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[Lupingosei]

This is not about politics. Yes, maybe a little, but it goes way beyond this. It is about truth, facts and what we are willing to believe.

This is about a story, which went viral, and around the world, covered by the BBC and many other news outlets without anybody ever checking if it is true and even worse, if it even can be true.

It is sad, that you will find an analysis like this only on substack nowadays, but I highly recommend reading this article. It shows what we want to believe, as long as it confirms our existing biases.

Too Good To Check: A Play In Three Acts

...

astralcodexten.substack.com

This story doesn’t make me feel smug and superior to everyone else. It makes me feel confused and annoyed. This is how true things usually make me feel, so I think I’ve dodged the Law of Rationalist Irony and might have some chance of being right this time.

(by the Law of Rationalist Irony, I have to be wrong about this in the most embarrassing possible way, so feel free to tell me what it is in the comments)

But I really am reading Scout Mindset, and it really does have me thinking about the ways our irrationality is polarizing us.

A Democrat reads some fraction of this story, and sees a bunch of idiot conspiracy theorists taking deadly horse medication to cure COVID. A doctor warns people that his hospital is overcrowded with poisoning cases, and the media dutifully reports on this. Then an unrelated hospital puts out a press release saying they’re not involved and - even though this changes nothing - Republicans seize on this to declare the entire media is “fake news” and nobody should trust anything they read and the horse dewormer conspiracists were right all along.

A Republican reads some fraction of this story, and sees the media falsely reporting that ivermectin is overcrowding local hospitals, even though the hospitals themselves are denying this. Also, using a fake photo of something else to imply that lines at local hospitals are stretching out the door. Also, declaring that 70% of poison incidents are due to ivermectin when it’s really 2%.

Both sides end up even more convinced that they are right and the other side is selectively misinterpreting the news to feed their own skewed narrative. Only you, reading this ACX article, are getting the full story and learning more about the world instead of just confirming your biases.

Did you believe that?

 

[ScythD]

The sad thing is there is very little punishment rags like Rolling Stone will take for publishing BS stories like this. They'll publish what they want, collect millions of clicks, then a few days later issue a correction that maybe a small fraction of the folks that initially read the story will see.

 

[Toots]

Lack of accountability from the mass medias is a real problem. Coupled with lack of accountability from officials,

 

[I collect VHS tapes]

The sad thing is there is very little punishment rags like Rolling Stone will take for publishing BS stories like this. They'll publish what they want, collect millions of clicks, then a few days later issue a correction that maybe a small fraction of the folks that initially read the story will see.

 

[CGiRanger]

The sad thing is there is very little punishment rags like Rolling Stone will take for publishing BS stories like this. They'll publish what they want, collect millions of clicks, then a few days later issue a correction that maybe a small fraction of the folks that initially read the story will see.

Pretty much the current standard operating procedure from the vast majority of journalism these days.....especially games journalists.