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Not saying you are wrong, but could you give real examples of your three points? Right now it feels a bit abstract and hard to argue against.

Not the OP, but the lab leak theory being 'debunked' in the press very swiftly, before any real research, in stories sourced from a bunch of people who would be implicated to some degree by such a thing would be one recent example.

That's not to say it's proven by any means, but various media outlets credulously accepting stories from conflicted sources and not even disclosing that conflict is itself a black mark whether or not the theory pans out later.

It was 'debunked' because it didn't amount to a theory at the time.

It was a wild political swing at a manufactured enemy to shift blame from a void of American leadership.

Well, first, that's not what the word "debunked" even means. Two, there were and are plenty of odd signs, like the furin cleavage site.

Yes, that's by no means conclusive, but they say that we should research this instead of coming to hasty conclusions in either direction that are, as you point out, manifestly political.

A claim that, when being asked "where's your proof," is met with absolute silence if not wild claims without evidence, can be dismissed immediately. Just because a broken clock is right twice a day doesn't mean it's a solid timepiece.

Sure, but this was never one of those things.

Yes, this is the exact storyline that was pushed by the mainstream media. Repeating it doesn't make it true but reinforces the counter argument.

There were a lot of clues that it might indeed have originated from a lab but these were selectively ignored, thus it "didn't amount to a theory".

More and more communication happens abstractly, away from the facts. An article titled "The lab leak theory is false" is not merely trying to inform people of a fact. Some call these Simulacrum Levels of communication. [1]

The hypothetical article may also be trying to cause people to act like the lab leak theory is false. The statement doesn't indicate whether the author believes the fact is true or false, it indicates the behaviors they desire from the reader - for example, not being biased against Asians. See also "You don't need N95 masks", which means is that the speaker doesn't want a panic buy of masks so they're unavailable for medical personnel.

It could also be written to cause people to believe that the speaker is part of the group that advocates against the lab leak hypothesis. "That sounds like a conspiracy theory, or racist, or nationalist, and I'm a part of the team that's against those things, go team, we're the best!". By taking a stance against the lab leak hypothesis they indicate their memebership in these causes, regardless of the truth or falsehood of the statement or the behaviors that belief or disbelief in the statement would entail.

Finally, it may be expected to benefit the speaker in an abstract sense. If you have any position at all on a hot news item, that brings in eyeballs, which the publisher values. None of the correctness, behavior, or group identification results really matter in this context, their incentive is orthogonal to the communicated information.

[1] https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/qDmnyEMtJkE9Wrpau/simulacra-...

Thanks for that, it was an interesting read.

The lab leak theory was pushed heavily by QAnon and then got picked up by the usual right wing news outlets without actually providing any proof. It made great TV, and also made conservative news outlets a bit of good profit as well. But since Fox news' (and others) prime time is mostly opinion, not news, it makes it hard to separate what is "fact" and what's someone's opinion stated as fact.

I think what you're complaining is valid, but you need to look at both sides. There appears to be a million different hypotheses for how the first transition to human happened, the lab leak is just one of them. Responsible journalism would have included the other hypothesis instead of highlighting the most panic/profit inducing one.

> The lab leak theory was pushed heavily by QAnon

IIRC, what QAnon pushed was beyond the standard lab-leak theory, that it was an lab leak of something created as an offensive bioweapon. I do think that that had the effect of poisoning the well on the plain lab leak theory (one might even speculate that that was the purpose for which QAnon pushed the theory.)

Ironically, we're on a thread discussing Assange, who ran Wikileaks, which published (often cryptographically verifiable) source information. The editor of that publication has been locked in prison indefinitely. So if you're having trouble distinguishing trusted information, you might think that the solution extends beyond "responsible journalism."

Then we had another thread on HN thereafter suggesting that Google & co. rotate out their DKIM keys to make this sort of news less verifiable. This seems to suggest that factual accuracy is not always the primary concern.

On the third point about feeling informed but not really being informed, there was something earlier this week where Vox had an article claiming that publications were ganging up on blackrock. Turns out one of the board members has a huge conflict of interest and is an investor in blackrock. https://www.vox.com/22524829/wall-street-housing-market-blac...

Now let’s say you read the vox article but nothing else. You might feel informed, like you’re doing something good keeping up on the news or whatever, but you’re potentially worse off if you don’t know the whole story

Eh. After yesterdays annoucement on CDFI by US treasury, which indicates that it includes venture capital funds, I can see why some might get a little miffed on missing out on grabbing goverment largesse..

It is not possible to give specific examples without crossing paths with readers who happen to have that particular epistemic monkey on their back. I want to avoid political arguments, so I think this tack fits the HN ethos best despite being, admittedly, an imperfect solution to a sticky problem. Although I think anyone can come up with their own examples.

Eliezer Yudkowsky suggests using historical examples, when making points about politics – like French Revolution or earlier. I know you're talking about contemporary US politics, but people are people are people and it can't be that different to something from history.

I'm not sure if information availability has ever been this high (before modern era). When everyone in your town believes the same thing and only the most wealthy people can or have any reason to send a letter to another country, sustained misinformation is a lot easier to justify without recourse to anyone's preferences, at the top or bottom of society.

The reasons you cite should have applied equally well back before the propaganda outlets took over.

I think this is the main reason the US population is so poorly informed and polarized:

- For the last 40 years, the Republican Party has systematically defunded education and consolidated the news media.

The Democrats haven’t done enough to push back, and many of the left wing media outlets copied Fox’s playbook, but that’s not the same as spearheading these changes.

I suspect you may be over-evaluating the quality of news sources / the public discourse 50 years ago. Fifty years ago, the US was willfully escalating in Vietnam! The founding fathers were complaining about the yellow press in some of their communications about freedom of speech. WWI had media restrictions on anti-war text issued straight from the presidency. I really don't think the troubled discourse was invented in the lifetime of anyone around today.

I may have another reason to add.

I am toying with GIS tools these days and it kind of shocked me that when I queried for "most common amenities" in a medium sized US city, I got:

1: parkings

2: places of worship

Well above any educational facility.

surely if you want to go to the library in the US, you have to park there?

Also, lack of atheism is not a sign of lack of education or presence of ignorance.

I was not criticizing the prevalence of parking, it is obvious you need a lot because most amenities will have one. What I found weird was that places of worship is the second absolutely necessary amenity according to the American mindset.

Places of worship are places where you are taught to respect a lot of indoctrination techniques as valid and where you do weekly exercises at shutting down critical thinking. I can't imagine it having a positive contribution over the wisdom of the general public.

I don't think there's much worth responding to in this comment except to say that I disagree and that some atheists have very strange ideas about religion and I don't know if that's because they don't understand what's going on or something else.

This is just dumb. A person spends 15% of their life using educational facilities. It is possible they will need parking and attend places of worship for close to 80% of their lives. The latter are also not amenable to geographic consolidation; you can't build one parking lot for entire medium sized city, but you might be able to only have one secondary school.

I'm not sure how dumb it is if you really think about it. Why is theology the only field with widespread public lecture halls? Why can't I go to botany church every Saturday? If there was anywhere near the public interest in knowledge about the world as there is in knowledge about the world-to-come, you could go to church on Saturday to hear about botany. You wouldn't even have to cancel anything on Sunday.

How is theology not knowledge about the world? Religion is the original form of moral philosophy and sociology, and contains thousands of years of experiential learning about how to lead a positive individual life within a society that enables said individuals. That's much more important to be informed about than botany.

Having said that, skill-oriented communities would be great too - they primarily exist online right now because participants are often spread out, or otherwise take the form of friend groups based on shared interest.

> How is theology not knowledge about the world?

Gather all the theologies into a room and get them to agree on the evidence for their points of dogma if you can. There's a first test of knowledge. Beyond pragmatic social strategy, these ancient tribal writings are a vestige of ignorant mummery.

"My Sky Avenger versus your Sky Avenger," as George Carlin might have said.

> Religion is the original form of moral philosophy and sociology, and contains thousands of years of experiential learning [...]

Sure, humans (and likely other extinct hominins) have speculated about their life and the world. It is not given that all their conclusions favoured a Sky Avenger. Some notable ancient Greeks were atheists. So, no, "religion" does not contain thousands of years of experiential learning. Speculation only becomes learning when it can be tested. Arrant nonsense is not learning, even if bound in leather and printed in gold on vellum.

Theology is knowledge only in the same sense that astrology, Scientology, or QAnon claims are knowledge. It is knowledge about a system of false and/or untestable assertions, constituting in all a set of conventions to which a power structure may ally itself. Old religions become mythology when there is no longer a power structure to promote them.

People make pragmatic choices every day to live in the real world. Purveyors of religion just build fantasies atop these pragmatic choices.

This little screed just betrays a lack of knowledge about religion. The idea of gods as being imaginary beings that people believe to be, Idk, invisible or something rather than anthropomorphised representations of the laws of nature is a pretty low effort atheist trope.

I used to believe this stuff when I was a know-it-all 15 year old too and used to joke about the flying spaghetti monster, but I've since attempted to actually understand some of these ideas rather than dismissing religion as crazy imaginings by those stupid people from over 70 years ago and all of history before that, compared to us modern enlightened atheists. I was raised atheist and have only come to understand some Christian ideas via learning some philosophy and 20th and 21st century scientific theory.

Good Sir, in my best and kindest humour I must say that neither of us is 15 years old ^_^ and I am aware that a literary interpretation of 4000 [1] years of mythology is not just possible, it has been offered in notable works by Joseph Campbell and JG Fraser.

Although literary criticism far from a rigorous field of thought, I am happy to celebrate your interest, especially if you have devoted most of your adult life to it.

What ignorance, cruelty, strife, and murder have been committed in the cause of other interpretations of 4000 [1] years of mythology is to my mind the greater concern. But we can of course agree to disagree on the InterWobbles.

Cheers!

[1] An arbitrary number to include various artefacts.

I actually haven't devoted any of my adult life to it - I was raised without religion and grew up not understanding the nature of religion and thinking science was somehow its successor as JG Fraser believed. But this belief was born of ignorance, not knowledge. My primary studies in adulthood have been systems theory and some dabbling in moral philosophy, rather than studying the Bible.

I suspect that wars between sects is not a simple matter of killing the non-believer, but an excuse for the real reason wars have always been fought: expansionism and colonialism in order to control scarce resources.

From your kind reply, Sir, I am led to suspect that we agree on much more than we would at first assume. Bread, circuses, and other mummery are distractions useful to the powerful as they concoct and enact their schemes.

And, of course, the winners of a conflict write the historical account and the myths. The losers lose their voice and often their lives.

There are some relatively lucid works in literature. But literature serves artistic purposes. There are honest and more rigorous works in economics, history, and anthropology that lead to a stark conclusion. [0]

Civilisation is a hard system to build. ^_^

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_homini_lupus

if you're implying that religion is just a tool used by the powerful to manipulate the masses, then I'd say that while that does happen for sure, that it's far from the purpose and benefit that religion brings to a culture. Religious literature is not just artistic, it prescribes a set of behaviour (morals) that, when engaged in by the individual, leads to the best outcome for the collective. No other system has successfully done this, and the 20th century was a catastrophe of political movements attempting to replicate this cultural success using bureaucracy and violence.

The history of human catastrophes extends far enough back in time that I conclude it to be the functions of a pre-compiled, statically-linked library.

I don't agree that there is any rigorous system to be found in the topic we are discussing. But we certainly can agree that anyone trying to be good is a welcome candle in the darkness. ^_^

Parkings make sense, I was merely pointing out that something as optional as places of worship are as prevalent as parkings.

You don't "need" to attend places of worship 80% of your life. A place of worship is usually a place where you are told to consider respectable several of the tools for indoctrination:

- Trust in a authority

- Faith over knowledge

- Revelation as a valid source of information