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media and media people

Reality About Fake News

“Fake news entered the world with the emergence of descriptive language,” writes philosopher Ray Scott Percival on Medium, “perhaps hundreds of thousands of years ago.”

And it is here to stay, because we lack a “fool-​proof algorithm” for “disposing of fake news” without cranking out a different variety of fake news.

“But this should not demoralise us,” Percival admonishes. “It is no different from the situation of science. Removing error has to be a piecemeal, tentative enterprise.”

Percival, following a line of argument from philosopher Karl Popper, denies there is such a thing as “manifest truth.” It’s a delusion, says Percival. (The title of his multi-​part essay is “Fake News and the Manifest Truth Delusion.”) But you don’t necessarily need to accept wholly his Popperian take on epistemology (or should that be “epistemics”?) to agree with his important conclusion, that a “ministry of fake news is a fantasy, a tool of oppression, suppression and stagnation, and would unavoidably impair our best means of error-correction.”

He recognizes that error isn’t the half of it. People lie. And some lies look pretty convincing, so we spread them. But the bizarre part of the current “fake news” mania is this: too many earnest citizens turn to government to stop “fake news,” though the biggest and most influential liar has always been the government.

What to do? Well, our “biggest gain in the control of error would be through the separation of science and the corrupting influences of politics (e.g. state funding, licensing etc.) and the chilling effect of political correctness on open discussion.”

Percival wants to “keep the enlightenment alive and kicking.” I like to think that’s just common sense.

I’m Paul Jacob.


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Accountability folly too much government

Our Limited Abilities Require Other Limits

Last week I asked, in effect, Who regulates the regulators?

It does no good to say “the people,” because — as much as I want government to be ultimately controlled by the people — if you’re like me, you don’t know enough to micro-​regulate high finance.

But there’s something I didn’t mention last Wednesday: The regulators don’t have that knowledge, either.

Even keeping eyeballs on simple fraud turns out to be difficult. Trying to micromanage high finance? Much harder.

But the congenital inability of regulators properly to regulate doesn’t mean that we must consign ourselves to a never-​ending, Sisyphean cycle of boom and bust. 

Many of the instruments of the modern federal government try to do too much. These very institutions, because they hubristically attempt to regulate away boom bust deliver just the opposite. They make sure booms go bust in messy ways. 

Here’s a fresh example: “Lack of regulation” wasn’t the main reason for this latest bust. More important? The “too big to fail” subsidy. By giving Wall Street, big bankers, and financial intermediaries the impression that they would be bailed out in case of implosion, those very same folks behaved in such a way to risk said implosion, and thus needing the bailouts.

Which happened.

Which started the cycle all over.

Only by going back to basics can we improve our long-​term economic outlook — not by government micromanaging the economy.

Nicely, citizens like you and me can understand these “basics.”

And defend them.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.