
Don't Outsource Your Thinking (2015) - ascertain
https://medium.com/@blakeross/don-t-outsource-your-thinking-ad825a9b4653
======
mjlee
Michael Crichton observed this and called it the Gell-Mann amnesia effect. I
think he said publicly that the name was to ride on the coat tails of Gell-
Mann's public success:

>>> “Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the
newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case,
physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist
has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the
article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause
and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of
them. In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors
in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and
read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine
than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.”

~~~
nemild
One caveat I would make: it is often over-generalized to then dismiss all
media on a topic, especially when readers have some limited knowledge of the
topic at hand.

~~~
jdc
Right, remember to keep your eyes peeled for that 10 or 20% of media that
isn't BS.

~~~
imesh
If only there was some way to know that the 10 or 20% you think isn't BS isn't
BS and you aren't labeling the non-BS as BS.

~~~
jdc
Ofc a more nuanced discussion would have to include something like a
probabilities of expected values. But given the cost of creating BS is cheaper
than refuting it and the media's proclivity for distributing it, I'm very
willing to be somewhat biased against it.

------
ChuckMcM
I wish I could upvote this more. This is such a pain for me, to see a reported
story and see an obvious question that any _serious_ journalist could answer
just sitting there, unanswered. It made me wonder what they teach in
Journalism school these days.

As it turns out, not much about investigation. I looked through the curriculum
at Berkeley[1] (a respected journalism school) and found things like J260[2]
which is a seminar more on "why" of investigative reporting than the "how".
There is also a "web skills"[3] class, but this is just about building a web
site.

They really should consider adding a 'using the Internet to find people,
corroborate sources, discover links between individuals and corporations, and
to track ownership relationships.' Something that, as the author points out,
is really a bunch of useful web sites and how to click them.

[1]
[https://journalism.berkeley.edu/curriculum/](https://journalism.berkeley.edu/curriculum/)

[2]
[https://investigativereportingprogram.com/](https://investigativereportingprogram.com/)

[3] [https://journalism.berkeley.edu/course-section/j215intro-
to-...](https://journalism.berkeley.edu/course-section/j215intro-to-
multimedia-web-skills-section-1-1-fall-2016/)

~~~
hos234
These days newsrooms do have a bunch of technical people on staff (plus access
to an amazing network of experts outside), to do the kind of digging the
article talks about. Resource, time constraints, pressure to publish before
someone else scoops you I think complicate the process.

It's similar to software companies pushing out workarounds and hacks to deal
with bugs that there is no time/resource available to fully investigate.

------
CM30
Good read. Definitely shows how little work is often put into investigating a
story nowadays, even from publications considered reputable in the past.

And it's worth considering given how many controversial stories that lead to
internet mobs and threats had just as little work done on the investigation
side as this one. The covington kids story had no real investigation done on
it, since if someone had actually asked witnesses or looked into video
evidence beyond the original tweet, they'd have seen a completely different
series of events. Same with the story of that guy thrown off a plane for
speaking Arabic; a bit of research would have proven the story was not what it
seemed there either.

And there are plenty of stories where non existent
people/companies/organisations have been written about after a troll submitted
a fake news tip or what not. Hell, it's surprisingly easy to get a
questionable story into the media, since often no one will investigate it
properly. I know, I did that by accident.

As for why that's the case? Eh, probably time. The internet has led to a 24/7
news cycle for every publication in the world, and has created a situation
where being 'first' is often seen as more important than being right. Even
sparing the 10 minutes necessary to investigate a story like in the article is
presumably seen as a 'waste of time'.

Either way, good article.

------
rayiner
If journalism, as a profession, is to add more societal value than random blog
posts, I think there needs to be a fundamental reworking of the medium. As it
currently stands, the medium itself encourages sloppiness. A modest proposal:

1) Articles should, like legal briefs, support each non-trivial point with a
footnote or citation. Primary sources, such as presses releases, documents,
and transcripts, should be hyperlinked from the footnotes.

2) Long form articles—unless they appear in a literary magazine—should contain
section headings ordered in a logical manner.

3) An adversarial aspect should be introduced into the medium. When a judge
receives a legal brief, she doesn’t review the brief in isolation. Typically,
there is an opening brief, a response, and a reply. It should be a matter of
journalist practice to write response articles to other articles. Aggregators
like Google News could then make it easy to see, for example, the Wall Street
Journal’s response to a New York Times article.

~~~
bjelkeman-again
The the first points are very much on point for me. I don’t get why sources
aren’t referenced. Is it because they are afraid the reader will leave the
news site? An attempt at sandboxing the user?

The second point, particularly US writing/journalism seems to really have a
very different writing culture than the European. It seems to want to be a
story with a beginning a history etc before getting to the meat of the
article. It often feels like the writer is paid by the word rather than
interested to getting the point across. European journalism ties to get the
hook in early, and the expand on it and draw you into the article more upfront
with the meat of it.

------
teddyh
Writers for media (I hesitate to call them “journalists”) have no incentive to
find _facts_. They have an incentive to craft a _story_ , based on whatever
information they already have in front of them. If they already have most of a
story, and a cursory search turns up no obviously interesting facts which add
to the existing story, they’ll leave it there. There is simply no _reason_ to
go digging.

It’s only where there’s no story without digging, and/or where the more you
dig the more story you get, when you get investigative journalism.

~~~
medill1919
This is incorrect. Have you worked as a journalist? Do you subscribe to any
news that you actually have to pay for?

------
taneq
Can I just take a moment here to plug how vital Internet Archive (mentioned by
the story, sounding like it's just a thing that the internet does) is to,
well, most things, and getting more important by the day?

I haven't donated to them yet but I'm going to now.

------
methehack
It's seemed to me for a while that you could take an infosec-style approach
and use voluntary controls, policies, procedures and third-party non-
government certification via accounting firms to give the public more
confidence in the press, something that is obviously fundamental to a
democracy.

Just like in infosec, controls (etc) do not guarantee safety (accuracy), but
they let you know that processes were followed and that fact is documented.
Third parties (accounting firms) confirm that you have the evidence of having
followed your processes. Corruptable? Sure. Better? Definitely yes.

Just like in infosec: if you have evidence that every week you've plowed
through the access logs, you're more likely to have caught an
intruder/mistake. The approach tends to route out single acts of sloppiness
and subterfuge and turn mistakes in to conspiracies, which is a much harder
thing to pull off than a single actor looking for fame or a raise.

For my part, I genuinely believe these organizations are trying their best to
do something very hard but that their own efforts at fairness can be
undermined by a lot of factors, especially money. The natural incentives
(clicks/$) need to be counterbalanced with self-imposed "regulation" that is
third-party verified.

[EDIT: s/factories/factors

~~~
everlastingfan
Yeah, be prepared to be treated like a paranoid schizophrenic when you do
that.

You're going to stop having conversations, or will you be recording them all?

Not to say you shouldn't, but it isn't easy and requires a lot of
consideration, energy and discipline.

The digital tools are definitely NOT ready, there's a few gigabytes of raw
mathematical data to be processed by humans into algorithms before we get
there.

~~~
ryacko
>HALDEMAN: It's a limited hang out.

>DEAN: It's a limited hang out.

>EHRLICHMAN: It's a modified limited hang out.

>NIXON: Well, it's only the questions of the thing hanging out publicly or
privately.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limited_hangout](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limited_hangout)

Sounds interesting when people are allowed to grep conversations for the
scandal of the moment.

------
yodsanklai
> We are lucky to live in a time when we are all so empowered.

I remember when I was a teenager, before the internet era. Our science teacher
thought us about critical thinking and not blindly trusting the media.
Everything he said made sense, but still, I felt that I was lacking the proper
tools and expertise to challenge what was said in reputable medias.

It's much easier nowadays, Thanks to the ability to search the web, better
knowledge/expertise in some fields, better understanding of how medias work...
yet it's not easy. It is a skill that needs constant practice, and one
shouldn't fall in the other extreme not to trust anything.

I really think this should be taught in school. Examples of bad journalism,
recent government lies, marketing and PR...

------
chrisweekly
Author Blake Ross ("founder @firefox and former prod dir @fb") makes great
points about poor quality / outright lack of investigative journalism in
reporting. Worth the 2 min to read.

------
cortesoft
I don't quite understand how you are supposed to follow that advice... no one
has time to personally investigate everything. We have to outsource SOME of
our thinking.

~~~
yodsanklai
I don't think we have to investigate everything, but we should try to detect
patterns of wrong information (can be government propaganda, marketing,
incompetence), and not trust blindly every piece of information.

------
jeffml84
This is a little beside the point, but I'm going to hold the author
accountable for his take on a pressing issue.

Author makes the mistake of not holding the retailer responsible for what they
sell. Walgreens, Target, and GNC, to anyone who knows what they're doing, are
NOT reputable, in terms of herbal supplements.

Go to any naturopath or natural health practitioner and they're going to
recommend herbal supplements with their own branding, specialty shop, or
specific brand. They're not going to give you prescription, and call it into
Walgreens like an allopathic doctor will.

Author is effectively saying "It's not the reputable retailers responsibility
to stock their shelves with legitimate products."

Why do you think they sell crap instead of quality herbs? The cost is lower.

Think for yourself, and take your health into your own hands and you'll be a
healthier person, no doubt.

Calling for the FDA to regulate and save the day because a bunch of uneducated
people blindly trusted big corporations...no.

------
nemild
Always value contributors to my media literacy guide. This message is a key
point that underpins all the examples I list.

[https://github.com/nemild/hack-the-
media/blob/master/README....](https://github.com/nemild/hack-the-
media/blob/master/README.md)

There's also one for engineers in the tech industry:

[https://github.com/nemild/hack-the-
media/blob/master/softwar...](https://github.com/nemild/hack-the-
media/blob/master/software-engineers-media-guide.md)

------
bryanrasmussen
I don't believe there is anyone I've ever met whose thoughts were original to
them in all particulars. I think it has been very seldom where I have met
anyone that has had one original thought in their head, I'm pretty sure most
thoughts, including mine were thought somewhere else and transmitted via some
media. Probably in most cases the only originality lies in the assemblage of
the thoughts and how they interact.

~~~
haihaibye
"You're not the first to think that everything has been thought before" \-
Three dimensions by Something for Kate.

~~~
bryanrasmussen
I thought I was quite clear that I did not believe everything has been thought
before, but only that most things have been thought before - or more
specifically that most people think things that have been thought before but
in new configurations.

------
vvanders
Seems a bit like pot calling kettle black considering what Facebook allows to
be advertised these days.

~~~
htk
This wasn’t posted by Facebook. The author used his experience working there
to further question news pieces.

