Don’t rely on credibility stamps (2021) | Hacker News Reader

Don’t rely on credibility stamps (2021)

nav.al

27 pointsbookofjoe11 comments

I don't think the author understands information literacy, and they show their own ignorance in how they discuss their objections. The New York Times and The Washington Post have news sections that are run independently of the opinion, editorial, and commentary sections. You have to look at which section the article is published in, and know the standards of that section. The NYT news section stamp means something much different than the NYT op-ed stamp.

Same with academic articles. Different journals have different standards, they each have their own biases. Something published in NEJM is gatekept differently than something published in PLOSONE, which is different than something published on a professor's Twitter account. The NEJM stamp means something that the others don't.

I think it is hilarious that the author calls models from the social sciences "nonsense," which cannot possibly have the validity of the disciplines they revere like the natural sciences.... and economics.

You sound like a stamp collector.

It's also worth examining the vested interests at play here — the author is a founder, and runs a Twitter account with 2M followers, so has, to put it mildly, a vested interest in calling the "old way" of measuring credibility of NYT and WaPo outdated. Often you find the people most loudly saying "Don't play status games" are in fact just playing another kind of status game.

I feel like the author is ignorant in a way that is inconvenient to media and academic institutions, but reflective of how the public feels about institutions.

Media for example. Media people may be very careful, or believe they are careful, about how they separate opinions and editorials. But that doesn’t mean much to the public. 2016 showed that the media is not trusted by large portions of the public, and their own biases cloud their reporting.

Looking at academic publishers. They control the dissemination of information without adding value. There’s no reason for them to exist with the internet. They exist only because of their name. Academics publish there for their careers. But the publishers are one scandal away from being irrelevant.

The public is already distrustful of institutions, distrust of finance drove crypto, distrust of medicine drove the anti-vax movement. Distrust of the national security apparatus drives encryption. Distrust of big tech drives right-to-repair, and decentralized social networks.

Institutions fail. But we don’t see them face consequences. They are being used by people to hide behind them to absolve themselves of responsibility. No one likes there being a group of untouchables and being outside of that group. Therefore, people are turning their backs, and seeking out solutions to problems these institutions used to satisfy.

What should we rely on instead? Hopefully not the social media comments of random strangers?

Maybe we will see credibility stamps that mean something more specific than the vague prestigiousness that they often have now?

This has to be revisited as the cost of publishing plausible but unsubstantiated content is driven to zero with AI text generators.

It may not come from the same old institutions, but I predict there will be continued and possibly increased value in stamps of approval for content and information that you cannot afford to be wrong (medical, engineering).

Naval seems to insinuate with "social scientists who [...] are now in there with nonsense political models" that authors like Nate Silver (of 538 fame) are examples of folks relying on NYT mastheads, and yet, Nate rose to prominence as an individual outside of traditional journalism, publishing on his own website (fivethirtyeight.com, which was later acquired by NYT).

What does Nate Silver have to do with this? The article never mentions him, and he left the NYT back in 2013 anyhow.

Listen, I would prefer if the article actually named names or gave examples supporting any of the statements therein, but it doesn't. The author leaves us to guess with the innuendo he's left.

After having read it, I agree.

You only have to look to the disinformation coming from this "official" sites in critical moments in which there are government-led interests: covid, ukraine's war, Biden laptop...

Twitter files gives a lot of content into this issue.

> Twitter files gives a lot of content into this issue.

The Twitter files is selective releasing of information to present a narrative. It doesn't have good content on anything.

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