aways from the voting booth or largely voted in their own best interests. If you ask these lackwits to read Hobbes or Rousseau it would be no different than giving them the blueprints to a nuclear power plant and telling them to go for it.

Gen Z has access to better packaged information than what we did. The tools at their disposal are more powerful than what we had then when we were their age. Good luck verifying a source in the time before Internet. We simple had to trust whatever they said, because... what we're we supposed to do about it?

The main problem with Gen Z, as I seeit, is that they continually hammer their brains with information. They're not taking time off to absorb the information. Stuff like going for walks in the woods chilling out. The thing we today refer to as limited screen time

 

[southernhybrid]

It's not about having access to information, it's about which information you access and which information you trust. I could give plenty of examples, but I think you all get the point. Ok. I'll give one example.

There are plenty of sites that give false information about medical conditions, medications, supplements etc. You have to know which sources of information are fairly reliable and which are nothing but scams. If I'm looking for information regarding medical conditions, I only visit sites like the Mayo Clinic, the Cleveland Clinic, Emory or Harvard Medical school etc. Then I compare what I've read to see if there is a lot of agreement and research to back up the claims and information. It's great to have such easy access to such information, but what if someone only gets medical information from people like Dr. Oz and other scam artists? There's another one who sells lots of supplements, but I can't think of his name right now. People are gullible and they want to believe what they read, even if there is no scientific evidence to support the trash these people sell.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

I have not heard of any such courses, and certainly not in high school; But then, I went to high school more than four decades ago, so a lot has changed since my time.

So did I. And I don't remember such classes either.
The way I remember it, concepts like critical thinking and learning how to research and using skills like those to identify bullshit and live a good life were just kinda built in to the whole curriculum.
Tom

First time I came across such an explicit course was in uni.

I heard a Swedish debate on this and a cognitive researcher said that it's a waste of time teaching kids younger than 16 critical thinking, because their brains aren't mature enough for it. He made good arguments.

Interesting. So when we tell a child to use critical thinking and not simply get in the car with the guy who is "looking for their pet" or "they have candy", that is a waste of time and ineffective?

One important part of critical thinking is about taking what is presented at face value and questioning its validity.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Gen Z has access to better packaged information than what we did. The tools at their disposal are more powerful than what we had then when we were their age. Good luck verifying a source in the time before Internet. We simple had to trust whatever they said, because... what we're we supposed to do about it?

The main problem with Gen Z, as I seeit, is that they continually hammer their brains with information. They're not taking time off to absorb the information. Stuff like going for walks in the woods chilling out. The thing we today refer to as limited screen time

*taking notes*

...entire Generation doesn't take enough hikes...

*raises hand*

Does this include Pisces?

 

[Gospel]

I agree that media bias and misinformation are real problems, but to me they become truly dangerous when people use them to justify harm. It takes a certain kind of person, someone already inclined toward hate, fear, or tribalism, to take biased or misleading information and use it to justify violence or dehumanization. Normal people exposed to biased news might just become misinformed or frustrated, but they don’t suddenly call for genocide or cheer on suffering.

 

[Swammerdami]

I suppose disinformation is as old as human communication, but it sure seems like we're especially swamped with disinformation these days. For some contexts, AI-generated fake images outnumber real images. There are some YouTube channels ostensibly dedicated to real stories with political interest but which present nothing but fictions. Today, with care images and voices that are machine-generated can be identified as such, but improvement is so rapid fiction will soon no longer be distinguishable from fact. "Speak truth to power"? When everything is likely to be fiction people resort to counting "views." The source with 2 million views is "better" ("truer") than the source with only a million.

RFKJr's Department released an important report filled with fake AI-generated citations. When called out for this, they rewrote the report ... but just ended up with a new batch of fake citations.

Tech-savvy teenagers will form their political views by typing "Is AOC a communist?" into their search bar. Results will depend on whether the chat-bot is operated by Musk or Zuckerberg or TikTok.

Heaven helps us. ... If only there were a heaven.

You appear to be mistaking libertarianism for liberty. In an effort to pursue liberty and democracy, we have diverted into a bizarre counterfactual world in which a core assumption is the anti-democratic idea that having power and wealth is what demonstrates an individual's worthiness to have power and wealth.

I've seen quotes from Dubya Bush and Forbes magazine which say, almost in so many words, that the wealthy are to be coddled even if their gains came from crime.

The lack of rules here is hypothetically freedom, but in practice it just gives people a voice weighted by their wealth and power. I can post literally anything on X (or I could if I had any desire to do so), and do can Elon Musk or Donald Trump. But whose xhits will be seen?

The whole system is riddled with positive feedback loops. Those who are heard, get heard. Everyone else gets nothing.

I don't think I have confused them. I honestly can't follow your logic. Capitalism and free market economics is not the same thing as a free disemination of information. If you don't like all of the current news sources you can just create your own with a near zero obstacle for entry.

Bezos bought the Washington Post with pocket change. In this Land of the Free, the homeless man living under a bridge has the same right as Bezos to buy a major newspaper. (This sure sounds like what you're saying.)

No, the lack of rules isn't a hypothetical freedom. It's actual freedom. Yes, rich people get signal boosted more than poor people. But that's because more people care what they have to say.

Let me see if I have this straight. You think people read posts on X because they admire Elon Musk and want their news filtered by his algorithms. If they were interested in what the homeless man under the bridge had to say, they'd click to ... What was the name of homeless man's website again?

 

[Colonel Sanders]

I agree that media bias and misinformation are real problems, but to me they become truly dangerous when people use them to justify harm. It takes a certain kind of person, someone already inclined toward hate, fear, or tribalism, to take biased or misleading information and use it to justify violence or dehumanization. Normal people exposed to biased news might just become misinformed or frustrated, but they don’t suddenly call for genocide or cheer on suffering.

Oh, I disagree. Look what the Fox-o-sphere has done to the poorly read. They take great pleasure when natural disasters happen here in California. They love when we have problems.

I'm 55 and I do not EVER recall growing up and taking delight in the suffering caused by floods, hurricanes, and tornadoes. It just wasn't a thing. Now though, if something awful happens in blue states, conservatives can't get enough of it. It's nearly a wartime footing against a hated enemy. They'd love to see California "fall into the ocean" which to my mind approaches a genocidal mentality and they're definitely cheering on our suffering.

Hell, I don't recall this much enmity when Chernobyl happened, and hating the Soviet Union was par for the course back then. T

This is what mis and disinformation does to functionally illiterate people and hell, even well educated people. My idiot sister has two advanced degrees and wanted to bury our dad with a Trump medallion in his coffin (I'm not joking).

 

[ZiprHead]

It's not about having access to information, it's about which information you access and which information you trust. I could give plenty of examples, but I think you all get the point. Ok. I'll give one example.

There are plenty of sites that give false information about medical conditions, medications, supplements etc. You have to know which sources of information are fairly reliable and which are nothing but scams. If I'm looking for information regarding medical conditions, I only visit sites like the Mayo Clinic, the Cleveland Clinic, Emory or Harvard Medical school etc. Then I compare what I've read to see if there is a lot of agreement and research to back up the claims and information. It's great to have such easy access to such information, but what if someone only gets medical information from people like Dr. Oz and other scam artists? There's another one who sells lots of supplements, but I can't think of his name right now. People are gullible and they want to believe what they read, even if there is no scientific evidence to support the trash these people sell.

Yup. I found it particularly disheartening when I learned that most young people eschew mainstream news media and prefer social media to get their news.

 

[Spacetime Inhabitant]

There is a lot of information available on the internet, for those who are willing to put in the work to investigate. But the vast majority don't do that, which is sad and dangerous as there is far more bullshit that populates the internet.

Yeah, but isn't that the whole point of enlightenment values and a success of freedom of information?

It sounds like you are arguing against this freedom, for our own good?

It might be for our own good. But I prefer the messiness. I don't have a good argument. I base my opinion on ideology, ie liberal values. Rather than what I identify as.. a pragmatic. Which is hypocritical of me. But it feels right. No, I don't have a good argument for the current mess

You appear to be mistaking libertarianism for liberty. In an effort to pursue liberty and democracy, we have diverted into a bizarre counterfactual world in which a core assumption is the anti-democratic idea that having power and wealth is what demonstrates an individual's worthiness to have power and wealth.

The lack of rules here is hypothetically freedom, but in practice it just gives people a voice weighted by their wealth and power. I can post literally anything on X (or I could if I had any desire to do so), and do can Elon Musk or Donald Trump. But whose xhits will be seen?

The whole system is riddled with positive feedback loops. Those who are heard, get heard. Everyone else gets nothing.

I don't think I have confused them. I honestly can't follow your logic. Capitalism and free market economics is not the same thing as a free disemination of information. If you don't like all of the current news sources you can just create your own with a near zero obstacle for entry.

No, the lack of rules isn't a hypothetical freedom. It's actual freedom. Yes, rich people get signal boosted more than poor people. But that's because more people care what they have to say. Not becuase they're buying reach. If you have a problem with that, then you have a problem with the rules of the culture you live in. We can't fix that with laws. Libertarianism is about laws. Not culture.

RE: Bolded sentence: So why do people care more for what rich people say? It's because they are rich, and also because more people hear what they say. Why do more people hear what they say? Because being rich they have influence and access to more media outlets.
So yes they are buying reach; sometimes with actual dollars, but often because being rich, the media is interested in reporting what they are saying. That is influence. Influence is a cultural phenomenon, but like all cultural phenomena it can be affected by laws.

 

[Gospel]

I agree that media bias and misinformation are real problems, but to me they become truly dangerous when people use them to justify harm. It takes a certain kind of person, someone already inclined toward hate, fear, or tribalism, to take biased or misleading information and use it to justify violence or dehumanization. Normal people exposed to biased news might just become misinformed or frustrated, but they don’t suddenly call for genocide or cheer on suffering.

Oh, I disagree. Look what the Fox-o-sphere has done to the poorly read. They take great pleasure when natural disasters happen here in California. They love when we have problems.

I'm 55 and I do not EVER recall growing up and taking delight in the suffering caused by floods, hurricanes, and tornadoes. It just wasn't a thing. Now though, if something awful happens in blue states, conservatives can't get enough of it. It's nearly a wartime footing against a hated enemy. They'd love to see California "fall into the ocean" which to my mind approaches a genocidal mentality and they're definitely cheering on our suffering.

Hell, I don't recall this much enmity when Chernobyl happened, and hating the Soviet Union was par for the course back then. T

This is what mis and disinformation does to functionally illiterate people and hell, even well educated people. My idiot sister has two advanced degrees and wanted to bury our dad with a Trump medallion in his coffin (I'm not joking).

I hear you, and I agree, misinformation absolutely fuels tribalism and has made people more callous, especially when amplified in echo chambers. But I still believe it takes a deeper predisposition for someone to witness a flood or disaster and actually celebrate human suffering. Misinformation doesn’t create that kind of cruelty, it simply hands those already comfortable with dehumanizing an “out group” a story to justify doing so.

Take law enforcement as an example. I’ve seen thousands of videos showing clear abuses of power, sometimes even resulting in death. But no matter how many of those I’ve seen, I’ve never once felt a desire to see police officers harmed. It’s just not in me. And yet, I know there are civilians who feel the opposite, we’re watching the same videos, but processing them through very different lenses. I see their comments online, saying things I couldn’t even bring myself to joke about, if “joking” is even the excuse.

That’s not to say people can’t be shaped by what they consume, but the line between being influenced and being dehumanizing is one people still choose to cross.

I think it's a principle at the heart of our legal system, the idea that you’re innocent until proven guilty, and that even if you're caught red-handed, you’re still entitled to a fair trial. To avoid becoming like those we oppose, we have to treat others better than they would treat us. Anyone who doesn’t hold that principle at their core risks becoming capable of unrestrained cruelty. Or, to put it bluntly, they're too big of a pussy to fearlessly navigate that vulnerability.

 

[bilby]

If you don't like all of the current news sources you can just create your own with a near zero obstacle for entry.

... and nobody else will read it.

And frankly, nor should they. I have no clue what's going on, because I am not a reporter.

So, who is a reporter? How can I be confident that a person who reports stuff has actually seen that stuff, or at least seen reliable evidence of that stuff?

Well, one good way would be to limit reportage to stuff that can convince an expert in assessing news to pay for it, with that expert's reputation on the line should he disseminate too much nonsense.

We could call such experts "editors".

Anyone whose reportage has not been vetted by an editor, or whose editor has a reputation for publishing bullshit, we can safely ignore.

And as people are clearly incompetent to make that assessment, we should simply block such bullshit from being disseminated at all.

 

[DrZoidberg]

It's not about having access to information, it's about which information you access and which information you trust. I could give plenty of examples, but I think you all get the point. Ok. I'll give one example.

There are plenty of sites that give false information about medical conditions, medications, supplements etc. You have to know which sources of information are fairly reliable and which are nothing but scams. If I'm looking for information regarding medical conditions, I only visit sites like the Mayo Clinic, the Cleveland Clinic, Emory or Harvard Medical school etc. Then I compare what I've read to see if there is a lot of agreement and research to back up the claims and information. It's great to have such easy access to such information, but what if someone only gets medical information from people like Dr. Oz and other scam artists? There's another one who sells lots of supplements, but I can't think of his name right now. People are gullible and they want to believe what they read, even if there is no scientific evidence to support the trash these people sell.

Here's a counter example.

My mother only believed utter pseudoscientific garbage. She spent a fortune on alternative medicine pills, "health" contraptions and went to courses. All her three kids all had fancy degrees and/or phd's. We could, and did, explain why she was wrong. Even before the Internet all us kids managed to look up all her dumb claims and whenever she brought anything up we knew, by heart, all the evidence that what she was citing was a scam. We all became extremely good at it.

Her problem wasn't a lack of information. It was that her tribe... the hippies... socialised primarily through sharing these pseudo scientific ideas. That's what we were up against. If being right risked isolating her from the love and validation of her peers, she preferred being wrong. That's not how she would have formulated it. But that's what

This is a social problem. And social problems need social solutions. Basically... we need to find a way to elevate the status of scientists and the scientific method.

If you don't like all of the current news sources you can just create your own with a near zero obstacle for entry.

... and nobody else will read it.

And frankly, nor should they. I have no clue what's going on, because I am not a reporter.

So, who is a reporter? How can I be confident that a person who reports stuff has actually seen that stuff, or at least seen reliable evidence of that stuff?

I don't think we used to know this earlier. We just thought we did.

Well, one good way would be to limit reportage to stuff that can convince an expert in assessing news to pay for it, with that expert's reputation on the line should he disseminate too much nonsense.

Sure. 2 years after an event has been in the news. But while it's happening, it's very hard who to trust

We could call such experts "editors".

Anyone whose reportage has not been vetted by an editor, or whose editor has a reputation for publishing bullshit, we can safely ignore.

And as people are clearly incompetent to make that assessment, we should simply block such bullshit from being disseminated at all.

What do you know about the editors of the publications you trust? Do you even know who they are?

 

[bilby]

No, the lack of rules isn't a hypothetical freedom. It's actual freedom. Yes, rich people get signal boosted more than poor people. But that's because more people care what they have to say. Not becuase they're buying reach.

Why do more people care what they have to say? Because they are rich. Why are they rich? Because more people care what they have to say.

Managing any system via positive feedback loops leads to disaster.

If you have a problem with that, then you have a problem with the rules of the culture you live in.

No shit, Sherlock. What tipped you off?

Being able to get my voice heard as part of a massive popularity contest that gives zero weight to truth is NOT freedom. Being able to voice my problems with the rules of the culture I live in is freedom; Why the everlasting and actual fuck would you suggest that excercising that freedom is somehow a failing??

Democracy is a shit way to decide anything. It's a last resort, to be used when the only alternative is arbitrary imposition of a decision by an autocrat.

If a decision can be reached via an intelligent examination of evidence, or by the employment of the scientific method, then it should be. Facts are not decided by consensus, and laws should be based of factual premises as far as is possible.

Only when we do not have access to evidence that can decide a question, can democracy be valuable in answering that question.

We can (and must) determine that Trump ordered the bombing of Iran and that that bombing subsequently occurred, without polling our favourite YouTube influencers for their opinions on whether these things actually happened.

Facts exist. Reality is real. Opinions are like arseholes - everyone his one, and most are full of shit.

 

[bilby]

What do you know about the editors of the publications you trust?

I know that they are able to rise to the position of editor of a trusted institution, which is highly degensive of its reputation (because that's its entire value), and has a long track record of carefully vetting editors to defend that reputation.

Do you even know who they are?

Why would it matter who they are? It's the system that matters, not the individuals. Everyone in the system is providing checks and balances against anyone who would harm that reputation.

Strong systems do not allow individuals to be important. Cults of personality are weak, and need constant shoring up (usually through violently coercive means).

That's one major reason why dictatorships are shitholes.