Joe vs. Times – How to explain the erosion of trust in institutions | Hacker News Reader

Joe vs. Times – How to explain the erosion of trust in institutions

integritytalk.substack.com

12 pointsbinnacle16 comments

As someone who has never trusted institutions, nor seen any particular reason they should be considered trustworthy, the contrary question feels more interesting: why did people in the past have so much faith in powerful organizations? Was it a function of centralized mass media? Given the a US-centric nature of the research, was it something about the depression/WWII/post-war boom experience?

I'd suggest maybe just the nature of organizations becoming more corrupt over time. When an org is younger more of its focus is still put towards the task it was originally created to perform, but the longer they exist the more bureaucracy and corruptness sets in, the most institutionalized they become, the more they put their effort into just spreading their influence and enriching themselves rather than performing their original task.

Sometimes at points in their history an org can reform itself and revert back to an earlier stage, but at this point I personally feel that most major institutions have been around long enough that they've effectively become corrupt beyond the point of reform, and just need to be replaced.

Because no man is an island and trust in institution is how our society evolved. Trusting that when I buy food from market, it is safe to eat, trusting that when a sentry says the enemy is coming, that we prepare. Sure, they fail at times but it's vastly superior to the alternatives.

I don't get this notion of 'trustless' as a feature. We should want to trust more. 'Do your own research' is such nonsense in so many ways - I don't want to re-invent periodic table or the that the Earth is round. Sure, the experts can be wrong at times but for one to challenge that, one has to first be an expert in the same domain.

I have always hypothesized that it's because these traits have helped our parents to blend in and survive (and bloom) in slavery and corrupted civilizations. I have nothing to back it up of course.

Media environment IMO. There wasn't enough bottom-up information; gatekeepers served as more aggressive filters than social media algorithms do.

The New York Times sold the Iraq War, Joe Rogan didn't, how complex do you really have to make this?

Not sure we need big brain analyses on this one.

They failed to act early on COVID so as not to panic us plebs, then lied about the efficacy of masks so the healthcare workers would have enough.

We discovered Epstein literally ran an entire secret pedo/blackmail island, then he died alone in a cell, and a full list or investigation of the people who visited has never even been considered.

Powell went from saying no inflation, to transient inflation, to inflation but it's good?? Reeks of the same "don't panic the plebs" attitude as the COVID crisis.

Apparently the entire push for more vitamin D was based on.. nothing? Someone just made up a number?

The media repeatedly said everything about Hunter Biden was baseless right until the smoking gun videos came out and now it's true?

Are you kidding me? No one trusts them because every single one is repeatedly caught lying. It's not complicated..

This article instead tries to argue about the peak-end rule and complexity and essentially explain away the distrust as a byproduct of stupidity. Casting those who distrust institutions as inferior idiots is the worst possible strategy to regain trust.

I think this pandemic highlighted this well. One thing that was really interesting to see in Hong Kong was that many people distrust the government but very few thinks the government is inept. This seems to be true for mainland China as well.

>an establishment made up of thousands of workers, jointly aiming to present information as accurately as possible

I don't think that's what media organizations "aim" for, which is why I don't trust them.

These compared items have too many dimensions to simply pick the best. NY times deffo have more pens, cameras and experience but there are other factors also, like authenticity and transparency.

>As someone raised in a democratic country, where most media outlets have been molded by decades of existence, this opinion struck me as naive and obviously wrong.

What an odd statement. The NY Times ran with constant Russia collusion articles for over 3 years and some of their "journalists" even won Pulitzer prizes for their fiction all while knowing the story was false, but it served their agenda.

The NY Times also spent years promoting Bush administration lies about Iraq, in support of that misbegotten war.

And now they turn to Raytheon board members and lobbyists for "independent analysis" of Afghanistan (without mentioning their affiliation):

https://thecolumn.substack.com/p/on-afghanistan-withdrawal-n...

Odd that Viktor Yanukovych and Donald Trump had the same campaign manager.

Totally unrelated, but if it satisfies your confirmation bias then so be it.

The author is looking at it wrong. The person that prefers Joe Rogan may not be consciously aware of it, but he does so out of simple us vs. them logic. They've intuited that the Times is hostile to them, and so they quite reasonably regard them with suspicion. Even if they're more accurate on each individual story, the overall selection of stories and angle from which they are covered is biased against them. Let's look at some of these stories:

The Angry White Male Caucus; Trumpism is all about the fear of losing traditional privilege. - https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/01/opinion/kavanaugh-white-m...

A school that is 1/30 black made a video. Their demographics were reflected in this video. This is very bad. In a Homecoming Video Meant to Unite Campus, Almost Everyone Was White - https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/01/us/university-of-wisconsi...

A white majority is a problem to be fixed: New Hampshire, 94 Percent White, Asks: How Do You Diversify a Whole State? - https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/27/us/new-hampshire-white-di...

When it reflects poorly on whites, race is so important to a story it is featured in the title: A Black Virginia Girl Says White Classmates Cut Her Dreadlocks at a Playground - https://web.archive.org/web/20190927202007/https://www.nytim...

And not all that important otherwise: Update: Virginia Girl Recants Story of Assault, and Family Apologizes - https://web.archive.org/web/20191001003852/https://www.nytim...

We Can Replace Them - In Georgia, a chance to rebuke white nationalism. - https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/29/opinion/stacey-abrams-geo...

How White Women Use Themselves as Instruments of Terror: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/27/opinion/racism-white-wome...

Indian boys attack black girls, white people are to blame: Instead of asking what the boys’ reported racial identity tells us about the nature of the attack, we should see the boys as enacting American whiteness through anti-black assault in a very traditional way. - https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/26/opinion/new-jersey-high-s...

Whites are 43% of NYC's population, but are underrepresented in its gifted & talented programs, at 35%. But the NYT puts them in the "white or Asian" category, to trick the reader into thinking they are overrepresented: Though about 70 percent of the roughly 1 million public school students in New York are Black and Latino, about 75 percent of the roughly 16,000 students in gifted elementary school classes are white or Asian American. - https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/08/nyregion/gifted-talented-...

Let Refugees Settle Italy’s Empty Spaces - https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/04/opinion/let-refugees-sett...

Whites have no shared culture and history: Why We’re Capitalizing Black - The Times has changed its style on the term’s usage to better reflect a shared cultural identity. [..] white doesn’t represent a shared culture and history in the way Black does, and also has long been capitalized by hate groups. - https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/05/insider/capitalized-black...

Except when it's time to feel guilty: How Can I Cure My White Guilt? The thing about privilege is that it can be used for good. - https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/14/style/white-guilt-privile...

Do you notice a pattern? But perhaps I've committed the same sin that I accuse the Times of - cherry-picking stories to fit a pre-determined agenda. If you believe this, then I welcome you, dear reader, to assemble a similar set of articles from the Times, but instead of targeting whites, they should target Blacks, Latinos, Asians, or Jews, and disprove my thesis.

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