
Billionaires vs. The Press in the Era of Trump - JumpCrisscross
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/22/magazine/billionaires-vs-the-press-in-the-era-of-trump.html?em_pos=small&emc=edit_dk_20161122&nl=dealbook&nl_art=8&nlid=65508833&ref=headline&te=1
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Alternative View:

The New York Time is at the heart of a network that controls a huge part of
Washington's mindshare. The paper itself is something like the top portion of
a considerably larger iceberg.

Consider for a moment the possibility that if state controlled media is a
problem, which of course it is, then a corollary of that thought is that if
the media controls the state then it is also a problem. Is that a realistic
proposition?

To be non-abstract; the New York Times makes no secret of the fact it sees its
role as an agent of change within the Western world. It is not merely
reporting the news in an information discovery process. Former NYT employees
like Michael Cieply state that the NYT has a plan it calls 'The Narrative'
which it plans years in advance. Stories are wrapped around this to keep on
message. It is functionally identical to the concept of a party line, except a
political party does this publicly and these memos are not made overt to their
readership. They are a newspaper coupled with a think tank agency which
operates together to form opinion.

Perhaps just as important, I believe the NYT also determines the _priority_ of
news headlines across the world. Without fail, if I spot a certain news
headline in a local Dublin paper, you may be sure the agenda was set by the
NYT. I am reminded of how so much Net culture is downstream from 4chan and
Reddit. There's an organization that determines what 'colour' is in this year
for fashion. NYT does that for the 'issues'.

What I am describing here is not just syndication. Every major broadsheet in
the West has many of the same stories and offers similar conclusions. Much of
this is inorganic. When enough people think the same thoughts, even using the
same phrases and words, using the same chains of logic, then they are either
in the same culture or they are being unwittingly subscribed to a narrative.

I noticed this myself because I used to be belong to a proselyting cult. They
have periodicals which they spread across the world in many different
languages. The local context would change, but at the end of each article,
whether it is religious or general interest, there will be a remark alluding
to or tying in a 'faith based interpretation'. To a non-believer this is
tediously obvious. Believers are but dimly aware of the tactic. The new
thought slides into their mind well greased. Later they are impressed that
other believers had similar parallel thoughts. How much I have in common with
my fellows! Warm feelings result and a sense of _being special_.

This is how you traffic shape human thought across a population. The fact is
that for persons of normal intelligence and experience there are only so many
possible branches in human reasoning when presented with limited data. I'm not
calling it pyschohistory, but I think a clever Narritive caretaker is well
able to predict the trajectory of thought in advance.

The simple truth, and I think of this as our dirty little secret, is that
we're not as unique as we popularly imagine ourselves to be. I think the
Internet has made that much clearer than before. I imagine for example, that
while reading this you thought: "yeah this is not new information, we knew
that already".

I am not calling this all bad. I think some of what I'm describing is a
natural outcome.

The basic problem with this is that every once in a while, they get something
really, really wrong. The Narrative stops matching reality. I'm sure over your
lifetime you've spotted this happening under a wide array of circumstances.

My suspicion is that mindshare coordination is useful to society up to a
certain point of complexity, and thereafter it is better to be less
coordinated for reasons Taleb outlined with his anti-fragile concept. If you
live in a world where everybody is going along the same path, then having a
strong contrarian bias is going to continually pay off even if you get some
commonsense things wrong.

One item that struck me as interesting is that Chomsky and Moldbug had a
problem with the NYT. They have different takes on what is wrong with the
world, but I think their basic intuition is bang on.

tldr; The New York Times is a political actor. If you want to be different it
is easy. Throw away your newspaper and television. Stay on the Net with your
fellow weirdos. We have hivemind too of course but don't you prefer organic
mindfoods?

