Some Fake News About Me from Bloomberg

Some Fake News About Me from Bloomberg(blog.dilbert.com)

31 points by toss1941 9 years ago | 13 comments

djsumdog 9 years ago |

I'm sick of this "fake news" crap. It's just called "news" and it hasn't been fair or objective in any western country for over a century.

I actually have a lot of respect for Scott Adams, and I feel that he, and others, who supported the unpopular side of the Americans Next Best President reality show that was on last year, have been unjustly labelled for what was a set of equally terribly choices.

Scott Adams constantly uses "Cognitive Dissonance" (so does Bill Nye and the vSauce guy Michael .. it's the buzz word of the year) and says in his blog that you can't tell when you're in it, even though he claims he's not in a state of Cognitive Dissonance himself!

I have an unpopular view myself, I think the game is rigged, the parties are the same, the points don't matter and that no matter which president gets elected, we'll go to more wars (Obama started bombing 5 countries. Clinton would have done the same. So will Trump. America's industry is dependent on war).

While I respect Scott Adams and don't think he should face the unjust criticism he has gotten, I still don't agree with his outlook. I don't think he's an idiot or racist or deceived. I think that all of America is simply on the losing side of the false left right divide, and have said as much:

http://fightthefuture.org/articles/the-fallout-of-american-a...

I could be wrong though. Maybe there is a difference between the two parties? I might have fallen into nihilism; accepting only the sources that feed my world view that America's political system is hopelessly corrupt and broken. I wouldn't mind being wrong, but I don't think that is the reality.

It's important to doubt your axioms and to constantly challenge your world view. Beware of nationalism or standing behind a person or idea because you feel you have to. Cognitive dissonance is giving the electric shock to the other person in the Milgram experiments because you didn't see that there were other options, and the reality is you won't know for sure what you'd do until you are in that situation.

astrodust 9 years ago | |

> I might have fallen into nihilism...

You have fallen into nihilism.

"What does it matter? Republican? Democrat? The Earth will be consumed by the sun in a few billion years anyway."

Thank you Marvin.

djsumdog 9 years ago | | |

He was my favourite character in those books. :-P

alimw 9 years ago | |

It is testament to Trump's art that you have forgotten the term "fake news" was more specific when it first appeared.

Rapzid 9 years ago |

I was eleven or twelve when I first got turned on to the bull spun in news stories. A few friends and I were going around our small, one light town on our BMX bikes when a writer from the local newspaper started interviewing us. She was making a dumb fluff piece but we didn't know and we were excited to be in the paper. I recall feeling duped and angry when I read the piece; misquotes and context spun out of whole cloth. I've always hated people misquoting or misrepresenting things I have said..

It was an important lesson I'm happy to have learned. Once you know what to look for, you can see it everywhere.

ryanx435 9 years ago |

For anyone wondering about the connection to the subject of the authors other article, marina abrimovic, she is the artist at the center of the "spirit cooking" controversy and personAL friends with John podesta.

The joke is that she got an extremely positive article, adams got a negative article, and the punchline probably has sonething to do with fake news and the author working for podesta or something.

More about spirit cooking, if you're interested: http://m.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/nov/4/wikileaks-john-...

toss1941 9 years ago |

Just speaking about accuracy in all reporting of our time (not including specific trade publications), I think there has to be a clever moniker for the phenomenon that occurs when you read or hear a news report about a subject you are already intimately familiar with, where you spot multiple errors peppered throughout the article. Then, on subjects we know little about beforehand, we walk away confident that what we just consumed was wholesome and true. That has to have a name already right?

Nadya 9 years ago | |

You've probably read the name here on HN, so here you go:

The Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia effect

toss1941 9 years ago | | |

Thanks! And to add, how can one possibly become less confident instead of more confident in our media the older one gets? I think the media is just a tool, to be used by those with the strings of the reporters, or the reporters themselves, to drive a desired message. Truth is hard to find. Wait, I'm already a cynic. Oh well, I'll just go watch old shows on netflix like Star Trek TNG where I won't be inundated with carefully crafted dilemma's with equally carefully crafted solutions and virtue signaling. Wait a minute...

djsumdog 9 years ago | |

A combination of selective memory, cherry picking and other logical fallacies can lead to cognitive dissonance. Things like nationalism, patriotism, propaganda and public relations can be used to place people into that state without them realising it. That is the power of advertising (ready about Edward Bernays and Anna Freud if you want to be really frightened).

Capitalism, communism, climate change, climate denial, racism, LGBT rights, reproductive rights, states rights, federal rights, debt, money, free markets, religion, atheism, healthy foods, unhealthy foods, pollution, consumerism, environmentalism ... you and I are wrong about one of these things. Statically we have to be. At least one of our core beliefs about society will eventually be proven entirely wrong at some point within the next century. Keep that in mind the next time you get into a political argument.

astrodust 9 years ago |

There's got to be something about this pattern of prominent people publicly losing their minds in the worst possible ways: ESR, Scott Adams, Jontron, even Bobby Fischer.

This is the same person who lost his shit over a sweater (http://blog.dilbert.com/post/146361457021/the-humiliation-of...). Chugging too much Infowars?

tnone 9 years ago | |

I thought pointing out post-truth politics was good? But only if the left does it, I suppose...

Character assassinations from afar are nothing new. It's been the progressive activists' favoured weapon for sure.

astrodust 9 years ago | | |

Your comment is, in a nutshell, what's wrong with dialogue today.