Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
"I was just following market forces" is the new "I was just following orders"
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
I also see little hope in collective bargaining with FB/Google/etc. I don't want a world in which good journalism is funded by, and so depends upon, mass propagandists. While these things exist, we could tax the fuck out of them to fund something else. When, gratefully they don't, we'd still fund.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
The LJI approach (@deanbaker13.bsky.social proposes something similar) strikes me as broadly the kind of thing we want. I'd go for the 1% of GDP rather than 0.15%, and want support for topical and national journalism, not just local. But the basic idea/structure is about the best we have for now.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
(I really didn't like this sentence, though: "And if people elect to have disingenuous local news media? Just like elections in general, that is the possibility in a democracy." Misreads both what democracy means and we should accept of journalism. Election does not render a tyranny a democracy. )
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
(That's quibbling annoyingly over what's mostly a throwaway line. The substantive point is, if an electoral or allocative procedure that funds journalism proves not to finance a diverse, high quality ecosystem, that is not to be shrugged off as "democracy" but remedied by reconsidering institutions)
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
okay. but that structure has to look very different than “what attracts viewership prospers”. that is to say, if we want to call it “restructuring the market”, we need to invent from whole cloth what precisely the good is, and what kind of choice would reward that. perhaps “market” is strained here.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
competition is a poison pill in this context, though. not the diversity aspect of competition, that’s great. but business models based on attracting eyeballs are epistemological catastrophes. the market does not optimize for the value we require. news “worked” only when it was a loss leader.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
assuming we are right (i'm pretty sure we are right!) that Dittman is Musk, i don't know what to do with an epistemological environment in which one of the world's most powerful men and most prominent speakers does this.
Screenshots of X posts by Elon musk meming mockery of people who think Adrian Dittman is Elon Musk, quoting followers asserting believing this apparently true claim is false is an"IQ test", ie to be smart one must believe the lie.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
that doesn't sound like a meaningful free speech regime to me. it doesn't sound like a free society.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
i agree that fox's viewpoint and content is free speech, like any other viewpoint or thing one might say. 1/
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
but, as you suggest, the combination of a viewpoint untethered from requirements of diversity, fairness, some meaningful epistemological filter and its domination, extent, reach should not be protected by a free-speech regime. with great reach comes responsibility. /fin
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
the game was not fair but still you’ve been checkmated.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
can we (are we?) preemptively develop vaccines against H5N1 flu that would at least reduce its severity should it breakout as a human pandemic?
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
facebook began with a mission to connect the world and ends with a mission to dissolve all connections in slop.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
if your requirements for a free society are inconsistent as a practical matter with its survival as a free society, you might want to reconsider those requirements.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
fox news is not free speech.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
it’s not fox news’ viewpoint that renders it not free speech. it is the intersection of viewpoint undisciplined by epistemological guard rails and reach. the bigger you are, the duller you must be, because you have obligations to fairness and caution.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
note this is completely inconsistent with a world in which reach is a function of attracting eyeballs through entertainment or outrage.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
people imagine that causality goes from free speech to a decent society, but it’s much more accurate to understand it as a decent society makes tenable free speech. 90s-era freewheeling speech norms were made tenable by shared epistemological institutions that were biased but broadly functional.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
Constanța
Diners in Piața Ovidiu, Constanța, Romania, with the Grand Mosque in the background.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
evidently they were quite delicious.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
🙁 i hate to give advice i resist, but deal with the hell of the health care system and get it looked at if “is this thing cancer” is a thing that crosses your mind.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
isn’t this contract basically the structure of an assassination market? obviously not accusing anyone. but do we think contracts like this are okay? (i’m not sure on what prediction market this allegedly traded.)
Price graph of a prediction market, “Will Jimmy Carter die in 2024?” showing contracts declinjng from 80¢ to almost worthlessness since Aug, then spiking to $1 today.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
i feel suddenly like we're on our own.
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Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
more persuasive in its history than its prescriptions and predictions. i don’t think China’s debt situation, mostly domestic debt, forces disruptive change in the way these authors presume. rest-of-world unwillingness to absorb China’s surpluses might. but different causes, constraints, implications
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