Tools like this streamline the hectic process that is blogging — were the situation different, I could see easily myself swindled by someone like Holiday. With each story he was quoted in, there would have been an analog way to get the source – to find an insomniac, call a doctor who specializes in insomnia and ask if any of his or her patients would be willing to go on record. For vinyl records, call a store and ask the owner to put you in touch with his best customer. But oftentimes, it can be hard to justify taking the long way around when news moves at the speed of the internet.
For Roy Furchgott, the reporter from the New York Times, this kind of lie can be hard to catch — Holiday sounded just like all the other record collectors he had talked to, and it was hard to imagine why someone would lie about something so mundane.
“He gave a fairly credible account in line with what most vinyl record collectors and owners say,” he says. “So I took his word on it, as frequently happens, and you’re telling me that he suckered me.”
“I’ve been in the business a fairly long time, and I’ve seen this happen many times even prior to blogs. I don’t think this is isolated or terribly, terribly unusual.”
This is a problem. Is it "news" (i.e. information) that's moving at the "speed of the internet", or just data? And maybe not even data, but just make-believe fantasy. Should we be expecting more of "our media"? Or are we getting just what we should be expecting.
Are we training our children to be more discerning of "information" they glean from a source? Should we be? If so, how should it be done?
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"I've long called these people Religious Maniacs because, of course, they are. I always point out that you don't need a god to be religious maniac; you just need a dogma and a Devil."- Ace @ Ace of SpadesHQ, 13 May 2015, 1900 hr
we have more information at ready access than ever in human history....and, vast amounts of misinformation or deliberate falsehoods. Critical thinking, always important will become absolutely critical for our children and grandchildren IMO.
"The Party told you to reject all evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command."
George Orwell---"1984"
callmeslick wrote:we have more information at ready access than ever in human history....and, vast amounts of misinformation or deliberate falsehoods. Critical thinking, always important will become absolutely critical for our children and grandchildren IMO.
I think critical thinking can get you a decent distance, but at some point we either have to resign ourselves to "knowing" very little or choosing to believe some other people and their conclusions. You mention the breadth of information that's out there - there's just so much information out there these days that we're forced as individuals to believe the vast majority of it without personal verification. The difficulty for reporters (and quotas don't help, as pointed out in the article) is knowing where to draw the line. Obviously "nothing" isn't good enough, but you can open Pandora's box if you want to get philosophical about it....
Think of the insomniac example: The article says that you can find a doctor who's an expert on insomnia, and ask to talk to his patients - if you do so: how do you know that this "expert" really knows anything about insomnia, and how to you know that the patient isn't just faking it for both and doctor and you? If you follow the rabbit hole, you wind up needing to verify every last detail personally, and you wind up never getting anywhere.
Arch Linux x86-64, Openbox
"We'll just set a new course for that empty region over there, near that blackish, holeish thing. " Zapp Brannigan
I probably should have coupled 'solid education' and 'critical thinking'. Those were the hallmarks of a real University degree at one time, and I dare say that anyone of that era, with those skills can not only sort the truth from the BS, but can do so pretty easily.
Researching the truth behind most 'news' stories is actually pretty fast and simple in this day and age. Key to the process are searching a range of sources and being able to sort hard data from conjecture. It is doable, but whether the next generations have the skillset or the due diligence is yet to be seen. If not, heaven help them.
"The Party told you to reject all evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command."
George Orwell---"1984"
callmeslick wrote:I probably should have coupled 'solid education' and 'critical thinking'. Those were the hallmarks of a real University degree at one time, ...
So, what happened to the ability to obtain "a real University degree"? Are we talking a "classical Liberal" education? It has been interesting to observe the divergence between the classical liberal and the modern liberal, for example Classical Liberalism vs. Modern Liberalism
Wolfe is right to be concerned about “the highly organized and concentrated forms taken by capitalism in the contemporary world.” That system does indeed undermine autonomy and equality. Where he goes wrong is in equating the “capitalist” economy with the free market. Thus he is guilty of what Kevin Carson calls “vulgar liberalism” and Roderick Long calls “left-conflationism”: attributing the evils of corporatism to its antithesis, the freed market. (It’s the mirror image of the view that defends business conduct in the corporate state on the grounds that the free market wouldn’t permit such conduct if it did not efficiently serve consumers.) . . .
. . . “Man in any complex society,” F. A. Hayek wrote in “Individualism: True and False,” “can have no choice but between adjusting himself to what to him must seem the blind forces of the social process and obeying the orders of a superior. So long as he knows only the hard discipline of the market, he may well think the direction by some other intelligent human brain preferable; but, when he tries it, he soon discovers that the former still leaves him at least some choice, while the latter leaves him none, and that it is better to have a choice between unpleasant alternatives than being coerced into one.”
"I've long called these people Religious Maniacs because, of course, they are. I always point out that you don't need a god to be religious maniac; you just need a dogma and a Devil."- Ace @ Ace of SpadesHQ, 13 May 2015, 1900 hr
Dissent, I don't really think about or care about how a conservative defines liberalism. It will all be gibberish, anyway. What I was referring to was the Classic University education which is also referred to as the German model. In that, one's education is to be well rounded, not narrowly focused only on a limited field of expertise, and the instructors are also active researchers and thus in touch with the cutting edge of their fields. The result is, or at least ought to be, an education that emphasizes critical thinking, research skills and the ability to pull knowledge from both the sciences and arts and integrate that knowledge.
"The Party told you to reject all evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command."
George Orwell---"1984"
