[HN Gopher] Are we living in the age of info-determinism?
___________________________________________________________________
Are we living in the age of info-determinism?
Author : pseudolus
Score : 55 points
Date : 2024-08-13 10:47 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.newyorker.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.newyorker.com)
| pseudolus wrote:
| https://archive.ph/tYpml
| setopt wrote:
| Betteridge would say no.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > How can a society function when the rejection of knowledge
| becomes a political act?
|
| It cannot.
|
| Living in a "post-truth" society is just a sanitized way of
| saying living in a society without truth. Such a society must
| inevitably collapse.
| blueflow wrote:
| > Such a society must inevitably collapse.
|
| No evidence for that.
| JohnFen wrote:
| I think that there is, but in true post-truth form, that's
| not relevant to my statement. I was stating an opinion.
| blueflow wrote:
| And I'm saying that countries like North Korea,
| unfortunately, don't collapse.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I would argue that North Korea has already collapsed, and
| we are looking at the results.
| JohnFen wrote:
| North Korea and such nations aren't post-truth at all,
| though. They have little-t truths that most of their
| people believe in. That's what I'm talking about. I'm not
| talking about capital-T Truth (of the objective sort).
| rob74 wrote:
| Well, North Korea doesn't have "post-truth". It has good
| (or bad) old propaganda and brainwashing, but "post-
| truth" for me implies a plurality of (increasingly
| polarized) opinions. So "post-truth" can only happen in
| democratic societies, and is actually used by non-
| democratic states (Russia, North Korea, China...) to
| destabilize them.
| evgwugegwhwgeg wrote:
| Rejection of beliefs not knowledge. There is a significant
| difference between the two.
| ben_w wrote:
| 20 years ago, I studied philosphy.
|
| Can you define "knowledge"?
|
| We had the tripartite definition, a "justified true belief",
| and the argument against it exemplified by a person looking
| at a fluffy white creature in a field and justifiably saying
| that they know there is a sheep in this field, but
| unbeknownst to them what they're looking at is a komondor and
| though there is a sheep elsewhere in the field it is not
| visible from where they are.
|
| I think there is only belief, that we can have degrees of
| certainty about our beliefs but there is no way to transition
| to P(1) or P(0), and no specific probability other than 0 and
| 1 where we can reliably say that we "know" something to be
| true or false.
| evgwugegwhwgeg wrote:
| Knowledge is seeing a white pattern in visual field.
|
| Belief is labeling the pattern and calling it a sheep.
|
| Belief is also the labeling the pattern a Komondor.
|
| Belief is thinking there is a person seeing the sheep.
| ben_w wrote:
| > Knowledge is seeing a white pattern in visual field.
|
| That definition classifies every dream I have dreamed,
| every video I've seen, every game I've played, as
| "knowledge".
|
| If anything, it is an easier thing to dismiss than the
| examples you give as "beliefs".
|
| See "naive realism":
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naive_realism
| evgwugegwhwgeg wrote:
| Can beliefs exist without sensory inputs?
|
| Also isn't dismissal also just another belief?
| ben_w wrote:
| 1. Dreams, so probably yes
|
| 2. I'm saying everything is
| bee_rider wrote:
| Most societies collapse eventually.
|
| Societies built on lies can go on for quite a while, there are
| tests, a war for example, that can finish them off. But even
| then, they might stumble along.
| silverquiet wrote:
| I don't think there is such a thing as truth; at least not for
| anything that matters to human meaning. The truth is we're just
| apes living on a planet that we're unable to stop ourselves
| from destroying; a tiny, ultimately meaningless rock that will
| be gone one day in a universe that won't even notice, let alone
| care. That truth is very hard to accept (I never really have)
| and so we create other stories to give us meaning, but these
| stories are too arbitrary and subjective for us to collectively
| agree upon.
| hoorayimhelping wrote:
| > _I don 't think there is such a thing as truth_
|
| This is a self-defeating statement. It's false on its face.
| If there is no such thing as truth, then this statement can't
| be true because it would mean there is at least one truth.
| gadflyinyoureye wrote:
| Not really. It's a hyperbolic statement. It needs to be
| understood as such.
|
| Normally this falls into the realm of moral truth. Or
| perhaps in a broader sense existential truth. For example:
| rape is wrong is not an absolute truth. It's just like your
| opinion man.
|
| In an entirely materialistic system morality is not
| universal. It merely the taste of whatever society wants at
| a time. Morality is ultimately might makes right. If you
| can enforce your morality through force, your morality
| wins. If the pro-rape camp could enforce their view, within
| a few generations we'd all say that the anti-rape camp was
| on the wrong side of history.
| dgfitz wrote:
| > I don't think there is such a thing as truth; at least not
| for anything that matters to human meaning.
|
| 1+1 = 2, the earth is ~80% water, water freezes at 0degC.
|
| What to you mean there aren't truths?
|
| Do you mean people form opinions that are wrong? Sure. After
| sitting back at looking at it, it seems like the big problem
| is: there are small circles of power that make decisions for
| the rest of their population under the guise of "best
| interest of the people" when in reality we all know this
| isn't true.
|
| So these small groups make the little people distracted with
| things that are very hot-button topics that affect a very
| small majority of people, by making appeals to emotion on
| both sides.
|
| The small folks eat this up, rip a huge divide, and the small
| circle people sit back and laugh.
| pchristensen wrote:
| Engineers have a hard time with this, because we work in a
| very 1-0, falsifiable world.
|
| When people talk about "truth" with regard to society,
| government, politics, culture, etc, they're talking about
| "the story". A story is something that shortcuts
| discussion, an agreement that two parties don't need to
| litigate the foundation of.
|
| Take the statement "Joe Biden is president of the USA."
| Many people accept that as truth not requiring further
| discussion. Many people do not accept that for a variety of
| reasons. If you're going to make that statement, you need
| to be prepared that some percentage of those hearing it
| will object. There are people that will object to "The
| earth is round."
|
| So "post-truth" means that there's not a stable foundation
| of generally agreed upon facts. The least common
| denominator for discussion and agreement is smaller.
| dgfitz wrote:
| > Many people do not accept that for a variety of
| reasons.
|
| That doesn't mean it isn't true about Biden being
| president. It is a fact, Biden is the sworn-in president
| of the United States. The part where people don't believe
| this doesn't make the world post-truth, it just makes
| some people wrong.
|
| I don't care how hard someone believes Biden isn't
| president, he is. he was sworn in, this is a fact, not an
| opinion, not a story, not up for debate. The dude was
| sworn in as the president, he is the president.
|
| Was he elected fairly? I think so, some don't. Debate
| that, sure. If two people on the opposite of that debate
| try and convince the other, it won't happen. That isn't
| post-truth, at all.
|
| Truth still exists. People don't look for it. I posted
| this the other day as an example: My Brother-in-Law said
| recently "The NFL has declining viewership and is losing
| interest because of all the different platforms they
| stream to." Which I'm sure he heard/read somewhere, and
| knowing the fella, had a political slant towards what he
| was saying. I do not know what the slant was, but I DO
| know he was wrong. The NFL had one of the best ratings
| years ever in the 23-24 season.
|
| My brother in law is just spouting nonsense. He didn't
| try and find the truth. We argued for 3 minutes, I pulled
| up the numbers, and he was wrong.
|
| That isn't post-truth, it is willful ignorance, choosing
| to believe a false narrative because it aligns with core
| values.
| silverquiet wrote:
| Trivial facts, yes. I like "1 second is the time needed for
| Cesium-133 to vibrate 9,192,631,770 times" or "the metre
| has been defined as the length of the path travelled by
| light in vacuum during a time interval of 1/299792458 of a
| second", but who cares if the values were a bit different?
|
| What does a life well lived mean? Is there a god or gods?
| Which one should one worship if so? What does it mean to be
| a good or bad person? Where does one find meaning? I don't
| believe there are truthful answers to questions like that,
| and modernity seems to annihilate the answers that cultures
| have developed in past. I'm not particularly versed in
| Nietzsche, but I believe he said it as "God is dead. God
| remains dead. And we have killed him."
| dgfitz wrote:
| You're moving the goalposts. This seems to be happening a
| lot lately...
|
| You posited a lot of philosophical questions, and quoted
| a famous philosopher.
|
| "Philosophy is the study of fundamental questions about
| the nature of reality, knowledge, and value. These are
| questions that everyone asks" [0]
|
| If you're trying to say "we don't have answers to the
| philosophical questions of our time" I would agree with
| you. This would not be a salient point on your end, or
| even a useful one. This is an example of a well-
| established... dare I say... fact.
|
| [0] https://www.cmich.edu/academics/colleges/liberal-
| arts-social...
| silverquiet wrote:
| I don't feel like I moved any goalposts, but I'll fully
| admit that I'm not among the best at using language here.
| Objective fact may be possible, but truth is a human
| value and I no longer believe that such a thing exists.
| It's actually rather simple to get there from just what
| you said above. If "Philosophy is the study of
| fundamental questions about the nature of reality,
| knowledge, and value." and "we don't have answers to the
| philosophical questions of our time", then it would seem
| to follow that we cannot agree on the nature of reality
| which would seem to me to mean that we cannot find a
| truth that all can agree upon.
|
| Believe me, I'm not happy about it either.
| svieira wrote:
| Fortunately, Nietzsche was simply diagnosing a disease
| rather than expounding on the nature of health. Yes, many
| of us in the 20th and 21st centuries _act like_ God is
| dead. But "right is right, even if nobody thinks it is"
| is something that people have recognized since ... oh,
| Socrates? And once you probe how something can be "right"
| even if "[everyone in society]" disagrees you find a law
| giver. That's when the rubber _really_ meets the road.
| ryandv wrote:
| > "right is right, even if nobody thinks it is" is
| something that people have recognized since ... oh,
| Socrates?
|
| Something recognized since Socrates, whose death was
| foretold by Nietzsche, and finally rendered obsolete by
| the postmodernists a la Baudrillard (1981):
| All Western faith and good faith became engaged in this
| wager on representation: that a sign could refer
| to the depth of meaning, that a sign could be
| exchanged for meaning and that something could
| guarantee this exchange-God of course.
|
| To parse this idea properly it is important to define
| your terms, and lack of adequate definition is what leads
| to confusion especially as regards philosophical and
| especially religious discourse. "God" here should be
| taken to mean the belief in an absolute truth, a common,
| shared, objective reality from which our subjective
| realities are derived; metaphysics, spirits, ghosts,
| "energies," New Age quantum bullshit, and creationism all
| need not apply here (and are better dispensed with). It
| is the underlying reality to which all symbols refer; the
| concept of the pure simulacrum, the hyperreal, is a
| symbol with no reference to any underlying reality
| whatsoever, no referent, and thus untethered to any
| actual reality - atheistic and "without God."
|
| Language and rational discourse are based upon this
| principle - that when we exchange words or symbols with
| one another that refer to a thing, we have some hope in
| hell of referring to the same thing, such that I can
| represent an object in the "external world," or even a
| thought in my intellectual "internal world" or "soul",
| serialize it into a literate form, and have you
| deserialize that literate string into the same
| intellectual or cognitive structures that I beheld in my
| own soul when I put those words together and hoped to
| communicate to you.
|
| "The death of God" means that we can no longer guarantee
| this exchange of "meaning" between minds/souls (both of
| which I regard as terms that refer to exactly the same
| thing and are perfectly coextensive), because no symbols
| are tethered to an underlying objective meaning nor
| reality. Language and definitions are relative,
| malleable, subject to revision. Context and intent of
| language and expressions are irrelevant; the meaning of
| any string of symbols is now unilaterally determined by
| their impact or impression on the receiver, and thus any
| subjective meaning can be inferred from any expression.
|
| The condition of post-truth is a consequence of this
| rejection of objective reality, of the elevation of
| relativism to the highest degree, and the confusion of
| (hyperreal, manufactured) symbols with actual reality.
| There is no objective truth any more, only relativism,
| narrative, and belief.
| lainga wrote:
| Plato has dealt with both of these already in the analogy
| of the divided line as _dianoia_ (mathematical reasoning)
| and _noesis_ (understanding). To Plato, facts are
| likenesses of the truth, just as an imagined object is a
| likeness of a real object.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analogy_of_the_divided_line
| apantel wrote:
| Nothing you said is truth. Those are just your own blind
| beliefs. How do you know the universe is meaningless? Maybe
| it's a simulation being run for a purpose, and the beings
| running it care about the outcome. You're just spouting YOUR
| truth, which is not truth at all.
| silverquiet wrote:
| > Maybe it's a simulation being run for a purpose, and the
| beings running it care about the outcome.
|
| This sounds an awful lot like a higher being who sits in
| judgement of their creation; and something that humanity
| seems to reach for very quickly. I was taught something
| similar as a child, but lost the belief when I was still
| quite young. I'd love to believe in a higher power or
| purpose because nihilism is quite a terrible experience. I
| often wonder if I'm just wired differently so in some way
| unable to believe things as others are or if a lifetime of
| chronic pain has revealed things to me that most people do
| not learn until they are older.
| sgu999 wrote:
| > Such a society must inevitably collapse.
|
| What are the examples of that? It's closer to a phase
| transition than an actual collapse at the kind of scale we're
| talking about here.
|
| I'm not disagreeing with your sentiment, though.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Well, a _technological_ society that loses the idea of truth
| as it relates to science and technology must inevitably
| collapse in its level of technology. You can 't maintain
| functioning tech on a "nothing is true" basis, because you
| cannot tell what will work from what won't.
| complianceowl wrote:
| "truth doesn't exist" -- except for that truth statement you
| just made? If no truth can exist, then why are you making a
| truth statement?
|
| Truth does exist. And the ultimate truth is Christ. Yes, those
| words ring as ignorance to most, but just like we are forced to
| reckon with gravity and the laws of physics, we all will one
| day reckon with the ultimate truth.
|
| But it is not my job to compel anyone to believe this. I just
| find it fascinating that non-believers will believe in magic,
| ghosts, simulations, aliens, evolution, but that a Creator that
| exists outside of time, space, and matter created this
| universe? Nah, that's ignorant religious thinking.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > "truth doesn't exist" -- except for that truth statement
| you just made?
|
| I never said that truth doesn't exist.
| bloopernova wrote:
| I think "post-truth" is a symptom of unequal power. The rich
| and/or powerful can push their version of truth with little or
| no consequences for them. Unfortunately for them, there's a
| tendency for those in power to start believing the yes-men:
|
| For example, in World War 2, the Japanese authoritarian regime
| took over newspapers and newsreels. Any time they would lose a
| battle, or have to withdraw, that would be stated as a victory.
| By the end of 1942, they had stated that the Imperial Japanese
| Navy had sunk _" 11 aircraft carriers, 11 battleships, 46
| cruisers, 48 destroyers, and 93 submarines"_ (December 8th,
| 1942)
|
| The Japenese people could look at maps, and see that the
| "glorious victories" were somehow occurring further and further
| west, closer to home each time. But they had no power, no way
| to challenge the newspapers and announcements from Navy and
| Army HQs. And the constant propaganda had warped the
| perspectives of everyone, including progressives and liberals,
| so they fell in line too.
|
| A large part of Japan's defeat was because they fought an
| opponent capable of out-producing and out-training them. They
| had started to believe their own bullshit about being a
| superior race, about being simply better than the Americans,
| and as you said, collapse was inevitable. Before the atomic
| bombs convinced Hirohito to accept unconditional surrender,
| Japan was close to famine. If the war had lasted into 1946,
| millions of Japanese people would have died of starvation.
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| Absolutely, we are. The greeks recognize the phenomenon early
| through their concept of logos, and how it comes about is teche
| fromw here we get the word "technology".
|
| Currently, we have built our systems so strongly that we
| practically develop technologically deterministically. Can we
| help but develop new computer security technology? No. Can we
| decide NOT to make computers faster, even if making new
| technology constantly requires the unsustainable extraction of
| raw materials and is polluting the entire planet? No, because
| SOMEONE will make their computer faster, so we call have to do so
| to keep up.
|
| Our modern society is so intertwined, that we cannot make
| decisions at ALL on which technologies to develop and which
| technologies not too. The Amish do it, because they have some
| foresight into it social impact, and because they've structured
| their society to place their way of life ABOVE that of
| technology. But the outside world IS technology now, and we are
| but cells in the new amalgamation of humanity and machine and we
| can no longer do anything about it...
|
| ...that is, until someone starts a revolution and destroys it.
| 39896880 wrote:
| This piece mentions Harari's new work. Has anyone read it? I find
| his style appealing but I have also read comments here that are
| eyerolls similar to how Malcolm Gladwell is received, so I am
| wondering if I should even bother.
| klabb3 wrote:
| My understanding is that he wraps Twitter hot takes in an aura
| of credibility through narrative and authority without
| necessarily providing any proof. So in that way I'm skeptical.
| And it's also ironic that an article about post-truth lifts up
| those kinds of ideas.
|
| On the other hand, you could argue that at a certain
| philosophical high level, you can't use current generation
| paradigms to meaningfully explore next generation paradigms
| anyway - so how else are we gonna intuit the world we're
| transitioning into? I suspect that to explain emerging social
| phenomena we're going to have to adopt some strange ideas,
| whether it's neo-religious, postmodernism or Harari-style
| scientism. Pick your flavor I guess..
| dfxm12 wrote:
| _For more and more people, a random YouTuber seemed preferable to
| a credentialled expert_
|
| People are too used to "having a platform" being a credential in
| and of itself. They wouldn't let just anyone be a TV News anchor
| or have a drive time talk radio show or write a book, right?
| There have always been snake oil salesmen, but what's unique
| about today is that it's very easy to make yourself look like Dan
| Rather or Barbara Walters or even Hunter S. Thompson. Some people
| fall into this false authority trap.
|
| Anecdotally, I find that older generations are more willing to
| accept what they see online just because it is "published"
| online. Hopefully this is something that works itself out as more
| and more people grow up with these platforms.
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| Speaking of Dan Rather, remember he tried to pass off a forged
| memo as real and was called out on it by a bunch of bloggers.
|
| And recently Hollywood released a movie that tried to whitewash
| this.
|
| A lot of the hand-wringing about how no one cares for the truth
| is mainly the elite crying over the loss of power to define
| truth for everyone.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| It's important to add that CBS _also retracted this story_.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Which doesn't really happen anymore. How are you going to
| retract Russiagate Pulitzers?
| pjc50 wrote:
| Which Russiagate Pulitzer are you referring to, the 1932
| one?
| lazyeye wrote:
| Obviously not.
| d_watt wrote:
| I would think a key difference is once this was found out,
| Dan Rather was fired.
|
| There will always be failures of integrity. Our expectation
| can't be infallible people, but rather the rigor of an
| organization to care about the failures.
| lazyeye wrote:
| I think its more a case of once _other_ people found out it
| became untenable to keep Dan Rather on.
|
| However if his lies had not become public they would have
| been happy to ignore it and move on to the next thing.
| mountainb wrote:
| Part of the issue is the aborted attempt to turn journalism
| into a profession. Professionals, by and large, carry personal
| liability for errors, negligence, and deliberate bad behavior
| that harms their clients. Journalists are supposed to serve the
| public interest, but they generally only have narrow personal
| liability for torts like defamation. Recent precedent further
| limits that personal liability.
|
| Despite this, journalists in the later part of the 20th century
| successfully created an aura of professionalism borrowed.
| Cronkite, Rather, the 60 Minutes crew, etc. projected a sense
| of seriousness and professional care. In some instances, the
| newspapers really did and to some extent still do engage in
| fact checking and other professional activities to increase
| reliability. However, because all of these measures are self-
| enforcing, they became over time even more corrupted than they
| were before.
|
| They increasingly relied on anonymous sourcing for important
| matters, which is inherently open to abuse (it's why the
| Constitution requires that a defendant be able to confront
| their accusers and witnesses against them). They could no
| longer maintain this false aura because they were repeatedly
| confronted by bloggers and other small creators with evidence
| of their unreliability.
|
| The standard proposed solution to the problems created by
| powerful universal publishing technology tends to be a
| licensing regime of some kind as a preventative measure, or
| otherwise that publishing technology providers submit to close
| supervision by the state (as they did during the cough cough
| era).
|
| I think the better way that comports better with the
| Constitution is to just to enforce the criminal laws and
| facilitate civil suits against individuals retroactively for
| the harms that they cause through illegal speech. There are
| lots of kinds of illegal speech, e.g. you cannot engage in the
| unauthorized practice of law, you cannot provide medical advice
| without a license, you cannot defame people, you cannot incite
| riots, you cannot procure criminal acts, you cannot defraud,
| you cannot infringe on copyright, and so on and so forth. More
| lawsuits and prosecutions for illegal speech -- a reactive way
| of addressing the issues -- is less harmful and better comports
| with the Constitution than proactive means such as requiring
| that every social media user have a license that can be revoked
| or that the platforms submit to close management by the Article
| II government.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > There are lots of kinds of illegal speech, e.g. you cannot
| engage in the unauthorized practice of law, you cannot
| provide medical advice without a license, you cannot defame
| people, you cannot incite riots, you cannot procure criminal
| acts, you cannot defraud, you cannot infringe on copyright,
| and so on and so forth.
|
| Is this sentence unauthorized practice of law?
|
| edit: It's a rhetorical question. If I had power over
| policing and the justice system, and I disagreed with you,
| and it were actually illegal to give legal or medical advice
| to people without a license (which it is not), it would
| absolutely be unauthorized practice of law and the spreading
| of misinformation. I might also claim that you're doing it to
| help Russia weaken a potential future law that would force
| journalists to be licensed. I will claim this with no
| evidence, but I will claim it everywhere, through dozens of
| different, soon-to-be-licensed, mouths. The rumor will be
| used as grounds to investigate you.
| singleshot_ wrote:
| What caused you to believe that the unlicensed practice of
| medicine and law are legal? Are you drawing a distinction
| between advice and information, perhaps?
| pjc50 wrote:
| > you cannot incite riots
|
| We've just been through a week of Americans on Twitter
| getting shocked at Brits on Twitter because there's some,
| very minimal, legal action being taken against people who
| incited riots through false statements on social media. I
| think you need to be much clearer about what this actually
| means. Especially as there has been very little prosecution
| of Jan 6 "inciters" (as opposed to people who were physically
| there committing crimes while being filmed)
| pessimizer wrote:
| Describe "minimal." The new journalism/discourse seems to
| be full of adjectives that presuppose conclusions.
| singleshot_ wrote:
| The Brandenburg court did this pretty explicitly, no?
| pimlottc wrote:
| > Part of the issue is the aborted attempt to turn journalism
| into a profession.
|
| The term "unfunded mandate" come to mind. Journalists should
| aspire to a higher standard (just as software developers
| should), but nobody's incentivizing it. Get the scoop, get
| the clicks, publish first and make it an exclusive.
| Traditional media is getting squeezed from all angles, who's
| got time to fact check, who's got the budget for deep
| research? It's hard to blame the poor journalist, who's just
| trying to survive in a landscape where anyone with a social
| media account is given the same consideration as an
| authority.
| tbrownaw wrote:
| Or maybe instead, distrust of credentialed experts is a natural
| consequence of it becoming easier to catch people out when they
| lie?
|
| If say Fauci declares that there was no gain-of-function
| research, and some random blogger does a FOIA that turns up a
| paper trail proving otherwise? That's much easier to find out
| about these days than if I was limited to what a TV channel or
| two and maybe a couple newspapers decided to cover.
| svieira wrote:
| Earthweb (https://www.baen.com/earthweb.html) is a story of a
| version of the internet where Gurri's "acerbic internet" was a
| more PH-neutral environment.
| bsuvc wrote:
| > I realized that I couldn't restrict my search for evidence to
| the familiar authoritative sources without ignoring a near-
| infinite number of new sources
|
| This happens because the so-called "authoritative sources" have
| lost their trustworthiness, creating a vacuum that is filled by
| new sources, some good and some bad.
|
| The problem is, people are bad at thinking for themselves, and
| basically outsource their beliefs to third parties. Are we worse
| at this than we used to be, or has it always been like this?
|
| We need more primary sources of information, and less filters
| trying to persuade us, who often have unseen agendas and
| different motivations.
| tbrownaw wrote:
| Gathering and evaluating information is hard work and can be a
| significant time sink. Most people have other things going on
| in their lives that they'd like to have time for.
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| Throw in AI crap that can be insanely convincing into the fold
| posted by trolls and people seeking ad eyeballs.
| fuzzfactor wrote:
| >I realized that I couldn't restrict my search for evidence
| to the familiar authoritative sources without ignoring a
| near-infinite number of new sources
|
| This was in the early 2000's when the CIA analyst said this,
| but with familiarity of a time when the _majority_ of online
| sources had been trustworthy (if not completely
| authoritative), it was easier to navigate the pitfalls at the
| time.
|
| It was still possible to judiciously exploit the new sources
| for deep research to a worthwhile degree for another reason
| because there was _lots more_ info (but noisier by far)
| coming from all directions, but I wouldn 't say they were
| exactly near-infinite.
|
| Not compared to today.
|
| Now I would say it's near-infinite.
|
| Although AI may not have yet had the full effect that it
| could be capable of.
|
| So I could be underestimating . . .
| dageshi wrote:
| Who really has the time or energy to actually do all that?
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| Exactly. I was in a discussion thread where someone mentioned
| a book that was accusing some group of becoming apostate (in
| terms of the context of this particular community). Now most
| people in that community don't think the author of said book
| is an unbiased source of information - in fact the bias seems
| quite blatant. But people in the thread were saying "Have you
| read the book?!" and most people said "No, I've got better
| things to do" to which the reply was "Well, then you don't
| want the truth!"... and on and on. Who's got time to check
| out every crackpot source and determine it's veracity?
| Modified3019 wrote:
| Yah this is basically a weaponized version of "Brandolini's
| law" and other related concepts like "Gish gallop".
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini's_law
|
| I personally remember it as "an ounce of bullshit takes a
| pound of truth to clean up".
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| What is funny about all this is treating Harari as some kind of
| expert.
|
| His training is in medieval military history. He is not an
| anthropologist. Yet he is always make grand pronouncements about
| human behavior.
|
| Most of his fame is not due to his academic achievements but
| because he can write very engaging popular works. Harari has a
| lot more in common with a popular YouTube "expert" than he would
| care to admit.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Since he's using the New Yorker's journalism license here, he
| becomes an authority on whatever subject he wants. Disagreeing
| with him here is some sort of "-information" with prefix, and
| may get you deleted on facebook.
| carlmr wrote:
| >His training is in medieval military history. He is not an
| anthropologist. Yet he is always make grand pronouncements
| about human behavior.
|
| Some of the best software engineers studied something else.
| Only because his training is in something else doesn't mean he
| didn't read up on it or is not knowledgeable about human
| behavior.
|
| Also history kind of chronicles aggregate human behavior, so
| it's at least a related discipline.
|
| I'm not saying he is knowledgeable, mind you, I just think you
| shouldn't pigeonhole people based on doing exactly what they
| studied. Because many people don't do exactly what they studied
| and are experts in it.
| JohnMakin wrote:
| I have too often lately been in a situation where I cannot find
| any authoritative sources for a topic where there should be one.
| The first time this happened it was deeply unsettling - I
| couldn't recall going back a decade a single time I couldn't find
| a random piece of information - it was sometime mid-2022. Now
| it's so commonplace I just resign myself that I may just not get
| an answer to whatever question I have.
|
| The most ironic thing would be if this "post truth" situation we
| seem to be in drives people back to brick and mortar libraries.
| keiferski wrote:
| I am curious about the problem from the perspective of a
| startup idea / nonprofit website. What would you look for in an
| authoritative source that doesn't exist now? And which topics
| were you looking into?
| JohnMakin wrote:
| It's not really that they don't exist, but it's silly stupid
| to find them now.
|
| For instance - ddg, google, doesn't really matter the search
| engine - typing in something like "ohtani batting average
| with runners in scoring position with 2 outs" used to be so
| easy it'd practically pop up in the quick answers with the
| exact link to the ESPN table or
| dudewhoneverleavesbasement.com that has tracked every
| baseball stat for the last 150 years.
|
| Now you just get basically the same results for "ohtani
| batting average" or "ohtani news." It's impossibly
| frustrating. It's like that with _everything_ now.
|
| I guess that's more of a problem with search than anything
| else, but honestly, search is the main way people navigate
| the web. If I want anything authoritative, honestly, I'm
| probably going to wikipedia to see a source list and then
| checking out authors in the local library. Anything dated
| post 2022 I consider inherently unreliable.
| keiferski wrote:
| I've had the same bad experience with search as you've had,
| but my conclusion was that AI tools are just going to
| replace "using a search engine" in the near future. Google
| is more and more unusable to me.
|
| That doesn't exactly solve the authoritative problem, but
| theoretically it makes it more centralized (one AI company
| vs. innumerable websites.)
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I find AI to be as bad as search engines, except they
| will try to pass the wrong answer off as the correct one
| gibbitz wrote:
| What worries me is as soon as we accept AI results with
| no fact checking (or ignore it) they will become the
| means to directly manipulate people without any recourse
| for judgement about veracity. Like phishing emails with
| perfect spelling and well formatted HTML.
| keiferski wrote:
| On the one hand this is definitely a potential issue.
|
| On the other hand I'm not sure how the current state of
| the web is really any different. We just rely on Google
| or whatever search engine to "fact check."
| dageshi wrote:
| I think the issue is, dudewhoneverleavesbasement.com
| stopped working on his website and his potential successor
| is more likely to be trying to turn that information into
| an interesting youtube video.
| JohnMakin wrote:
| I think this is definitely _an_ issue but not the only
| one. In the game knowledge part of the web, there used to
| be personal sites written in plain html of some guy's faq
| who figured out every single thing in a final fantasy
| game and google would draw on stuff like that. Now you
| get AI SEO spam heavily monetized drivel that contains a
| lot of inaccurate or outright false info.
|
| I think the small sites like that are either mostly gone
| or simply not ever indexed.
| pjc50 wrote:
| The authoritative source has to be .. authoritative. And it
| also has to be timely, i.e. updated in real time. This is
| _hard_. Being an authoritative source for certain sub-types
| of information is definitely a viable business, but only if
| your information is being used by other people to make
| business decisions. See, for example, the Bloomberg terminal.
|
| But "authoritative" is a social construct.
| apantel wrote:
| The person writing about the thing has to be knowledgeable,
| correct, and telling the truth.
| keiferski wrote:
| Yes, of course, but how are you determining if this is the
| case?
| fuzzfactor wrote:
| Take post-truth and cross it with higher noise than ever and
| you get bullshit squared.
|
| And that's before introducing exponent AI ;)
| throwawayk7h wrote:
| Can you describe an occurence or two like this?
| haunter wrote:
| >authoritative sources
|
| The opposite is a problem too when authoritative sources on X
| topic start to talk about Y topic as if they still have the same
| knowledge and expertise and we should trust them. I see this more
| and more everywhere, here on HN too.
| soared wrote:
| I wonder if this is partially caused by the internet spreading
| accurate knowledge for the first decade or so of its existence,
| which went against people's existing sets of beliefs. After which
| they're primed that the beliefs they held for decades (pre-
| internet) could easily be wrong.
|
| How many times have you believed and old wives tale, but then
| found out it's not true at all? Now apply that less to specific
| beliefs but more generally, and scale it across all your beliefs.
| netsharc wrote:
| > After which they're primed that the beliefs they held for
| decades (pre-internet) could easily be wrong.
|
| I wish the majority of dwellers of the Internet is able to do
| this (I feel I'm quite reflective), but it seems like a lot of
| the noise online is people insisting that they've been right
| the whole time...
| adolph wrote:
| The author would have done well to read "The Beginning of
| Infinity" by Deutsch which has well rounded discussion of
| different methods of epistemology espoused over time. The
| development past authority need not result in anarchy. Deutsch's
| view, embracing fallibility can achieve an advancement of human
| creativity and knowledge.
| isaacremuant wrote:
| Meh. Most comments here seem to be playing this pretense game
| that having to be critical about what you read is something that
| happened post 2016 and pretending the internet somehow changed
| things for the worse when media, biases, political influence and
| propaganda hasn't been a think since the Inception of the written
| word.
|
| If you think we're suddenly "worse" then you're probably too used
| to your alleged set of beliefs being spread and shared by the
| major narrative setters and you were too comfortable in that echo
| chamber.
|
| But hey, it's easier to call anyone who thinks differently some
| name (Today it's customary to rail against the evil right, in
| "the west" but your mileage may vary) and write "insightful
| articles" about post truth eras and the like.
| akira2501 wrote:
| > You can learn more about how Americans live just by looking at
| the backgrounds of YouTube videos--those rumpled bedrooms and
| toy-strewn basement rec rooms--than you could from 1,000 hours of
| network television." Back then, info-determinism was exciting.
| Today, it feels like a challenge which we must surmount, or else.
|
| You can learn more about the deranged minds of CIA officers and
| "public intellectuals" from the backgrounds of their arguments
| than you can from taking them at face value.
|
| These people are _completely afraid_ of living in a world which
| does not require their permission or ideology in order to
| function. This article is written entirely from the "state" point
| of view and completely lacks any "humanity" whatsoever.
|
| > And yet, "the public opposes, but does not propose."
| Demolishing ideas is easy in a subreddit; crafting new ones there
| is mostly beside the point.
|
| Give me a break. Tons of new ideas and new systems and new
| projects have been created on the internet using precisely this
| mechanism and with zero government authority involved. This is a
| completely ridiculous assertion by the article.
|
| > How can a society function when the rejection of knowledge
| becomes a political act?
|
| Is it the rejection of knowledge or simply the rejection of
| authority? Perhaps people expect those in authority to actually
| explain themselves, to act in a transparent manner, and to not
| use their power to unfairly benefit one group over another.
|
| > But democracy on a mass scale depends on mass institutions--
| mass media, mass education, mass culture--that seem likely to
| fracture or mutate with the arrival of A.I. The forms of
| government that flourished in one info-epoch may not thrive in
| the next.
|
| I'm sorry, but what a total crock of shit, this idea that "mass
| anything" is somehow _required_ for "mass democracy" to function,
| or even that "mass democracy" is something experienced in any of
| our governments.
|
| It really sounds like these people want to diminish humanity at
| all costs, in favor of AI, so they can regain control of our
| information space, and have the ability to manipulate the entire
| world en masse and without any oversight or responsibility for
| it.
|
| I'm completely grossed out by this article and the people within
| it.
| ElevenLathe wrote:
| Thank you for articulating these criticisms. IMO people like
| the author are pining for high modernism when we've been in a
| postmodern media (and cultural) landscape for at least a couple
| decades now. It's the same impulse that has extremely online
| right wingers pining for "trad" values while posting waifus.
| They seem to wish we could live in the Eisenhower
| administration forever. Unfortunately for these people, that's
| just not possible.
|
| Edit: also want to add this quote:
|
| >...disillusioned voters might adopt more realistic
| expectations about how much leaders can improve their lives.
|
| This article positions itself against "nihilism" but this is
| the most nihilistic thing I've seen in a piece of political
| writing. This is no more than a way to say that elites should
| tell voters: "Peons, stop expecting your lives to get better.
| That's not our relationship. This is not a democracy, and your
| role in society is to suffer silently while also praising us."
| stonethrowaway wrote:
| We've been dealing with this for some time unfortunately.
| "Democracy" is used when "think of the children" won't sell.
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| > This article is written entirely from the "state" point of
| view and completely lacks any "humanity" whatsoever.
|
| Well of course it's pro-statist: it's from _The New Yorker_.
| There aren 't many more leftist publication than that one and
| leftists _love_ the state: it 's their religion.
|
| To these people every single problem is due to "not enough
| state" and the solution is always "more state", which can be
| seen here:
|
| > But democracy on a mass scale depends on mass institutions--
| mass media, mass education, mass culture ...
|
| Yeah. Mass state. Mass mind control. More left.
|
| I honestly don't understand how anyone who thinks for himself
| cannot see through this pile of horseshit.
| kkfx wrote:
| IMVHO and perception we live in an era of very informed
| ignorance, NOT in the Socrates sense of course... I can speculate
| about various cohort of informed ignorant (me included), like
| those who demand "numbers" but not care how they was generated,
| so for them a "good looking" page of data CERTAINLY it's true or
| those who read only a specific news source and so on.
|
| The signal/noise ratio it's not a new thing of course, but the
| real problem is mean (absence of) culture not information per se.
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