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Comment by barrkel | Hacker News Reader

This is in fact the goal of Russian style propaganda. You have successfully been targeted. The idea is to spread so much confusion that you just throw up your hands and say, I'm not going to try and figure out what's going on any more.

That saps your will to be political, to morally judge actions and support efforts to punish wrongdoers.

https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PE198.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firehose_of_falsehood

https://jordanrussiacenter.org/blog/propaganda-political-apa...

https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-communications/insi...

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> The firehose of falsehood, also known as firehosing, is a propaganda technique in which a large number of messages are broadcast rapidly, repetitively, and continuously over multiple channels (like news and social media) without regard for truth or consistency. An outgrowth of Soviet propaganda techniques, the firehose of falsehood is a contemporary model for Russian propaganda under Russian President Vladimir Putin.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZggCipbiHwE

Yeah, just check how many alternative versions they provided for MH17 downing.

What you're saying is certainly an established propaganda strategy of Russia (and others), but what parent is saying is also true, "truth" isn't always black and white, and what is the desired behavior in one country can be the opposite in another.

For example, it is the truth that the Golf of Mexico is called the Gulf of America in the US, but Golf of Mexico everywhere else. What is the "correct" truth? Well, there is none, both of truthful, but from different perspectives.

> For example, it is the truth that the Golf of Mexico is called the Gulf of America in the US

We're pretty much okay with different countries and languages having different names for the same thing. None of that really reflects "truth" though. For what it's worth, I'd guess that "the Gulf of America" is and will be about as successful as "Freedom fries" was.

Liberty sausage feels naked without freedom fries

No, it's called the Gulf of Mexico everywhere else, not the Golf of Mexico. I'm not falling for your propaganda ;-)

Hah, yeah :) I originally wrote "Golfo de Mexico" but that's obviously the wrong language for HN and instead ended up with a mix between the two, inadvertently creating a new ocean golf resort.

The correct truth is to go to a higher level of abstraction and explain that there's a naming controversy.

I get the general point, but I disagree that you have to choose between one of the possibilities instead of explaining what the current state of belief is. This won't eliminate grey areas but it'll sure get us closer than picking a side at random.

What about straight up ideological disagreements?

Are markets a driver of wealth and innovation or of exploitation and misery?

Is abortion an important human right or murder?

Etc etc

In all those cases, you can explain the existing sides and show the available evidence for each. This isn't perfect, but those cases don't show the imperfections clearly enough.

You have to look at the details before you find the grey areas. Consider the case of abortion, and further consider the question of the existence of the human soul. There's no scientific evidence for souls, but the decision to look only at scientific evidence is itself a bias towards a certain way of understanding the world.

This is still much better than just deciding to pick one or the other side and ignoring the dispute.

I don't see those examples as being either-or. They don't seem like questions about any kind of objective truth, just questions about what aspect of a thing you think is the most important to you.

> explain that there's a naming controversy

But that also isn't the truth everywhere, it's only a controversy in the US, everyone else is accepting "Gulf of Mexico" as the name.

If the US government calls it one thing and everyone else calls it another, that's a dispute. I'm Australian. It is called the gulf of Mexico here. I still acknowledge that there is now a naming dispute between the US and basically everyone else.

The exact word "controversy" might have been the wrong choice by me, but whatever, I'm not a Wikipedia editor and I don't run Google Maps. The world has standards for dealing with government disputes and with i8n.

> If the US government calls it one thing and everyone else calls it another, that's a dispute

I guess that's the fundamental disagreement, I wouldn't call that a "dispute" more than I would call the name "America" a dispute, it's just that different people understand it different. For some, it means a group of continents (that's how most people around me would take that for example), for others it means a country in North America (which I'm guessing is the common meaning if you live in North America already). Just because different people has different meanings doesn't make it into a dispute.

In other words, there are reality bubbles, and they are embedded in a single shared reality and you can just go look at it.

The US hasn't switched to calling the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America. Partisans on the right do this to show their allegiance to Trump. Partisans on the left still call it the Gulf of Mexico to show their opposition to Trump. Big companies that can be targeted by Trump call it the Gulf of America to protect themselves. And most non-partisans still call it the Gulf of Mexico because they're not paying attention and have always called it that (if they have ever spoken of it or know that it exists). I suspect a lot of people call it the Gulf, already an established custom before this idiocy about renaming it, precisely to avoid entangling themselves in the partisan fight.

The US, like other countries, doesn't get redefined with every change of government, and Trump has not yet cowed the public into knuckling under to his every dictat.

Upvoted to discourage greyness. Your observation is very applicable and is heavily grounded in human nature. It's even funny! But it turned grey because no comment mentioning Trump is complete without the author stating how they FEEL about Trump. Extra greyness awarded for wrong answers. People trying to avoid entanglement in the partisan fight are the new 'enemies of America'.

Brandolini’s law in action.

Parent is arguing one thing, show up with some bullshit argument and watch dozen comments arguing about Gulf of Mexico instead of discussing original point.

I'm not calling it, that, because it's ridiculous.

It's been called the Gulf of Mexico everywhere for centuries. The president is free to attempt to rename it but that will only be successful if usage follows. Which it does not, as of today. This is a terrible example of subjectivity.

Russia doesn't care what you call that sea, they're interested in actual falsehoods. Like redefining who started the Ukraine war, making the US president antagonize Europe to weaken the West, helping far right parties accross the West since they are all subordinated to Russia...

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