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JonCole

"Ethics and Journalistic Integrity"

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Source: https://twitter.com/anne_theriault/status/575369566664138752

So apparently libel can result in jail time. And a group which defines itself as leaderless and too diverse to be criticized can be a target of it.

 

Not sure what the immediate cause was for that tweeteria. Was it the Tim Schafer sockpuppet thing? Because that would be hi-larious. ;)

 

"Mr. Schafer, you're being sued for making fun of gamergate and especially the #notyourshield hashtag, which was racist".

 

 

The SJW narrative crap is really getting to me. Many gaters are desperate to draw the controversy to a political level, so they can even understand it, and "the SJW" is the result.

 demonized enemy concept that, just as much as "the Jew", simply doesn't exist. Slap a label on your enemies, then execute them for the label.

 

Any one of those idiots going "the SJW this, the SJW that" (singular form denoting the entire fictitious group) really is without a brain.

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I think we're both confused by each other at this point, haha.

 

The way I see it is:

You were talking about data, ie. facts (frequencies, the things which measurably happened), at which point it's not yet statistics in the sense of probabilities. Those are the result of the analysis of data.

 

Choosing whether to analyse the data in terms of a linear series of dependent events is quite different from lumping events together into one big event as far as I'm aware. It's frequently done this way, but that's a simplifying assumption which is only rarely actually appropriate to my (admittedly detail-oriented, connectionist) view.

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I guess I may have been careless in my terminology. Specifically what I wanted to convey is that saying "this is too long a string of events to be probable to occur if the odds didn't demand it" doesn't follow since astronomically improbable things happen all the time, and all a long string of improbable events can be viewed equivalently as one long, specific, and highly improbable prolonged event. This is very similar to the watchmaker argument for intelligent creation, stating that because things arrived in this highly specific way something must be influencing them to happen this way -- it just doesn't necessarily follow, because things could have happened in any number of very specific ways, and none of them necessarily more or less guided than this particular outcome, whether by odds or by design. In other words, I find the argument of a general trend towards progress to be unconvincing both because it relies highly on the examples set by a few cultures even though those cultures may be themselves short-lived outliers, and because it's based on an assumption that very unlikely things never happen.

 

... but this is like super off-topic. Dangit.

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I really wanted to get in on that discussion about inherencies of profit-motives in art-creation discussion. I wanted to get into the state-funded arts one too. But y'all shook hands and agreed to disagree before I saw a spot where I had something to say.

I guess I'll say something that might start it back up.

I think that capitalism has a tendency to centralize wealth while it develops incredibly efficient allocation of labor. An actor with more money has more capability to make money. So I see one of the State's roles as redistributing that wealth to correct for that snowball-effect.

I would think that using tax money to do things like build affordable housing, build public-transit, providing healthcare, and providing other means of production (such as education) would take precedence over arts-funding, but I think that art can increase production in culture. A good example would be (what I see as) a symbiosis between science-fiction and scientific progression in the 20th century. I think that stories of alien planets and androids had a significant effect on motivating certain areas of scientific research and possibly even suggesting some solutions. Likewise, I think there wouldn't have been as much interest in science-fiction without the advances in the U.S. space-program. I honestly believe that the arts had an impact on production.

Now the question of which artists should be state-funded is one I have a hard time answering, but my current position is informed by the role of the State that I expect it to redistribute wealth. So I would suggest that arts-funding be allocated by providing the means of production to the least wealthy.

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@Problem machine, yeah let's drop it. Mostly nitpickery anyway. I disagree with some stuff you say but not in a particularly interesting manner.

 

The most clear recent example of art's influence in my mind is 24's pernicious influence on US policy after 9/11

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The most clear recent example of art's influence in my mind is 24's pernicious influence on US policy after 9/11

How mind-blowing would it be if it was disclosed that the C.I.A. funded that show. It's a good thought-experiment for thinking how arts-funding could be used to promote certain changes in public perception. I have no problem with propaganda that attempts to declaw the War On The Poor. Maybe if tax money could be used to seed art co-ops in impoverished areas, the U.S. population could hear the perspective of the poor along with that of the wealthy.

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Now the question of which artists should be state-funded is one I have a hard time answering, but my current position is informed by the role of the State that I expect it to redistribute wealth. So I would suggest that arts-funding be allocated by providing the means of production to the least wealthy.

 

Pretty much agreed all the way up to this and this is where I and Deadpan probably diverged the strongest (IF we are actually disagreeing on anything at all, I still suspect that it's more of miscommunication).  What you are describing is pretty much what I want, that instead of having money allotted explicitly based on 'art' reasons (say it's implemented for game development... would every IOS game publishers qualify?  If not, then what are the criteria and who makes the judgement?), just make that bare minimum net always there so that people can be 'free' of worries to pursue art full time... and if their venture fail, state should be ready to catch them and help them on their feet in another area where criteria are easier to follow.  That's imo safest way to support art without undue influence or possible corruption.

 

And yeah it's pretty disappointing how rampant recent fictions are at promoting the idea that torture will always yield reliable information.  But I didn't mention such thing being potential pitfall of state funded art because same goes for corporate funded art (aka ads).  It's just that states have more explicitly militaristic side that has easier to spot moral boundaries.

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And yeah it's pretty disappointing how rampant recent fictions are at promoting the idea that torture will always yield reliable information.

 

I haven't watched 24, but whenever I heard about some politician citing it in a torture debate, I'd always hear people say "But in 24, torture doesn't work. It gets the protagonists bad information." Is that something that changed in the later years of the show?

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I haven't watched 24, but whenever I heard about some politician citing it in a torture debate, I'd always hear people say "But in 24, torture doesn't work. It gets the protagonists bad information." Is that something that changed in the later years of the show?

 

I didn't mean it specifically towards 24 so I should have clarified... but off top of my head, there was a part where Jack electrocute torture his ex's fiance and that's how he deemed the guy trustworthy (and yes, turns out he wasn't an enemy) but that was more of an event to create tension between him and his ex by "hey you are torturing my current fiance"

 

But yeah 24 is bit all over the place on this one cause there is a scene in that show where naive FBI agent gets bit too gritty and Jack frowns on her method.  But again, later on that series it just goes all over the place.  You get this smart, sneaky Jack who then straight up goes "Army of Two" (bullet proof hockey mask and everything) on vice president in middle of NYC...

 

A show I had specifically in mind was The Blacklist.  In that show pain-inflicted straight up converts to most reliable information all the time.  BTW if any of you watched that show, I think it's episode 6 or something where they are car chasing this guy called 'courier'... I live like 2 blocks from where they filmed that car chase :)

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I didn't mean it specifically towards 24 so I should have clarified

 

Ah, okay. There's definitely an overall narrative that torture works. I think there's an interesting discussion to be had about how much responsibility fiction has to not do that though. Is the problem that fiction has a shitty message, or that people are basing real world policy on fiction? After all, there are pervasive untrue narratives and tropes about a whole lot of things. To take a specific example, fiction will give you a terrible idea about how gunshot wounds and blood loss work, but there everyone is content to say "It's the audience's responsibility to understand this is fiction, not an accurate representation of reality". Where and how do we draw the line?

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I think there is no line to be drawn.  As you rightly pointed out, the responsibility is on both side of the screen (or however a medium in question is enjoyed) with audience carrying the bulk of it by having final say on how it'll affect them (unless they are really young minors).  So at most it's more of disapproval on creator's own outlook of the world (when the situations cross really close to real issues) than anything else.

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I think there is no line to be drawn.  As you rightly pointed out, the responsibility is on both side of the screen (or however a medium in question is enjoyed) with audience carrying the bulk of it by having final say on how it'll affect them 

As far as I'm concerned, misinformation and propaganda are unethical at the very best and criminal at worst. The torture example can lead to a loss of life in a very real way. The responsibility for effects of communication largely lie with the communicator, not the recipient in my opinion.

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As far as I'm concerned, misinformation and propaganda are unethical at the very best and criminal at worst. The torture example can lead to a loss of life in a very real way.

 

Only if we have people who are basing torture decisions on fictional portrayals of torture though, and that is obviously the wrong thing to be doing. If someone writes an essay of the efficacy of torture, then they bear some responsibility for decisions made based on it, but I don't think it's fair to demand entertainment be factual. Is basically every action movie ever unethical for dangerously misrepresenting the severity of injuries?

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As far as I'm concerned, misinformation and propaganda are unethical at the very best and criminal at worst. The torture example can lead to a loss of life in a very real way. The responsibility for effects of communication largely lie with the communicator, not the recipient in my opinion.

 

Please bear in mind the context of the discussion between me and Ninety-Three.  This was derived from discussion of non-historical TV drama.

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Do you think that people creating sexist media have equal responsibility to those consuming it? Bear in mind that most people don't get a real education in understanding and reading media, whereas people who create media often are supposed to learn to read it as part of the training for their job (though that doesn't necessarily mean they've worked on the skill enough to notice the biases and politics inherent to their work).

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I guess I'll say something that might start it back up.

 

Maybe that's a good time to back up a little in general on that discussion: I originally only took issue with the idea that the market should be the ultimate arbiter of what is produced and what isn't produced, as it has proven to do a very bad job of supporting certain things even if they are universally considered to be of importance. That turned into a discussion about states more quickly than I would have liked, both because I'm not sure placing these as natural opposites is very helpful (it ignores how deeply capitalist logic is ingrained into concepts of government, and foregoes any solution that might fall outside of these concepts) and because it took us to discussing issues of propaganda almost immediately.

 

You already identified some more benign ways states can benefit from producing art, and I'd go on to add there are certainly other uses for it that don't take away from the other functions of a nation. If you can imagine a campaign to address racism, sexism, or

(which are themselves worthwhile attempts to prevent issues that the state otherwise has to police after the fact), you can imagine how these might benefit from giving a platform to people who face these issues and to allow them to express themselves. Artistically or otherwise. Nobody really has a big problem with these kinds of image campaigns (okay, some people do, I guess), so I don't necessarily see the big whoop about using those funds to create something in the process.

 

Regardless, I don't think the talk of potential abuse of this system really gets to what I wanted to get across, both because I meant to address everything surrounding art (after all, the plight of unpaid internships but no available jobs extends to archival, academia, criticism, journalism and pretty much everything else) and because I didn't want to advocate for state-controlled art (as in, art created at the behest of the state for a specific goal) as state-enabled art (art which the state supports but has no real control over the shape and content of), which I posit isn't the absolute worst use of government funds.

 

Or, at the very, very least, it strikes me as rather odd that people are so quick to dismiss this as a complete waste of money while hundreds and thousands of young people these days are sent to mandated courses on how to apply for jobs which don't exist so they can keep their unemployment benefits. It does make me wonder what some of the minds that emerge from our universities to discover that their field isn't hiring could come up with if they were left to their own devices instead of constantly being told the lie that there's enough jobs for everyone and if they haven't found one yet than that's entirely their own fault. In that sense, the kind of basic social security Gaizokubanou was talking about is one way of enabling art, because it gives people limited freedom to keep creating even when the market fails them.

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Do you think that people creating sexist media have equal responsibility to those consuming it?

 

To use the example I gave:

 

Is basically every action movie ever unethical for dangerously misrepresenting the severity of injuries?

 

If the amount of realism we demand from fiction is not absolute, what are we using to declare certain things acceptable and others not?

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Do you think that people creating sexist media have equal responsibility to those consuming it? Bear in mind that most people don't get a real education in understanding and reading media, whereas people who create media often are supposed to learn to read it as part of the training for their job (though that doesn't necessarily mean they've worked on the skill enough to notice the biases and politics inherent to their work).

 

Interesting idea you raised there, perhaps professionals in their field do ought to hold themselves up to higher standards but generally speaking I think in case of fictional media, the 'ethics' difference between creator and consumer, if it exists, would be too tiny to matter in any practical sense.

 

If the amount of realism we demand from fiction is not absolute, what are we using to declare certain things acceptable and others not?

 

Well, not in regulatory sense but personally... surely we all find some contents objectionable even if we would argue against censoring of it?  Like, not acceptable in a sense that you wish people would voluntarily stop consuming but were ensured in their freedom to consume if they wanted without persecution.

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If the amount of realism we demand from fiction is not absolute, what are we using to declare certain things acceptable and others not?

Maybe that overtly sexist bullshit is a reflection of problems in reality, while over-the-top action is a fantasy? I dunno.

 

Though you can certainly find plenty of people (even some on these forums) who think overly violent movies are problematic.

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It does make me wonder what some of the minds that emerge from our universities to discover that their field isn't hiring could come up with if they were left to their own devices instead of constantly being told the lie that there's enough jobs for everyone and if they haven't found one yet than that's entirely their own fault.

 

If I may make a tangent upon this already tangential discussion, is that a common narrative? I grew up hearing a lot of "Figure out what job you want, and if it's available, before going into university". 

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Though you can certainly find plenty of people (even some on these forums) who think overly violent movies are problematic.

 

I wasn't talking so much about the glorification of violence as simple misrepresentation of the effects of blood loss, shock, and so on. I'm sure individuals have made bad decisions based on understandings of injury gained from movies, but I think most people would be content to blame that on the individual, rather than the movie. If we accept that, it seems weird to blame other things on movie problems instead of the people foolishly influenced by movie problems.

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I think sexism and pro-torture issues are more prevalent than people thinking they can take a bullet and be fine. As Twig said, the bullet is a fantasy but sexism and pro torture draw parallels to life that people believe.

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I wasn't talking so much about the glorification of violence as simple misrepresentation of the effects of blood loss, shock, and so on. I'm sure individuals have made bad decisions based on understandings of injury gained from movies, but I think most people would be content to blame that on the individual, rather than the movie. If we accept that, it seems weird to blame other things on movie problems instead of the people foolishly influenced by movie problems.

Yeah that's true, but I sorta regret the second half of my post, as it was meant to be an aside, rather than an extension to the first half.

 

Basically what SBM said.

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