Other people have commented here that journalism is in the business of entertainment, or in the business of generating clicks etc. I think that’s wrong. Journalism is in the business of establishing the narrative of social reality. Deciding what’s a gaffe and who’s winning, who’s “controversial” and who’s “respected”, is not a distraction from what they do. It’s the main thing.
So it’s weird to frame this is “politics is way too meta”. Too meta for whom? Politicians care about being elected, so everything they say is by default simulacrum level 3 and up. Journalists care about controlling the narrative, so everything they say is by default simulacrum level 3 and up. They didn’t aim at level 1 and miss, they only brush against level 1 on rare occasion, by accident.
even when those words were untrue or could lead to violence
sometimes spew hateful speech
step outside acceptable topics
turned off by the more rigid and contrarian beliefs
his influential, and controversial, writings
push people toward toxic beliefs
These aren’t accidental. Each one of the bolded words just means “I think this is bad, and you better follow me”. They’re the entire point of the article — to make it so that it’s social reality to think that Scott is bad.
So I think there are two takeaways here. One is for people like us, EAs discussing charity impact or Rationalists discussing life-optimization hacks. The takeaway for us is to spend less time writing about the meta and more about the object level. And then there’s a takeaway about them, journalists and politicians and everyone else who lives entirely in social reality. And the takeaway is to understand that almost nothing they say is about objective reality, and that’s unlikely to change.
I think it’s good to be really cynical about the media as it exists today. I’m not sure it’s good to be cynical about the-media-two-years-from-now — that has something of the property of a self-fulfilling prophecy.
I have my own personal sense of how likely it is that the media will suddenly turn over a new leaf tomorrow, but since it might turn out to be easier than I think, I won’t start the conversation by stating that. Instead, I’ll mention some of the specific forces I think create the status quo:
Self-deception and plausible deniability. Reporters don’t want to think of themselves as doing a bad thing. If there were common knowledge within many newsrooms that this level of meta is bad, all or most of those newsrooms would behave a lot better. (Not perfectly, but a lot better.) Even more so if their readers and colleagues felt the same.
Lack of an ideology that recognizes these things as bad and clearly tells reporters what to do instead.
Bad ideologies filling the vacuum: ideologies that say “do the normal pragmatic thing”, and ones that say “do the virtuous principled thing, but that principle is about advancing a specific political agenda that doesn’t care much about epistemic principle”.
Economic incentives. But these are partly shaped by the above incentives: many people choose to work in journalism because they want to purchase a sense that they’re doing something noble and good. Many people choose to consume the news in order to purchase a sense that they’re doing something responsible and virtuous.
I understand, I think we have an honest disagreement here. I’m not saying that the media is cringe in an attempt to make it so, as a meta move. I honestly think that the current prestige media establishment is beyond reform, a pure appendage of power. It’s impact can grow weaker or stronger, but it will not acquire honesty as a goal (and in fact, seems to be giving up even on credibility).
In any case, this disagreement is beyond the scope of your essay. What I learn from it is to be more careful of calling things cringe or whatever in my own speech, and to see this sort of thing as an attack on the social reality plane rather than an honest report of objective reality.
Sounds right! If there’s anything I should read in order to understand and agree with your view, send it my way (including things that get written in the future).
Came to the comments to find an exchange like this. Rob, I liked the article, and also my thought while reading it was that I didn’t think you were being cynical enough about motivations. There may be a conflict v. mistake theory thing here: in your article, the phenomenon is treated as a mistake or bad habit by people unaware of its consequences, rather than as an intentional strategy. My guess is that it is an intentional strategy (in fact, it’d be crazy if it weren’t), and it’s important to see it as that in order to figure out what function it’s serving (and for whom).
Or both: for journalists, the focus on meta is an intentional strategy, but for the rest of us (people who read journalism), it’s mostly a bad habit (maybe, or something).
Another, broader thing here, which is that there are really two different conversations your post sparks for me. One is, what is the existing media/news doing, really, and how, and why? And the other is, what does actually good and effective media/news look like?
A cruxy thing for me is “Is the current regime of journalism representative of all eras of journalism?”. Was there a time when journalism was more in touch with object-level reality, even if it was still largely or primarily about social reality?
On one hand, I can think of examples of yellow journalism and other social-reality-oriented writing from Awhile Ago. On other hand, the current news cycle seems much worse than the new cycle from 50 years ago. I have stories in my head about how the first TV broadcast presidential debate shifted the focus from “who could speak better” to “who looked better”, and various other increases in partisanship and soundbyteness.
I think I agree with Wentworth elsethread that it’s best not to get distracted by politics when you’re interested in policy. But still seems worth at least briefly noting that politics could be better than it is.
Other people have commented here that journalism is in the business of entertainment, or in the business of generating clicks etc. I think that’s wrong. Journalism is in the business of establishing the narrative of social reality. Deciding what’s a gaffe and who’s winning, who’s “controversial” and who’s “respected”, is not a distraction from what they do. It’s the main thing.
So it’s weird to frame this is “politics is way too meta”. Too meta for whom? Politicians care about being elected, so everything they say is by default simulacrum level 3 and up. Journalists care about controlling the narrative, so everything they say is by default simulacrum level 3 and up. They didn’t aim at level 1 and miss, they only brush against level 1 on rare occasion, by accident.
Here are some quotes from our favorite NY Times article, Silicon Valley’s Safe Space:
These aren’t accidental. Each one of the bolded words just means “I think this is bad, and you better follow me”. They’re the entire point of the article — to make it so that it’s social reality to think that Scott is bad.
So I think there are two takeaways here. One is for people like us, EAs discussing charity impact or Rationalists discussing life-optimization hacks. The takeaway for us is to spend less time writing about the meta and more about the object level. And then there’s a takeaway about them, journalists and politicians and everyone else who lives entirely in social reality. And the takeaway is to understand that almost nothing they say is about objective reality, and that’s unlikely to change.
I think it’s good to be really cynical about the media as it exists today. I’m not sure it’s good to be cynical about the-media-two-years-from-now — that has something of the property of a self-fulfilling prophecy.
I have my own personal sense of how likely it is that the media will suddenly turn over a new leaf tomorrow, but since it might turn out to be easier than I think, I won’t start the conversation by stating that. Instead, I’ll mention some of the specific forces I think create the status quo:
Self-deception and plausible deniability. Reporters don’t want to think of themselves as doing a bad thing. If there were common knowledge within many newsrooms that this level of meta is bad, all or most of those newsrooms would behave a lot better. (Not perfectly, but a lot better.) Even more so if their readers and colleagues felt the same.
Lack of an ideology that recognizes these things as bad and clearly tells reporters what to do instead.
Bad ideologies filling the vacuum: ideologies that say “do the normal pragmatic thing”, and ones that say “do the virtuous principled thing, but that principle is about advancing a specific political agenda that doesn’t care much about epistemic principle”.
Economic incentives. But these are partly shaped by the above incentives: many people choose to work in journalism because they want to purchase a sense that they’re doing something noble and good. Many people choose to consume the news in order to purchase a sense that they’re doing something responsible and virtuous.
I understand, I think we have an honest disagreement here. I’m not saying that the media is cringe in an attempt to make it so, as a meta move. I honestly think that the current prestige media establishment is beyond reform, a pure appendage of power. It’s impact can grow weaker or stronger, but it will not acquire honesty as a goal (and in fact, seems to be giving up even on credibility).
In any case, this disagreement is beyond the scope of your essay. What I learn from it is to be more careful of calling things cringe or whatever in my own speech, and to see this sort of thing as an attack on the social reality plane rather than an honest report of objective reality.
Sounds right! If there’s anything I should read in order to understand and agree with your view, send it my way (including things that get written in the future).
Came to the comments to find an exchange like this. Rob, I liked the article, and also my thought while reading it was that I didn’t think you were being cynical enough about motivations. There may be a conflict v. mistake theory thing here: in your article, the phenomenon is treated as a mistake or bad habit by people unaware of its consequences, rather than as an intentional strategy. My guess is that it is an intentional strategy (in fact, it’d be crazy if it weren’t), and it’s important to see it as that in order to figure out what function it’s serving (and for whom).
Or both: for journalists, the focus on meta is an intentional strategy, but for the rest of us (people who read journalism), it’s mostly a bad habit (maybe, or something).
Another, broader thing here, which is that there are really two different conversations your post sparks for me. One is, what is the existing media/news doing, really, and how, and why? And the other is, what does actually good and effective media/news look like?
A cruxy thing for me is “Is the current regime of journalism representative of all eras of journalism?”. Was there a time when journalism was more in touch with object-level reality, even if it was still largely or primarily about social reality?
On one hand, I can think of examples of yellow journalism and other social-reality-oriented writing from Awhile Ago. On other hand, the current news cycle seems much worse than the new cycle from 50 years ago. I have stories in my head about how the first TV broadcast presidential debate shifted the focus from “who could speak better” to “who looked better”, and various other increases in partisanship and soundbyteness.
I think I agree with Wentworth elsethread that it’s best not to get distracted by politics when you’re interested in policy. But still seems worth at least briefly noting that politics could be better than it is.
Paul Graham’s The Refragmentation argues that mainstream media 50 years ago in the US was a rare and fragile historical anomaly.