
Naval Ravikant: “The Internet lowers the returns to distributing facts” - lenilsonjr
https://twitter.com/naval/status/912705663234539520
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SandersAK
This idea that "truth" and "facts" was ever a profitable business comes from a
very naive place. With the exception of encyclopedias (and even then...),
newspapers (owned by robber barons since day one, and then later mega-corps),
text books (read "lies my teacher told me") etc have always been about profit.

Newspapers historically were not driven by facts but by classified ads and
cartoons.

TV, even in its golden age, was always about advertisement. And as much as we
pine for the days of Walter Cronkite etc, the truth perpetuated in media has
always skewed white (fear of the minorities), status quo (fear of a
revolution), and capitalist (fear of commies).

Tweet storms and pontifications like these are grand standing but devoid of
any real grounded perspective. Just because you're 40 now, and realizing that
there's a bunch of bad shit that you don't have control over (and maybe even
contributed to) doesn't mean that "tech" or "media" has "gone away from
truth."

~~~
cirgue
> With the exception of encyclopedias (and even then...), newspapers (owned by
> robber barons since day one, and then later mega-corps), text books (read
> "lies my teacher told me") etc have always been about profit.

This is a profoundly naive view of how media works. In the past, advertisers
made ad buying decisions based in part on the reputation of the outlet, and
circulation of media was dependent on public consensus that something was a
reliable source of fact. Tabloids were a niche market that people did not take
seriously. Newspapers might make their money on ads and cartoons, but the only
reason they were able to command money for their ad space was because people
bought and trusted the paper. Now, the profit motive for content creation
relies far less on reputation effects. It is possible to make enormous amounts
of money even when most people think your content is complete bullshit.

~~~
djshgakdfdh
> based in part on the reputation of the outlet

The reputation is where the bias lies. Consider the new york times: you
probably respect it if you agree with it. If you don’t, it’s crappy narrative
journalism. This certainly aligns with the parent comment’s claim that “facts”
have never been the forte of any media; they simply need to agree with their
readers. There’s simply little need to get 100% accuracy when 70% suffices to
continue subscriptions.

Also, note that you can only see the issues in reporting if you’re closer to
the story than the reporter is.

~~~
cirgue
>The reputation is where the bias lies.

So there's a difference between bias, which exists in every human
communication imaginable, and abjectly bad writing and reporting. The major
problem today is the latter.

> Also, note that you can only see the issues in reporting if you’re closer to
> the story than the reporter is.

That is absolutely not true at all. Most bad journalism today is insultingly
bad. Take this article, which was the top article on Salon's 'News' section:
[https://www.salon.com/2017/09/26/george-clooney-donald-
trump...](https://www.salon.com/2017/09/26/george-clooney-donald-trump/)

Basically, it is a puff piece about how George Clooney doesn't like Trump and
has said as much. This article is clickbait designed to get likes on social
media. Much of what is stated is probably true (I would not doubt that George
Clooney said these things), but ultimately it doesn't matter. The point of the
article is not to inform, it is to provoke a reaction.

Salon used to be a reasonably thoughtful outlet. They now appear to be a
tabloid. This is a pattern that has played out over the internet media for the
past several years, and we are all definitely worse off for it.

~~~
djshgakdfdh
It’s easy to find poor reporting, but many people are blind to the flaws in
each outlet. I don’t see any issue with rejecting the idea that any news
source is “factual”. That is a downright harmful idea. You want to be sure
about something? Go there yourself, or pay someone a lot of money to
convincingly verify it.

You know what’s hard? Finding good reporting. Everyone is selling you
something, even if it’s just a comfortable world view.

------
tlb
It's amazing how much the end-user cost of facts has dropped. I used to ride
my bike across town to a library and spend an hour finding a fact. Now I can
have them on my screen in seconds.

One might have thought that as the cost of obtaining facts dropped by 100x,
people would consume higher-quality facts. But consuming higher-quality facts
requires more effort, so in the end people consume more low-quality facts,
like listicles of celeb gossip.

As a thought experiment, what is the cost per-fact that would make people
consume the maximum quantity of high-quality facts? Too high and they consume
less facts overall. Too low and they consume crap.

~~~
mindslight
I don't agree with this framework.

Even inside of it, there is obviously difference between the fixed cost of
obtaining one fact, and the marginal cost of each additional fact. Riding to
the library took time, but once you were there each additional fact cost less
due to curation. In fact, the traditional library seems close to optimal for
encouraging consumption of facts in volume (modulo institutional/cultural
biases like the winners writing history).

Furthermore, while being able to look up a fact quickly ostensibly reduces the
work to obtain that fact, it also discourages one's ability to perform
educated guesses, reason from first principles, operate with uncertainty, etc.
Intellectual effort/ability isn't zero sum.

~~~
ashark
It never even occurred to me to look up 99% of the useless facts I now can't
help but look up on the Internet. The questions slipped out of my mind before
they were fully formed, but now I think "who was that one guy in that one
show?" and because I know I can find out in 30 seconds or less, I look it up.

This ability adds almost no actual value to my life, while taking time. But
each individual thing is so quick to find.

It's also much easier to get lost trying to find the _very best_ resource(s)
for something, wasting time on that rather than digging into what's at hand.
Because it's _possible_ to refine one's selection now, it's so tempting to do
so, even if a few hours' head start on lesser works would have been a better
use of time. The same extends to entertainment.

What's lost is peace of mind, focus, serendipity, and contentment. I'm not
sure the benefit's really been worth it, for me. Libraries were actually a
pretty good solution for finding useful-enough information, fast enough, in
most cases. How much would I pay for a mini-OED-style IMDB? TVtropes? Zero
dollars, probably. I might not even keep them around if I received them for
free. Not worth the fraction of a cubic foot each takes up. But I've got this
Internet connection and all these devices _anyway_ , so....

[EDIT] OECD corrected to OED. I've clearly wasted too much time arguing
politics on the Internet.

------
throwanem
"Want to escape? Avoid Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat. Avoid venues and media
built around group signaling and conspicuous consumption."

Ironically, this only works well if ~everyone does it; if ~nobody does, it
isolates those who do.

~~~
golemotron
"Want to escape? Avoid Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat. Avoid venues and media
built around group signaling and conspicuous consumption."

There won't be any escape, just a move toward smaller more focused online
groups each with their own mores. The future looks more like a world of Slacks
than a Facebook.

It's fascinating that this is happening in both social media and the world
(Brexit and the fragmentation of Europe) at the same time.

~~~
throwanem
> smaller more focused online groups each with their own mores

So, more what the Internet looked like before 2007 or so. I was there for
that, and won't say it was without its drawbacks - but it is starting to look
as though the drawbacks of the current fashion outweigh them.

> It's fascinating that this is happening in both social media and the world
> (Brexit and the fragmentation of Europe) at the same time

Indeed it is. Perhaps there's a larger lesson to be drawn.

------
iovrthoughtthis
I see this as more of a cost / benefit thing.

Finding and distributing facts has a lower cost / benefit than finding and
distributing opinions.

I feel this similarly for constructive debate online. The cost of creating
constructive comments is much more than the cost of creative "destructive"
(not sure it's the right word) comments. So more comments are "destructive"
than constructive.

Unless the value of constructive comments is larger than the perceived cost
(hn might be an example?).

~~~
naravara
>So more comments are "destructive" than constructive.

Tell me about it! It’s gotten so bad that many times I would respond to
someone’s comment to expand on what they’re saying or provide context for
readers who might not have it and they will reply back to me with something
like “I already know this. That’s what I was talking about.”

I know that’s what you were talking about! I’m just further reinforcing what
you were trying to say! I think I probably fall into this sometimes myself.
Online comments are just so reflexively argumentative sometimes it's hard to
switch gears into discussing things.

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dmitrygr
> Want to escape? Avoid Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat. Avoid venues and media
> built around group signaling and conspicuous consumption.

Said a guy...on Twitter...

------
barrkel
Newspapers haven't been about facts in decades. Newspapers are vehicles for
opinion on yesterday's news, not facts.

But, the point still stands if you replace "fact" with "opinion".

------
s17n
The internet has definitely killed the profitability of distributing facts, if
it ever existed. The rest of the tweets about "signaling goods" are the type
of hogwash you end up with when you confuse Ted talks with actual intellectual
activity.

~~~
alexandercrohde
Oversimplified. Largely, the internet has reduced the profitability of
distributing facts because it gives them all away for free (how much can you
learn online that you used to have to pay for? encyclopedia, years of video,
stanford courses, books, scihub)

The problem isn't an absence of facts. It's whether the layperson is both
capable and motivated to seek out correct facts vs incorrect facts or
unfalsifiable narratives.

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peterwwillis
A gentle reminder that society's decay will continue without your quiet
protest of it.

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ksk
While I agree with all that is said here, I feel like its far more easier to
observe existing systems and explain them, than to prescribe a solution that
is practical and workable.

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ksikka
Do FB/GOOG distribute facts? They have some pretty good returns.

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0xbear
The press has never been about distributing facts. It’s mostly about
manufacturing consent, with small, and quickly corrected deviations from its
main purpose.

------
dandare
tl;dr - Twitter is not the medium for essays

~~~
tbirrell
This is not the actual tl;dr

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mjburgess
This is a massive signally piece from the Hacker News socially-naive cynicism
clique peddling its myths about how society works.

Half-baked unempirical soap-boxing with your Headline Hits from "College
Campuses Arent What They Used to Be" to Oh! Think of the Children! and the New
York Times Best Seller: "STOP LABELLING YOURSELF PEOPLE!?!?!"

Ugh. It's a parody of itself. If you want to make this point then you need to
do so by presenting an actual analysis of social dynamics on the internet,
their changes, and so on. Not this pseudo-intellectual apocalypticism that was
once phoned-in to broadsheet Op-Eds and now fills 20 tweets.

