In the case of Atlas Obscura I never took the articles very serious, the are all on the border between art, myth and story. I thought that was the appeal.
I think something like Atlas Obscura will be the internet of the future, wonderful collections of weirdness, with no way to discern truth.
> wonderful collections of weirdness, with no way to discern truth
So just like real life, then.
To be clear, I believe that objective truth exists. I also believe that people have a lot of stories. I'm from a small town, the size where you could learn a story about pretty much every family, and a lot of the stories would intertwine, or be very similar to each other, forming a shared reality among neighbors. I'm sure we could talk a good long time about the social implications of that sense of shared reality.
I think there's something deeply uncomfortable about having too many people available in your life to form a shared reality. I feel like that discomfort is a big driver of modern angst.
> why would anyone undertake such revealing and labour-intensive deceptions?
It’s totally about personal satisfaction. We need to “scratch an itch.” The thrill we get from “getting away with it,” is also a big part of the equation.
Many stories are embellished, along the way, by people involved in the oral tradition. Some, become almost unrecognizable, after a few generations. These folks often do it, to “add spice,” for entertainment value.
I’ve come to learn that most folks that “front,” are often doing so, in order to personally feel better; not harm others. It’s not healthy, but often, doesn’t result in much harm to anyone else. I’ve learned to relax, when I encounter it, and sometimes, even enjoy it.
Very many folks have terrible self-esteem, and develop coping mechanisms, which can sometimes be quite destructive, but, more often, are just energy sinks.
I have learned to be cautious, though, and not take things at face value, which can be difficult, if I don’t want to become a bitter cynic.
I wonder how much of History can we trust? After all, history is written by victors. Something that was written a thousand years ago (or longer) - how can we verify?
In today’s world, how much of Netflix “documentaries” are rigorously researched and how much just made up, to save time and money? It is not like Netflix is going to get in trouble, legally or in public opinion…
If you go to the town of Sainte-Mère-Église in Normandy, there is a manakin of a paratrooper hanging by his parachute snared on the steeple of the church. This is in reference to a well-known D-Day story, famously illustrated in the movie The Longest Day, of paratrooper John Steele.
The problem is, this story is probably a fabrication.
That series was a historical drama, not a documentary. Ulana Khomyuk, the woman speaking at the start of that video, didn’t even exist. As acknowledged in the series itself, she was a composite of several Soviet scientists for narrative purposes.
It’s not misleading to take artistic liberties in a work of fiction designed to entertain, even if based on true events. That would be damming for a documentary, but this was not one.
Pretty much any biopic or historical documentary struggles with the tension between the realities that, on the one hand, they can't completely make up everything out of whole cloth and, on the other, the writers don't want to let facts get too much in the way of a good story.
But some number of people get POd when not everything is literally true.
I think people get angry when something turns out being different in nature than what they expected, especially when it comes to accuracy. If I start watching a show, and most of the information matches with my understanding of the topic, I might start to believe that it's more of a documentary. Then something comes up that unrealistic, or I know to be false, I might feel tricked.
I'd love it if instead of saying "The following story is based on true events", they were obligated to say "The following story is based on true events, and has been modified for your entertainment".
But some number of people get POd when not everything is literally true.
By pandering to irrational fears about nuclear power, 'Chernobyl' and similar works have consequences that translate, more or less directly, into fossil-fuel pollution.
I'm inclined to be more forgiving towards a Borges manqué who uses his talents to defraud hipster travel websites than I am towards people who are successful enough at spreading FUD and bullshit that they make the world an objectively-worse place.
Chernobyl seems like an odd target for such overwrought criticism. It's not like it was dramatizing a nuclear reactor accident that didn't happen. By general consensus, it was pretty true to life as far as the main points were concerned.
A related thing I 'learnt' (or rather 'realised' having not thitherto thought about) via Fargo was that 'true story' are just words you can say, they don't mean anything and there's no regulatory oversight or whatever.
The showrunners agonized over making the show historically accurate vs fitting the story into a TV format. It sounds like they traded the minor details to get the broad brushstrokes right - and especially dissect the themes around hubris, willful ignorance, and so on. The 'making of' podcast where they discuss this is quite interesting:
He seems to be completely missing the distinction between what might be said in a meeting with high ranking politicians and what you might write in a nuclear physics exam. It's not unreasonable for someone to greatly exaggerate, talk confidently about stuff they're actually very unsure about and even straight up lie in such a situation.
I understand calling him pompous, or an ass, and he had that period where he basically was a part of gamergate for a minute (maybe he still believes those kinds of things, I'm not in his head). He definitely will take a "debunking" that should take two minutes of math, and spends 20 minutes basically reveling in "just how wrong" the supposed Bad Man is.
But when has he been wrong, in a way that would cause you to call his credibility "dubious"? When has he called out an Infinite energy machine, or a "pull water out of the air in a desert" machine, or an Elon project, and been wrong?
Well, IIRC, he said there was no economic or technical advantage to reusing rockets, and predicted the demise of SpaceX. That Tesla would never produce a semi-truck, then when it did he significantly misrepresented the details so he could "bust" it. And probably others. I try not to waste much brain space storing his BS.
This is why I bounce hard off of anything that could be labelled "historical fiction".
I don't know enough about, e.g., the JFK assassination, to be sure that a dramatization of it isn't going to fill in the gaps and make me think I do know something that turns out to be serving the agenda of others, or simply wrong.
And yes I recognize that "history" is just the consensus version of "historical fiction", and that consensus is local at best, and often also serving an agenda!
Lol history absolutely hasn't been written by Victors. Not always at least. As an example, most "folk knowledge" that is widely spread about WW2 come from post war books by German generals. They spread tons and tons of myths and outright lies that permeated WW2 discussions for like 70 years now. Slowly we are starting to see that disappear but for the most part, allied narratives have taken a back seat in comparison. Especially on anything related to equipment, performance, troop competence etc.
> They spread tons and tons of myths and outright lies that permeated WW2 discussions for like 70 years now. Slowly we are starting to see that disappear but for the most part, allied narratives have taken a back seat in comparison. Especially on anything related to equipment, performance, troop competence etc.
Do you have examples? Does that include whole memeplex about the Nazis being somehow far better at advanced technology than the Allies?
Pretty much everything about the Nazis, about Germany, about the war in general, is written by the not victors. If you grew up watching the Discovery Channel, everything you know about WWII was written about former Wehrmacht generals in semi-autobiographical stories. Things like "If it hadn't been for Hitler being such a terrible leader, we would have won" or "The King Tiger was an Uber tank that could have won the war" to "That flying wing Heinkel made was a STEALTH BOMBER", or "Those damn Soviets were sending meat waves at us armed only with a single shovel!"
Don't forget the entirety of the "Clean Wehrmacht" myth, that the whole Nazism thing was mostly contained to Hitler and the SS and the normal German army was mostly clean from the desire to gas all the jews.
I get what you are saying - but there are also elements of truth in the examples you cite. Yes, much of OKW were synchophants, but there were plenty of competent generals and opportunities that were missed because of meddling. The Tiger had major technical challenges (as did much of German armor) but it had elements of superiority over US armor. That Heinkel was certainly interesting - like so many German weapons programs, they had fascinating ideas, but they were short on resources to make them functional. And on and on - so you aren't "wrong" but I think to say all of these things are propaganda written by the losers is also not really the whole story either...
> Pretty much everything about the Nazis, about Germany, about the war in general, is written by the not victors. If you grew up watching the Discovery Channel, everything you know about WWII was written about former Wehrmacht generals in semi-autobiographical stories.
> ...
> Don't forget the entirety of the "Clean Wehrmacht" myth, that the whole Nazism thing was mostly contained to Hitler and the SS and the normal German army was mostly clean from the desire to gas all the jews.
Thinking about this a bit more, couldn't that even be thought of as history being written by the victors? In this case the victors (Allies) wanting to write history to rehabilitate the losers (Germany) to fight the next enemy (the Soviets), and allowing defeated elements of the German forces (former Wehrmacht generals) to do so?
IIRC, there was an period where the Allied consensus was to reduce Germany to a nation of disarmed farmers, but that was quickly reversed once the Americans realized they needed a reasonably powerful Germany to oppose the Soviets.
"Written by victors" is not really accurate, but there is bias in who it was written by (not least, for most of history, the fact that it is somewhat tautologically written by the literate). Historians are well aware of this and will generally try to account for it by looking to corroborate accounts, but of course it's very easy to project one's own biases onto any such analysis, especially when evidence is thin.
There are many, many biblical texts from various centuries that agree with each other. The New Testament has twice as many ancient copies as any contemporary works. The Dead Sea scrolls are a good example of older copies being found… and they are no different from later copies.
> In general, I'll turn it around. Atheism is a group of people like any other. Do you believe that atheists alone are able to withstand the human inclination to favor their in group and hate their out groups?
This is the difference.
I don't view "atheists" as a group of people with in and out groups. Any more than "pasta eaters" or "brown-eyed people".
But some atheists (I would call them "militant atheists") do. Of course I'd argue that militant atheists are largely reacting to the militant theism of others, which is more popularly accepted and gets way more air time (and also is responsible for horrible things in the world). But both are silly.
> But some atheists (I would call them "militant atheists") do. Of course I'd argue that militant atheists are largely reacting to the militant theism of others, which is more popularly accepted and gets way more air time (and also is responsible for horrible things in the world). But both are silly.
Do you believe this is not true of other religions as well?
Ah. You've got me all wrong. And my error was in propagating your capital-A "Atheism".
The sins committed against groups of humans in the name of any belief system are not the topic I was asking about. They're all terrible. Choose your idol or lack thereof.
And FWIW I think that's generally not a product of the system, it's a product of people and power and resource contention.
But I was asking about the historical fiction of atheism. Lots of people live without a Christian or other god, with no particular concern for how others believe or any need for a mythology to support or define their views.
> The sins committed against groups of humans in the name of any belief system are not the topic I was asking about. They're all terrible. Choose your idol or lack thereof.
This is a Dodge.
> Lots of people live without a Christian or other god, with no particular concern for how others believe or any need for a mythology to support or define their views.
So you believe this is unique to atheists? Even ignoring the obvious "mythology" which rightfully can extend to common atheistic beliefs.
When I use the word "mythology", I mean it to apply to any set of correlated beliefs. All religions have their mythologies, yes. But so do cultures and nations and corporations and universities and friend groups.
I think I see your agenda here though. Atheists have done terrible things. Adolf, Joseph, Pol. If you choose these folks as representatives of atheism (or, of what happens when you don't have a supreme accountability) then sure. They constructed a non-Christian(etc) mythology that was not competitive with their own supremacy, and did bad things with the power derived. I think we agree here.
But I don't view "atheism" as an organization or a correlated set of beliefs. You can choose to argue about "Atheism" and disagree. But we're talking about different things.
See also "[Dd]emocratic", "[Ll]iberal", "[Ll]ibertarian", etc.
My agenda is to make you (and those reading the thread) consider your own movement critically, instead of perpetuating your own mythology.
> Atheists have done terrible things. Adolf, Joseph, Pol. If you choose these folks as representatives of atheism (or, of what happens when you don't have a supreme accountability) then sure. They constructed a non-Christian(etc) mythology that was not competitive with their own supremacy, and did bad things with the power derived. I think we agree here.
So, by that logic, Christianity cannot be blamed for the inquisition and atrocities committed during the crusades, since it's on those in command of those movements (the Pope) and not based on christianity itself.
> But I don't view "atheism" as an organization or a correlated set of beliefs.
That strikes me as deliberately obtuse.
> You can choose to argue about "Atheism" and disagree. But we're talking about different things.
Again, you're not being intellectually honest here. You're defining terms so that you don't have to admit that atheism (and sects thereof) have their own mythologies and revisionist histories.
Your efforts above to extricate atheism from the atrocities committed by sects of atheism, even those committed those to convert the heretics, rather highlight that fact.
There is no "atheist movement", nor is it something about "the left" (like you mentioned earlier). There are, of course, rightwing atheists.
Atheist do not self-organize as "a movement". Yes, there is the "Brights" thing and other such nonsense with little to no traction. And it's just a marginal group of people who think they are better, anyway.
Atheism is not a religion or movement "opposed" to traditional mainstream religions like Christianity, Islam, etc.
It is, quite simply, the lack of belief in the existence of a god and usually anything supernatural. There is no "fiction" to it, no mythologies that go with it. There's no innate belief with "the movement of atheism" that being an atheist makes you a good person, for example; or that being religious makes you a bad person.
The condemnation of the crimes committed in the name of organized religion do not require one to be an atheist -- plenty of religious people condemn the Inquisition. Likewise, it's perfectly common to be atheist and acknowledge the crimes committed by non-religious against religious people.
There's no mythology and no movement to go with it. There are as many kinds of atheists as there are people who do not believe in a god. And no, it's not "the same" with religious people, because unlike religious people atheists do not recognize a source of "atheist" authority -- there's no scripture, no Pope, no Rabbi, no Imam, no person or object of unquestionable authority.
In order to be an atheist, you just have to not believe in gods. There's no "atheist" path to living a good life, no guideline, no set of rules.
> Yes, there is the "Brights" thing and other such nonsense with little to no traction. And it's just a marginal group of people who think they are better, anyway.
Huh. Sounds like almost any other religion.
> [Atheism] is, quite simply, the lack of belief in the existence of a god
This is incorrect. Agnosticism is the lack of belief in a god. Contrast this with atheism, which is the belief in the lack of a god.
> There's no movement.
There's as much an Atheism movement as there is a Christian, Muslim, Hindu, etc.
I'm going to be level with you here: it sounds as if you're being dishonest.
> Huh. Sounds like almost any other religion.
I preempted this comment and you ignored it. No, it's not like any other religion, because "Brights" is not a "movement" of atheism (unlike say Catholicism for Christianity) because the Brights just happen to be a group of people who happen to be atheists, and have no major influence on atheism nor are they any kind of authority over even a fraction of atheists (nor do they claim to be). They don't prescribe anything over atheism nor do they hold any authority over it, not even a tiny fraction of it.
More importantly, atheism is not even a religion. Yes, I know you are going to claim this (it's your angle, and it's best if you admit it early on. No point hiding it. It's been attempted and refuted thousands of times before, so let's get on with it).
> This is incorrect. Agnosticism is the lack of belief in a god. Contrast this with atheism, which is the belief in the lack of a god.
You are wrong, but that's splitting hairs anyway. Before we go down this rabbit hole though, best get back on track and examine your assertion that there's an atheist "historical fiction". You haven't spoken one word about this, and instead got sidetracked into pointless distractions.
> There's as much an Atheism movement as there is a Christian, Muslim, Hindu, etc.
Do you want to argue honestly? I know you don't believe this. You can make a (mistaken, in my opinion) argument about atheism as a secular religion, or about atheist "beliefs", but no-one will seriously consider atheism a movement similar to Christianity, Islam, etc.
If you want to be taken seriously, make serious arguments. Otherwise you just come across as dishonest.
I agree, your incorrectness on this point is likely leading you both to incorrect conclusions, even before we get to the "is an empty set a set?" that you would apparently need to argue against.
You have me all wrong. I am a part of no movement. I have never once been in a group of people (more than two) where the discussion was about religion and where agreement (with me) was had. It's just not a part of my life.
I do not think there is a mythology around atheism. This was my question to you, effectively. Atheism is literally the lack of belief in a god. Yes there are people who have constructed belief systems around that lack of belief, but those are not necessary to meet the definition. There is no complex set of beliefs necessary to be an atheist. Just one lack of belief. Anything on top of that is something other than atheism.
There are no sects of atheism. But maybe of Atheism-as-you-understand-it. You claim I'm being intellectually dishonest here, but I maintain that we are talking about different things.
I'm still curious about the "historical fiction" of any version of (your) "Atheism", but I don't think I'm going to get a conversation about that at this point. If you're talking about the mythologies created by our friends Adolf, Joseph, and Pol -- then you are really stretching. They used anti-religionism (which is not atheism) as a vehicle for their own crazy/evil. I also do not blame Christianity for the Inquisition, although I do blame (bad) Christians for it!
It seems that you feel attacked in your beliefs by a vocal minority of atheists. That sucks, absolutely.
But militant Theists have far more power in this world than militant atheists. The latter are just rabble-rousers.
I am fully aware that tolerant Christians exist. But as intolerants go, the atheists have nothing on the Christians. At least not in terms of numbers or influence.
I wish we could ignore the militant Christians as easily as we can ignore the militant atheists.
The real monsters, and with the most dangerous beliefs and mythology, which are just as much beliefs and mythology as the religious despite their protests that claiming they have beliefs or mythology or even are anything is nonsensical, are the [whatever the word is for not believing in the reality of Russell's Teapot]-ists. You'd be shocked how many horrible people were part of that movement!
Nazi germany had a weird relationship with Christianity; the country was overwhelmingly religious, the party had some rabid anti-Christian views at the top and seemed to view it as a competing power structure incompatible with their plans, but seems to have decided to put off that fight for later.
> In public speeches, he portrayed himself and the Nazi movement as faithful Christians.[42][43] In 1928 Hitler said in a speech: "We tolerate no one in our ranks who attacks the ideas of Christianity... in fact our movement is Christian."[44] But, according to the Goebbels Diaries, Hitler hated Christianity. In an 8 April 1941 entry, Goebbels wrote "He hates Christianity, because it has crippled all that is noble in humanity."
I mean, if his public speeches describe it as a Christian movement and his right hand man’s private journals describe him as a secret atheist… I dunno, I think it is just typical Nazi incoherence on topics not related to racial hatred.
In general I think it is hard to work out whether a historical figure believes in anything other than power. I’m not sure it makes sense to attribute the evil actions of individual leaders to particular religious belief systems without some pretty deep scrutiny. If you just go by the beliefs they profess, you get a list of which belief systems were popular, because those are the belief systems they went to co-opt.
> For one, science and Christianity are not the enemies many on the Left seem to believe.
Christianity isn't a monolith, so it depends on which flavor of Christianity we're talking about. If we're talking about fundamentalists that interpret the Bible literally (this is a large and politically influential group in the US), then yes, science and those beliefs are incompatible.
I tried! My search came up with *The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" topping the list which, while an amazing book, doesn't feel like what you had in mind...
Getting to watch things like Mormonism (and, to some extent, Scientology, though that's a bit of a different beast) develop under conditions that provide pretty good records and a variety of disinterested accounts, has definitely been instructive for interpreting plausible courses of development of older religions. "Why would all these people lie?" "Why would so many people attest to having seen something that was actually bullshit? It must have happened!"
Well... I mean, you'd think so, but not so much, it turns out.
Exactly, It's like the people who created false Wikipedia pages (complete with seemingly valid references). Maybe the first time someone did that there was a point -- showing how such an article could get past the mods as a wake up call to improve scrutiny. But certainly the thrill of "getting away with it" is probably the real motivation.
The harm to others is the broken trust. Every time someone willing spreads misinformation it makes people think less of other people and life in general.
The fact that we are reading about this now, shows that people were negatively affected by it. It wasn't a harmless activity.
People should be called out for intentionally spreading misinformation, and they should feel bad about it, and people shouldn't trust anything they say again for a very long time. Don't feel sorry for these assholes, and don't let them get away with it, because that encourages them to continue this sort of behavior.
That's the thing. If we don't trust, or accept that trust may not be merited, then there's nothing to break.
I know some outrageous characters. Many, are decent folks, in their way, but I wouldn't trust them to handle any kind of meaningful responsibility.
But I enjoy having them in my life, and have no intentions of driving them away, or avoiding them.
I have a cat. He's a great little guy. But if I pick him up, and I don't make him feel secure, he will scratch me. He doesn't want to hurt me, but he needs to dig into something to feel secure; even if that "something" is my chest.
It's possible to have relationships with folks that have no boundaries, and we need to maintain our own boundaries, ourselves, as opposed to rely on others, to respect them.
That said, we also don't need to defend our boundaries with nukes. Often, a simple "No, I don't want to do that." is sufficient, as opposed to "This is bear spray! Stay away!".
> That's the thing. If we don't trust, or accept that trust may not be merited, then there's nothing to break.
Yeah but to get to that point you have to break the trust you had in them or people in general, so my point remains. Or did you from the day of your birth assume everyone is lying to you about everything?
Let's just say that I have spent my entire adult life, in close relationships with some of the most untrustworthy S.O.B.s on earth, and have learned to deal with it.
Many folks think, because I am friendly, open, and kind, that I'm weak, naive, and gullible.
They tend to get quite upset, when they find out, that's not the case.
Depends. It depends on who believes them, and what decisions those people make.
I realize that most folks don't have four decades' worth of experience, dealing with hardened criminals, con artists, and generally delusional people, to firm up their personal boundaries.
I've found that a good start, is not to do things like apply emotionally-charged labels to the folks doing this. If they are dangerous, or present a risk, they may be sanctioned, imprisoned, whatever.
But I have found, in my experience, that offering kindness, where none is expected, is often key to helping folks turn things around.
As I said, many of these people are living in their own personal hell, where they hate themselves, and the world around them, and that tends to set up a reinforcement feedback loop.
There’s an interesting film:
Shattered Glass (2004)
That explores this… looking at a fabulist working for a website in the late 90s early 2000s somewhere in there.
> It’s not healthy, but often, doesn’t result in much harm to anyone else.
Let’s not forget that the readers are also willing participants in this, and their willingness to believe “half-truths” is what keeps the whole thing going.
Edit: You advice to be skeptical is, in my mind, healthier if the reader also is very aware of whether they’re entertaining themselves or trying to educate themselves, and if they’re trying to educate themselves, work hard to seek out the highest quality sources of information, i.e. not Atlas Obscura.
The other day I was thinking that in "the times we live in"™ it would be nice to have a sort of notary for anonymous sources. The source is known between the journalist and the notary. The notary has to be assigned to the journalist from another third party randomly (probably a state institution through a process like `get_notary(unique_article_id, unique_journalist_id) -> unique_notary_id`).
The journalist communicates quotes and contact information for the quotes to the notary they've been assigned to.
Then, in case of doubt, it's possible for anybody to request the notary validates the sources of the story.
Freelance journalist could also go through the process to be able to guaranty to the Editor they're submitting to that their story is not bullshit, without having to reveal their sources or the editor to have to do the checks themselves.
Now you have N more points of failures, possibly concentrating far more power than attacking journalists directly.
There's a reason journalists tend to be all hush hush around giving who their sources are, sources are often risking their lives, and are often putting regimes in place / powerful people under scrutiny. The very same people that can decide whether you should live or not.
There are lots of ways around this. The most obvious is to forgo the process if the story is one of the few that would draw the ire of a national government or otherwise place lives at risk.
There are lots of cases where anonymous sources are used in less extreme circumstances, and to protect those you could build a rigorous system of vetting notaries, equivalent to a security clearance. Under OP's proposed model we wouldn't need a lot of these notaries, since as I understand it they'd only be actually validating sources if doubts are raised, so the requirements could be quite strict.
I agree, I was thinking about it while writing it. My thinking was that it should somebody sworn in to try not break the chain of trust. But adding somebody new in a chain will always weaken it (in this context).
As the sibling comment mentions, it wouldn't have to be mandatory as well.
It's just that in general I find the "anonymous sources" a bit too easy to use. It's very easy to have your article say whatever you want by using "anonymous sources".
With the articles left up but with a disclaimer, it will be interesting to see if the “facts” and “quotes” work their way into LLMs, losing the disclaimer
It's surely a great use case for the semantic web on paper, but I'm not sure that site owners have much incentive to make it easier for the bot owners to extract and resell their content.
I asked ChatGPT why lemmings choose to jump off cliffs,
"The idea that lemmings intentionally jump off cliffs and into the sea is a myth. This misconception likely originated from a 1958 Disney documentary called "White Wilderness, ...."
A google search will give you 1000 sources that lemmings don't jump off cliffs, because there was a Disney movie about it and now it's the prototypical example of falsification.
Here are 10 articles on a comparatively small website, where only one gained enough notoriety to be directly called out as debunked on secondary sources, where the statistical data is insufficient.
Even with a disclaimer, they've already worked their way into factoids touted by human beings and will continue to be. It's an inevitability for LLMs too if it hasn't already happened.
Oh dear, from copilot:
The term “Dark Weeks” in the context of the Scottish town of Moffat refers to a volunteer-led initiative where many residents and businesses in Moffat turn off their lighting for two weeks each winter, particularly in the village center1. This is done to reduce light pollution and preserve the wonders of the night sky2. However, public lighting around essential locations like the hospital and firehouse remains on1.
It’s worth noting that Moffat is recognized as Europe’s first Dark Sky Town2, and it’s home to the Moffat Community Observatory3, which offers beautiful views of various night sky objects3. This observatory complements the town’s Dark Sky Town status as recognized by the International Dark-Sky Association3.
However, an article from Atlas Obscura had to be retracted because it was found that the author fabricated the idea of “dark weeks” in Moffat, and also fabricated interviews with multiple sources1. Therefore, while Moffat is a Dark Sky Town, the specific concept of “Dark Weeks” might not be an officially recognized or widely practiced event. It’s always a good idea to check with local sources or official town information for the most accurate details.
At least it included the disclaimer! Too bad it was at the end past where anyone will read, it wasn't smart enough to retroactively remove the false info.
Besides the glaring absence of Claas Relotius, the article lists a number of high-profile journalistic fraud (one that briefly got a Pulitzer prize).
It does not go into detail but it does present a relatively fair assessment of how journalism goes back to being dubious, and that journalists as guardians of truth is actually not the historical pattern.
It is very surface level on everything though. It does not go into details about what is below the apex of 'outright fabrication' in the journalistic fraud pyramid. Most journalists have always relied on either some extremely rich investor or Government funding and in both cases it is obvious they won't tolerate real independent journalism for their money.
This is very much one of those things that the ridiculous right parrots in order to reduce trust in 'the media'.
But the simple truth is that every profession, including journalism, has its rotten apples. But they're a small fraction of the total and in general journalists are the real thing.
> every profession, including journalism, has its rotten apples
Referring to a professional person gone to the bad as a "rotten apple", meaning that most of the apples are fine, is a kind of malapropism. The full saying is: "One bad apple spoils the barrel". The claim is that corruption spreads if it is not opposed quickly and throughly.
It's an error to use the phrase to minimise the scale or severity of wrongdoing.
The usage of 'bad apple' which you are describing as incorrect is so widespread now that railing against it is futile. Language sometimes changes in ways we disagree with personally.
I understand how you feel, I have the same feeling about how the word 'literally' is now defined as 'figuratively' in some dictionaries. Makes me want to tear my hair out... but the people have spoken.
> I have the same feeling about how the word 'literally' is now defined as 'figuratively' in some dictionaries.
This bugs me for the opposite reason it seems to bother you: this definition is wrong descriptively; the figurative use of “literally” doesn’t mean “figuratively”, it means “as if literally (in the usual, literal sense)”, and is applied to another expression used figuratively (that is, it is a mechanism for claiming the proximity of a figurative use to a literal one, not for marking a use as figurative.)
> I have the same feeling about how the word 'literally' is now defined as 'figuratively' in some dictionaries. Makes me want to tear my hair out... but the people have spoken.
Usage of "literally" to mean "figuratively" dates back hundreds of years, with citations by top English writers. If you believed that "literally" meaning "figuratively" was a recent change, you were mistaken.
> Do you have a source for this? This is exactly how bullshit spreads.
I did, just not on me—I had to come back with it.
**
My daily bread is literally implored
I have no barns nor granaries to hoard;
— John Dryden, The Hind and The Panther (1687)
Every day with me is literally another yesterday for it is exactly the same.
— Alexander Pope, Letter to H. Cromwell (March 1708)
His looks were very haggard, and his limbs and body literally worn to the bone
— Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby (1839)
If we were not perfectly convinced that Hamlet's Father died before the play began, there would be nothing more remarkable in his taking a stroll at night, in an easterly wind, upon his own ramparts, than there would be in any other middle-aged gentleman rashly turning out after dark in a breezy spot -- say Saint Paul's Churchyard for instance -- literally to astonish his son's weak mind.
— Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol (1843)
He is a fortunate man to be introduced to such a party of fine women at his arrival; it is literally to feed among the lilies.
— Frances Brooke, The History of Emily Montague (1769)
I look upon it, Madam, to be one of the luckiest circumstances of my life, that I have this moment the honour of receiving your commands, and the satisfaction of confirming with my tongue, what my eyes perhaps have but too weakly expressed — that I am literally the humblest of your servants.
— George Colman and David Garrick, The Clandestine Marriage (1766)
Lily, the caretaker's daughter, was literally run off her feet.
— James Joyce, The Dead (1914)
that he had shared her bedroom which came out in the witness box on oath when a thrill went through the packed court literally electrifying everybody in the shape of witnesses swearing to having witnessed him on such and such a particular date in the act of scrambling out of an upstairs apartment with the assistance of a ladder in night apparel...
— James Joyce, Ulysses (1922)
And when the middle of the afternoon came, from being a poor poverty-stricken boy in the morning, Tom was literally rolling in wealth.
— Mark Twain, "The Adventure of Tom Sawyer" (1876)
All colors made me happy: even gray.
My eyes were such that literally they Took photographs.
— Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire (1962)
Literally, I was (what he often called me) the apple of his eye
How come some professions are declared "high risk of fraud" by banks, insurance, accounting firms?
Your statement implies that there is an obvious truth that fraud is equally distributed among professions.
Nothing in reality subscribe to this blank statement.
For something that's Atlas Obscura worthy, it's been a few centuries that people have been making ranking of fraud level by trade. There's a book, whose name I can't remember, that explained how much you should expect to be swindled by the baker, the windmill guy, etc. It explained some of the common tricks each profession would use, how widespread the tricks would be, and therefore do an estimate on the most dishonest professions.
> Mastbaum’s stories didn’t raise any red flags, he said; details were spot-checked by editors, and notes were provided whenever they had questions. They didn’t suspect anything was amiss until a reader reached out to them. Once they realized there were problems with the story, he explained, they did a complete review of all of Mastbaum’s work, reaching out to every single source and documenting the inconsistencies in an editor’s note.
In addition to the fraudulent author, editors are (or were, or should be) accountable for lies getting into print. Especially when a writer under their purview lies over and over. Especially if you don't immediately pull all of that author's stories after even one of them is deemed fundamentally fraudulent. And I'm not sure how 'spot-checking' is meant to be used here, given that you could apparently catch quite a few of the lies in the articles with a Google search. What were they doing as editors?
When we talk about the dwindling quality of journalism, or the dearth of trust in journalism, to me it always goes back to editors and fact-checkers. More precisely, the lack of them. It doesn't matter why they aren't doing their job, whether it's lack of money, time, or lack of skilled practicioners. Editors are really important, as it turns out.
How would you know that this article is itself not fake? In this case, disclaimers have been placed on the original article, but that doesn't usually happen.
This is the problem with confirmation bias. What if another article came out to reveal that this article was fake? And then recursively on and on. How would you know how to distinguish the reality? I sense most people will believe what they want to believe, and if that be the original article (possibly fake), or the rebuttal article (possibly fake). We have to go entirely on our ability to trust the source.
Seems a little too pat, popped up a few years ago, never heard of before. The text of the ebooks is respectable, but may give off a whiff of anachronism in places.
If anyone in the UK feels like checking a library ...
So what you are proposing, and I am perhaps agreeing with, is that someone has created a bunch of random ebooks and then invented a backstory for the fake author?
Yes and I find the style annoying in this case - for a topic like this I’d prefer a wikipedia/readme style structured list of relevant articles, perhaps with dates and a little context.
The name "Atlas Obscura" puzzles me since it looks like they intended "atlas of obscure things", but the only way I can see to read these two words together in a grammatically valid way yields the command "hide, atlas!".
I'm tempted to wonder what attitude this reveals on the part of the publisher towards its readers. Do they think "This is obscure, our readers won't notice if we make stuff up"?
Funnily enough, I complained to Atlas Obscura a couple years back about a story they ran that included a bunch of statistics which were mathematically inconsistent with each other. I get that english majors don't like math :) but these numbers were so central to the story that you'd think any fact checker who had the story to review would have pulled out a calculator and checked them (if not actually review the sources of the numbers).
I got an email reply from Patel (who is mentioned in the Walrus story) about 3-4 weeks after my initial complaint, acknowledging the issue and saying that they'd issued a correction. In the editorial comment that they'd added to the story along with the corrections, they understated the issue that I reported, but they had fixed all of the numbers. Of course, fixing stories 3-4 weeks after publishing means that only the fictional long tail will benefit.
Anyone else think this dude should write a book of fake articles and market them with the Atlas Obscura story, only their version contains several falsehoods?
This is the sort-of premise of the UK radio/TV panel show, "The Unbelievable Truth". Contestants take turns to give a brief lecture about a subject, the majority of which is untrue, with four facts smuggled in. The others get points if they can identify the facts, and lose points if they incorrectly identify a falsehood as true.
>Der Spiegel published the final investigation report in May 2019, concluding that "no indications were found that anyone at DER SPIEGEL was aware of the fabrication, helped cover them up or otherwise participated in them"
No worries, no one has bad intentions. They're just thoroughly incompetent.
There is also former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson who, in his former career as “journalist” was fired for fabricating stories about the European Union that contributed to the climate of Euroskepticism that ultimately led to Brexit, and Johnson’s rise to power. Who says crime doesn’t pay?
"clearly politically motivated." - interesting, how so?
Most of the people I talked about it see his forgeries as "simple" work for awards/compliments: Everything he wrote/reported seemed believable, because it was in range/sync with events/storys/news that actually happened.
Again, I'd love to know how to identify his/the political motivation.
> because it was in range/sync with events/storys/news that actually happened.
As far as I understand he never wrote anything special or world changing, he took stories you already heard a million times and created pieces of fiction that pandered to the sensibilities of his core audience. A story about the life in a small town in the US? Boring! Lets add in a bit of racism here, a literal Trump cult there, re-frame it as some backwater town in the middle of the woods and a few more changes later you have a story people want to read, not quite "The Call of Cthulhu" but maybe enough to bridge the gap to the next award winning piece of journalistic fiction about the just as colorfully exaggerated struggles of a refuge family on their way to Europe or the life and motivations of freedom fighters in remote corners of the world.
Honestly, I'm surprised this hasn't happened more often. The challenge with stories about unusual situations, events and topics is that they're often difficult to verify, and you're relying on the author's word that they've actually done the research.
Sites like Atlas Obscura feel like perfect publications for hoaxers because of that. Make up an extremely obscure topic or event, then bet the editors won't bother to do any real fact checking because of said obscurity.
It's also the reason that stories about cancelled movies/TV shows, lost scripts, unused content in video games, media that's gone missing in general, etc are so likely to be inaccurate or outright hoaxes; trying to actually verify these stories and get reliable sources is quite the challenge.
> In my opinion, the individual is best off ignoring all of it, and dealing with their actual lives, rather than taking any of the distracting and manipulative stories seriously.
That’s one way to remain entirely ignorant and unengaged with anything that happens in the world beyond your immediate vicinity. This feels a rather high price to pay to avoid the occasional egregiously fraudulent piece of journalism
> In my opinion, the individual is best off ignoring all of it, and dealing with their actual lives, rather than taking any of the distracting and manipulative stories seriously.
Sounds like the thing Russian propaganda aims for: "we are lying, q.e.d., and if we can get away with that much lying, would you expect others to be much better? Truth does not exist, just pick whatever lie you feel most comfortable with."
Looking back at the most egregious lies of the last decade (the Bush/Blair Iraqi WMD deception), I'd say media was pretty good at calling it out as a lie. Unfortunately not successful to the point of tangible consequences, but it's not like anyone really believed them.
> the individual is best off ignoring all of it, and dealing with their actual lives, rather than taking any of the distracting and manipulative stories seriously.
Hard to do when you're in school. And yes, there is some serious indoctrination going on, as you mention.
That would be great but the message from government, media and academia is overwhelmingly that people who double check ("do their own research") are fringe crazies who to be mistrusted and ideally silenced. Before getting to the point where people are actively encouraged to double check, we'd have to get to the point where people aren't actively ostracised for it!
The problem is that skepticism on its own isn't a route to the truth. An embarrassing number of people "doing their own research" are doing on reddit, not e.g. arxiv.
Sorry, I had been assuming that the HN readership would assume that double checking tertiary sources involves consulting (at least) secondary sources, secondary sources primary, etc.
Just as well-founded loop variants help avoid nontermination, making strictly closer-to-ground double checks helps avoid echo chambers.
(and frankly, "do your own research", to me, is a clear sibboleth translating to "enter our echo chamber")
If the problem you're trying to solve is Dan Arielys or journalists reporting non-replicable academic papers, restricting your review only to arxiv isn't going to help.
You're not wrong. Sometimes you're better off on a random sci-blogger's site. But there's always a level where we have to take things on trust. Understanding who is actually trustworthy I'll leave as an unsolved problem.
I wouldn't say it's best to outright ignore so much as not take seriously, or at least not use for anything actionable. You can read the news and magazines etc. if you find it interesting, just make sure to do some independent verification in line with the importance of any decisions you are making.
Thank you for sharing about the Dan Ariely scam. From his wiki:
> Ariely is the author of the three New York Times best selling books Predictably Irrational, The Upside of Irrationality and The Honest Truth about Dishonesty.[3] He co-produced the 2015 documentary (Dis)Honesty: The Truth About Lies.[4]
You have to say, this guy has chutzpah! He's fine to promote himself as a bastion of truth and rationality, and all the while he's making up his studies! Lying through your teeth gets you "three New York Times best selling books"!
> In my opinion, the individual is best off ignoring all of it, _and dealing with their actual lives_, rather than taking any of the distracting and manipulative stories seriously.
Yes, yes, and yes. And now observe how many clickbait and fear-mongering articles people tend to react to.
Don't gey sidetracked by topics pushed by other people.
> There is 'journalism' which is basically propaganda served by AP and Reuters
It has always been like this, we're just starting to notice now. The fascinating thing to observe is that they're still continuing to lie as if nothing changed, even though they get called out for it on Twitter via community notes or quote tweets. Not even a reaction, apology or correction. They just continue lying.
Its hard to tell sometimes, there are certainly a lot of midwit true believers, and the capacity of man to hold contradicting beliefs at the same time seems boundless.
But yeah, at some point one gets really disillusioned.
It debunks an unintentionally untruthful (not fabricated) page that Atlas Obscura used to have.