Re:Critical ignoring as a core competence for digital citizens
by PuppyTailWags on Monday November 28, 2022 @11:17AM
(#33775463)
Well I just pointed to knowing liars and people who rely on knowing liars. Honestly I think most people are just doing their best to tell their incomplete knowledge accurately, and assessing people in that lens helps clarify a lot. Science media tends to laud an experiment that turns out to be non-replicatable, so it's good to keep that in mind when you read science media. Scientists are incentivized not to do boring experiments, so that's useful to keep in mind when reading science.
But like, how did you know that science media tends to do X? Scientists are incentivized to do Y? How do you know that NYT and Fox are incentivized in the ways you're talking about? The reason why they're even notable is because someone else is looking at it and going "hey!! this is going on!!" and presumably this person isn't a known liar/acting on known lies. Maybe enough independent people are saying it that collusion is statistically unlikely. But you do have a knowledge base. It's as simple as knowing what your knowledge base is, in relative to the knowledge bases others are using.
I disagree with this, which is why I'm so freaked out. I would have agreed with this 20-25 years ago, but not now.
For example, re: your last paragraph, I'm also from a purple district in a purple state with family equally split between the left and the right (and split into multiple factions within each). There are a lot of social incentives for people and institutions to lie and, more importantly, for the middlemen to amplify and present those lies. I also think that with so many of our fundamentals on shaky ground, a lot of the lies might not be purposeful. Scientific reporting is a good example: If the science media lauds an experiment that it turns out is non-replicatable, they're not lying on purpose but they're still reporting something that isn't true.
Scientists are incentivized to publish too often/fudge numbers/not do "boring" experiments. The NYT and Fox are incentivized to cut editors and fact checkers and reduce turn around time because people have been conditioned to expect immediate reporting. They're incentivized to cover things with a partisan slant because it goes viral.
The incentives are perverse at this point.