Trump Keeps Winning

[Ennewi]

Originally Posted by Raev [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

TLDR: I'm quite satisfied with being right 99% of the time and being wrong about unimportant things 1% of the time. I am not going to diligently fact check every post I make to off topic. You are welcome to follow me around pointing out any mistakes.

P.S. You are completely wrong about fake news: the problem is not social media sharing dubious information, but the systematic bias of our major networks. In other words, it's not actually incorrect information per se, but the ratio of that information. For example, Australia had record cold temperatures last summer, but you didn't read about that in the NYT because they only share evidence that favors the global warming narrative.

I wouldn't want be satisfied with believing I was right 99% of the time. That itself creates a blindspot as does determining what is and isn't important. That is also where bias arises from. Maybe at a later stage in mankind's existence that kind of accuracy will be possible on average.

Social media itself is not the problem but how it's being (ab)used is presenting a problem of credibility and consensus. And yet, given enough time to develope, mainstream media and social media will probably merge with the viewer becoming a contributor by default. So both may just become the soft solution to the problem people and their biases are creating through each.

Audiences will go to whichever media outlet clangs the bell they want to hear, so they can salivate. Most of the time it only serves to reaffirm what they already believe, either side of a narrative that has been around long before the television and radio.

Social media on the other hand offers an outlet for beliefs once so obscure they were not influential on society as a whole. And that interactive propaganda is now coming out of every dark corner of society, connecting instantaneously worldwide. Case in point, flat earthers. And now that theory has become the news, legitimizing itself in a sense because enough people actually believe it to where they can shape our world (figuratively).

Before social media outliers, insane assholes, and revolutionaries had to meet out by the docks at night, in coffee houses, etc. The madness was largely self-contained while few great ideas still filtered through, especially when it came to art.

Also, as a counterpoint to your last example, the NYT just covered a similar incident and only mentioned global warming once, at the very bottom, because the person interviewed made the statement. That being said, warming trends in the climate and one continent having unseasonably cold weather are not incompatible with one another.

www.nytimes.com/aponline/2018/11/22/us/ap-us-dead-sea-turtles.html

www.nytimes.com/aponline/2018/11/22/us/ap-us-dead-sea-turtles.html