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Comment by michaelt | Hacker News Reader

> So…some friendly government officials and security vendors but no press or members of the public ensure "the highest level of transparency" in Microsoft's book?

Sometimes the message you need your 'partners' to receive is: "Yes, we fucked up 3 times, but over the same period you lot fucked up 100 times so we're going to severely curtail what you can do, if you don't like it tough"

And if you're Linus Torvalds you can just say that in public.

But if you're a business with a PR department and lawyers, and some of these partners are actually important to your business and you want to maintain a good relationship with them?

Then it's probably a lot easier for you to deliver the message clearly and frankly if you do it behind closed doors.

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That makes a bit of sense. I'm stuck in this weird place where part of me wants information to be free (read; actual transparency) but the other part of me knows I don't understand all of it and will likely misinterpret or misrepresent it alongside millions of other people and multiple media outlets that generally don't know enough about a thing to be drawing conclusions about it. Having a foot in both of those camps is exhausting. It's a conundrum.

The world is a complicated and messy place.

I would rather live in a world where information is free and we learn to deal with that rather than one where information being free is subject to whatever powerful group is in charge at that moment, whose interests will never align with citizens'

> information being free is subject to whatever powerful group is in charge at that moment

The mainstream media outlets dont really change hands often. The vast majority of people are already subject to the whims and biases of said media organisations. More information being available is unlikely to change that. We already can't parse the amount of information available today.

> More information being available is unlikely to change that.

No, it's not. Education is though.

> We already can't parse the amount of information available today.

You're right, we can't. But more ignorance is hardly the solution I'd opt for.

Whose education, then? People can be educated in all sorts of different ways.

I'm not entirely sure what you're asking.

Who would be educated? Everyone, I would hope.

Whose education would they be given? As in, what education plan? I would say one devised by teachers and educational experts, the goal of which (in the context of this discussion) would be to educate children on things like critical thinking, media literacy, recognizing propaganda, etc.

I mean they could be educated in something other than our standard tradition. For example someone educated in NK under the ideology of "the Juche idea" will have very different reactions to media than we would have.

Why does ‘more ignorance’ matter if the current smaller quantity is already beyond you?

(And realistically for pretty much everyone, zero prospects of grasping even 90% of what’s currently available)

Just because it's beyond me or you doesn't mean it's beyond everyone else.

The point GP made that it seems most people have missed, is that we need to recognize that we almost always lack the necessary context and expertise to understand something. One potential response to that realization is more ignorance, yes, I suppose. Another might be looking for people with the necessary expertise to understand something and get their input on it.

Getting the input from someone, means not getting the input from someone else… in that unit of time.

So it doesn’t make a difference?

(Assuming there are way more potential inputs than you have lifespan to receive, which is already the case)

And I’m pretty sure it’s the case for everyone, since even if someone is 10x smarter than Einstein, they will still only have 24 hours a day. And their neurons have a chemical upper limit in processing speed.

What point are you trying to make, exactly?

I’m not sure, because I was the one who asked you, why does this matter?

I'm not going to argue for the sake of arguing. If you have a position you're arguing from, at least try to articulate it, otherwise I'm done with this conversation.

Huh?

> vast majority of people are already subject to the whims and biases of said media organisations

The least-informed people, today, are not the ones who shun mainstream media.

I take this to imply a dichotomy that does not exist: it isn't just MSM vs the rest. There is a lively, informative section of the press which is dedicated to specialist topics, or specialist treatment of current affairs, etc. Le Monde Diplomatique is a great example of this: a relatively narrow readership, fortnightly publication, and high quality articles written by experts who are good at communicating with the public.

By contrast, most people who talk about non-MSM outlets are referring to places that publish actual fiction, YouTube channels, or thinly veiled propaganda outlets.

> where information is free and we learn to deal with that

We’ve tried that. We’re probably in the era with the greatest individual access to information in human history. It’s mostly void screaming and sound bite selecting. We should still fight for free information. But that doesn’t mean we should be forced to give up the benefits of privacy and confidential dealings.

What we have is a deficit in expert, diverse journalism. Our media landscape just isn't fit for the amount of information that's out there: ideally, a newish profession would exist that straddles academia and journalism, with more generalise than the former and more specialism than the latter. Having this would let us actually enjoy the benefits of an open society much more freely, and make use of the huge number of semi-experts that are out there in the world thanks to the advent of mass higher education.

> We’re probably in the era with the greatest individual access to information in human history. It’s mostly void screaming and sound bite selecting.

I'm not sure there's much evidence to suggest these are related. It's always been like this. Just because it's easier to see that now doesn't mean we should ignore the benefits this era brought.

> But that doesn’t mean we should be forced to give up the benefits of privacy and confidential dealings.

I don't think anyone suggested this.

> We’ve tried that.

So we keep trying? Just because something is difficult doesn't mean it's not worth doing.

If you'd like a counterpoint that complete transparency is not inherently good, you might enjoy this: https://philpapers.org/archive/NGUTIS.pdf

This one sounds like a standard application of Chatham House rules[0]. No press, no snipe reporting, no out-of-context soundbites.

The short version I often use about that rule: "you can quote, but you can not attribute". It's a relatively common practice among certain technology conferences. At least in the UK.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chatham_House_Rule

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