Yes, and most of the policy and laws comes from the political branches of governments. While you and I may disagree on which groups are more full of crap, we do at least seem to agree that there are plenty of people who aren't truthful with full disclosure, and questioning things is a somewhat worthy endeavor. I tend to question both sides, but do find one side complains more loudly about the other...

Or maybe if people consistently get things wrong there's an agenda... --> people who have a bridge to sell...
Or maybe the evidence is incomplete (COVID -- the vaccine will keep you from getting it...)
Or maybe the research is immature (COVID -- the vaccine will keep you from getting it...)
Or maybe (like marketing) they ran the numbers til they got the results they wanted (9 out of 10 dentists) -- [see how to lie with statistics]
Or maybe it's groupthink (e.g. academia not representing the populace) [https://www.efinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/EFI-PoliticalDonations_JGreene.pdf]
Or maybe it's something else...

Fool me once, shame on you
Fool me twice...

There is a reason these proverbs and wisdom exist.
Being a skeptic or untrusting of political malarky is probably a wise way to go these days regardless of which party/agenda/ideology is being pushed.

Yeah, isn't it great how one country can so significantly affect the "World Health Organization" with its 168 member countries.

I agree with your first point about hygiene-- and TLDR: That's WORK and doesn't work so well in some cases... That's why people "need" 5GB of mail.

THE 1 %:
I think we agree on the 1% of emails/photos you need. There are emails I've lost to time (pre-Gmail) that I would love to have back.
( Every now and again I do go back to look some friend up or something that I haven't emailed in years -- people do have lifetime events that make it so you want to get together once every 10 years (think reunions, or special trips where you're going to visit that person who moved to a foreign country).

THE PROBLEM:
The problem, to keep that 1% of valuable emails means having to sort through all the garbage that you kept when you had loads of space and were younger and didn't have the hygiene and discipline. It's manageable (if you keep at it every day).

Having spent several hours (4+) going back and cleaning out a few years of mail-- I can say that once you're behind the power curve, you're not really going to catch up. (It's the same thing with photos and undoubtedly why your family has tons of it).

So while you may be disciplined -- and I salute you for it-- most people don't have that discipline or desire to use their time that way. And thus "free" storage seemed like a win/win -- keeping those important emails without the cost of good hygiene. My wife (who intentionally doesn't upgrade her phone often and often is running out of memory) does have good photo hygiene keeping only the best pictures, or off loading the larger files she wants to keep on to other storage...

I know there are apps out there that could probably help with this (for photos anyway -- although I don't know how well they work). Definitely could use something like this for Gmail... :)

Hmm World War II comes to mind (without much effort).
We didn't take over Germany or Japan -- we helped rebuild them & feed them somewhat too after the war.
But guess that doesn't fit your narrative of America as constant oppressor. So do you support WWII Germany and Japan and we should have not fought them?
I mean yeah, we decided to bomb Japan first -- oh, no it was the other way around.

And Korea? Vietnam? -- don't think the goal there was ever to take the land, but to try to spread democracy.
I'm not well enough versed in history or the Korean war to know if South Korea appreciated our involvement in the war. But I sure do know that I happen to like what South Korea does and lives (with whom we are aligned) a heck of a lot more than the North Korean dictatorship that constantly starves and kills its own people.

But sure, America bad... And by that logic, you bad too dude for such an unfair and exaggerated point of view that ignores the good that was and is done by the United States and paints defending itself (from Japan) and helping defeat Nazi germany as oppression, genocide, land & resource theft, etc.

I see your response was to call a reasoned argument childish. And also you help make my point (without realizing it-- oh the irony!)

There were plenty of mistakes and misstatements about COVID. I admit it was an unusual time and situation. And yes there are bound to be mistakes.
But that doesn't excuse or counter my point... It actually strengthens it.

Was the administration doing their best-- I believe they likely were. They (and more relevantly towards this thread), the MEDIA just weren't very nice with people who disagreed with them or had a different set of results from the science that was being done, or had different analysis. Going towards your original point -- truth and its discovery (or lack of bias) often tends to be messy.

Strange how this thing called truth often tends to be inconvenient towards political ideologies and cover stories and things that aren't always true. Sometimes information is successfully suppressed... And there are idiots on both sides. And yes your cousin may have been one of them.

As you said, navigating COVID was hard. It is however incredibly unwise to go down an unchartered road and then declare (as the government and media tended to do together) that yes we have and are the science, and anyone else with different ideas is wrong.

If it's hard and unchartered, you should be very careful about sharing what you know *as scientific certainty* -- which was the mistake made by the government, and the media (the theoretical 4th wall to check the government) went right along with it. So much of what the government said (and was amply repeated by the media) turned out to be wrong over and over again. Thus the media failed at its job -- you said '"reporting the truth (AKA doing their job) and controversy, "

When something has a high degree of uncertainty-- if you're honest in your science and math you dont' supress it, you admit the possibility of uncertainty (see all those polticial polls), and you also admit that there are other possible explanations of the facts (and why you believe yours to be correct, but admit that it's not conclusively proven). The Media didn't really fact check or allow other positions ** importantly that turned out that many of the alternate view points ** were correct.
And yes you can say I'm agreeing with the idiots (as opposed to the scientists and doctors who voiced concerns).

See: https://journalofindependentme...
Or (before Trump won the election): https://reason.com/2023/04/12/...

You make my case for me -- by showing that media & government should have been more cautious. Adults in the room listen to both sides and try to make as informed a decision as one can. And those of us who listen to both sides and do our best not to live in the echo-chamber (which is the unfortunate side of having a biased media is to get positions and counter positions you have to listen & read & importantly THINK about both sets of arguments) can then make a reasoned decision.

I suppose since you call my reasoned arguments childish because they don't agree with your worldview, I'm not talking to someone who actually knows how to reason and instead relies on name calling to try to win arguments. Best of luck to you with that.

Agree on the biases about courting controversy -- and what they are *supposed* to do.
However, I don't believe you're correct about media being unbiased... (i mean both mainstream and non mainstream media -- in my opinion, all media is biased these days).

Because in your world, the Hunter Biden story wasn't buried (pre-election) by the so called "mainstream" media and the media all investigated & reported frequently on President Biden's mental ability or challenges thereof (after the election before his debate with Trump), and there was no mis-reporting of COVID at all (or burying/mocking of people who didn't go along with the official position)...

I think you get the idea of there being a series of "too big to miss" biases and failures on the media's part in reporting showing that they have more than the 2 biases you mention.

To show the error in your statement another way -- when my brother years ago had to go to traffic school for a ticket, I was told that the police/instructors said that an average citizen makes sometype of mistake for which they can be pulled over ever 2 city blocks. Now, there's an opportunity to pull an average citizen over every couple of blocks -- but if the police officer pulls over those of a certain group he doesn't like 2x more than the group he does -- that doesn't mean there isn't bias even if he gives the group he likes a hard time and a ticket every now and again.

There's at least some recognition of the media's fall from grace: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/t...
(current story, although I know I've seen it reported elsewhere).

People don't trust the media-- and it could be said to be because there have been too many times (left & right) that um "excuse me, your bias is showing".

Love your sig line -- somehow appropriate for this topic & thread.
The comment was good too. :)

Just to make an observation that I think has largely been ignored about school biases (not that I've read all the comments on this page).
(And i'm responding to your points, but others also made on this page...)

This isn't just about students. It's also about the teachers (who are doing the teaching with some power/influence even if almost always used in the cause of raising people up) too.

https://www.efinstitute.org/wp...
(as one source -- demonstrates with some data that the teachers tend to be signifcantly on the democratic side, even in red states...-- but it was a random search, I don't know the quality/bias of the efinstitute).

So I agree that those going into college likely are more liberal to begin with. There's an old adage that if you're not liberal when young you have no heart and if you're not conservative when older you have no brain...

Regardless, if (and I know this is an assumption that some don't agree with) we treasure education and diversity of points of view, then it's an easy leap to see how a single-sided political ideology representation can have influence. E.g. political ideology naturally enters into all sorts of higher level education topics: (social justice/inequality, politics, philosophy, law, etc.). We might think that it doesn't enter that much into math/science/etc. However, there are plenty of science clearly kills religion teachers out there... -- they may not be focused on it, "preaching" it or teaching it, but those viewpoints are bound to creep in as they make a passing comments.

Hopefully it doesn't really matter (and it shouldn't matter) if someone is teaching something that is their opinion & belief along with something that they are supposed to be teaching as the expert and authoritatively. Yet if an individual/student never meets the enlightened counterpoint -- which matters again only if you value diversity of thought & points of view-- then you miss out on other points of view. If you don't value diversity of thought & points of view -- e.g. if one side is right then you're probably not far from fascism or any other ideology that demands conformance to "correct thought".

As an example, for example I've heard people say that Evolution proves there is no need for God. I've also seen an interesting exploration of an idea that uses science & information theory to make a case for God (via Intelligent Design): https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Does this settle anything? No. But it does at least expose that there are multiple ways of viewing the world and how we got here (and maybe they're not all idiotic).

And then one other danger that can occur (assuming we want diversity of thought being taught at college).
There can be cases of people who can fire/blacklist/harrass/etc. those who they don't agree with...
I don't know if this one is true -- who knows again-- but it certainly seems like someone got let go because of commentary they made on a social issue:
        https://scnr.com/article/teach...
And maybe the truth is that it was for something non-political. Who knows?

But as a thought experiment it's very simple to see how once you get to a certain majority of views, you *can* move to a super majority (that isn't necessarily right or representative) done by admins/peers/etc. who don't share your ideas.

Where's the truth? I don't know. Every school is different. Every side (left & ride) has its nutjobs.
But for me it is a somewhat interesting point that *the educators* at least seem to be overwhlemingly liberal.
(Maybe because they're smart and smart people are liberal. That's one possible explanation.
Another -- maybe conservatives just naturally don't go into education that much. Another possible explanation
Another -- maybe there is some peer pressure / rejection of conservatives is another possible explanation.)
I don't really know.

What i do know is that when you're hiring for a position I think most people will hire the people they like and not the ones they don't.
And if they don't like the ideas on the other side (in some way they can tell) then it can also be very natural to end up only with those of one ideology plus the non-conflicting ideology-- with the other ideology not represented.

To conclude:
I think a very liberal idea is that we should practice civil discourse.
"Civil discourse is the practice of deliberating about matters of public concern with others in a way that seeks to expand knowledge and promote understanding."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Unfortunately rather than be civil, some (on both sides) would rather be correct and celebrate put-downs and insults and the obvious stupidity of the "other" side.
And perhaps without the good type of collegial example being more common (whether in University or elsewhere) the world is a lesser place for it.

I know you weren't trying to argue for free markets -- but I do like some of the points you make!

  I like that you point out that regulation is needed. I agree, in that there needs to be some sense of "rules" or "laws" that ensure how some (hopefully widely agreed upon) definition of fair and free markets should work. E.g. regulating it as necessary, rewarding/enabling "fair" trades/exchange/commerce and penalizing those that abuse that ideal version of the "fair"/"free" market.

Ignoring that-- and recognizing that we need regulation & wisdom as consumers, I think an interesting aspect of the above challenge we face is the matter of scale and how that has changed things.

I have often thought that legislation, policy, regulation, etc. and consumers view of the market has and will continue to have massive challenges given the frequency with which change (in technology especially) happens and the scale it enables. For example, right now there is a lot of questions about AI and how to regulate it... which is sort of nice to hear that there's at least some thought for how it should be regulated before complete disaster strikes. AI is just the latest though in a series of disruptions over the past several decades.

  I think it's also instructive to look at how the "free market" used to work before the internet, before globalization, etc. Going back a hundred years or two, imagine processing 1000s of information transactions a second in 1825 or 1925. Similarly, shipping expenses would have made buying things from "far away" (whether that meant a few states away, or countries across the sea) more expensive and therefore there were less businesses that would set up a factory in one (cheaper to manufacture place) to then mass deliver components to other factories (in other places) to then assemble and deliver the products to yet another far away place.

I think that many systems and ways of doing things existed for hundreds of years, and in localized & smaller markets. The world has changed a lot in the past 100 years-- and what's best (policy-wise, marketwise, regulation wise) barely gets time to soak (much less be cooked) on the global stage before the next new thing is disrupting things and changing the way the world works... There is also much less humanity in all these automated systems & corporations that operate & play at a global scale.

Notes:

1) before you would have had many more ma & pa shops, and less Walmarts, less Amazons, and other corporate giants & tyrants that squeeze every ounce of humanity away in the process of pursuing profit to the tune of data driven profit & performance, corporate profits, etc. Consumers often trade convenience and cheaper prices for the loss of that humanity... And then the consolidations begin (in the race to the bottom) and pretty soon there are only a few major players left and both consumers & employees who would work in those industries have less choice.

2) The changes in the industrial revolution (train,planes & automobiles) and information tech age -- are not minor changes to our society. Think of the following technologies (and I'm sure there are more) that didn't exist even 50 years ago: internet*, social medial, online purchasing, AI, cellphones --> smartphones, etc). I imagine similar changes in businesses (startups with their public IPOs, MBAs, the ability to leverage one market into another, to be a monopoly or quasi-monopoly and not get broken up,etc.). The industry moves so fast that setting good policy, regulatory framework, and laws around this (a back and forth process that if it happens well, takes time...).

3) I'm not arguing we should go back to the stone-ages, not use Amazon, etc. I enjoy my cell-phone & other modern perks often just as much as the next person. That said I feel like -- to borrow from Michael Chricton's and Jurassic Park wisdom -- “[People] are actually preoccupied with accomplishment. So they are focused on whether they can do something. They never stop to ask if they should do something.” Move fast and break things is great perhaps on the small, but not so much in the big. And we've been doing things bigly for better or worse for the past hundred years ... I'm always hoping we can figure out how to do things for the better for humanity (as well as from a tech side).

> For years, tech companies have argued that encrypted messaging is crucial to maintain people's digital privacy, while law enforcement and governments have said that the technology enables illicit behaviors by hiding illegal activity.

The question comes down to do you trust the government? How much harm (to minors, those being exploited, those harmed by the crimes enabled by true privacy, etc) is worth protecting it. Then again on the other side, how much do you trust government (which can give almost unlimited funding and influence) to not abuse, hide facts, be fair, or not be intrusive and heavy handed?

Seems like a long time ago there was a war fought about invasive government and why we shouldn't trust government...

Methinks there are other ways to catch criminals without snooping on their electronic protections. People get caught all the time despite encryption... Does letting people (both the good and bad) make it harder to catch criminals-- yes. That's the point -- that legitimate activities are also protected.

This seems to be something missing in our modern society-- a balanced approach to both sides of the same issue.

‘Without freedom of thought, there can be no such thing as wisdom – and no such thing as public liberty without freedom of speech.’ – Benjamin Franklin
‘They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.’ – Benjamin Franklin

Just my 2 cents from the conservative/libertarian and/or practical side of the house.

I'm a programmer who by trade needs to consider the unhappy path. Which people tend to forget...

There just seems something wrong about having those who are auditing you and telling you how much you owe, also writing the software that you need to submit for it. It's very standard to have outside/independent auditors for companies/business verify that everything is on the up & up. In the happy case where the government isn't a fox, or hasn't made a mistake then there's no problem. Once you get into the unhappy case where it is a fox guarding the henhouse (adverse relationship/targeting) or there's a mistake made and it's up to you to fix-- both of which may mean a very costly time on the phone (waiting/talking/arguing) or in court to fix... Well it's too late.

Having a third party witness is certainly helpful in that case.

And then reason 2.... I have a personal reason for not trusting the IRS though and why I'd worry about it... Years ago when we lived near each other, I had a friend who worked as a senior manager for the IRS program that helped process the returns-- and he shared some scary stories about how the tax code system in use was maintained by 5 *old* COBOL programmers. Later as time progress, yes those 5 started to retire... Yes, the IRS knew they needed to replace the system-- and they had tried several times with multi-million dollar contracts that had only managed to automate the processing of the 1040EZ program. When they went to be fired, the contracting company got their lobbyist friends involved and well they weren't fired. My own time in a different area of government also taught me about government waste and inefficiency.

I think the quote was a little off from Contact (1997 movie) where the genius of his day -- said "S.R. Hadden:
First rule in government spending: why build one when you can have two at twice the price?" In reality what the government does (IMO) usually costs 3-10x as much as when the commercial world does it.

So if you're ok with that type of mark up and the lobbyists and rewarding failure, and trust the IRS and government in all it does-- by all means continue to support the IRS doing both the preparing and the auditing.

That's a logical fallacy -- a false dichotomy.

Sure we can divide the world into science and anti-science or similarly say "our side good, your side bad."
But you make the original posters point.

To make it more clear it's taking stupid examples at the extremes and saying that everyone on one side agrees with all the bad actors.

So you could say that *everyone* on the "bad" side agrees with this (vaccines don't work, ivermectin will save you, etc.)
And we could say that *everyone* on the "good" side agrees with Facui saying things like "I am the science" (https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/11/anthony-fauci-i-am-the-science/) or others (magazines say) who have said in essence "vaccines will end the pandemic" (in 2020 )(https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/11/vaccines-end-covid-19-pandemic-sight/617141/).

Of course like a blog post I saw much earlier in the pandemic that predicted COVID would be with us for a long time (because there was no way we could vaccinate everyone) that turned out to be right. Would that make it anti-vaccine (back in 2020) because the talking heads were saying and suggesting that vaccines would end COVID? Does wondering why (if masking & vaccines work so well) why New York and other places California that have strong mandates and high vaccination rates are still getting COVID -- make you wonder if it's really worth the lockdowns when Florida and others dont' seem to be _unarguably_ much worse because they are pushing back on _mandates_? What about science of risk mitigation? Is asking about risk vs benefit a bad thing? I thought we used that in programming & design all the time...

I mean early on we all stayed home and isolated and people didn't go to the doctor because of COVID -- and then many were dying of other things because they weren't getting their other medical conditions treated. (One example of for some the cure possibly being worse than the problem). Or how about the fact that it's apparently now OK to in New York City to deny people entry places because they don't have their papers... (I mean vaccination card)-- that sounds a little like World War II germany to me. Or what about if wondering if _madnates_ are a way to push out the "right" out of the government, their jobs, and their livelihood. A way to discriminate? That doesn't sound like a good thing to do, unless you're completely in on the right is evil (which many apparently are from the comments).
      Is it ok for me to question mandates even if I'm in favor of the vaccine being used? Which of the 2 boxes you so happily create to make it obvious that you're good and others are bad, do I belong in?

Yes people are dying of COVID. My sister-in-law is a doctor in a hospital and they recently had to post signs saying the Hospital will not do any more COVID testing (e.g. people come there when they can't get tested anywhere else) because they need to have the medical staff available for real emergencies (and staffing is reduced because many of the doctors & nurses are testing positive for COVID and quarantining).

  I also know someone who is worried about losing their job (and livelihood) because they happen to think that the "science" is being used to justify and mandate things that don't need to be mandated-- and are not going to comply with government orders...

should we only care about the lives of people on the "left" side of the equation who believe in mandates, masks, that Fauci is science, and so on?
Or is it maybe more nuanced than everyone is "on the left" believes in science and everyone else is "on the right" is dumb and there aren't any people who have positions between those extremes?

From my POV most things cannot be reduced to sound bites -- and the people who argue from the sound bites and support it are really much of the problem with today's society.
  - any data set can be made or twisted to say what you want. (& statistics can be used to tell stories: see the book how to lie with statistics)
  - Science & Data change over time
  - Generally consensus emerges (even if that consensus changes over time).

  One example of consensus, is that I think most people would agree that COVID has been politicized by both sides (e.g. there have been public figures of note on both sides that have said untrue or stupid things on both sides for political purposes).

I'd rather rely on consensus over time and larger data-sets, than false dichotomies or sound-bites to what is a complex national discussion with multiple facets.