How to Bounded Distrust
Scott Alexander points out that the media, from The New York Times to Infowars, very rarely lies explicitly and directly.
Alas, the media often misleads. It implies and insinuates that which is not. It abuses the language. It selectively omits. It is highly motivated by partisanship and ideology and its own interests. It does not do or understand the research. It is terrible at interpreting science. It confuses cause and effect. It purports to use technically accurate data to show, even prove, conclusions known to be false, in ways that are designed to mislead and obviously in bad faith.
Nor does it much care.
They cite someone else, and claim this excuses them from all responsibility. All they said was ‘police say this guy is guilty’ or ‘this ‘expert’ found irregularities he says shows fraud.’
The rules are not what they used to be.
Then there are the op-ed pages and headlines, which are far worse.
This leads to a situation of Bounded Distrust, which I analyze at length here. I then work through some examples here. If you want to think about the problem in detail, start at these links.
A shorter, more practical version was needed.
This attempts to offer that. It leaves a lot out. Consider reading the long version.
What are the Rules?
Some special rules about the headline. They also apply to op-eds. Headlines are:
Not chosen by the author.
Allowed to lie.
Allowed to blatantly contradict the article’s content.
Laying out a Narrative the source wants you to believe.
The body of a news article is more reliable. The rules are simple. The article:
Has a Narrative, likely revealed by the headline.
Is not allowed to lie, in a way that could count as being physically falsified.
Is not allowed to assert facts without reliable sources.
Is allowed to do almost anything else.
Is often part of an implicit conspiracy to suppress true information or spread false information, without explicit denial of the true info or explicit claims of the false info.
Is allowed to repeat any claim if it attributes that claim to its source.
Can call anyone an expert. Expert consensus means three people. ‘Some investors’ and similar phrases mean two (as does ‘surrounded by.’)
Is allowed to withhold or not seek relevant information, selectively quote, frame, insinuate, imply, condemn via association, misconstrue. This includes calling true things lies or ‘misinformation’ if they imply disliked things.
Is allowed to change meanings of words in different contexts or over time.
Will draw conclusions in ways that defy logic, or that would be obvious errors to anyone with ordinary skill in the art. This is allowed.
Can and will find an ‘expert’ to support anything they want.
Will maximally shape the story to fit the Narrative and reality tunnel.
Will face potential negative reputational and other consequences for breaking these rules, and sometimes choose to break all of them.
Won’t face consequences for breaking these rules if everyone else is also breaking them to the same degree in similar spots.
Will face other negative consequences for insufficient Narrative support.
When the expected consequences of rule breaking exceed any plausible benefits from breaking the rules, you can mostly trust that the rules above are followed.
When the stakes are so high that the consequences could be seen as worth paying for either the reporter or the outlet, they might do that, which can be called using the one time. You must be extra careful.
The reporter is allowed to lie in order to get the story, the way a cop can lie during their investigation. Both often do so.
Three Approaches to What to Do About This
As described in the long version, now that you roughly know the rules the media uses, there are three general approaches.
Careful reading of media in combination with other sources.
Stop caring so much about the news unless it impacts you physically.
Outsource the work to some combination of other sources, including here.
The remainder of the post is a guide to using the first strategy, when it is needed.
Consider the Source
There is no getting around the need to consider and examine the original source.
For each source at all levels, and each class of source, one must track what rules they can be assumed to be following.
Any superficially credible source screwing up and endorsing a statement can start an information cascade no one will feel responsible for. See the origins of the false ‘more athletes died in the last year than in the last 38 years’ claim. This type of logic-washing does not only applies to one side.
As long as the direct source is named, the original (primary) ‘source’ could be mistaken, lying, non-credible. Circular citations are a thing. E.g. Wikipedia cites X, Y cites Wiki, Z cites Y, Wiki cites Z instead of X, everyone forgets who X was, and Y and Z are media. Or the original source is selectively quoted. Within the rules.
As long as they quote their source, nothing more is required. There is zero obligation for media to verify their source is not spouting obvious nonsense.
If the source is a politician, assume they lie, about everything, all the time.
Some sources, especially governments and corporations, have different rules, and in some contexts engage in bounded lying where they shift expectations a fixed amount in a positive direction. This is where 'good harvest’ means ‘we will all starve’ and ‘glorious harvest’ means ‘good harvest.’ Watch out for using the one time.
Also examine the direct source. The media outlet or reporter will, on rare occasions, choose to ‘say that which is not’ and take the consequences. Ask: Do they see the stakes as high enough to consider this? If yes for the reporter but not the outlet, would the editors and fact checkers catch it?
Logical Implications
The old Soviet joke is that Pravda always lies and so it is useful, whereas The New York Times is not as useful because it sometimes tells the truth.
Once you realize articles are sculpted to be maximally supportive of Narrative, it becomes possible to read them as a Soviet would Pravda. Every word is present for a reason.
A stronger version, with less qualifications or weasel words, would have been against the rules. This tells you where you are at.
Every piece of evidence that was found and helps the Narrative will be present. It will be taken out of context, sculpted, engineered to do this to the extent possible.
Every known detail that is not present would not support the Narrative, or at least would not support it sufficiently to justify the space necessary to include it.
Odd word choices (given the house style) are not coincidences. The standard word choice could not be used. The lack of direct statements can be very strong evidence. Pay attention to Exact Words, the use of weasel words, the Law of No Evidence and Suspiciously Specific Denials.
‘Legal reasons’ can also explain such choices.
Drawing vague flimsy associations between the target and Bad People tells you that this was the best they could do.
The choice to write the article or say anything at all is also a choice. Ask why.
This is similar to when a lawyer cannot tell you to do something that carries any legal risk, or someone is avoiding providing medical care or advice. Think about what they are being careful not to say.
This is a very different Bayesian calculus. Notice what is missing or unsaid and what qualifiers could not be left out. Ask why is this being told to me rather than something else.
Where this leads to a ‘that’s funny’ investigate further.
When you see the kinds of attacks and tricks the rules favor, that’s all they have.
For non-media sources, one must figure out what rules set applies and act accordingly.
Not that simple. The problem gets easier with practice, but is anti-inductive.
For further reading: On Bounded Distrust, An Exercise in Bounded Distrust.
Paring down On Bounded Distrust to the extent that it can be stated briefly is really hard, mad props on the attempt. I think it could stand to be about a third again longer and much more convincing, though: without any specific examples in the post it's both unclear what "how to bounded distrust" looks like in practice and I'm also worried that to those who lack context the essay reads like it was written by an actual crazy person. (Capitalizing references/concept handles like Narrative, Bad People, and This Is Not A Coincidence doesn't help with not seeming crazy to people who don't get the references, and would probably be enough on its own to stop me from linking zero-context people to this explanation even if it had specific examples.)
"This leads to a situation of Bounded Distrust, which I analyze at length here. I then work through some examples here. If you want to think about the problem in detail, start at these links." Would read better to me if after the link to Bounded Distrust you gave a brief definition of what bounded distrust is, like "knowing which things you can trust people to tell the truth about" (obviously as a better writer than me you could give a better definition than this) so the reader knows what they're reading here and why it's supposed to be useful, instead of hoping they read until the Logical Implications section before knowing what the purpose is.
The "What Are The Rules?" section would be less jarring if it began with a one-sentence "What does it mean that the media rarely lies but is often deceptive?" or other better sentence that serves the same purpose of signposting to the reader what's going on and why they are now reading a list of rules.
"When the stakes are so high that the consequences could be seen as worth paying for either the reporter or the outlet, they might do that, which can be called Using the One Time. You must be extra careful." Would really benefit from a specific example, to seem less crazy to people just tuning in. A link and a one sentence description would work here.
"The reporter is allowed to lie in order to get the story, the way a cop can lie during their investigation. Both often do so." Would also benefit from a specific example to seem less crazy to people who are out of the loop.
"For each source at all levels, and each class of source, one must maintain a Translation Matrix that lays out what rules they can be assumed to be following." I'm imagining my mother reading as far as capital T capital M Translation Matrix before she closes the tab and thinks less of me for linking it.
"There is zero obligation for media to verify their source is not spouting Obvious Nonsense." As a longtime reader, I know how Obvious Nonsense is different from obvious nonsense (Obvious Nonsense isn't intended to look plausible, unlike obvious nonsense which presumably is) but if this is supposed to be low-context and linkable I think the lowercase letters work better.
I hope you found this useful and if not I hope it wasn't too annoying! Thanks for writing.
It sounds like incredibly annoying, tedious, thankless work - but it would fascinating to see a site dedicated to applying these rules objectively/neutrally to various news outlets. Not "debunking" style, but similar to how one might go about assessing a scientific paper: "it is possible the conclusion is true, but the data (for a newsstory: sources, logic, context, etc...) provided do not prove that is true, and also do not exclude other potentially more true conclusions, and here is why this is the conclusion they would like you to arrive at." Given that MSNBC gleefully points out misleading FOX articles, and vice versa, it seems like there's a market for that - but is there one for a both?