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Comment by Mezzie | Hacker News Reader

I'm not a fan of this either. In addition to what you've said, it ignores that one reason these 'alternative' sites have been so successful is that they often are good at pointing out the mistakes and misleading nature of mainstream institutions. That's often how they grow an initial trusting audience to begin with, and why they can so successfully bang the drum of 'don't trust the mainstream media': Often that media isn't trustworthy.

My go to is how the mainstream media treated the war in Iraq when it was started. Of course Iraq has WMDs; the President says so. The only counter examples I found at the time were from online orgs and discussions back before those were as prominent.

"Just trust us" isn't a good reaction to the current problem. If some institution wants to be trusted, they have to actually be trustworthy, but that takes $$ and effort. Which is not supported in the current landscape.

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It's been remarkable how people have gone from "the press were far too credulous towards US government statements" to "I will get my news from Russia Today (or any number of even less credible places)".

But yes, there was heavy pressure to conform to a narrative. People were sacked or threatened in the name of "balance" against the "too liberal" anti-war argument. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_Donahue#MSNBC_program

I don't really know what the solution is. There are plenty of sources, media and individuals, who can be quickly written off as propaganda, nonsense, or chronic liars. But that can leave you with the more respectable media simply omitting stuff they don't like; they never have to lie about anything, just not mention it.

I don't know what the answer is either and it scares me.

I'm about as well armed as a person can be when it comes to being able to suss out what I'm being told: I've been online for 30 years (and thus understand how information spreads online and how digital communities work), I have an MLIS (understand how news and information was transmitted historically + how most citizens are taught [or not] media literacy + I understand things like the replication crisis in the sciences), I was raised by an accountant (I'm economically literate/understand financial incentives), and I've worked in nonpartisan political/civics communication (I'm aware of what every side is saying or can get that info in ~5-10 minutes). I can even read multiple other languages - French, Arabic, and Mandarin - so I'm not limited to the anglosphere for my information.

I still have low confidence in almost everything I'm told, and doing proper investigations into all of it is excessively time consuming, terrible for my mental health, and frequently impossible/difficult without institutional affiliation for things like being able to read primary academic sources that are being reported on.

How is the average person supposed to navigate this? There's literally no way.

TBH I think the answer is really quite simple and also fairly nihilistic: It's incredibly unlikely that you will personally be able to find the full truth in anything, even wildly important things like the justification of a war.

At the same time, the reason why the war justification is so notable is because it was eventually brought to light, and its unusualness of the lie made it notable enough for reporters to believe people need to hear about it.

It makes sense to me to generally conclude: liars happen, but generally dishonesty isn't something that's considered moral/ethical by society. Most people don't bald-faced lie about stuff, when they do its considered a scandal. Generally people will honestly tell some truth of what they understand from their own incomplete knowledge and that's about as good as you're going to get (there is no "objective truth").

Trustworthiness then becomes people who knowingly lie less often relative to others, or people who source their truths less often from known liars. For example, I don't believe Alex Jones on much of anything given that he's knowingly lied repeatedly, extensively, and built his career on it. But Joe Rogan I'm pretty sure just sources from liars more often than I'd like in his claims, so I don't really listen to him either. I'm more likely to believe the Slate Star Codex guy, because I don't think he knowingly lies about his analysis but he has his own biases and blindspots and so I generally don't believe what he concludes when he says things that correspond to his blindspots.

> It makes sense to me to generally conclude: liars happen, but generally dishonesty isn't something that's considered moral/ethical by society. Most people don't bald-faced lie about stuff, when they do its considered a scandal. Generally people will honestly tell some truth of what they understand from their own incomplete knowledge and that's about as good as you're going to get (there is no "objective truth").

I disagree with this, which is why I'm so freaked out. I would have agreed with this 20-25 years ago, but not now.

For example, re: your last paragraph, I'm also from a purple district in a purple state with family equally split between the left and the right (and split into multiple factions within each). There are a lot of social incentives for people and institutions to lie and, more importantly, for the middlemen to amplify and present those lies. I also think that with so many of our fundamentals on shaky ground, a lot of the lies might not be purposeful. Scientific reporting is a good example: If the science media lauds an experiment that it turns out is non-replicatable, they're not lying on purpose but they're still reporting something that isn't true.

Scientists are incentivized to publish too often/fudge numbers/not do "boring" experiments. The NYT and Fox are incentivized to cut editors and fact checkers and reduce turn around time because people have been conditioned to expect immediate reporting. They're incentivized to cover things with a partisan slant because it goes viral.

The incentives are perverse at this point.

Well I just pointed to knowing liars and people who rely on knowing liars. Honestly I think most people are just doing their best to tell their incomplete knowledge accurately, and assessing people in that lens helps clarify a lot. Science media tends to laud an experiment that turns out to be non-replicatable, so it's good to keep that in mind when you read science media. Scientists are incentivized not to do boring experiments, so that's useful to keep in mind when reading science.

But like, how did you know that science media tends to do X? Scientists are incentivized to do Y? How do you know that NYT and Fox are incentivized in the ways you're talking about? The reason why they're even notable is because someone else is looking at it and going "hey!! this is going on!!" and presumably this person isn't a known liar/acting on known lies. Maybe enough independent people are saying it that collusion is statistically unlikely. But you do have a knowledge base. It's as simple as knowing what your knowledge base is, in relative to the knowledge bases others are using.

>I still have low confidence in almost everything I'm told, and doing proper investigations into all of it is excessively time consuming, terrible for my mental health, and frequently impossible/difficult without institutional affiliation for things like being able to read primary academic sources that are being reported on.

>How is the average person supposed to navigate this? There's literally no way.

By embracing the fact that we live in a state of information uncertainty and you can't know everything.

People need to put in hard work to develop their worldview based on analyzing primary source material.

I think what one has been forced to do is find sources/propaganda like RT or Al Jazeera, BBC, Xinhua, Times of India and then distrust things where they have a dog in the fight and then triangulate where they don't have a dog in the fight.

"Just trust the alternative sites" is not gonna cut it either - lands one in the same dumbing swamp, if not worse because the alternative sites have no reputation to lose.

Reminiscent of the war on drugs. When kids hear that marijuana will ruin your life and find that it doesn't, you end up with an opioid crisis.

Isn't the opioid crisis a crisis because it ruins lives?

Yes but who is going to believe that after hearing so many other drugs will ruin their lives then finding out they don't?

The opioid crisis isn't related to the war on drugs. It was caused by doctors being misinformed about how prescription opioids worked by the drug manufacturers + widely disseminated (funded) research about pain treatment. This caused people to be prescribed opioids without a risk assessment for addiction or similar, and thereby lots of people got addicted after being prescribed for broken bones, surgeries, and general discomforts.

When you hear about X overdoses in an area in a shockingly small amount of time, it's not people dying because they took too many oxycodone pills, it's because of street fentanyl. You can thank the war on drugs for that.

I suspect it was meant as a: "They told me marijuana would ruin my life, but after smoking some, my life is fine, so surely they lied about the other drugs as well"

TL;DR: Marihuana not as bad as stated, surely fentanyl is fine too.

"Marijuana and crank will ruin your life!"

"Here, take some lithium and/or ritalin, or your life will be ruined!"

Cannabis is - in my experience - fun, but medically neutral. Doesn't hurt or help me.

Methamphetamine or similar in recreational doses would probably be terrible for both my physical and mental health. I am aware of at least one person in my personal social circles whose entire life has overtly and drastically deteriorated from that addiction.

I have met a few people who find lithium the only effective treatment for their bipolar disorder. When they can actually get their hands on it, their lives improve significantly.

Methylphenidate (Ritalin) - in an extended release formula (Concerta) - is the most valuable tool I have to treat my ADHD. Thinking back on how my life could have been improved if I had it earlier on...is frustrating to say the least.

It turns out that lazy dichotomies are worthless.

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