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Comment by dev_dull | Hacker News Reader

> Foreign propagandists are getting a strong foothold in France, and the traditional media can’t fight it

Or, another way to look at it, is that MSM in the country has lost control of the "narrative". Whether that is good or bad largely depends on whether your opinions fit within the status quo.

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You seem to think that everything is about "narrative" or "bias"- this is incorrect, since some things are fact.

If the MSM says that the Earth is round, that's not their narrative, it's fact, and anyone who says differently is just plain wrong.

The trouble with telling noble lies is that once people realize that you've been lying to them, they start to suspect everything you say. That's part of why the replication crisis in the social sciences is so corrosive: it shreds people's willingness to believe unintuitive things that institutions insist are true, even in those instances where institutions are correct.

Social Sciences is used to create propaganda, which is used to tell us that the Institutions of Social Sciences speak truth & facts. It becomes tautological.

Another issue is it's no longer in an ordinary citizen's interest to believe these institutions, since they encourage the citizen to act against their own interests to the benefit of the institutions, capital holders, & political leaders.

Another issue is equating the opinion of a subset of the experts (which are often cherry-picked) or an institution with fact.

Another issue with social sciences is each study is only as good as what abstractions were conceived of to measure minus the accuracy of the measurements.

Many scientists have a poor understanding of the Philosophy of Science, as it's not emphasized in the educational process. Philosophy is often seen as a "solved" problem, instead of the foundation of interpretation of information. This cloisters the scientists to the point to them becoming glorified technicians only capable of measuring the culturally accepted data points & unable to relate the information beyond their ever-shrinking domain of expertise.

With very, very few exceptions, half the battle is what is true and what isn't, and how well they map to reality.

>Today the president visited voters in New York

may be factually true, but

>In a desperate attempt to win the election, the sitting president tried to win voters in New York

Is actually more accurate.

When the web started to mature, seeing the MSM lose control of the narrative was a breath of fresh air. However the average person started to understand and use the web, so did sponsored entities and governments. After this there was a noticeable change of narrative on the web. Everything was polarizing, right and wrong with no middle ground.

I used to fully support direct democracy, but after seeing this I've changed my views.

That way of looking at it assumes that the MSM is no more truthful than the foreign propagandists. I'm willing to believe quite a bit negative about the MSM, but the foreign propagandists are in fact less truthful.

The foreign propagandists are nationalists and the domestic MSM is anti-nationalist. Weird huh? The anti-nationalists are saying because you support strengthening national sovereignty you are subversive to the nation and anti-patriotic. War is peace. Freedom is slavery and all that.

"Strengthening national sovereignty" is often a thinly veiled synonym for "putting a bunch of strong-hand authoritarians in charge and letting them suppress opposition". A good example of that is PiS in Poland. If you believe that political freedom is a core part of your national identity, then fighting back against those people is very much patriotic.

> A good example of that is PiS in Poland.

What are examples of "suppressing opposition" in Poland?

Taking control of the Supreme Court.

>Taking control of the Supreme Court.

Or maybe even Constitutional Tribunal? :-)

Anyway, I'm still waiting for examples of opposition oppression, not squabbles between politicians and part of judiciary (which, I hope, is not considered to be opposition).

What do you think the control the Court is needed for?

Poles say they voted for them because they promised to keep muslim migrants out which they did once elected.

I'm less familiar with the situation in France, but I'm going to guess that they share some players in common with the foreign propagandists we had here in the US. They weren't nationalists - they backed nationalists. And they also backed anti-nationalists. The intent was to cause division and strife, and thereby weaken the country. Because this is a foreign power trying to weaken the country, labeling them "nationalists" is completely mistaken.

Can you prove that?

I am pretty sure I could run a very effective propaganda show, by only spreading true, but carefully choosen facts; it would help me greatly that I could always say "don't believe me, go look it up".

It could be done that way... but it wasn't.

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