Reply to post: Re: What's new?

How Google's black box Knowledge Graph can kill you

MonkeyCee

Re: What's new?

"Of course everyone should act like a typical El Reg reader and trust nothing, ever."

"This issue is not new, formerly if it was printed in black and white it was fact,"

What I learnt in history (back when dinosaurs roamed the earth) was that *any* source of data was suspect. Even if the author has clear motivations and they don't appear to conflict with what data you seek, you need multiple sources for anything to be sure. Then you've got the issue that sometimes those multiple sources turn out to have a single root source, and that itself is unverifiable. Those who write the history books and all that.

Then there's the "publishing with intent" or just publishing. Nothing gets written and disseminated without a damn good reason. Thus you've not only got to worry about the literal content of a piece, but by what conclusions (or bias reinforcement) the article is attempting to provoke. In the days of yore it was referred to as reading between the lines, these days it's probably something more newspeak. Triggered, trolling, dog whistling etc.

So it's not just the "what" in a person's statement, but the "why did they bother to write this". What motivates a person, and perhaps what motivates someone to pay someone else to advance their views. In much the same way that two newspapers with opposing views can report the exact same event, using the same verifiable facts, and advance completely different narratives. Note that no lying or "fake news" is involved here, you just present (and avoid mentioning) certain facts, and your audience should reach their own conclusion. They will be then more attached to the conclusion, since it wasn't presented as one.

Then there's always the difference between what was said in a meeting versus the minutes of said meeting. One of those is a formal record, and may only bear a passing resemblance to what actually happened, but what may have been an extremely contentious discussion can be made to sound unanimous.

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