
Don't Outsource Your Thinking (2015) - objections
https://medium.com/@blakeross/don-t-outsource-your-thinking-ad825a9b4653
======
Rauchg
While the intention of the article is noble (it's an empowering thought), I
feel like it's missing out on a more important idea.

That is: while ideally we would critically and deeply analyze every aspect of
our life, we have limited time and energy. The reason we've been able to
accomplish so much as a civilization is because we _delegate_ thinking to
others.

"Always doubt the media" is bad advice. It's similar to "always doubt your
parents" because they told you Santa Claus was real. Always doubting the media
is exhausting, and the author probably doesn't do it anyways, because he gets
things done.

What's perhaps worth investigating is how technology can help us reduce the
amount of trust we put in a single entity. The trend from news sites away from
user-submitted comments is worrying, because that's an example of how one can
read a story and immediately read critiques and reviews of it.

Quite ironically, Blake's platform of choice for this post (Medium) removed
our ability to make inline comments on his writing, which is perhaps the best
way to accomplish that.

~~~
blfr
_" Always doubt the media" is bad advice._

It's solid advice. Journalists have really become the used car salesmen of the
21st century. They should be doubted by default.

With declining revenues the salaries dropped and people attracted to the
profession are more and more often outright propagandists for whom the ability
to push their views is part of the compensation package. For the same reason
sponsors get more control over content. Not to mention changes in ownership.
Even the esteemed NYT is on life support provided by Carlos Slim who is now
its biggest shareholder.

And let's not overestimate the energy required to doubt the media. You could
probably stop consuming any reporting or journalism, stop watching tv, stop
reading newspapers and live just fine. It's just not that important to know
about all the events you cannot influence anyway.

~~~
superuser2
You'll be fine in the short term. But in 30 years, when there is no one even
pretending to serve as a check against institutional abuses, when 0% of the
electorate has any idea at all what is happening in the world, when if you
find that something unconscionable there is absolutely no way to get people to
know or care about it... what then?

In a world without press that is listened to, a bad actor could literally
remount the Holocaust in plain sight and no one would stop it because _no one
would know_.

Public officials act in the public interest because their constituencies read
the news and demand that something be done about it. Sure, this isn't what
they do all or even most of the time, but can you imagine a world where it
doesn't happen at all?

Many facets of government and business cannot function without some sort of
professional collection and analysis of facts about what's happening in the
world. I expect that in our post-journalism society, public and private
intelligence agencies will expand enormously and start doing something that
looks an awful lot like journalism, except for very small and inordinately
wealthy institutional readers instead of the public.

~~~
blfr
Journalists do not provide a check against institutional abuses. When the
Soviet Union _was_ literally staging a holocaust in plain sight, the NYT lied
to cover it up[1]. Walter Duranty still has a Pulitzer to his name for reports
from the Soviet Union.

Supposedly the greatest triumph of journalism, lionized in a movie, uncovering
of Watergate was done by an insider who just told the journalists. Nowadays,
they're not even necessary for this. I learned about Snowden leaks from here
and Wikileaks. And then nothing happened.

The only reason I can see why people believe journalists are heroic fighters
for truth, checks against tyranny, and so on is because they rely on
journalists for stories about journalists.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denial_of_the_Holodomor#Walter...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denial_of_the_Holodomor#Walter_Duranty)

------
madaxe_again
Journalism doesn't work like people seem to think it does, and hasn't for a
long, long time - if it ever did. Journalists don't research. Most media
outlets just get press releases in, or articles from AP, Reuters and other
aggregators, and they paraphrase.

This is why you see the same errors across the grid. It's not that they've all
done the same poor research - it's that they have done _no_ research, and have
simply rehashed for their audience. _They_ outsource _their_ thinking too.

Then of course you have outlets eating each others' messes, and regurgitating
"facts" that copy-editors ("journalists") put in to garner appeal to their
audience, and the feedback cycle distorts as it goes.

This is how you end up with shit like the "piano man"
([https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andreas_Grassl](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andreas_Grassl)),
and much, much worse.

------
Animats
This guy hasn't dug very hard.

"American Labs" \- who are they. Probably not American Laboratories, Inc, of
Omaha, NB, "Manufacturing Enzymes, Proteins and Flavors since 1967"[1] The PO
box was in southern California, so the next check is the California Secretary
of State business search.[2] This brings up:

    
    
        AMERICAN LABS, INC.
        Entity Number:	C0846085
        Date Filed:	        05/09/1978
        Status:	        FTB SUSPENDED
        Jurisdiction:	CALIFORNIA
        Entity Address:	5701 S COMPTON AVE
        Entity City, State, Zip:	LOS ANGELES CA 90011
        Agent for Service of Process:	LIONEL BENTKOWER
        Agent Address:	5701 S COMPTON
        Agent City, State, Zip:	LOS ANGELES CA 90011
    

That's old; it may not be them. The location is visible in Google Street
View.[4] It's a concrete building with a street number and no name, with a
semitrailer out front being loaded with boxes of something. Possible. The
building is owned by an LLC. There's a hazardous waste cleanup order for the
business, and it names some names.[5] But that's from 2005.

Let's try LA county DBA names.[3] We have a hit:

    
    
        AMERICAN LABS 2012141731 7/12/2012
    

That's a reasonably likely hit. More info is available during business hours
from the LA County office in Norwalk. So that's it for now.

(When I did "sitetruth.com", my goal was to do all this automatically for any
web site. That works for most legit and even semi-legit business in the US.
For non-legit businesses, you need databases that aren't as easy to get and
access. But they exist.)

[1] [http://americanlaboratories.com/](http://americanlaboratories.com/) [2]
[http://kepler.sos.ca.gov/](http://kepler.sos.ca.gov/) [3]
[http://rrcc.lacounty.gov/clerk/](http://rrcc.lacounty.gov/clerk/) [4]
[https://goo.gl/maps/pRPygz9dzH82](https://goo.gl/maps/pRPygz9dzH82) [5]
[https://www.dtsc.ca.gov/HazardousWaste/Projects/upload/Ameri...](https://www.dtsc.ca.gov/HazardousWaste/Projects/upload/American-
Labs_ENF_CACA.pdf)

~~~
angelbob
Sure. He said what he did was basic and "table stakes." He was clearly not
trying hard to reveal the company in question, just to show that the
journalists had done almost _nothing_.

------
nine_k
A person finds more contact info about a mystery drug producer in an hour than
big media in days, in a dietary supplement scandal. "Don't outsource your
thinking".

~~~
fabulist
Is this sarcasm?

------
alexashka
'Earlier this year, the New York AG investigated supplements at major
retailers and found that four out of five didn’t contain any of the labelled
herbs'

The article could've been simply this, followed by ...

I don't know how people are not in prison for this. If you printed counterfeit
money, you'd be so done with. If you sell quackery in a bottle, for money,
you're fine?

Makes sense.

What this tells me is the system is completely rotten, where even the most
blatant loopholes are being exploited in broad daylight, with no fear of
repercussions.

Reminds me that empires fall apart at the weight of stupidity and incompetence
of it's own citizens, no need for an enemy.

~~~
Kronopath
The article isn't really about the supplement industry, though. It's about
news media's complete inability to do anything investigative, as evidenced by
the fact that this guy, with a handful of publicly accessible tools and
websites, was able to find more information on this scandal in an hour then
the journalists who were covering this case.

~~~
eldavido
Yep.

The lesson I take from this: don't be so quick to denigrate liberal arts and
traditional university education. The kind of skills one learns in college,
namely, the ability to do independent research, to write well, to think
critically, and to make moral judgments, are precisely what's been taught as
part of a classic liberal curriculum since Roman times.

We can talk about how expensive it is, and that there may be better delivery
methods, but per se liberal arts education will only become _more_ important
as the clickbait / spam / dreck-production machine of ads / neutraceuticals,
etc. kicks into higher gear.

