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.
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?
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.
I dispute Assertion 3, unless you define "reliable" as "supports the Narrative". I have read entire articles in my field of expertise (water and wastewater treatment) where the only sources used are political interest groups.
'Drawing vague flimsy associations between the target and Bad People tells you that this was the best they could do.'
I think your inferences are much to strong here, the people writing these pieces are often not very well paid journalism majors who have just run through the gauntlet of indoctrination of a mediocre college. That they put out low quality pieces is an indictment or their (lack of) skill, or an indictment of their intended audience, but neither of those implies that there aren't strong arguments for the positions they posit, just that they don't have the ability to elucidate such arguments given their constraints.
You mention sometimes that you write long essays for lacking the time to write short ones; I write short things faster than long ones and the shorter the faster. Also, I couldn't have written On Bounded Distrust but I think I could have written How to Bounded Distrust. If the latter took more time to write than the former, writing short things is super not your comparative advantage.
For $20 I'll lossily compress any one important long post of yours down to 1,353 words or fewer and get it back to you inside 24 hours, to see if getting people to compress your posts nets positive.
- only $20 because I'd run this test for free if it's worth $20 to you
- as many as $20 because things written for money are much easier to write quickly
> Can call anyone an expert. Expert consensus means three people. ‘Some investors’ and similar phrases mean two (as does ‘surrounded by.’)
If only you'd see news in national television in Poland... they usually invoke "experts" to comment on a given topic. The thing is, these are usually chosen from a set of just a few people. And they are... affiliated internet alt-media 'journalists'.
Imagine if Trump _somehow_ established a US state-funded TV channel (well, it already existed in Poland), made it completely partisan, with news sometimes eerily reminiscent of North-Korea propaganda somehow. News would have segments where "experts" from Breitbart discuss excesses of the Wokism.
Shame OpenAI Whisper didn't exist back then. Thankfully it does now, so I'll also share what main opposition TV channel said a few days ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFH_CfN7dvM
I mean, I agree with them. But it's a bit eerie to see mainstream media (they're US owned, so I interpret them as roughly extension of MSM; maybe that's going a little too far tho) talk about freedom of speech.
Anyway; one guy on Twitter https://twitter.com/FlasH_vikop even counts things like frequencies of these "experts" appearing http://ekspercitvpis.info or amount of times in 2021 (well, to 24.10) they reused the same clip of Donald Tusk's fist, supposed to make him seem aggressive (27) or the clip of Donald saying "fur Deutschland" (completely contextless, apparently supposed to associate him with Germany) (97 times) https://twitter.com/FlasH_vikop/status/1452032913046913024
In 2007, there was a story in the New York Times about some kerfuffle over a sorority that had kicked out about 2/3 of their membership for not being cool enough or something like that.
One phrase that immediately jumped out at me was a statement by the author that, among others, the only black, Korean, and Vietnamese members had been cut. The weirdly specific wording immediately tipped me off to the fact that there had been another Asian member, probably Chinese, who had not been cut, but that the author really wanted to insinuate that they had cut all the non-white members. There was no other plausible explanation for that phrasing.
Sure enough, CNN was reporting that a Chinese member had not been cut.
Granted, this wasn't a terribly important story, but it's a great illustration of the media including all the facts that fit the Narrative, and only the facts that fit the Narrative, and what can be inferred by accounting for this.
I can't fault anyone for being too paranoid about their information intake, but this set of rules does not jibe with Steve Sailer's observation that e.g. NYT often does put inconvenient or counter-Narrative facts right there in its articles, except they are shoved towards the end after all the convenient and pro-Narrative ones and all the boring details. This way casual readers check out before encountering them from being bored, pro-Narrative readers check out after having seen their expectations confirmed, whereas diligent readers can actually construct a decent picture of the world by reading to the very end, and presumably journalists and editors can feel good about themselves as adhering to the standards of truthfulness and conscientiousness. (The observation was correct every time I checked him.)
Can I add a corollary to the Pravda joke? The WSJ is useful because it is used by Washington to “tell the truth” . I.e. DOD info leaked regarding some military operation. This we get a Pravda effect - sort of. This source is useful to DC because it is not the NYT and will be viewed as less biased. Better for info leaking, whether deliberate or not. It is useful to readers because the anonymous source is more likely to be someone who actually works at the DOS or DOD or White House. Not 100% Pravda but WSJ as conduit effect.
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?
A couple editing errors:
> ‘this ‘expert’ irregularities he says shows fraud.’
> This type of logic-washing does not only applies to one side.
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.
I dispute Assertion 3, unless you define "reliable" as "supports the Narrative". I have read entire articles in my field of expertise (water and wastewater treatment) where the only sources used are political interest groups.
As I like to say, they lie even when they tell the truth.
I'd call it (mis)information laundering. After a few steps a lie looks like the truth.
'Drawing vague flimsy associations between the target and Bad People tells you that this was the best they could do.'
I think your inferences are much to strong here, the people writing these pieces are often not very well paid journalism majors who have just run through the gauntlet of indoctrination of a mediocre college. That they put out low quality pieces is an indictment or their (lack of) skill, or an indictment of their intended audience, but neither of those implies that there aren't strong arguments for the positions they posit, just that they don't have the ability to elucidate such arguments given their constraints.
How does a journalist count to ten?
"One, several, many, nearly the better part of ten, five..."
You mention sometimes that you write long essays for lacking the time to write short ones; I write short things faster than long ones and the shorter the faster. Also, I couldn't have written On Bounded Distrust but I think I could have written How to Bounded Distrust. If the latter took more time to write than the former, writing short things is super not your comparative advantage.
For $20 I'll lossily compress any one important long post of yours down to 1,353 words or fewer and get it back to you inside 24 hours, to see if getting people to compress your posts nets positive.
- only $20 because I'd run this test for free if it's worth $20 to you
- as many as $20 because things written for money are much easier to write quickly
> origins of the false ‘more athletes died in the last year than in the last 38 years’ claim
(kinda weak putting a paywalled story here as evidence for the claim)
> Can call anyone an expert. Expert consensus means three people. ‘Some investors’ and similar phrases mean two (as does ‘surrounded by.’)
If only you'd see news in national television in Poland... they usually invoke "experts" to comment on a given topic. The thing is, these are usually chosen from a set of just a few people. And they are... affiliated internet alt-media 'journalists'.
Imagine if Trump _somehow_ established a US state-funded TV channel (well, it already existed in Poland), made it completely partisan, with news sometimes eerily reminiscent of North-Korea propaganda somehow. News would have segments where "experts" from Breitbart discuss excesses of the Wokism.
(see this clip I've translated and subtitled; shame OpenAI Whisper didn't exist back then: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOZR2OxM4uc )
Shame OpenAI Whisper didn't exist back then. Thankfully it does now, so I'll also share what main opposition TV channel said a few days ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFH_CfN7dvM
I mean, I agree with them. But it's a bit eerie to see mainstream media (they're US owned, so I interpret them as roughly extension of MSM; maybe that's going a little too far tho) talk about freedom of speech.
Anyway; one guy on Twitter https://twitter.com/FlasH_vikop even counts things like frequencies of these "experts" appearing http://ekspercitvpis.info or amount of times in 2021 (well, to 24.10) they reused the same clip of Donald Tusk's fist, supposed to make him seem aggressive (27) or the clip of Donald saying "fur Deutschland" (completely contextless, apparently supposed to associate him with Germany) (97 times) https://twitter.com/FlasH_vikop/status/1452032913046913024
In 2007, there was a story in the New York Times about some kerfuffle over a sorority that had kicked out about 2/3 of their membership for not being cool enough or something like that.
One phrase that immediately jumped out at me was a statement by the author that, among others, the only black, Korean, and Vietnamese members had been cut. The weirdly specific wording immediately tipped me off to the fact that there had been another Asian member, probably Chinese, who had not been cut, but that the author really wanted to insinuate that they had cut all the non-white members. There was no other plausible explanation for that phrasing.
Sure enough, CNN was reporting that a Chinese member had not been cut.
Granted, this wasn't a terribly important story, but it's a great illustration of the media including all the facts that fit the Narrative, and only the facts that fit the Narrative, and what can be inferred by accounting for this.
I can't fault anyone for being too paranoid about their information intake, but this set of rules does not jibe with Steve Sailer's observation that e.g. NYT often does put inconvenient or counter-Narrative facts right there in its articles, except they are shoved towards the end after all the convenient and pro-Narrative ones and all the boring details. This way casual readers check out before encountering them from being bored, pro-Narrative readers check out after having seen their expectations confirmed, whereas diligent readers can actually construct a decent picture of the world by reading to the very end, and presumably journalists and editors can feel good about themselves as adhering to the standards of truthfulness and conscientiousness. (The observation was correct every time I checked him.)
I imagine that you could use some carefully selected system prompts to use AI to help with this kind of analysis.
Can I add a corollary to the Pravda joke? The WSJ is useful because it is used by Washington to “tell the truth” . I.e. DOD info leaked regarding some military operation. This we get a Pravda effect - sort of. This source is useful to DC because it is not the NYT and will be viewed as less biased. Better for info leaking, whether deliberate or not. It is useful to readers because the anonymous source is more likely to be someone who actually works at the DOS or DOD or White House. Not 100% Pravda but WSJ as conduit effect.