Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
I realize that mag's question was not directed to me, so I will hide my
reply!
  

    
Thank you, Paula.
  

    
i also posted this in the other SOTW, another substack product:

https://www.corememory.com/p/so-begins-core-memory-a-new-sci-tech


with this as the killer graf:

We’re going to approach all these stories with our minds open and
our curiosity churning. In other words, hating technology/activism
is not our starting point, as seems to be the case with much of the
media today.




so who is this for? is this so thielcorp can do a reverse gawker and
have a place to do happy happy happy STEM news all the day (assume
thielcorp or its peers will be the obvious funders of this)
  

    
(I unhid Lisa's post because it was too good to be hidden.)
  

    
Lol, thank you, Jon.
  

    
Thanks for unhiding -- external readers can't see hidden posts 
  

    
23: I asked a similar question of fellow skeptics a few years ago - has the
skeptical movement (see for example, csicop.org, founded in 1976 by a load
of smart guys including Asimov, SAgan, etc_) failed? I do think one factor
is the religionization (?) of politics. I saw this when I lived in Ireland -
in the 1980s - in the North everything was both religious and politics, not
one or the other. You cannot have a meeting of disagreeing minds when one
side is convinced - or can convince others - that the other side isn't just
wrong, they're going to hell.

I remember a UK friend saying years ago that although she was an atheist she
supported religious education in the state schools here because it was so
boring that it acted like a vaccination against religion in adult life. True
or not, the UK is a far more secular place than the US, and while the UK
certainly has its mad politicians, you would simply never see someone
opening a hearing, as Hogseth did yesterday, with a performative speech
about his faith.

wg
  

    
I would add a couple "big picture" points to Lisa's list of how we
got here. 

One has to do with HOW newspapers were destroyed. In short, Big Tech
ate their advertising. Straight news has always needed some form of
subsidy--not only here, but also abroad. Audiences have never paid
the full cost for gathering, editing, and disseminating news. In the
twentieth century, advertising made that work. With that in mind, we
should consider paying for journalism the same way we pay for other
public goods, like law enforcement and infrastructure. Other
countries do that as a matter of course, and it works. We're no
closer to doing it than we were 25 years ago. 

Another point has to do with sweeping media deregulation during this
period. From the 1930s to the 1980s, broadcasters were required to
serve the public interest. If they didn't, they could lose their
licenses. That meant they couldn't "flood the zone with bullshit,"
as one political strategist put it. The public interest standard
never applied to cable television or the Internet. The combination
of media deregulation, powerful new technologies, and the collapse
of traditional journalism's business model helped create a golden
age of disinformation. 

Finally, there's the question of free speech. Freedom of expression
is exactly what Musk and Zuckerberg say they are for, but the
fraudulence their platforms foster tests the belief that the best
remedy for bad information is more and better information. The EU
and Brazil are now calling for Big Tech accountability, not free
expression as such, to protect their democracies. X and Meta have
cast that kind of regulation as un-American censorship, and they are
hoping the Trump administration will protect them from oversight. 

Are we for that regulatory approach or against it? If the former,
are those governments potential allies in the struggle to preserve
democracy? How about more, not less, public media? It seems like
something at the national scale is required to a address the threats
to democracy and journalism. 
  

    
Education. There is no media savvy electorate or fact seeking
constituency that doesn’t value learning and civic involvement from
a young age. 

Until actual people find value in it journalism outlasts will
suffer. 
  

    
I live in a state where the most progressive people I know
homeschool and choose charter schools because the public school
choice is horrid. 
  

    

 Lies are simple.
  Lies spark outrage, which is rewarded by most social media algorithms.
  Lies are satisfying when they seem to confirm what people already believe.
  Lies are fun, especially when they make the other side react with
sputtering rage.

  It's basically a battle between fact-based news and entertainment, and
it's too easy for entertainment to win.

  One of the ways to avoid falling for the old trap of "if you're
explaining, you're losing" is to tell stories that resonate with people,
stories that touch on things they care about and people they can relate to.
That's what I've tried to do with climate stories. Not just the latest
study, but how people are affected, and in unexpected ways.

  A study I show my students these days suggests that climate change is
responsible for longer and more intense pollen seasons. Climate change isn't
far away and in the future; it's in your nose. Similarly, I've written about
the changing nature of winter cold and how it makes it much harder for
Canadian parents to set up usable ice rinks in their backyards. A great part
of a country's culture is dying because winter temps aren't consistent
enough to give you an extended period of good ice. The NYT did a greeat
story on how getting leather for your luxury SUV is making Amazon
deforestatiom worse. Great investigative reporting that puts climate change
right under your ass.

<https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/17/climate/leather-seats-cars-
rainforest.html>

  I realize this doesn't necessarily help change our political fortunes. But
I am suggesting that there's a lot more to be done in telling stories that
can reach people.

  Lies will remain powerful. But we can counter the lies with enticing
truth.
  

    
I was just coming back to say that search ads and online advertising
is general are a huge part of the decline of print journalism.
  

    



i'm enjoying the conversation that flows.

i'd like to add onto my question of earlier.

so far, i haven't seen any answers that i didn't already know about. i've
been in this business forever, too, coming from various angles and
positions.

what i usually see in discussions of this type is an unwillingess of we
hand-wringers to acknowledge our own personal roles in the evolution of
what has become the flaming dumpster fire. wendy's point about religion and
politics in Northern Ireland is a wonderful example.

i generally see and hear a whole lot of smart and educated and liberal and
progressive people pointing their fingers at the bad religious people
across the aisle. naughty, mean Christians and cruel conservative
Republicans. OK. legitimate.

what's driving me nuts, what i think is a major cause of this shitshow: WE
are religious, too. we are religious about our views on science,
journalism, human beings, facts, communication styles, social justice, you
name it. and very often, most of us refuse to acknowledge it. it turns Us
versus Them. 

Us? we're just smart and compassionate and have the right worldview. 

Them? they're ignorant and easily led astray, stupid, cruel, voting against
their own interests.

so is anyone here willing to think on and write about how they, personally,
have helped us get here? how the values and tenets they cling to, the
social and professional crowds they tend to run with, have helped build a
mediasphere that the average person disbelieves or despises? 

happy to admit i have. oh boy have i ever, in my small role in this big bad
world.
  

    
John: I remmber often your story about Nashville moving to higher ground.

wg
  

    
Calling all our values "religious" cheapens so many things.
  

    
There's a difference between strongly-held beliefs that are based in faith
and those that are based in the quantifiable and measurable.
  

    
I think that term is inapposite. Secular values are rational, based
on evidence, and subject to revision upon the validation of
superlative evidence. Try that with religion.

There's arguably a tribal dimension to the dynamic, but I don't
think it's faith based. Disagreements within the liberal community
are argued on merit, whereas disputes in the conservative community
are doctrinal. 

We're not wrong to dismiss them as beguiled by charismatic and
demagogic orthodoxy. Neither are they wrong to condemn us for
heresy. ;-)
  

    





sigh.






"our beliefs and values are correct! because Science!"





"those people over there are religious idiots!"





regardless of whether either of these sides is objectively correct (and
whether objectivity is even possible -- please see Theory of Knowledge
101), this approach sucks. it is not working. we are losing. losing losing
losing.




losing newspapers.
losing support for journalism.
losing (some) support for responding to climate change.





are we never going to take any responsibility for our role in this
standoff?
  

    
> Secular values are rational, based
on evidence, and subject to revision upon the validation of
superlative evidence.

Yes, and religious values are based on humility and treating others
as we would like to be treated ourselves.

That’s the theory, anyway, but in practice it turns out rather
differently. Some people cling to discredited science just as hard
as they do to articles of faith. 

And honestly, have you ever been proselytized by an Evangelical
Atheist? Those fuckers are convinced the only thing holding us back
from New Jerusalem is believers’ unwillingness to hear the Word of
Our Lord Richard Dawkins.
  

    
You're not going to change my mind with scorn, that's for certain.
  

    
>people cling to discredited science

That may be true (and is far more attributable to tribalism than
arrant superstition), but the science itself remains subject to
proof by test. Empirical imperatives are still the gold standard in
validating claims.
  

    
Tiffany, I'm sorry, when journalism is being destroyed by media
consolidation and online advertising, I'm having a hard time seeing where
the factors you're emphasizing come in. Can you show me which local
newspapers went out of business because people who trust the quantifiable
were in conflict with those who are more religiously faithful?
  

    
slipped 

So none of you are willing to look at your own complicity (as
journalists) because mag used a word you take issue with? 

Let's take that provocative word out of the discussion, since her
question didn't mention it at all. 

>so is anyone here willing to think on and write about how they,
personally, have helped us get here? how the values and tenets they
cling to, the social and professional crowds they tend to run with,
have helped build a mediasphere that the average person disbelieves
or despises? 
  

    


and if i didn't already make it plain: i believe that i, too, have been
part of this long process over the last 3+ decades. i try to apply critical
thinking even to myself and my compatriots, to people i generally or often
agree with. but especially in the window of maybe, 2006-2016 (?) when
cancel culture and language policing got really hardcore, and i was living
my blue bubble life in Portland, and added social media into my life...
mostly i was not really helping or examining how my/our beliefs and
approaches were possibly throwing kindling into a dumpster, just waiting
for a match.

so this isn't a guilt trip on everyone else. it's part of an admission on
my part. i have been a Believer and have come to recognize that this
position and attitude are problematic. and i *still* do it, in the
newspaper, even though i know it's... unwise. but i've definitely reduced
the amount of predictable blue-bubble reporting and opinion-writing, and
have won some (perhaps begrudging) respect from some non-blues in my purple
area of residence, where i've lived over 8 years now.
  

    
Lisa, looking at statistics for this conference, most of the panel of
journalists (I'm not one of them) have not yet seen magdalen's questions and
the ensuing discussion. I am skeptical about the premise of her questions
and about journalist complicity in the destruction of journalism.