Comment by devy | Hacker News Reader

Comment by devy | Hacker News Reader

Ben Thompson tried to compare China with over 1.4 billion people with Taiwan with only 24 million people and vehemently arguing that the Taiwan's governance is better is very disingenuous at best. Imaging the comparing the governance of large corporation vs. a small startup, it's just different. The complexity and nuances of managing human organization will increase drastically when the headcount increases. That's just common sense.

Also Ben is based in Taiwan, he should know better. The current Tsai Ing-wen's regime actually oppressed free press and freedom of speech by terminating CTi News TV broasting license due to political reasons (since CTi New airs opposing views to her government and is generally seen as close to the mainland China).[1]

I don't agree with Ben's first rule of new default either:

    First, it should be the default that free speech is a good thing, that more 
    information is better than less information, and that the solution to 
    misinformation is improving our ability to tell the difference, not futilely 
    trying to be China-lite without any of the upside.

The more information is NOT better at all. Information overload will cause great harm and push people to the extreme ideology, as we've seen in social media (facebook, twitter, google etc.) the self-reinforced bubble. And there are physical drawbacks to those too. The more noise and junk information the less likely you can make an informative decision. Garbage in garbage out!

[1]: https://www.bbc.com/zhongwen/simp/chinese-news-55000536

> The current Tsai Ing-wen's regime actually oppressed free press and freedom of speech

> The more information is NOT better at all. Information overload will cause great harm and push people to the extreme ideology

I sense that you believe in two conflicting views. You want less information, but are critical of silencing a pro-China TV license in Taiwan? How do you rectify this yourself? I'm trying to understand.

There's a large difference between censoring a news source for political affiliation and censoring something for (for example) counterfactual misinformation regarding vaccines and the pandemic, or for that matter unsubstantiated voter fraud.

> Information overload will cause great harm and push people to the extreme ideology, as we've seen in social media (facebook, twitter, google etc.) the self-reinforced bubble

Now that we understand this piece of information, is the best way to solve the problem more information, or to forget that we ever learned it?

> Now that we understand this piece of information

No, a large portion 72 million Americans don't. They still believe fringe theories and conspiracies like 5G signal caused COVID-19 or election was stolen.

Now that you understand this piece of information, would you choose to learn more about this problem, or erase memory of this knowledge from your self?

> The more information is NOT better at all.

Even prior to official orders coming through, people were acting on information they were receiving from news reports on the virus.

Kids were pulled out of school, the restaurant industry was seeing less traffic, fewer people were in bars and people that could find a way to work from home and minimize going into the office were already doing so. Some larger firms were proactive on this.

Not everyone will act perfectly with more information, but more information allows more people to make better choices for themselves and make their own risk/reward tradeoffs ahead of the curve. I think it was February that N95 masks started selling out in the shops around here, maybe sooner, and it was at least a week prior to the lockdowns that supermarkets started selling out of staples and had long lines leading into their parking lots.

Most people out of the reach of the CCP will concede no accolades to the Chinese government. Especially in regard to information transparency and availability.

Sure, maybe the population size requires different ways of governing, but let’s not make the mistake of looking towards such a horrible government for source of inspiration.

As you said, a startup has to operate differently from a large corporation, but let’s pick a “successful” corporation.

> The more information is NOT better at all. Information overload will cause great harm

Although I appreciate your desire to decide what information I’m allowed to access I’m going to politely decline. Thanks for the offer.

It's possible that Thompson means "information" in the more technical, information-theoretic sense, which we might qualify as "useful information" - signal as opposed to noise or "misinformation." In this sense I tend to agree with what he's saying: more information is probably better. Indeed, I find it hard to believe that he really feels he's making an original point here - it seems almost axiomatic.

Nevertheless I think you're making a solid point: information overload can be pretty harmful. I think that's what Thompson is getting at with his comment "the solution to misinformation is improving our ability to tell the difference" but honestly that's not a solution so much as it is a goal - granting that it's desirable for people to have this filtering capacity, how can it be learned?

>The more information is NOT better at all.

Do I take it that this information you are providing me is an exception?

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