I really like the core idea here: media used to be a push model, social media turned it into a pull model but they're trying to wrest it back. I always hated the push model of social media, which is why most of the online content I consume is via rss, including Twitter [0].
But I never thought of traditional news media media as being a push model. It makes so much intuitive sense when you say it: the reason I read newspapers is, at least in part, I want and trust them to tell me what's happening that's important. That's different than my programming blog subscriptions: I follow them because I've decided what they write is important to me.
It's a subtle difference but very impact-full, and seems correct.
[0] not sure of they actually have rss feeds but my rss reader supports them
Push, pull doesnt matter at this stage. Netflix and YouTube and HN etc are neither, and look at the attention they capture.
People think they can regain control. The majority wont.
Their brains have been trained for decades now to chase clicks/upvotes/views/likes and followers as if these rules are Newtons Laws or something. Different parts of the brain now are totally fubar, as in once you have been writing with your right hand for 15 years, the brain cant just, over night, rewire large chunks of the network to use your left hand. Its takes lot of discipline and most people dont have it.
Probably have to write off a generation or two before things change. Look at netflix, now that they are hitting the upper bounds of attention capture using video, they predictably move to games and shorter vid formats like tiktok to keep capturing more attention.
They have fucked up a whole generation with an endless supply of rewards and to keep people glued. And given the billions being raked in every hour they have won.
> That's different than my programming blog subscriptions: I follow them because I've decided what they write is important to me.
This makes a lot of sense for blogs and sources that are specifically focused on one subject (e.g. programming).
But I'm not convinced it's as big of a difference for something like the Joe Rogan podcast (the author specifically recommends this at the end of the article). On a site like Twitter the users are still collecting a broad range of content from a broad range of people they choose. With something like the Joe Rogan podcast they're listening to shaped opinions from people that the host chooses, influenced by the topics the host allows to be discussed. Rogan is particularly famous for spreading anti-vaccine messaging right now and downplaying any pro-vaccine arguments from actual experts in the field. This seems like the epitome of biased "push" information sources.
I think everyone has the urge to push their views onto other people once they get a platform. It is something instinctual deep within us. We tell ourselves that it is because we are so much smarter than everyone else, and we are the bearers of the one true truth, but really it is just our animal Will To Power at work. Thousands of years of evolution and the need to dominate other groups is really what is driving us to do this.
Anyway, my point is that "Push" is the natural state of being. One has to work very hard to do otherwise. Someone who doesn't push, or who comes close to this, stands out above the crowd. I can think of very few hosts who do this. Joe Rogan goes out of his way to do this - to get all sorts of guests on with all sorts of perspectives - then he just shuts up and listens and asks questions. Yes he has started pushing his opinions a little, but he is better than most everyone else that I can think of.
For a more recent example, apparently he mistook an obviously satirical video as actual government media and criticized the Australian government for it, before somebody pointed out that it's [obviously] a satire video: https://www.instagram.com/p/CVvyYXzgrD2/
This stuff isn't "just asking questions". Viewpoints are being heavily pushed, but Rogan does a good job of pretending he's "just asking questions".
From that instagram page, apparently Rogan's words:
> Not only has Australia had the worst reaction to the pandemic with dystopian, police-state measures that are truly inconceivable to the rest of the civilized world
Ohh - is he where that insane-seeming take comes from, that I've read more than a few times in HN comments over the last few months?! They sure are projecting something, apart from intense anger/rage. I couldn't begin to understand it until I read that. Or where did he get it? (Sydney here.)
I don't really understand what you are asking exactly. It sounds like a question someone would ask about a war zone. The whole thing seems totally imagined to me, maybe fed by denial about the quality of the US response to covid.
Trying to guess what that apparent US hysteria about Australia is based on — maybe it's because we had longer lockdowns/restrictions than most places, I think because there was hardly any covid cases here until the last few months (although Melbourne had an outburst a while ago), so not many people bothered about getting vaccinated. In the last few months a lot of people have gotten vaccinated, the large majority of Australians I think, so restrictions are being phased out. Personally, I've not heard anyone here objecting to the restrictions/lockdowns, but rather to what seem unfair exceptions or people acting irresponsibly, like live music venues being closed while some large sporting events are allowed, or people gathering in large parties when they know it's a bad idea. I don't think there's much of a story, and overseas stories presenting the situation/covid response in Australia as outrageous! unbelievable! inconceivable! etc seem totally detached from reality.
(The most outrageous true Australian story I've heard this year was that Australia is soon going to get nuclear-powered submarines because the US wants us to, I guess because of their current posturing against China, although for 50 years we've had a strong policy of not having nuclear-powered ships, or nuclear-powered anything. Everyone I mentioned it to thought it was totally outrageous too. I guess not many people in the US are worked up about that.)
edit: I looked up some figures. In June, 2% of Australians were fully vaccinated, now 64%, and at least one dose 75%, and increasing fast. 20% of Australians became fully vaccinated in the last month alone. https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations?country=AUS
The will media covering large house parties because it is something that can easily get everyone outraged. People in the same poor situation hate seeing others break the rules or seeing unfairness. Meanwhile the extra long lockdowns can get ignored. There is only so much rage to go around.
I was referring to one very large beach party I heard about, a year ago or so. I wouldn't say outrage, just mild frustration, enough to mention it once then forget about it. I haven't seen any covid-related rage or even anger in real life. Not sure where is this rage you're talking about. Everyone I've seen—friends, acquaintances, strangers in the street—seems extremely relaxed and patient about the situation.
I'm not sure what you're insinuating—that there's a conspiracy to manipulate people into accepting a lockdown when they shouldn't? Or something.
That is the insidious and sad part. I always thought Joe Rohan was kind of a dick and was not personally interested in the type of content he produced, but that’s okay. I got why people did, it just wasn’t for me.
But the bait-and-switch of things into him now just kind of fully descending into normalizing misinformation and crazy stuff is what helps others buy into it and pushes the discourse even more toxic.
This sad crash-dive into insanity that we’re on is the equivalent of a snowball starting an avalanche. It started a lot further up the mountain, and a lot smaller, but people keep getting swept up in it and it’s hard to know where the bottom is going to be since we’re still in the middle of it.
I like Rhonda Patrick too bad. I didn't watch that episode. He's human and not infallable, but like the redditors you may have an opinion already, and just want to be agreed with, OP in the thread and Joe already formed their opinions and wouldn't change it. No strong force is making you agree that the moon landings were fake or aliens made the pyramids, but you are free to believe so if you want.
Not really. Facebook pushes stuff to you via its Timeline. Twitter has a feed. Reddit and HN has front pages.
Social media does plenty of pushing. It’s just instead of a biased human editor with common sense and perhaps a conscience filtering your news, it’s an algorithm with none of the aforementioned attributes.
Did you skip the paragraph the poster was referring to? They were referring to older social media where you would pick which users to follow and those would be shown to you, which mirrors RSS, a comparison explicitly mentioned in the article.
The point is that now it is getting more and more "pushy", but previously it was very "pull" based when compared to traditional education.
People need to learn to start forming their own opinions and not being so easily influenced by who said what and thinking about the what itself.
Lately I've been wondering if maybe people evolved to be sensitive to the who to make it easier for us to be controlled. Said control can be useful at times.
Having to form an opinion about every damn thing that matters is a) exhausting and b) hubris.
It is not possible to be an expert on everything.
The best personal outcome doesn't come from making your own assessment of everything from toothpaste to nuclear power. It's when you learn to recognise the difference between someone's reasoned expertise and, well, just about everyone else pushing their viewpoint.
The top current tip for removing noise from signal certainly is, don't consume social media, as in the OP. In a similar vein, ignore parochial/domestic television broadcasting; obtain current events from international reporting sources, and informed opinion from long-form writers.
>Having to form an opinion about every damn thing that matters is a) exhausting and b) hubris. It is not possible to be an expert on everything.
That's a cynical take, and it illuminates the importance of good education, so that "hubris" as you put it is minimized and right judgment is maximized.
Even more important when most children's education is more and more geared away from critical thinking, and instead towards the One True History.
Someone stated everyone in the US has an opinion. He wrote a book that sold well and was carrying copies to the US, the worker there took a look at his cargo and exclaimed "nobody will buy it". Do we really need opinions on everything?
To look at a thing, to think about what you see (or not). That's one way.
To consume words, interpret them, to create a metaphorical story. That's another.
That's a big difference. Fire vs fireflies.
It isn't a matter of truthiness but of substance.
The difference between menu and lunch. If the question is what to order, what course of action to take, maybe it doesn't matter so much. But for understanding it matters a whole bunch.
Trust attributed via a trusted proxy is not an invalid strategy.
We don't have time to verify everything. Once you've rediscovered fire and are finishing up on reinventing the wheel, you come a point where you've got to delegate some tasks to others, perhaps trust them. And if you trust them, you probably impart some of the trust in their character to the opinion they utter. Nothing wrong in that.
There's reality. And then there's the popular, authoritatively supported STORY about reality.
Most people seem to prefer the latter.
Truth becomes less about reality and more about power, then. Power is a big deal for most people. Look at popular movies for a clear illustration of that.
This can't happen because most people live in a reality that has been crafted by the media sources they consume. This reality provides the mental safety they have enjoyed for their entire lives and there is no reason to step outside of that bubble. I've had conversations with very successful and highly-educated people who can't come to terms with certain truths unless they are validated by "trusted media".
I'll be the first to say I was like this until only a few years ago. Once you realize that a significant chunk of mainstream media and social networks are heavily curated to influence your thinking, you never see the world the same again. There's a reason they call it being "red-pilled".
> Lately I've been wondering if maybe people evolved to be sensitive to the who to make it easier for us to be controlled. Said control can be useful at times.
Pretty sure we evolved to be both. A society cannot function without a lot of people who mostly just follow a leader, but any society which doesn't constantly question its beliefs and ideals is guaranteed to fall sooner or later so we also need a lot of contrarians who do ask all those questions.
I've been thinking this exact same thing too. But I think it is also a survival instinct. We don't just believe anyone, we believe those who we perceive to have more power, be it a violent mob demonstration, or someone we see on TV a lot.
Those in power are well aware of this. You will notice that all the propaganda on TV is designed to make people believe that "everyone believes what I believe, I am in the majority". And when election time comes and hard facts seem to prove the propaganda wrong, they very quickly pivot to "Ok sure, but those other people don't count, they are 'uneducate', 'poor', 'evil'... they have no power"
Abstract belief formation is a topic of study. The gist is: first we hear something, then we assume it's true, then we maybe vet it later. Multiple experiments seem to imply that the default state is believing.
There is too much information (and/or content) for this to be viable.
A hyperconsumer of information can handle somewhere in the range of 300--1,000 messages per day. The ultimate limit is simply time --- at 1,000 messages, and an 8-hour workday, you're dedicating 30 seconds per message, maximum. If you dedicate all your waking hours to that, you can double that. If you give up on sleep (I don't recommend this), triple.
There are hard limits.
30 seconds, or 60, or 90, is not enough time for a hard debunk.
And the alternative is simply to ... consume far fewer messages. Meaning that most of what flies by (much of it bogus) is ... unvetted. Dendritic information filters function by distributing the bullshit-filtering task across numerous nodes. In mass-media contexts of publishing or broadcast, that role was filled (with, very admittedly, problems) by reporters and editors. (See Noam Chomsky for what could possibly go worgn. It's still ... reasonably good, particularly with multiple press channels, say, those which include Noam Chomskys or George Seldes or I.F. Stoneses.)
In an environment with an overabundance of information what is required are fast, cheap, minimally-biased, no-regrets discarding mechanisms. Reputation and trust mechanisms afford much of this, which means that yes, the vast majority of people do trust others, either experts or collectively, at making useful partitions of the total information stream.
This is alway why known amplifiers or creators of bullshit <coff>joe<coff>rogan<coff> deserve to be dropped without any regrets.
(There are of course numerous others. That happens to be a channel specifically recommended in TFA, a fact which seriously degrades TFA's own credibility --- trust is not perfectly commutative, but it has transitive aspects.)
Incidentally, an advantage of choosing specific sources or channels is that those themselves can be examined and rated on their own performance. What's most critical is that sources afford cheap, fast, minimally-biased, and no-regrets performance. If a channel is tedious, if it is biased (and here, "bias" is based not on ideology but ground truth to the extent that that can be determined), if it produces regrets (choices are continuously second-guessed), then it is a poor option. Decisions aren't based on an ideal, but against alternatives.
Sources should own up to their own failings. I had a discussion a couple of months back on what such practices should, and do, look like (with someone apparently incapable of grasping the concepts, but that's another occupational hazard):
I first used a tool to change the fb feed when they stopped allowing me to sort by chronological order, now my account is deleted and I don't use it at all. They assume you are their cash cow, their captured audience. Prove them wrong. If you doomscroll you're probably bored by it but stuck as their prisoner.
I see tiktok as more of flipping through the channel on TV but finding something good randomly, usually but I don't spend much time on it.
It’s so appalling to me. Anything called a “timeline” that is not and cannot be ordered chronologically is going to lose me immediately, as Facebook did when they made that change.
Yeah it was useless, I sorted by chronological order but I didn't stay using facebook long and used it for hours for a few days every few months to do something, but I deleted it. They needed me, I never needed them, they need you, you don't need them.
Why did I never know about Twitter Lists before? Twitter has been unuseable for me because it just feeds me fucked-up shit from people I don't know even though I disabled all the notification options, just like for the author.
This is an inevitable side effect of people's tendencies to over-subscribe to information sources. Once it's normal to try and follow 200+ people on Twitter, you're in need of an algorithm to prioritise content, and from there it's an easy side-step to inserting other content you haven't asked for.
Unfortunately even when you don't follow 200 people on Twitter, you're still subject to the same design principles.
Manual subscription management is a problem. The current choices are: you either have to manually control everything or surrender control to an opaque algorithm.
I am building https://linklonk.com to explore a middle ground - you upvote/downvote content as a way to tell a transparent algorithm who you want to get more/less content from.
When you upvote a post/link, LinkLonk connects you stronger to other users that upvoted it and prioritizes other content they upvoted for you.
When you downvote something - your connections to those who upvoted that become weaker, and their other upvotes don't have much weight for you.
This makes it much more scalable - the algorithm keeps track of your connections to everyone else. You could be connected to hundreds of users and RSS feeds on LinkLonk, without having to explicitly subscribe to them. But you still have control - you express it every time when you decide whether to upvote or downvote the content you just read (or do nothing).
You end up connected the strongest to sources that have the highest signal-to-noise ratio for you. You see content from those who have proven to be good curators of content, which I think is a good feedback loop.
You can do lists or read twitter as an RSS. I simply don't use twitter much since its mostly garbage. I won't be subject to fix social media, if it is a burden to use its not going to be used. Don't miss the headache of organizing quailty for my feeds when its more work to make it enjoyable for a few minutes.
Color screens are useful, infinite scrolling is not. Not only makes it indexing much more difficult or sometimes even impossible due to lacking standards, it also disallows users exchanging links to something specific.
Crawlers would have to execute JS and do additional requests, which is not feasible at all.
Content shouldn't be optimized for the most brittle consuming users and infinite scroll should be an anti-pattern of the most severe degree. I don't know which boneheaded webdevs recommend it to customers, since it is a most effective mechanism to kill discoverability.
Since the article specifically laments the loss of chronologically ordered tweets, it’s worth mentioning here that NewsBlur can not only aggregate RSS feeds but also act as a twitter client and provide said missing functionality.
>"So I got to watch hours and hours of incredibly boring TV shows because there was nothing good on"
I grew up in USSR where TV was for the most part quite pathetic but I did not really dwell on it. There were always books that I was reading in insane amounts and all those long talks with the friends along with some vodka ;)
I am in Canada now. Still do not have TV, still read a lot of books but also do heavy "pulling" from online sources. No so called "social media" though unless HN counts as one.
Just switching from "Home" to "Latest" on Twitter is enough to make it tolerable for me (ok, it also helps to carefully prune the accounts you follow).
For Twitter, you can use the http://realtwitter.com/ redirect to get to a search that just shows what you subscribed to. Then click “Latest” to sort chronologically.
Clay Shirky talked about time spent online versus time spent watching Giligan's Island tv. i still think of it a lot. but this article did a great job calling attention to how crypto-broadcast modern online experiences often are. thanks.
After reading this blog post, I realized, that after doing exactly the same things for last couple of decades it was not decision of mine... but this guys decision.
Joe Rogan sits squarely at the intersection of "intelligent and curious people who don't vet their sources particularly well" and "batshit-insane folks looking for confirmation of their abhorrent views".
Intelligence just means spotting patterns faster. If you're intelligent but "detail oriented", that just means you'll end up coming up with a brilliant solution to the wrong problem.
In a Dungeons and Dragons character, knowing to vet one's sources would be an example of "Wisdom". And I think that's probably the right word for it in conventional speech as well.
I'm defining intelligence as "the thing we think people have when they have a high IQ" — similar to how depression is currently medically defined as "that which is measured by a forced swim test."
Obviously, measured intelligence is not "real intelligence" ("g", whatever that is) — but at the same time, people increasingly use the term "intelligent" to refer to someone who has high measured intelligence (IQ), whether or not they have high "real intelligence." So the definitions sort of collapse into one-another over time. "The measure becomes the target", but for language.
IQ testing is not how anyone measures intelligence and hasn't been for quite some time.
I suspect the problem lies here: Intelligence requires a multi-part definition, to use your analogy, much like swimming.
Swimming is defined as the action of moving oneself through water using your limbs.
An intelligence definition should include the ability to extrapolate, comprehend and innovate information accurately as far as we can understand the world. The more precisely one can do this and the more depth of knowledge one has the more intelligent one is.
A tricky thing to define.
> An intelligence definition should include the ability to extrapolate, comprehend and innovate information accurately as far as we can understand the world.
What? "Intelligence" is not a psychology jargon term; it's just a word, defined by the way lay-people put the term to use in conversation. Language is used to communicate; we define words (jargon excluded) as what the majority of people understand them to mean.
When jargon and regular words collide, the lay-definition wins, and the jargon definition gets lost. (See e.g. "begging the question", which has become a lay-term for "something that has an obvious corollary or unstated flaw" rather than its meaning as a jargon term in logic.)
That's why academics invent terms like "g" — to make sure that the jargon term has no lay-term it's colliding with.
Lay-people have incomplete information, therefore even if they "win" with common usage their opinion can be casually disregarded.
If you are suggesting that I give in to the ignorance of the average human simply because they have numbers you and me have a serious irreconcilable problem.
I am suggesting that the purpose/point/craft/art of communication has the goal of packing the model in your head into a portable "universal standard" form, so that it can be unpacked as losslessly as possible, in minds with models as different from your own as possible.
The concept of a lingua franca is that there is an optimal encoding for information conveyance, if you're recording that knowledge without knowing the target audience in advance; and that that encoding is the one that uses the language, the dialect, the terms, the idioms, the mode of speech, etc. that — at least measured by current world trends — will confound the understanding of the fewest such potential audiences.
Or, to put that another way: if the people you want to communicate already think like you... do you really need to say anything at all? They can probably independently come up with the same thought you want to convey. Communication exists to bridge gaps in understanding, to create mappings between non-isomorphic mental models where those mappings aren't already implicitly embedded in the models' shared structure. Communication is work done upon other people's mental model to converge them closer to you own.
That work does not consist just waving at others from over where your own mental model sits, and demanding that they bridge the understanding gap with you from their end, so that your words will make sense to them. Why would they bother? If you want to communicate something, you're the one struck with a motivation to optimize toward a world where other people know the thing you know; the other people who you'd be sharing that information with, have no such motive.
This is why tools like the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lie-to-children exist: the work of moving someone's mental model closer to your own, of bridging that gap, cannot be accomplished in a single leap; you must often take a circuitous path around (what you consider) the truth, to create a sturdy bridge that will reliably bring people's mental models in line with your own.
Refusal to do this painful-but-O(1) work—presumably under the expectation that the N parties that consume your communication will instead do their own painful mental labor to understand you, for an O(N) aggregate workload—is a disengagement from the entire concept of communication.
no. it depends on your motives. if it's just building an audience to make money or fame, vetting sources doesn't matter, and may even be counterproductive. sad truths about our current culture.
How could that possibly work for a podcast? Interview each guest and basically script out the conversation? Or maybe do the interview then heavily edited it?
And who decides what’s appropriately “vetted”? I assume the Covid “lab leak” theory would have been verboten last year but apparently ok now?
I haven’t listened to Rogan in a long time but he basically invites people on and asks questions. He doesn’t give the “Rogan Stamp of Approval” to everything said.
The criticisms seem to be a basic form of “stop talking about things I don’t like”.
Those are all good questions that I don't have the answer to.
I know I didn't make the original claim, I just took issue with the initial reply as I felt like it was removing nuance from the discussion. My reply didn't really add much and I probably shouldn't have made it, so I'll try to add something to the discussion below:
For me, I think, it comes down to whether or not something is presented as an opinion or as fact/truth. There's far too many opinion pieces presented as news these days and a lot of people have trouble processing that.
A headline or claim like "China manufactured this virus as a bio weapon to attack the united states!" at the beginning of a pandemic when no one has any information yet is bad.
Discussing whether or not it could have been a lab leak and whether or not it was manufactured is a different thing, and whether it was or was not an attack are acceptable topics, though, I think.
How you actually enforce this I have no idea and I know it's easy to go down the rabbit hole of "who watches the watchers."
What bullshit and lies are you referring to? If you don’t like his podcast don’t listen to it, others love it. If you only want approved mainstream views it’s strange to impose them on a podcast for someone who believes in aliens, you can watch mainstream news for that.
Part of Rogan's schtick is conspiracy theories. There's a lot of "just asking questions" style conversations where he tries to build up this idea that the "officially approved" narrative has a lot of holes, which he often uses to insert an alternate opinion that isn't subject to the same scrutiny.
His anti-vaccine content is a perfect example: He invites actual experts on his show, but then interrupts them and brings up an anecdote about a "guy I know" who had some vague symptoms after getting the vaccine.
The listener is then supposed to believe that the pro-vaccine expert is uninformed and simply parroting the official narrative, whereas Joe Rogan is the smart one who sees the big picture and can "tell it like it is". In this case, Joe Rogan sees that Vitamin D and a healthy diet is all the protection you need from COVID and that the vaccine should be avoided.
But it's often nonsense. Rogan's vaccine opinions are not just unvetted, they're built from the ground up on a foundation of flimsy anecdotes and conspiracy theories with a complete disregard for the science.
He plays the "both sides" card to build up the anecdotes and conspiracy theories while tearing down the well-researched science in order to create an illusion of presenting both sides fairly. But to get there, he has to go out of his way to downplay the most robust information while exaggerating the least trustworthy.
It's not about having different opinions. It's about misrepresenting the robustness of each.
People don’t think statistically. He’s asking questions about covid and how anecdotes relate like normal people. You state he’s a conspiracy theorist but the result of him being cured of covid in a few days isn’t evidence enough for you that bis bro science isn’t wrong? You can argue theory all day but he lives the way he preaches, the reality of his actions isn’t enough?
Too bad everyone else living the way they did who died of Covid didn’t live Joe Rogan’s reality and ended up a statistic instead.
I don’t even know what you’re trying to get at here. He can’t be judged because he seems to be consistent in his actions? That doesn’t make them inherently valid.
His recovery method give him credibility, unless you think most unvaccinated people recover in 3 days and nothing he did helped his recovery. Mainstream news say nothing he used including ivermectin works while anyone with a brain will look at the results of his recovery and say the mainstream news has no relevance, its like seeing 1+5=6 then some overpaid group of talking heads in makeup and dressed to present random factoids they don't care about or have any interest in are paid to say its not right, and they state the math is wrong. They are deluded if they think they have any credibility left vs real results. Why are the people denying it valid by that standard?
I'd like to believe that "anyone with a brain" won't take one anecdote as gospel and base everything on it and throw out all the other data.
Even if Ivermectin is some Covid miracle treatment (It isn't), Joe Rogan's experience isn't typical or expected and it doesn't mean that pumping Vitamin D and Ivermectin will yield similar results for you or anyone else. Additionally, the Ivermectin narrative (I'll leave the question of if it has any benefit open for the sake of argument) is one that positions it as an alternative for vaccinations which is inherently dangerous.
Also we have actual treatments (Remdesivir, Monoclonal antibodies) that have documented clinical results for active infections, we don't need to gamble on bullshit.
To add one other thing, because I think we can get on the same page about this probably: Just because someone says something and they're in authority/credentialled doesn't mean you should believe them unconditionally. It is important to have a healthy skepticism of information, regardless of its source. But the outright rejection of any "authoritative" information and latching on to whatever counter-narrative (read: misinformation) that happens to be popular is just as naive and stupid, but it seems like that's where we're at these days.
He used monoclonal antibodies too. I am not stating Ivermectin is all that helped (I am not sure its that useful personally, I think its probably his healthy lifestyle, steroids, the non missing nutrients and minerals that helped him as well as monoclonal antibodies he used), his "conspiracy theory" treatment had a 3 day recovery, yet hes dismissed because some talking heads online were paid to hes wrong about everything despite his quick recovery.
I think I would disagree about the last part. I think whatever the CDC announces I think the opposite since they have been wrong about everything. I am glad I ignored Faucci about masks at the beginning, or how it wasn't contagious or whatever else they told the public. Public trust is at an all time low, and they will need to earn my trust again, and so far there isn't any reason to believe these so called experts who are more intent on silencing disagreement than giving useful content. I have to read papers on my own since the talking heads and publicists often make misleading/false statements based on snipped quotes so I won't listen to any statements they make and just read papers on my own, authority exists, but its not some political talking head, its the scientists who publish their findings and have their papers turned into propaganda by people who unfortunately use them for political reasons.
Considering the quality of the information and presentation in the corporate press is so terrible, in comparison Rogan does a stellar job.
I disagree with your characterization, too. He has on people from all angles, including e.g, Dr. Sanjay Gupta from CNN, and he gives them a fair shake.
And yes, considering how "rare" vaccine adverse reactions are supposed to be, knowing multiple people who've experienced significant adverse reactions is quite unusual. Worth talking about even.
He has people from all angles, but most of them are right wingers. He brings on a Liberal every now and then and if they don’t hate the Democratic Party he hardly lets them talk and uses the typical right wing gish gallop tactic to pretend he’s owned them at the end of the podcast.
Rogan does a stellar job, lmao @ that. He does a stellar job pushing the current GOPs agenda. Because he’s able to have people like you arguing that isn’t what he’s doing.
Bullshit I listened to Joe religiously until 2018, like every day he put out a podcast. I realized around that time that he was beating a strawman about “crazy” democrats while promoting a trove of right wingers and disinformation. He couldn’t go an episode without bringing up how some tumbler person thinks there’s (n+1) genders and when he did bring on a “democrat” it was someone like Abby Martin or Tulsi Gabbard who hates the Democratic Party. With this, combined with the cringe ass “intellectual dark web” bs, it became increasingly obvious that Joe Rogan wasn’t some moderate but instead that he was pretending to be one while pushing a right wing narrative to his viewers under the guise of “just asking questions” and “how do I know I disagree until I talked to them?”
Your accusation is typical of Rogan fans who want to shutdown any criticism of his very obvious grifter status.
Yet you state he's got a "GOP agenda"? I don't believe you at all. Hes already contracted by Spotify, what you're spewing is more generic anti-Joe smearing that shows me that you never listened to him.
Yeah okay. Your Dave Chappelle comment proves you are arguing in bad faith.
You know I’m right and that he’s a right wing grifter posing as a moderate, that’s why you’re strawmanning about me not “actually have ever listened to him.” I saw through him just as I easily see through you, I’m just upset it took me four years of listening to him everyday before it became obvious.
You only talk about politics, its so boring that you don't have any real talking points aside from regurgitating some complaints someone else had that you don't think up for by youself, and trying poorly to pretend you ever listened to the show. You used a talking point someone else made and haven't listened to him ever, why is that worth lying about when you can't name any episodes and just named politicians someone else listed to justify the conclusion you are pushing?
I’ve named half a dozen episodes. Abi Martin, Tulsi Gabbard and Eric Weinstein are fake democrats he brought on to talk about how crazy the Democratic Party is. Jordan Peterson he brought on 4 times in 2017 alone to argue about the trans issue and “cultural Marxism” (he brought Ben Shapiro on to do the same.) I’m not doing this with you, you are arguing in bad faith because you know Joe has a right wing agenda. I don’t have to lie or copy what anyone else said because I listened to it first hand and for a time I (regretfully) actually fell for his “the democrats have gone crazy” routine. Joe Rogan painting Hilary Clinton as evil (he constantly brings up her paraphrasing Caesar at the death of Gadaffi) convinced me to vote for Johnson in the 2016 election. Like I said, I don’t know if he’s paid by a GOP/conservative organization but it’s awfully convenient for them that the largest podcast just happens to push an exact replica of their narrative.
People didn't like Hillary, its not a conspiracy. It cant be that pople don't like the mainstream Democrat politicians and he didn't see them as fitting guests, it must be a GOP conspiracy. He can't not agree with any non mainstream Democrat point without being part of a conspiracy of a GOP organization, but you ignore his love of UBI? What else did JP say during that podcast? You watched the whole thing and not just some clips someone used for an agenda didn't you?
Its interesting how little info you have aside from some political talking points and never have any in depth information about a podcast except for things that are found in talking points that are used in propaganda. You continue to demonstrate signs that you didn't listen it at all and only bring up talking points that are used in your statement like they were fed to you and you're just regurgitating them. Who are you trying to fool and for what reason?
It’s not just vaccines or conspiracy theories, the dude has been walking the conservative line and spreading their rhetoric since at least 2015. He brings on “democrats” who hate the Democratic Party (e.g. Tulsi Gabbard, the Weinstein brothers) and pretends supporting UBI means he isn’t a conservative. All the while constantly bringing on right wing guests (the ratio of right wingers to people like Bernie Sanders I at least 4:1.)
He has constantly pushed the idea that transgenderism is taking over and brought people like Jordan Peterson to argue against it. everything from making fun of the number of genders (something I only ever hear conservatives talk about) to the big bathroom discussion that was had in 2015.
I don’t know if he’s paid by some right wing organization to push this narrative, I don’t necessarily think so, but I don’t like how he is painted as some centrist or moderate when he very clearly has an agenda and it lies to the right of center.
I consider him to be centrist, but it's very subjective as there is no good definition of left/right that people generally agree on. To me, he's not a partisan, so he's a centrist- not that I particularly care one way or the other.
> He has constantly pushed the idea that transgenderism is taking over
You have no idea, haha. I used to laugh when "right wingers" complained about LGQBT stuff being shoved down their throat. And it was funny, until things made a big change a few years back, and then we had a child attending a "liberal" school district.
Joe Rogan's views are very... normal, almost surely closer to those of the typical person than yours or mine. I'm not gonna go around telling people what they can and can't abhor, but I do think it's important to acknowledge that you're in a strong cultural bubble if you're shocked by the things he says.
I'm not personally shocked by things he says, I just think he's not particularly smart and I think he tends to have the same thought processes happening over and over again, which weren't particularly more than sophomoric insightful to begin with.
At best I think he might be useful to discover interviewees that actually have interesting things to say and go from there.
What I am shocked by (and I suspect this is the shock people mostly have) is how some people are like, Joe Rogan fans. Like the article author here. To the point he's the one guy he mentions in the article. He just not that interesting!
Joe Rogan has built a massive business by being interesting and talking to people from all backgrounds, while having a very fascinating history himself. He may not be a nobel laureate but it's quite silly to think he's so dumb, or that others wouldn't find his conversations, topics and personality to be entertaining.
All the fans I've met are Joe Rogan fans in the same way as other people are BTS fans or Ariana Grande fans. They don't really worry about precisely how smart or insightful he is - they just see him as a cool guy producing content that's fun to listen to.
> What I am shocked by (and I suspect this is the shock people mostly have) is how some people are like, Joe Rogan fans.
Why does this shock you? It’s pretty clear from what you wrote that you’re much smarter than the rest of us. It shouldn’t be shocking that us dumb ppl are fans of a dumb person?
My definition of regular and pretty nice guy is not someone who spouts off against men who take parental leave to help their newborn and spouse during her recovery.
I immediately discount 50 year olds who criticize fathers for being there for the birth of their child and helping the mom during their recovery. There is no excuse I would buy for a man with his exposure not knowing how difficult it is for a new mother to be on her own in the first few months.
A quick search says he has 3 daughters of his own, so either he’s an idiot or he’s creating controversy for the sake of controversy or to pander to other idiots.
The guy has thousands and thousands of hours of him talking online. If you think we couldn't distill from the same volume of your own views that you're "not a regular and pretty nice guy" by linking some bad shit you've said - you're wrong.
I am pretty sure I have not taken that tone with anyone as an adult, and this is not even a candid moment. This is his business, one where the very thing he is selling is his communication with others. And he is not a newbie, this is a relatively recent recording after decades in the show business.
Well, again, nobody can tell you who you personally have to like, but it's important to realize that your standards are not common. Most people don't mind if their friends or family or favorite podcast hosts are a jerk on rare occassion.
(It's also important to note that the last clip is entirely out of context, with no information at all on when it happened or where it came from. I'm not saying I know it's false, but this should be triggering your "unreliable source" alarm. If the clip were from 20 years ago, or misleadingly edited, or just entirely fabricated... would we know?)
Also, watching his interviews doesn't mean you're a fan of Joe Rogan. Most of the time, I am interested in what the guest has to say and Joe rightfully shuts the fuck up and lets the interviewee talk - exactly what a host should do.
Huh? Does Rogan run a shop selling trinkets and snake oil?
He's a comedian chatting with people and sharing the discussion that you can choose to watch or not. The controversy around him is largely manufactured by a dying corporate media and ruling class threatened by unsanctioned voices. Speaking of being trolled by billionaires...
He makes and sells Alpha Brain and other “supplements” through the company he co-founded Onnit. He’s very much in the snake oil business. https://www.onnit.com/pro-team/
Yeah but that has to be a side gig, not perfect but it's pretty common for humans to not be perfect. You have to believe he loves stand up comedy, loves the UFC, is blown away by the success of the podcast, and generally loves life. That doesn't leave time to get the Onnit topic quite right.
Was that the only "treatment" he did at the time? No. He also took Monoclonal Antibodies and prednisone. Why didn't you bring that up?
> In addition to mentioning ivermectin, the podcaster, who has previously stated that the young and healthy should not "worry" about being vaccinated against COVID, said he had also taken monoclonal antibodies and prednisone to treat the disease.
> Thus far, three anti-SARS-CoV-2 monoclonal antibody products have been granted Emergency Use Authorizations (EUAs) by the FDA for the treatment of mild to moderate COVID in high-risk sufferers, though this is different from full FDA approval.
Based on my interactions with Rogan fans, this just confirmed biases that ivermectin works and is on par with, or better, than actual treatments like monoclonal antibodies.
Sure, let’s talk about Rogan’s overall approach toward COVID-19. I personally know people who haven’t gotten vaccinated because of Rogan’s influence. He may have caused more harm than Gwyneth Paltrow - you’d need to gather a bunch of data to measure the effects to know for sure.
What’s the harm in that? Efficiency decays rapidly (to about half in 5 months) and a false sense of security isn’t beneficial for anyone. Would you rather have vaccinated people who think they're invincible while infecting others because they think having the vaccine gives you the ability not to get infected at parties and bars?
Effectiveness against infections declined from 88% (95% CI 86–89) during the first month after full vaccination to 47% (43–51) after 5 months. Among sequenced infections, vaccine effectiveness against infections of the delta variant was high during the first month after full vaccination (93% [95% CI 85–97]) but declined to 53% [39–65] after 4 months.
This is such a polarised view - there is clinical evidence that suggests it may reduce the symptoms of COVID. Its not a full on miracle cure. The problem is that what should be a medical discussion is now political - and people have drawn battle lines around it.
This supports your argument that this is polarizing but worth noting that other medical groups have highlighted a ln undisclosed conflict of interest in your linked study and selective data use in the meta analysis.
Ivermectin is being used in many countries and is supported by a large community of physicians and medical professionals. It may or may not be useful for covid - I'm not a medical worker so I will not opine on it's usefulness, but any person is capable of browsing the medical fields support for its efficacy as an antiviral.
Ivermectin is a miracle drug against parasites due to its effects on the nerve and muscle cells of invertebrates. The evidence for its use as an antiviral in vivo is weak.
Does this mean it works? No. But it does mean that your characterization of it as "snake oil" is completely incorrect. The real question is what kind of manipulation has taken place that could lead people to such a conclusion and who was behind this manipulation?
I've seen about 30 joe rogan podcasts over the years as background noise during some dark souls runs - not once does the guy present himself as an expert.
if anything he just brings on people who are experts and asks them a bunch of questions.
why the hard-on from twitterinas that want to shit on the show because he interviews people accused of "wrongthink"?
I think there's a view that his content has changed recently. I used to watch him a lot in previous years as it really was the best place to just hear conversations with interesting people. Now there's a view that he's taken on a particular political lean and has surrounded himself with conspiracy theorists. I doubt he's actually promoting them but his show does put them in front of a large and impressionable audience (in my personal opinion, he is extremely impressionable himself and parrots the views of his guest for the sake of the conversation regardless of his actual belief).
There are also some theories that his sudden giant increase in wealth may have contributed to his shift from the mainstream to the fringe
I enjoy that he asks the stupid questions (or the questions that I would feel too self-conscious to ask) of those experts. It is such an excellent contrast to a stale interview with prepared topics and nothing natural to it.
It's easy to shit on the show for being a bro-science quackery discussion, not worthy of smart people listening to it or being guests on it. And as we all notice just how popular the show is, anything bad about it (it has plenty of that) becomes a good reason to want it _shut_ _down_
> if anything he just brings on people who are experts and asks them a bunch of questions.
But that's a pretty sure fire way to gain credibility by association, even if you try your hardest to undermine it by bringing on holocaust deniers and obvious peddlers of bunk conspiracy theories.
It isn't - or wasn't when I still listened every now and then back in the time when it was available to all [1]. He did interview scientists who often talked about their fields, leading Rogan to first assure the guest(s) that he - Rogan - is just an idiot upon which he would ask questions which often revolved around some of his favourite subjects: nutrition, DMT, physical training, DMT, aliens and did I mention DMT?
What made his interviews interesting is that he, apart from the mentioned standard hitching points, was inquisitive and unafraid to ask 'stupid' questions. Those often gave the guest room to delve into his or her subject of expertise, enlightening the listener and Rogan at the same time. Only a few of the guests were scientists, most were comedians, MMA fighters, ex-servicemen and such. Things might have changed since then but I can not imagine him ever labelling anything he does as 'science'.
It isn't a science podcast per se, but he actually has a lot of scientists/science educations on. Neil deGrasse Tyson has been on four times, Sean Carroll three times, Brian Cox twice, Brian Greene once, Roger Penrose once, etc. (those are just the science people I remember off the top of my head, there have been lots) He's had Richard Dawkins, Elon Musk, John Carmack, Sam Harris on if you're into them. But it's very hit or miss. He has about as many quacks on as legitimate scientists/educators.
He does like 3-5 episodes a week, and they're each 2-4 hours. So there's a shitload of content, much more than I could ever sit through. When I was commuting ~3 total hours each day, podcasts were my medium of choice, I would generally listen to maybe one of his podcasts per week and skipped the other 2-4 after listening long enough to know that I didn't give a shit about the guest, whether it's because they were a quack, some random boring comedian, or some meathead MMA person.
He is (rightly) criticized for having lots of shitty guests on, and that criticism is fair. But the fact that the podcast is often bad doesn't mean that it's always bad. When the podcast is at its best, it is very, very good.
On the website the episodes are broken down by category, so if you want science content you just click "scientists". Unfortunately Joe is too dumb to tell the difference between the real scientists and the fake ones, so most of the quacks are lumped in there too.
Well it is a fitting conclusion if you think about it. Joe Rogan is like a one-man RSS feed of people's thought streams, while being one of the few like it with an audience large enough to challenge an established mainstream narrative and not get "cancelled".
In fact, the Spotify recommendation for podcasts seems weirdly out of place in this post.
So much so that I find myself wondering if the entire post is actually a Spotify/Joe Rogan promotion (or maybe gaslighting).
Want a strong, open, diverse podcast community free from bullshit, unskippable, targeted advertisements for razors and stamps.com? Stay far, far away from Spotify.
It does feel ironic that he talked about avoiding "push" media sources from billionaires, only to turn around and recommend a "push" podcaster with a 9-figure podcasting contract and a track record of pushing misinformation.
What’s the difference between a billion dollar corporation and a million dollar corporation in terms of the content that’s curated and presented to you? Is it that it feels like Joe doesn’t curate his guests? Because I assure you, with the sheer amount of requests he gets, he definitely picks and chooses the guests he has on, even if they’re from across the spectrum of opinion.
The idea of “stop letting people control what you consume but oh here’s a person who controls what you consume, don’t worry it’s fine if it’s Joe” makes no sense. Either it’s fine to receive a filtered worldview from people who provide a platform for opinions, or it’s not. And that’s what’s wrong with including Joe Rogan in this article.
I will give Joe some credit though, what he is not, is an engagement echo chamber, but that was not the argument pitched in this article.
We all pick our own poisons. Unless you've got the time and fortitude to construct your entire worldview from first principles, including a completely independent reconstruction of all of science and history, at some point you have to choose some sources to (mostly) trust using your best judgement. Hopefully you do a good job, but none of us can escape bias and curated selection in our incoming information streams.
This thread is a hilarious example of why most people will always be controlled by someone else. There is exactly 5 words talking about Joe Rogan and half the replies are telling how you shouldn't watch him because he spteads misinformation. Meanwhile there has still been no reckoning for the lies the main stream media invented and repeated to invade Iraq and kill a million people.
And there won't be, Bush was contested as a legitimate president but used 9/11 so doubters woud unify under him and reelect him. All the misinformation spread by mainstream media and poor quality social media but they aren't relevant in conversation, only being upset at a spotify podcaster who presents audio that can easily be skipped or whose audio show can be ignored if they really dislike him.
It doesn't. That's the point. He thinks he's fantastic. You don't. That's fine. You both have your separate feeds. Nobody rams Joe Rogan down your throat, and nobody forcibly takes him away from the OP.
It seems there's a noun missing. The article made it sound like the television itself was supplied by the state. I guess this made sense to everyone but me.
But I never thought of traditional news media media as being a push model. It makes so much intuitive sense when you say it: the reason I read newspapers is, at least in part, I want and trust them to tell me what's happening that's important. That's different than my programming blog subscriptions: I follow them because I've decided what they write is important to me.
It's a subtle difference but very impact-full, and seems correct.
[0] not sure of they actually have rss feeds but my rss reader supports them