then I don’t think we meaningfully disagree on what there is to protect self and community from—malice incentivizes divide and conquer, so if you’re seeking to protect, unite and aid. my only objections to conspiracy theorism is that it can cause one to mismodel the coordination patterns that cause the behaviors one notices. in general, I don’t think the media as a whole tries to convince people of things; as a whole, mostly they try to get people to click on things. subgroups of media do have specific agendas, but for the most part the shared directions in behavior space do not result in reliable coordination. I also agree with Scott Alexander’s take about how the media usually lies: by omission. I don’t think it’s an awful idea to occasionally read or watch stuff produced by media companies, it’s just important to do citation tracing. don’t be a crackpot; there are always many possible causal hypotheses.
then I don’t think we meaningfully disagree on what there is to protect self and community from—malice incentivizes divide and conquer, so if you’re seeking to protect, unite and aid. my only objections to conspiracy theorism is that it can cause one to mismodel the coordination patterns that cause the behaviors one notices. in general, I don’t think the media as a whole tries to convince people of things; as a whole, mostly they try to get people to click on things. subgroups of media do have specific agendas, but for the most part the shared directions in behavior space do not result in reliable coordination. I also agree with Scott Alexander’s take about how the media usually lies: by omission. I don’t think it’s an awful idea to occasionally read or watch stuff produced by media companies, it’s just important to do citation tracing. don’t be a crackpot; there are always many possible causal hypotheses.