Highest Rated Comments


morphogenes138 karma

The question I would like to ask is: What can I, as an ordinary American, do to combat the rise of fake news?

We all saw, during the recent election, the media stopped being journalists and began being cheerleaders, and became people who had a conclusion that they reached, and then searched for facts to show that Hillary Clinton was an 92, 93, 99 point 9999 chance winner, of winning the election.

Media was caught red-handed planting debate questions. BBC got caught red-handed misquoting a reddit user. The Clinton campaign ordered the media to back Trump - and they obeyed! BBC lied about women coding. NYT lied about a Tesla car. “When the facts didn’t suit his opinion, he simply changed the facts,” Musk wrote. A Times spokeswoman reiterated that its story was “fair and accurate.” An Associated Press journalist got caught with an alleged al Qaeda leader and tested positive for bomb-making materials. Just look at this graphic and tell me the media didn't choose a side.

Journalists don’t want the media to stop being partisans– they just want them to be more effective partisans! To be more effective at beating Trump. The assumptions and goals are the same — Trump is evil, he should be destroyed.

It never occurs to the media or their ”critics” that the media is not supposed to have any skin in the game….you can only ”lose” if you are fighting an opponent…and THAT'S THE PROBLEM.

What bothers me the most about the media is that not only are they horribly prejudiced - they don’t even seem to be able to recognize their prejudice. That’s so bad. Calling fake news fake news is fake news, according to the fake news.

I wish there was something I could do to fight back against these powerful actors, who are malevolently attempting to traumatize everything we all hold dear. What's the best thing I can do as an ordinary person to make sure these elites lose and we powerless people win?

morphogenes88 karma

A lack of political diversity in psychology is said to lead to a number of pernicious outcomes, including biased research and active discrimination against conservatives. The authors of this study surveyed a large number (combined N = 800) of social and personality psychologists and discovered several interesting facts. First, although only 6% described themselves as conservative "overall," there was more diversity of political opinion on economic issues and foreign policy. Second, respondents significantly underestimated the proportion of conservatives among their colleagues. Third, conservatives fear negative consequences of revealing their political beliefs to their colleagues. Finally, they are right to do so: In decisions ranging from paper reviews to hiring, many social and personality psychologists said that they would discriminate against openly conservative colleagues. The more liberal respondents were, the more they said they would discriminate.

Composite scores of perceived hostile climate for conservatives (a = .85) were significantly correlated with political orientation, r(263) = .28, p < .0001: The more liberal respondents were, the less they believed that conservatives faced a hostile climate. This correlation was driven entirely by more conservative respondents' greater personal experience of a hostile climate: Controlling for personal experience, the relationship disappeared (r = -.01), suggesting that the hostile climate reported by conservatives is invisible to those who do not experience it themselves.

At the end of our surveys, we gave room for comments. Many respondents wrote that they could not believe that anyone in the field would ever deliberately discriminate against conservatives. Yet at the same time we found clear examples of discrimination. One participant described how a colleague was denied tenure because of his political beliefs. Another wrote that if the department "could figure out who was a conservative they would be sure not to hire them."

-- Yoel Inbar and Joris Lammers, "Political Diversity in Social and Personality Psychology"

http://yoelinbar.net/papers/political_diversity.pdf

morphogenes77 karma

Hey, do you realize that you are getting ripped a new asshole in these comments? It's like an argument against letting The People interfere in elections. Better go back to Big Money Donors and letting illegal immigrants vote, otherwise you're never going to be elected, hombre. :(

morphogenes40 karma

"The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or mental, is not a sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the opinion of others, to do so would be wise, or even right."

-- John Stuart Mill, "On Liberty"

Agree, or disagree? Why?

morphogenes33 karma

The NSA has that ability, but for a variety of logistical & legal reasons only does so in highly targeted cases.

On March 12, 2013, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told Congress that intel officials were not collecting mass data on tens of millions of Americans. NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden soon revealed material that proved Clapper's testimony false: The government had been gathering and storing data from ordinary Americans' phone records, email and Internet use.