Not so sure about that. I suppose the original intent was to have a healthy debate around major policy decisions. It's a check against wanton liberalism or conservatism. Congress seems eager to pass spending bills and take away our privacy. They move at light speed when doing that.
> I can't take them too seriously until I see an alternative that does the work of collective discovery.
There is an alternative. It is you and I. The citizen journalist will become the arbiter of truth tomorrow. And that arbitration will be decided on rationality. There will be no more credentialism and gatekeeping. That is why the traditional media companies are scared shitless.
The most obvious first step is to form a leadership group to manage coordination. Different people to be in charge of printing/hosting and distribution, payroll, HR, research, etc, etc.
And the citizen engineers will solve P = NP, and the citizen doctors will cure cancer, and the citizen citizen political scientists will create a perfect voting system…
How do I tell the difference between an honest citizen journalist, a propagandist, a liar, a lunatic, or a troll?
Conventional journalism of course is not perfectly trustworthy, but at least there is some penalty for extreme untrustworthiness in the form of loss of reputation of the paper and its brand. The NYT is an illustrative case. My opinion of that paper dropped significantly after its role in providing only the most softball criticism of the (then impending) Iraq invasion. I'm not the only person I've heard say this. NYT paid a price for cheerleading for that disaster.
A lot of people stay at the dunning-Kruger peak on that for a very long time and over-evaluate their (i for sure did for several years at least).
> independent research
Those who have the time to do this for half the semi-important issues in the world are lucky(like most of of on HN i think). And i started 2 month ago informing myself about climate change and what does it mean to stop using oil, i did not have any time for myself between that and work until recently. Research takes a long, long time if you wnat to do it well. I'm still not certain about anything.
> open dialogue
Yes if it mean what i think, this is very helpful. Paper journal used to offer opportunities for that.
You captured a facet of climate change I feel few can properly articulate. Modeling and digesting complex systems is incredibly difficult and at this point I share the same position.
It seems to be we have no clue how severe the impacts of climate change will be but based on gut feelings we are in for the same problem as technology development.
> We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run.[0]
I'm not sure there's a penalty. NYT subscriptions have been going up, not down, despite it frequently reporting things that are bizarre or factually wrong. Same is true for many other papers.
That makes sense: people often buy newspapers for the analysis that reconfirms their own world views, and gives them intellectual ammo for their pre-conceived notions.
With citizen journalists (a.k.a. bloggers) they start out with no pre-existing reputation so tend to depend on other ways to quickly build credibility, like using lots of hyperlinks to sources so you can check their claims, or leaving comments open so commenters can criticise and respond. Even today in 2020 it's standard for news articles to provide no citations or hyperlinks at all, even when e.g. the entire report is about a research paper, and often comment sections are now closed. Exactly because so many commenters would often point out flaws in the articles!
Reading your comment and the original post really made me thankful for what I have. It goes to show that you have very little control of things in life. There are countless headwinds that influence the decisions you make. Some are invisible.
Sort of. In many Asian countries, the rule of law is very weak or nonexistent. This means you will eventually come into contact with the police - usually for the purpose of extorting a bribe from you.
> Secondly it seems plausible that a person locked in a room with a radio to communicate with the outside world would eventually acquire intelligence without ever fully experiencing the world.
Without fully experiencing the outside world, such an agent will still have gaps in intelligence. Knowing the specific wavelength of the color red (564–580 nm), and how the optic nerve processes color is different than the experience of seeing a red flower in the world for the first time.
In my view, the issue is not so much cancel culture. It’s that journalists can publish inaccurate information and libel people without any sort of punishment or way for the targeted party to respond.
Also, this article is extremely racist. They are supporting the decades old trope of the “uppity” black male that just won’t shut up and behave like an Uncle Tom. At least these journalists are no longer hiding what they really think about minorities.
There is a way to respond when a corporation says libel thing about you... you can sue. The target can also respond, thru social media at the very least.
Where in this article were they 'supporting the decades old trope of the “uppity” black male that just won’t shut up'? I felt like I read it pretty closely and I cant even begin to understand where that took place.
> Kanye West has made increasingly oppressive, malformed declarations over the past several years, and yet commands earth-stopping attention every time he opens his mouth/Twitter app. Forbes ran a massive feature just this week about the ridiculous notion of West running for president in this year’s election.
It is very subtle. Oppressive? Malformed? This is basically calling him an uppity ni---r.
