Still, you want your public officials to be able to say what they mean the first time around instead of giving the opposition easy ways to derail the issue. Carson is a bit of a gaff machine and causes some to worry about his electability.
Just how politics goes. You say something, you have to deal with it. It doesn't matter the context or what you REALLY mean, as long as they can make a soundbite out of it, it'll be done. It'd be nice if reporting truth got clicks and views, but it's really just better to run with emotionally charged topics/spins.
I truly believe that it's not just cynicism. The thing is, when people get used to people lying, they tend to stop listening to them. Take the reduced ratings of the major news media in the US that I talked about in the appropriate thread. People aren't watching them nearly as much, and it's not (just) because of the internet and further alternative news sources. I bet if they were more clear-cut and precise, and not pushing one political agenda or another, their viewership would actually go up.
I pretty much disagree with all of this. I think the reduced ratings are largely just due to shifting demographics away from TV watching. In fact, those who are left actually having cable, etc. are probably MORE likely to watch cable news. People on the internet have no problem reading whatever sites/links they are shown, usually in whatever echo chamber facebook group they are in. People don't seem to want "news," rather, they want affirmation of their beliefs. Any time you try and have a discussion about the merits of a particular news story or event, you can be expected to be called "libtard" or "repug" or whatever instead of anyone actually listening to what you are saying. ~ Remember, everyone who disagrees with you is biased!
left wing news media competes with left wing comedy shows like Stewart and Colbert. Guess that audience prefers their lies with laughter.
To be fair, @Sokolov has correctly and consistently beat the "drum of bias" for a bit now. We are all biased. It is a ubiquitous problem. Realizing that at any time our judgement might be too clouded, is a very important first step towards true wisdom. Perfection is not possible, but it is worth striving towards nonetheless. Understanding oneself better is a noble goal.
One thing that bothers me is... how do we identify truth? Is it legitimately possible to separate truth from bias?
I used to be too hesitant and unsure. Now I am probably too bold and self-assured. Truth can be known... but one should always be on the lookout for bias. For example, I am very confident that centralized government is too inefficient. Many other systems can also be just as inefficient. And, as we discuss inefficiency, I can focus too much on any single example when a wider angle is needed. Other times, I should laser in but I might be looking too wide. Ah man. What a dilemma.
You're just a biased [insert whatever the opposition to me would be, I haven't thought of a good single-word term for it yet]! No, but seriously, I respect that you disagree, but I think you're wrong in terms of ratings. While yes the demographic shifting away from TV (as it has from books, magazines, etc.) that's only true in the sense that video entertainment is available on other platforms. Most people still watch a lot of TV programs, albeit not necessarily on their TV. People watch quality shows. Game of Thrones for example is one of the biggest things out there. What's declined the most is "news" media, and I contend that it is due to the LACK of quality. If people wanted to see people flame each other and call them libtards or republicraps they'd go to the internet. In my experience, and I'm sure Dark Jello's on this forum, it is very hard to get people to actually read your links. There aren't that many people that really go through and check out the sources on Wikipedia either. Though this could be wrong based on my limited sample size. It's generally a vocal minority that's doing that though. What's more, its generally also a thin response or defensive mechanism. Many people don't go looking to explain their own views to other people. Mostly because it's hard, you need to right words for the conversation to get your point across properly. Or maybe that's just me. By and large, my experience is that people start with reactionary comments like what you're talking about... but if they don't leave immediately you can get a decent conversation out of them if you try. There aren't that many people looking for a conversation however. But, I do believe there are that many people looking for good information. Echo chambers have their uses, but most people don't want to be ignorant about things that actually effect them (though to hell with everything else). Of course, that desire to not be ignorant can sometimes lead to initial resistance to new information, since that meant they WERE ignorant. But it's not lasting. Or maybe that's just a lot of the people I've spoken with rather than a majority of the human race. It is legitimately possible to separate truth from bias. It can be incredibly difficult however. I don't have time to get into this more at the moment, but... Generally used as a religious term "Agnosticism" refers to whether or not it is possible to "know" that something does or does not exist. In religious context, this generally refers to God, spirits, gods, or what have you. It's "I 'unno" response. This doesn't just apply to religious belief however. It can also apply to principles. For example, is there an "objective truth" of the world or is all we see an illusion conjured forth by our brains? What does "Blue" look like to other people? Etc. In that sense, it can be difficult to understand what Truth is separate from illusion, delusion, and bias. But, in my experience, and perhaps this is merely the depth of my delusions, most people agree that a given thing is "blue" baring physical handicaps preventing the identification. Even if it "looks different" from how I actually perceive it, we can determine the "Truth" of the nature of the color of the thing. Optical Illusion/lighting-based party dresses aside (and really, in that case we just say "both" or "depends on the context"). More complex things however require research or even experimentation, and will not be doable for many people with purely their own resources.
That is pretty much the case. The larger the player population the more likely stuff like this will be removed just as a preventative measure. Religion and Politics are two major third rail issues for most companies. In most cases with the larger companies they don't have the moderator staff to constantly monitor threads like this in relation to their user-base so it is more economical to just outright remove such threads. Our approach is that this is a community and we want to encourage thoughtful interactions among players. That may not always work and we address such things accordingly.
I have to say the overall tone of these discussions has been more civil than I would have expected, though I think the direct involvement of the lead dev probably contributes to that. (Global chat when no greens are on is still a cesspool).
But it is just SO delicious... Mmm... Ham... EDIT: I think at least part of that is the medium. Same thing with "comments sections" for places like Youtube, Facespace, Mybook, and especially Twitter. There's generally not enough space (or time to write in live chat) to have an in-depth conversation with credible sourcing when necessary.
It might be big, but it is dwarved by the audiences that popular TV shows used to draw. Game of Thrones specifically is kind of an outlier and is also not part of "normal" cable either, since it's on HBO, who also offers their own streaming service. ER's numbers in the 90s. Declining viewership of even the TOP watched episode across all networks for each decade. Most watched Season Finales, all time. The only thing since 2000 to crack the top 10 was Friends, which is one of the biggest series ever. This is ALSO with the population of the US having doubled since the 50s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_watched_television_broadcasts So if Game of Thrones is one of the best now, it's evidence of the opposite of what you claim, I think.
I was more thinking total people watching, including streams and pirated copies. While there are some streams of CNN/Fox/Etc. that get pirated or streamed online, it isn't nearly to the same degree, thus their TV ratings are much more emblematic of their actual viewership, compared to many streamed and/or pirated shows. Don't have time to get specific numbers at the moment, so I could be off base, but the claim I'm making is that quality gets more viewership than crap. The fact that GoT does as well as it does in SPITE of being HBO (which is different from standard Cable due to their "premium" nature on top of having a streaming service) is why I brought it up. While there are exceptions to this rule, it generally the case. Obviously, advertising also has a large part of the success of such things as well. As does relevance. MASH, as the people posting in that thread can attest to (and as can be pointed out by the numbers you posted) is an excellent show for example (probably better than GoT, honestly, though it's hard to compare since they are very different). However, for many younger people it is not "relevant" so it doesn't get the current viewership that it would have in the past. Finally there are also other issues, to put it simply, it's very complex. Anyway, the REAL point, that I was inadequate in stating, is that I think our divide on this particular issue (that proper, quality news would get more viewership than click-baity biased bullshit) comes down to fundamental differences in view, already at least partially discussed. Mostly that, because of my experiences with others, I'm generally an optimist, and believe that most people would rather actually be informed and knowledgeable than to merely pretend to be (though they might pretend in the short term to hide ignorance). Whereas you seem to be a pessimist, likely also based on your experiences, which may or may not be similar to my own but with different reactions on our parts. I do think that click-baity nonsense can lead to short-term gains, to be sure, the numbers are there to support it. However, it's also true that quality information is valued by people, as is quality entertainment. In the long term, enduring quality leads to enduring success, the numbers are there to support that as well.
I don't know that I consider it pessimism, more... what I perceive to be the truth? Like, I am not being cynical about it, rather, I believe and accept that this is how the majority of people operate. Part of it is the potential over-abundance of information and the fact that the truth is much greyer than the black and white that some pundits would have you believe. I think psychologically people are ill-adapted to handle spectrums and find comfort in dichotomies instead. In general, studies have shown too that people just pay much attention to things that aren't aligned with their world views or even conceptions of themselves: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/as-luck-would-have-it/ (there are many of these types of studies and many variations on the newspaper one in particular and they all point in the same direction). I notice these sort of things too in game development in both aggregate data as well as in playtesting environments. I think informative/quality news can get an audience, but it'll always be a niche audience, and I don't think the majority of people want it in reality - even if they claim to want it. And I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing, as the majority of people largely cancel each other out anyway.
at some point you have to act with imperfect information. so people want to follow someone who at least looks like they know where theyre going. congress is for debating the grey areas. the president is supposed to be a bit freer to act. I think this is why trump has a better shot at being elected president then he would a senator.
I think that's basically the nature of pessimism though. The belief that general behavior of people/things will operate according to a preconception. Optimism functions on the same way, but in a different direction. My optimism is based on what I perceive to be the truth just as your "pessimism" is. There are, of course, "chosen" optimism and "chosen" pessimism, or, essentially, faith in positive/negative aspects of things, but this is primarily for things which people don't have knowledge/experience of. For example, as I view it, belief that "God is Good" would be a matter of "chosen optimism" with regards to a religious idea. "God doesn't Exist" could be neutral depending on what they'd believe "God" would be if it did exist. "God is Evil" would be "chosen pessimism", and so on. While this could be applied to "humans" I think in our cases it's a matter of our experiences and observations forming a belief. It also doesn't mean that either of us are necessarily right. We might be right about the people we've interacted with, but completely wrong about the rest of the world. I think this has far more to do with learning from example. When the majority of "political news" someone is exposed to is couched in dichotomies and black-and-white (sometimes literally) differences, people are more likely to repeat that sort of action/behavior. For the most part, people are not encouraged or asked to think about things for themselves, especially when it comes to politics. Part of that is because of the system employed by most of the Western world, where representatives handle most of the specifics of an issue, and you're just told to vote for X person in order to improve things (which doesn't work as often as I'd like). Combine that with a relative lack of free time available to look into said issues, and it becomes easy for people to fire a one-liner (snark optional) and move on with their lives. That does not, however, mean they wouldn't value having a greater understanding were such a thing available. Nor does it mean they are generally psychologically incapable of thinking about things in a complex manner. Rather, there is an initial choice, based on defensiveness, lack of initial interest, and/or a lack of understanding of relevance, etc. which conduces the behavior of oversimplifying things as a means of quickly and easily "understanding" what all goes on in the world. So far it seems that we'll never find out In short, we'll likely need to agree to disagree, but this was the expected outcome from my perspective. I don't quite agree with this either, but then see the line above this quote
I think that what people do shows what they value. You can say stuff all you want, but if you act in a way that demonstrates that you don't care about something, it's more telling. In the case of "lack of free time," if you have little free time and choose to throw your snark into various issues with relatively little understanding of it, then I'd say you don't value understanding the issue very much when you spend your already limited time furthering misunderstanding and spreading misinformation. Call it "lack of initial interest" or whatever you want - I look at it from the perspective that this is the aggregate behavior of people in general - they demonstrate a lack of interest in "quality information" while having no problem spending their limited time furthering misinformation. ~ I guess I take issue with it being called "pessimism" and "optimism" because I don't view this trait as a negative or a positive, but rather just a state of being and don't generally lament is as a problem unless said person believes they are actually being informative. I realize this is a bit unclear, but this happens to me. I am actually fairly ambivalent from a judgement perspective towards a lot of things, even if I discuss them passionately. In that ambivalence, I also have the general attitude of "it will work out" which for me is a form of optimism. As such, I have trouble articulating this position a bit... I guess to put it another way. While I think there would be benefit to more people paying attention to "quality news" (assuming such a thing can exist), I don't think the underlying reasons for why it is not happening currently are negative ones. I think you label it as such because you believe that "quality news being popular" is a good thing, whereas I think it stems from basic human psychology which isn't necessarily a negative thing. i.e. We are talking about slightly different things. In fact, I think it is what allows us to function day to day, and I am more optimistic about humanity's future that can brains do this sort of thing to simplify our lives.
I think you guys are so concerned about being misunderstood that you use a 1000 words to say 10. The result of which is that fewer and fewer people bother to read it all (and thus misunderstand you). Brevity isn't snark, it's a practical style of communication. I could go on but....
