[HN Gopher] The Bullshit
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The Bullshit
Author : hoffmannesque
Score : 90 points
Date : 2021-08-15 19:25 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (walterkirn.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (walterkirn.substack.com)
| lordnacho wrote:
| I feel a bit privileged, and in a dangerous way, because feeling
| like you're special can be an illusion that is easily shattered.
|
| Here's what I mean. If I was born earlier, like say a baby
| boomer, I'd have less education in critical thinking, but I'd
| also be more protected by the news media than the time when gen Z
| grew up. By that I mean most of the stuff in the paper at the
| time was down the middle, somewhat bland but serious, and the
| editors took it upon themselves to keep things balanced. They'd
| acknowledge other viewpoints and think properly about how to fit
| in their own perspectives.
|
| If I was a gen Z kid, it was and is all a blur. Just loads of
| crap mixed in with everything. Chaos, no particular authority is
| obvious. More time spent in education but also more noise. Fewer
| cultural lighthouses since everyone is watching different things
| (both news and wider culture) and able to stay within whatever
| they already believe.
|
| When I grew up I had a leg in each era. I still think some papers
| are better than others. But I also see the cacophony of crap for
| what it is.
|
| Boomers have ended up in this world too and it's horrifying. My
| university educated in laws in the UK are doubting the outcome of
| elections in the US. They come up with crazy things from time to
| time, like they're missing a critical thinking inoculation.
| tomp wrote:
| _> My university educated in laws in the UK are doubting the
| outcome of elections in the US._
|
| Democracy is like science. If you don't constantly doubt at
| least a little bit and check the outcome continuously, but
| instead just trust blindly, you're doing it wrong.
| rcurry wrote:
| Writing off an entire generation of people as lacking critical
| thinking skills seems a bit short-sighted.
| epgui wrote:
| No generation in History thus far has demonstrated general
| possession of this skill.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| As is evidenced by writing off the critical thinking skills
| of others. None of us are terribly good at critical
| thinking.
|
| Now I think about it, that likely particularly applies to
| those of us who believe we are great at critical thinking.
| OneLeggedCat wrote:
| If that's short-sighted, then it is only because that should
| also be applied to every generation. Most people of every
| generation in the world still believe in magic, which excuses
| any need to fully develop critical thinking skills.
| lordnacho wrote:
| I'm not writing off entire generations, these are just
| generalities. It's a bit sad to have to caveat everything one
| says with "but of course there are still people who know how
| to think", because it's fairly obvious that certain unsaid
| things are the case.
| edoceo wrote:
| TLDR: modern news media is the bullshit and a time-suck.
|
| Some neat anecdotes in there tho.
| krona wrote:
| It's no longer a credible business model to simply report what
| you see to a wider audience. We have Twitter, Facebook, YouTube
| and every person on the planet with a smartphone for that. (See
| the fall of Kabul for the latest example.)
|
| When people read the news they expect a lens upon the world that
| they agree with, that connects to everything else in a coherent
| narrative that confirms what it was they thought they knew. This
| fakeness (or 'bullshit') is a form of _hypernormalization_ for
| the consumerist society.
| skybrian wrote:
| This is a good, well-written rant, but rants are a form of
| bullshitting, aren't they?
| tboyd47 wrote:
| This was a rare gem of well-measured prose here. I laughed out
| loud a couple of times and had to go back and read it over again.
| Thanks.
| tomnipotent wrote:
| > but it isn't the news and it hasn't been for ages.
|
| I have a better idea. The news has always been shit.
|
| There's this weird fetish with "freedom of the press" that
| distorts the fact that news is still a business, run by free
| market forces, with the same distributions of incompetence and
| corruption as any free market.
|
| It used to be the "nightly news", but we now have a 24/7 always-
| on consumption culture and news orgs have adapted to fill in all
| those remaining hours. Consolidation hasn't helped, but I can
| look at any news clipping from the early 20th century and see the
| same level of bullshit I see today.
| User23 wrote:
| In the excellent The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin[1] the
| author describes that Freedom of the Press isn't worth a whit
| unless you own one and that was why he got into the printing
| business. It's been common knowledge for a very long time that
| the primary purpose of political reporting is to persuade and
| not to inform.
|
| [1]
| https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52309.The_Autobiography_...
| brundolf wrote:
| As with any field in a capitalist society, good things can only
| really come from those who care more about what they're working
| on than about any associated profit-motive.
|
| I do think that many journalists in the past operated this way.
| They would chase a story not because it was profitable, but
| because it was important. Not all of them, maybe not even most,
| but many. Nobody goes into journalism for the huge paychecks.
|
| And of course some people like this still exist, but:
|
| Anecdotally, it seems to me like there's been a shift across
| all sectors (not just journalism) away from professional
| integrity or civic duty and towards cynical profit-motive. You
| can see it in everything from hospitals, to universities, to
| technical companies like Boeing.
|
| I don't know if it's because the people who used to care care
| less, or because the people who never cared are being put in
| charge. I don't know if centralization/acquisition is to blame,
| or stock market pressures, or private equity, or some cultural
| phenomenon. But it feels like we're only careening further down
| this path with each passing year.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _it seems to me like there 's been a shift across all
| sectors (not just journalism) away from professional
| integrity_
|
| It starts with the meaning of "professional". I know of two
| opposite ones:
|
| 1. "Professional" as in doing high quality work, no corner
| cutting, having respect for the problem and the customer.
|
| 2. "Professional" as in putting business first, with the
| implication that any possible corner will be cut, any
| possible sacrifice on quality will be made, if it makes the
| business more money.
|
| The second meaning is what I've been seeing increasingly
| often over the years. It's a frequent sentiment in our
| industry - it's _professional_ to keep applying subpar
| tooling and methods to a problem, because upskilling costs
| money short-term. It 's _professional_ to bloat your product
| and make your users pay an implicit tax, because it 's saving
| fraction of those costs for the company.
|
| > _I don 't know if it's because the people who used to care
| care less, or because the people who never cared are being
| put in charge (...)_
|
| I sometimes wonder if the answer is: none of those, things
| have always been as shitty - it's you and me who are growing
| up and discovering the world for what it is (and/or growing
| more cynical in the process).
| tlarkworthy wrote:
| My theory is its data driven decision making. It's messed up
| the corporation to be purely metrics driven. Everyone hunts
| the metrics and misses the qualitative reasons for anything.
| We distrust internal models now, and try to be purely
| empirical, which is a mistake. We are overly technology now,
| but the technology lacks nuance and long term reasoning.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| What irks me about data-driven decision making are two
| things:
|
| 1. Correctly reasoning from data is a very difficult task,
| needing advanced skills, requiring deep understanding of
| statistics. Most companies have nobody with such skill set
| on board.
|
| 2. It provides a fake air of legitimacy to otherwise
| arbitrary decisions. Whether by mistake (confirming your
| own biases with data) or on purpose, you can use data to
| justify whatever decision you already want to make, few
| people know enough statistics to call you on your bullshit.
| tomnipotent wrote:
| > They would chase a story not because it was profitable, but
| because it was important
|
| They operated the same way they do now, and worked on
| whatever their bosses told them to work on. It's just
| romantic to think they were unburdened by our mortal
| contrivances and somehow had the wherewithal to pick out
| "important" stories.
| brundolf wrote:
| Do you push for good engineering practices at your job,
| even when they go beyond the quarterly business goals? I
| know I do.
|
| It doesn't have to be just one or the other. You can have
| principles and push for what you believe to be good, even
| if your boss is ultimately profit-driven (even if you have
| some profit-incentive of your own!). Multiple factors come
| together. It's incredibly cynical of you to paint that sort
| of basic integrity as nothing but a romantic fantasy.
|
| What I feel like I'm seeing today is that people are either
| less willing or less able to enact higher principles in
| their work. It could very possibly be a power-dynamic
| thing, or it could just be the spread of general cynicism
| like yours.
| tomnipotent wrote:
| All professions have a distribution of competence,
| whether you're looking at programmers or journalists.
|
| There's no evidence that the distribution of good
| journalists has fundamentally changed over time other
| than the effects of just a larger pool of eligible
| candidates. A quick glance through Peabody and Pulitzer
| winners over time can quickly confirm this.
|
| If anything, I'd argue people are far more principled
| today than any other point in recorded history. Maybe
| they're just not your principles.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| Yes, but journalists are usually journalist because they WANT
| to be journalists. Local journalism pays rates that make
| teachers look like kings, and local journalists routinely put
| in 60-80 hours of work a week. It's a job that requires
| passion, because there are far more of them who are making
| under minimum wage at an hourly rate than there are who are
| making six figures.
| inreverse wrote:
| Do you have any (including speculative) ideas that could
| explain why our news is so bad, given that most journalists
| are passionate about their work?
| pessimizer wrote:
| Yes, but there are barely any of this type of journalist
| anymore, and barely any outlets for them to be published in.
|
| What there are are a lot of connected people who went from
| elite schools to exclusive unpaid internships, jobs in
| prestige nonprofit PR departments, and consulting firms, then
| to national outlets at very high salaries. Their coworkers
| are ex-politicians and campaign flacks, and people who worked
| at massive hedge funds and investment banks, who decided that
| they preferred punditry and socializing to their jobs.
|
| The people you're talking about are bloggers/substack people
| now, and are generally denigrated by mainstream outlets.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| Oh, you mean other than about 90% of journalists in
| America.
|
| I worked around multiple newsrooms. It's clear that you
| have not.
|
| There is a very big world outside of the corner of the
| internet that you live in. And it still exists despite the
| internet trying to kill it off. Most "hometown" papers
| still exist. Go find some of them. Read them. What you'll
| see is that most of them are staffed by about 5-6 people, a
| few freelancers, and then a bunch of bylines that are
| simply the name of the paper, because they don't want you
| to realize how short-staffed they are (these are also
| written by those same journalists and editors).
|
| That's the reality of the modern newsroom for the VAST
| majority of news outlets in the US.
| tomnipotent wrote:
| > but journalists are usually journalist because they WANT to
| be journalists
|
| So do accountants. And actuaries. And doctors. And
| programmers. And artists. And pretty much most every other
| profession. There's nothing special about clergy or
| journalists or doctors because they chose the career they
| did.
|
| > and local journalists routinely put in 60-80 hours of work
|
| This is just more romanticism. I'd wager that the
| distribution of hours of journalists looks very similar to
| most professionals.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| Yeah, I'll put my 13 years of working around newsrooms and
| with journalists against your fantasy of what they're like
| any day.
| tomnipotent wrote:
| I've done startups for 25 years which has included
| publishing, there's nothing special about the hours of
| journalists. Every profession thinks that they put in
| more work and hours than others. Ask anyone at a law
| firm.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| Oh, "startups" you say? So no actual newsroom experience.
|
| Well, when I want to know what it's like to fuck around
| with Wordpress, I'll ask for your input.
|
| Bullshit indeed.
| tomnipotent wrote:
| Only a Top 100 internet property with billions of monthly
| impressions and hundreds of writers, but yeah sure no
| experience. Grow up.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| That's both adorable and utterly irrelevant to the topic
| at hand. I've worked in a newsroom. You've heard of one.
| It's like you're intellectually flagellating yourself
| with your own brand of self-importance at this point.
| tomnipotent wrote:
| > you're intellectually flagellating yourself
|
| There's nothing special about newsroom journalists. Like
| somehow they're the only people on the planet with
| deadlines, or that everyone is waking their editor up at
| 3am with that important story that just needs to make
| morning print.
| dibujante wrote:
| Uh-huh, because if something is bullshit then anything that
| disagrees with it is anti-bullshit. Fauci says masks are bad?
| That clearly self-serving bullshit entitles you to any reality
| you want. Don't think Covid is real? Well, some liberal elite
| once told you a false thing and they also believe Covid is real,
| so it's the bullshit. You're standing up to the bullshit. They
| only have to step in their own once to entitle you to spend your
| entire life head-over-heels in your own bullshit and it's fine
| because it's not THEIR cowpie.
| snarkyturtle wrote:
| Dude needs an editor. If mainstream news is bullshit, at least
| it's readable bullshit.
| nicoffeine wrote:
| > What has changed is that the press used to maintain certain
| boundaries in the relationship, observing the incest taboo. It
| kept its pants zipped, at least in public. It didn't hire ex-CIA
| directors, top FBI men, NSA brass, or other past and future
| sources to sit beside its anchors at spot-lit news-desks that
| blocked our view of their lower extremities. But it gave in.
|
| Incredibly, this essay about bullshit is bullshit. Here's a snip
| of journalism from 1977:
|
| "Alsop is one of more than 400 American journalists who in the
| past twenty-five years have secretly carried out assignments for
| the Central Intelligence Agency, according to documents on file
| at CIA headquarters. Some of these journalists' relationships
| with the Agency were tacit; some were explicit. There was
| cooperation, accommodation and overlap. Journalists provided a
| full range of clandestine services--from simple intelligence
| gathering to serving as go-betweens with spies in Communist
| countries. Reporters shared their notebooks with the CIA. Editors
| shared their staffs. Some of the journalists were Pulitzer Prize
| winners, distinguished reporters who considered themselves
| ambassadors without-portfolio for their country. Most were less
| exalted: foreign correspondents who found that their association
| with the Agency helped their work; stringers and freelancers who
| were as interested in the derring-do of the spy business as in
| filing articles; and, the smallest category, full-time CIA
| employees masquerading as journalists abroad. In many instances,
| CIA documents show, journalists were engaged to perform tasks for
| the CIA with the consent of the managements of America's leading
| news organizations."[1]
|
| The long, well documented history of intelligence services mixing
| in with journalism is impossible to miss if you do any research
| at all.
|
| > The other day when Cuba erupted in protests, numerous stories
| explained the riots, confidently, instantly, as demands for COVID
| vaccines.
|
| This is more bullshit. The protest started on July 11th. Here are
| some headlines/bylines/opening paragraphs from that week:
|
| (BBC 7/13) Cuba protests: Arrests after thousands rally against
| government: Dozens of people have been arrested in Cuba after
| thousands joined the biggest protests for decades against the
| island's Communist government, media and opposition sources
| say.[2]
|
| (Reuters 7/11) Cuba sees biggest protests for decades as pandemic
| adds to woes -- Chanting "freedom" and calling for President
| Miguel Diaz-Canel to step down, thousands of Cubans joined street
| protests from Havana to Santiago on Sunday in the biggest anti-
| government demonstrations on the Communist-run island in
| decades.[3]
|
| (WaPo 7/12) Cubans hold biggest anti-government protests in
| decades; Biden says U.S. stands with people -- Communist Cuba
| erupted in its largest-scale demonstrations in decades on Sunday
| as thousands of people chanting "freedom" and "yes, we can" took
| to the streets from Havana to Santiago de Cuba in a major new
| challenge to an authoritarian government struggling to cope with
| increasingly severe blackouts, food shortages and a spiking
| coronavirus outbreak.[4]
|
| The only way you could arrive at the same conclusion is if you
| did not read any of the news from that week.
|
| Take the author's advice, avoid bullshit. However, actual
| bullshit is usually essays like this, which are really opinion
| pieces that do not attempt to mention any facts at all. If your
| "alternative media" is nothing but opinion pieces that count
| other similarly prejudiced opinions as research, it's bullshit
| all the way down. Journalism has some bullshit mixed in, as does
| everything, but at least there's a chance you will walk away with
| some information.
|
| [1] http://www.carlbernstein.com/magazine_cia_and_media.php
|
| [2] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-57813704
|
| [3] https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/street-protests-
| break...
|
| [4] https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/07/11/cuba-
| protest...
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| These recent substack articles which have been posted to HN are
| interesting. Not because the people who write the articles are
| intelligent and serious thinkers, because if they are, they
| definitely aren't showing it via their prose.
|
| They're interesting because they show exactly the sort of vacuous
| garbage one can expect when an amateur is is trying to make a
| name for themselves as a writer and has no editor to slap their
| hand or even ask for some sort of coherence.
| bobmaxup wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Kirn
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| Essayist is a more concise way to describe someone who
| engages in long-form verbal diarrhea. It takes neither moral
| courage nor intellectual valor to declare oneself above the
| fray without describing your method for being so.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > He has also reviewed books for New York Magazine and has
| written for The New York Times Book Review and New York
| Times Sunday Magazine, and is a contributing editor of
| Time, where he has received popularity for his entertaining
| and sometimes humorous first-person essays among other
| articles of interest. He also served as an American
| cultural correspondent for the BBC.
|
| > In addition to teaching nonfiction writing at the
| University of Montana, Kirn was the 2008-09 Vare Nonfiction
| Writer in Residence at the University of Chicago. He
| graduated with an A.B. in English from Princeton University
| in 1983 after completing a 22-page-long senior thesis
| entitled "Entangling Breaths (Poems)." Following that, he
| obtained a second undergraduate degree in English
| Literature at Oxford University, where he was a Keasbey
| Scholar.
|
| You don't think this guy can get a job as an editor?
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| I think that guy seriously NEEDS an editor. All writers
| do.
| peytn wrote:
| Wow, this guy must have something to say with haters like
| these.
| [deleted]
| heydemo wrote:
| "The real news is my banned covid conspiracy fb page. Everything
| else serves the elites" yeah ok
| mistermann wrote:
| Is this from the article?
| Jtsummers wrote:
| It is not. I thought I'd missed something but GP is just
| making a snide remark.
| smoldesu wrote:
| I'll try not to be an ass, but it's hard to not count any of the
| time I spend reading this as "bullshit time," as he might put it.
| OneLeggedCat wrote:
| He recognizes exactly that in the last several sentences.
| smitty1e wrote:
| Manadatory Harry G. Frankfurt "On Bullshit" reference =>
| https://www.amazon.com/Bullshit-Harry-G-Frankfurt/dp/0691122...
|
| It's a personal amusement of mine that the singnal-to-noise ratio
| on the internet is so terrible. Sorry, Tim Berners-Lee. The
| abysmal state of facts on the internet also seems a failure of
| capitalism of sorts: a low-distortion news channel doesn't _seem_
| an impossible business model, but here we are.
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