In the Wheel Of Time series the Aei Sedia (a guild of sanctioned magic users) are bound always tell the truth via magical means. This is ostensibly done to convince non-magic users to trust them but in practice it has the opposite effect because due to this binding members of the Aei Sedia often become quite adept at word-games, lies by omission/implication, and using nitpicky technicalities to get around their "limitation". Of course, the normies notice this tendency and naturally come to trust the Aei Sedia even less.
Reading this along with Bounded Distrust I find myself wondering if Scott is being purposely obtuse as a means of currying favor with his ingroup (wealthy bay-area progressives), or genuinely doesn't grasp the above dynamic.
In a realistic world, there would be precisely worded, standardized, questions that would get asked of Aes Sedai any time a legal or similar situation came up, that had been vetted for loopholes and worked in the past.
In fact, Scott completely grasps the dynamic you describe. That's the whole point of his post! He says that while media sources aren't technically lying, they still are giving misleading impressions with their work. He isn't at all saying "these media organizations don't outright lie therefore they are trustworthy".
When I was in High School, I thought the Aes Sedai were oh-so-clever, but making the truth dance is still immoral even if you don't speak literal falsehoods. That journalists of all stripes continue playing this game is partly why I consider their moral development on par with teenagers'.
He isn't at all saying "these media organizations don't outright lie therefore they are trustworthy".
Ill admit that i stopped reading at the bottom of part II so if Scott turned it around later thats on me, but "these media organizations experts didn't outright lie therefore they are trustworthy" is pretty much tbe core thesis of Bounded Distrust and this article seemed like it was headed in the same general direction.
It's a bad title (or at least a title that is not aimed at the Motte users -- this post is clearly directed at people who are marginally pro-censorship). I went in thinking that's where Scott was going, but his point is that even Infowars mostly doesn't tell outright lies, and would-be censors' claim that they are merely fighting "truly fake news," rather than differences of opinion is full of shit. That their claims to objectivity are hollow.
This may seem obvious to many people here, but a large portion of Scott's audience (and probably an even larger portion of his peer group) honestly doesn't understand why we don't just ban all the obviously bad people because they're obviously and uncontrovertably bad. He's trying to nudge those people toward free speech without alienating them entirely.
Have you read Pact and/or Pale? Same limitation on magic users and magic creatures. Pretty much the same result, too, other than there is no issues with normies distrusting magic users because they do not know of them.
Do you know if there is any place I can get this as an epub? I tried googling it and I just find links to the guys website, im not interested in reading the whole thing online.
If you're fine with mobi files, you can get Pact from https://github.com/TheBrain0110/worm_scraper. Pale isn't on there, but the script would probably work on it too if you wanted to run it locally.
I started Pact but never finished it. Got about 100,000 words in and realized that I didn't really care about any of the characters or the world being crafted.
Pact, I think, was definitively the low point of wildbow's oeuvre, but he does have a certain signature trope that makes it particularly hard to care for his protagonists. (I read through all of Worm and Pact, and got pretty far through Twig whose worldbuilding I loved but which made me do a hard "not this shit again" drop when the trope in question reared its head again. It would probably be good if it's the first of his stories you read.)
(I'm talking about how his protagonists inevitably slide into inhumanity and outright non-sapience over the course of the plot.)
Yah that bothers me too. While I quite enjoyed Worm, Pact felt like it was emphasizing all the elements i disliked in Worm (see your spoiler) while minimizing the elements I enjoyed.
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Notes -
In the Wheel Of Time series the Aei Sedia (a guild of sanctioned magic users) are bound always tell the truth via magical means. This is ostensibly done to convince non-magic users to trust them but in practice it has the opposite effect because due to this binding members of the Aei Sedia often become quite adept at word-games, lies by omission/implication, and using nitpicky technicalities to get around their "limitation". Of course, the normies notice this tendency and naturally come to trust the Aei Sedia even less.
Reading this along with Bounded Distrust I find myself wondering if Scott is being purposely obtuse as a means of currying favor with his ingroup (wealthy bay-area progressives), or genuinely doesn't grasp the above dynamic.
In a realistic world, there would be precisely worded, standardized, questions that would get asked of Aes Sedai any time a legal or similar situation came up, that had been vetted for loopholes and worked in the past.
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In fact, Scott completely grasps the dynamic you describe. That's the whole point of his post! He says that while media sources aren't technically lying, they still are giving misleading impressions with their work. He isn't at all saying "these media organizations don't outright lie therefore they are trustworthy".
When I was in High School, I thought the Aes Sedai were oh-so-clever, but making the truth dance is still immoral even if you don't speak literal falsehoods. That journalists of all stripes continue playing this game is partly why I consider their moral development on par with teenagers'.
Oh, for sure. I don't think Robert Jordan intended the Aes Sedai to be moral role models.
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Ill admit that i stopped reading at the bottom of part II so if Scott turned it around later thats on me, but "these
media organizationsexperts didn't outright lie therefore they are trustworthy" is pretty much tbe core thesis of Bounded Distrust and this article seemed like it was headed in the same general direction.It's a bad title (or at least a title that is not aimed at the Motte users -- this post is clearly directed at people who are marginally pro-censorship). I went in thinking that's where Scott was going, but his point is that even Infowars mostly doesn't tell outright lies, and would-be censors' claim that they are merely fighting "truly fake news," rather than differences of opinion is full of shit. That their claims to objectivity are hollow.
This may seem obvious to many people here, but a large portion of Scott's audience (and probably an even larger portion of his peer group) honestly doesn't understand why we don't just ban all the obviously bad people because they're obviously and uncontrovertably bad. He's trying to nudge those people toward free speech without alienating them entirely.
Fair and I suppose that's on me for not reading the whole thing. I should've given him more credit than I did.
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Have you read Pact and/or Pale? Same limitation on magic users and magic creatures. Pretty much the same result, too, other than there is no issues with normies distrusting magic users because they do not know of them.
Do you know if there is any place I can get this as an epub? I tried googling it and I just find links to the guys website, im not interested in reading the whole thing online.
If you're fine with mobi files, you can get Pact from https://github.com/TheBrain0110/worm_scraper. Pale isn't on there, but the script would probably work on it too if you wanted to run it locally.
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I started Pact but never finished it. Got about 100,000 words in and realized that I didn't really care about any of the characters or the world being crafted.
Pact, I think, was definitively the low point of wildbow's oeuvre, but he does have a certain signature trope that makes it particularly hard to care for his protagonists. (I read through all of Worm and Pact, and got pretty far through Twig whose worldbuilding I loved but which made me do a hard "not this shit again" drop when the trope in question reared its head again. It would probably be good if it's the first of his stories you read.)
(I'm talking abouthow his protagonists inevitably slide into inhumanity and outright non-sapience over the course of the plot .)
@HlynkaGC, too.
Pale is doing a very good job of not taking that path, even while laying out why it might be a desirable option for some of the protagonists.
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Yah that bothers me too. While I quite enjoyed Worm, Pact felt like it was emphasizing all the elements i disliked in Worm (see your spoiler) while minimizing the elements I enjoyed.
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