Without getting into the finer points, my understanding is this:
My company needs to make metal squares. There is a defined process for it. I just need a welder to weld all four corners. No R&D here.
I need a website with some features. Asking a sample of professional software developers how to build it, you get a variety of answers.
If anything, that the basics of software development still requires R&D is an indictment of our fields lack of professionalism.
Wait, what? There's more than 1 way to make metal squares, and which you want to choose is gonna vary based upon your needs and the fabricator, even if you, for whatever reason, pre-determine you want them welded!
It's right in that they don't often feed you with provably false stuff --at least not at the time of publication (such as Hunter's Laptop being Russian misinfo but now owned up to by Hunter himself) but yes, they lie by omission, innuendo/leading and half truths. Similar to how quite a few social programs are based on small unreplicated studies that sound good on paper --the intent matters more than the results or reality.
> The point is: the media rarely lies explicitly and directly. Reporters rarely say specific things they know to be false. When the media misinforms people, it does so by misinterpreting things, excluding context, or signal-boosting some events while ignoring others, not by participating in some bright-line category called “misinformation”.
I don't think it's true (why would it be), and even it is true, it is stupid to assume that it is true. It only can cause harm, but no benefits at all.
What do you not believe is true? That print space in newspapers is limited so you have to report selectively and your news organisation may just find one category of articles more relevant or interesting or important than another?
Bad take. For one, any time you try to evaluate "the media" as a single entity, you've already failed. Secondly, the first example of "not really lying" is most definitely a deliberate lie.
The entire point of the article is to damn with faint praise. The NYT is no worse than infowars. Both may mislead and omit extremely relevant information but actual lies, no. It’s a knock on the NYT and by extension the entire news media journalism complex.
Which is stupid. Infowars is an absolute sham from top to bottom and the leader of Infowars is an absolute monster who will spend the rest of his life paying restitution for well-proven slanders. And has never produced a single "scoop" of verifiable value in it's history.
Meanwhile, the NY Times has made a few mistakes or let some bias slip through by the human beings who work there and produce thousands of relevant and accurate stories per year. Many of which are of vital national interest.
Because the data was completely misrepresented. VAERS is unvetted raw data from the public. Anyone who has experience or imagined a malady after self-reporting that they received a vaccine dose can make a report to VAERS. Portraying VAERS reports as conclusive causation is most definitely lying.
The headline presents the conclusions as unambiguous: "New Vaccine Data Shows Alarming Number Of Stillbirths And Miscarriages Caused By Covid Shot". Aside from referring to "covid shot" as a single thing and the 8 different vaccines available.
This has aged poorly; nowadays, the most notable attacks are conducted by state actors (e.g., Russia and China) or for-profit criminal groups (e.g., ransomware) rather than lone hackers doing it for fun.
And particularly the means--smoking it versus taking orally. A lot of these stims are terrible if snorted or injected, they used to warn patients never to do that or risk becoming addicted.
There is a methamphetamine that is prescribed to ADD's, not the same as the street version of course.
I've done a decent amount of drugs, and I've been around people who have done a hell of a lot more, but I recently had a friend develop a meth problem, and I have to say, there is something remarkably different about how issue compared to what I've seen in my life.
Minor quibble about this: On large pages, it can be quite slow. E.g., on https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/ivermectin-much-more-t... , it takes a few seconds after initial loading for it be responsive to pressing the PgDown key, at least on my machine.
> "Anti-censorship" is hugely unpopular with the mainstream intellectual community these days.
I'd disagree. It's unpopular with left-leaning mainstream audiences, but among intellectuals who write for a living, I imagine that extra assurances of not getting kicked off the platform are rather attractive.
>It's unpopular with left-leaning mainstream audiences
It is truly wild how HN often frames censorship as something coming purely from the left while ignoring the laws coming out of conservative state legislatures across the country. There is a wide spectrum of people both pushing for censorship and pushing against it.
Left and right censorship are applied to very different media. In the case of online platforms, the most visible attempts of censorship are coming from the left. At least I haven't heard of any opposite examples.
When one form of censorship is coming from private companies and the other form of censorship is coming from the government, I am definitely more concerned about the latter than the former.
The only modern examples of censorship coming from the right I can think of are the anti-CRT and "don't say gay" type bills. These laws are certainly problematic, but as tools of censorship, they're narrowly targeted at children, not adults. There's a pretty longstanding cultural consensus around censoring content targeted at children, for better or worse. We may not agree with the particular choices being made on the right here about content, but it doesn't seem to me like, per se, a free speech issue in the normal sense.
Maybe you are aware of some example that i'm not, though.
>as tools of censorship, they're narrowly targeted at children, not adults.
Children eventually become adults. How do we expect the adults of the future to deal with difficult topics like race if we prevent them from learning about them?
>Maybe you are aware of some example that i'm not, though.
I linked to another example in a different comment.[1]
When an online platform is a de-facto monopoly, like Twitter or Facebook, I don't think it should be unilaterally censoring user content. I understand that content policy is a difficult problem, but I don't think "they are a private company they can do whatever they want" is the right answer.
Name a single such law passed in the past 4 years in the US? (Laws regulating the curricula of state-funded public schools don't count. Not using taxpayer money to support a view ≠ impinging on the right of private citizens and organizations to express that view with their own resources and funds)
I will ignore the bizarre exception you are making for "Laws regulating the curricula of state-funded public schools" because I can still point to other examples. Here is a law that passed this month in Florida that dictates what topics employers can discuss in diversity training programs.[1]
It's not a bizarre exception, it's completely normal. If a math teacher tells their students that 2+2=5, it's not an assault on free speech to fire the teacher.
I like how you challenged me to listed an example thinking none existed, I list an example, and then you completely ignored that I did. You didn't even try to weasel out of it by saying that example doesn't qualify, just fully 100% ignored that I proved you wrong.
I didn't "weasel out" of anything, I didn't address a portion of your comment because I judged that another commenter had already said everything I would have said.
Why those reporting need to be intentionally biased? The bill is clearly about what the training programs can teach, not “discuss”. These two are clearly different. When a training program teaches white employees they are inherently racist, it’s totally different from a random person raises this idea from discussion.
This is a continuation of the same problem I highlighted before because it pretends that self-censorship only happens on the right. I have been through over a dozen diversity training courses in my career. Not a single one has ever said "white employees are inherently racists". This law is written against strawmen examples. Their goal isn't to stop those extreme examples. It is supposed to make companies fearful enough of a lawsuit, remember a lawsuit doesn't have to win to be costly and damaging, that they either dumb down this training or stop it entirely. The problem with censorship is not just what is actively censored. There is a much broader chilling effect that ends up censoring more topics even if they aren't explicitly banned.
Not to mention the censorship pressure exerted by family values groups’ complaints to the FCC. Those are generally very conservative groups who want to protect children from seeing a breast.
Some seem to think that "cancel culture" started 5 years ago as well. It's a strange position to take which indicates a near total lack of research into the topic.
What is insane is when people frame anti-censorship as an alt-right value. That offends people like me who are staunchly liberal but completely anti-censorship to my core.
It's so pervasive that you can't even have an anti-censorship opinions on Reddit without getting lumped in with the alt-right and banned from subreddits. The nuance of "I disagree with you but defend your right to say it" is dying a painful death. Defend free speech and get accused of being alt-right or wanting to say the n-word.
Another thing dying is the defense of protests. I made a couple comments in popular Canadian subreddits about the truckers and was banned from a few for saying "protest isn't meant to make people feel happy and if the protestors don't make you feel uncomfortable you either agree with them or they're not doing their job". I got banned from one with the reason being "be gone nazi scum go try parler".
If you are talking about r/Ottawa, I can explain their reaction. What happened in downtown Ottawa was not a protest, but an occupation with heavy machinery in an attempt to make the PM look bad, and have to step down. There were many, many posters in that sub trying to paint the whole thing as a peaceful protest, but after a week of 150 air horns for ~18 hours a day, the benefit of the doubt was gone, and everyone repeating the same garbage was turfed.
Additionally, the sub saw many multiples of normal traffic, so mods were quick to ban anyone posting anything resembling a Fox talking point.
>What happened in downtown Ottawa was not a protest, but an occupation
Here's exactly my problem. This is the only narrative people are allowed to have on mainstream subreddits.
I'll admit it wasn't 100% peaceful but let's be honest here - it wasn't violent either and it wasn't an occupation. They demanded the PM step down or be removed by the GG because they don't understand how politics work here but visit some Canadian subreddits and what was done is widely regarded as a coup attempt. The view that it was a coup, or even an attempted coup, is literally insane and hysterical.
Regarding the length of the protest - Ottawa police sat on their hands and did nothing to stop or remove the truckers. When they finally did lift a finger to remove them they successfully removed them. It took 3 days but if they had just done something earlier it wouldn't have grown to as big as it did.
Is there an example of a thriving online community that has absolutely no censorship? One gets the sense that once a platform commits publicly to never censor, it's overrun by people with extreme opinions, and the platform loses more reasonable people, who actually are the largest majority.
There's a difference a mile wide between censoring discussions between adults about complex current issues and censoring books being given to children.
On the right, banning books means trying to prevent their kids from reading them. But on the left it often means trying to prevent anyone from reading them.
For Twitter, perhaps a good compromise would be: instead of banning problematic accounts, set to them a "default-mute" state where only people who choose to follow the account can see its tweets.
Automatic over-the-air updates to cars do constitute a national security concern. A nation-state adversary who infiltrates the manufacturer can brick the cars, impeding the ability of essential employees to commute to work. And if the cars can be updated while on the road (either by design or by exploiting a vulnerability), it can be even worse.
How is this any different than everything else that is connected the grid. Sure a nation state could brick some cars or force them to drive without a driver. Shutting down critical infrastructure such as electricity generation, or water purification would do far more damage.
>Shutting down critical infrastructure such as electricity generation, or water purification would do far more damage.
I mean, this is true right now, and so those things (and hospitals and governments) are being targeted right now. Lots of stories about ransomware recently, and allegedly it's part of the hostilities in Ukraine.
When there is enough centralized infrastructure controlling enough cars, then targeting it will do more damage, so it would be logical to do more of it.
