So I was watching a bit of a discussion about the situation in Argentina and if their ancap president has been successful? Mostly it was libertarians calling it a victory because it makes them look good politically. It is also a style of doing things that is making its way into the US, as DOGE was inspired by the Argentine Admin.
While there are something that do seem to imply an economic recovery they did just get a huge bailout (not sure why a recovery that is doing so well needs one) as well as food insecurity, along with pensioners protesting.
Aside from this specific case that will be very polarizing; how do you try to discern in real time what is misleading?
One thing that will help is separating between if a policy is effective in achieving a political goal and if achieving the political goal over other political goals is effective.
how do you try to discern in real time what is misleading?
That’s really hard. Unless you’re in a position where your opinion will have an influence (ie, you’re a judge, cop, or protestor who can take part in the event), you might as well wait a couple of days for more information to come out.
We’ve done ourselves a massive disservice by subjecting everything to constant, immediate analysis. Most of the time, we can afford to wait and learn more.
While I completely agree, I do have one counterpoint that the current US administration is employing to counter that tactic. Flood the zone with news story after news story of unrelated topics and it’s massively more difficult to remember all of them or follow up on them all
Here in Canada we’ve been trying to keep tabs on Trump’s tariff threats. At the start, our media was publishing headlines whenever posted about Canada/tariffs/etc. They seem to have given up on that (partially because Trump’s been distracted recently), but I think readers tuned out.
Instead we’re more focused on three current Canadian reaction, and the effects of whatever the current policies are. Tracking the day-to-day threats was almost information-free because Trump’s whims are so variable.
I think that strategy makes more sense: track the long-term story, without doing constant breaking news about something that’s likely to change soon.
You read multiple sources and look for the facts, not declarations of victory or failure.
Like how Milei is, by his own statements, anti-union, anti-LGBT, anti-pension, anti-abortion, anti-vaxx, pro-military/intelligence industry, pro-genocide in Palestine, and pro-unregulated crypto. All of which I don’t like personally; I’m not an anarchocapitalist. I don’t really care if one financial metric goes up or down that some will hail as “success” if the lives of so many are made significantly worse in the exchange.
“and that’s why I’m happy to share the sponsor of this comment, Ground News”
I wish. They must pay well given the number of content creators that advertise for them.
They actually have a good product.
That’s the thing: You can’t unless you are already well-informed beforehand.
Yes, it is possible to spot common rhetorical deceptions such as whataboutisms or straw man arguments, but misinformation in general is impossible to debunk in real time unless it defies common sense such as “Immigrants are eating the pets of locals”.
A popular talking point here in Germany when the government was trying to push for installing heat pumps instead of gas or oil based heating solutions was, that installing a heat pump would entail massive renovation costs to make its use viable. This information is semi true because installing a pump in older buildings might indeed require renovations. But exposing this argument as a broad overgeneralization takes so much time and effort that it is impossible to do on the spot, unless you have prepared multiple examples of home configurations and the associated costs of installing a heat pump.
The whole idea behind Steve Bannon’s famous tactic of “flooding the zone” is to flood the discussion with so much misinformation it would take a disproportionately amount of time to debunk it all.
TBH I don’t bother with watching discussions anymore because of this.
The other one they do is “never leaving the tent”
I have been in that many discuusions where someone just has to have the last word, their posts getting longer & longer but making more or less the same point.
It feels like arguing with a LLM.
Honestly (and unfortunately), the Financial Times or something like that supplemented by regular media. I’m not endorsing paid financial news sites as your only source of news or anything. But rich people pay for those newspapers specifically because they filter the signal from the noise. It’s more like a hack to see what’s important since they don’t report on drama and intrigue and their whole raison d’être is giving investors facts, quickly.
Bonus fact: basically all their paywalls are permeable. But if you need to check if a story is “important,” see what’s being covered — or more importantly, not covered — for people wearing fancy pants. Bullshit is free so free media often shovels a lot on top of the real story.
