convivial links

Herve Zwirn proposes 'convivial solipsism' as a plausible interpretation of quantum theory.
I think he should have used LaTeX instead of an 80s version of WordPerfect to format his paper...

Michael Penn looks at a geometric proof of Fermat's little theorem.
He has lots of interesting stuff on YouTube...

Remy explains the current economy and financial markets.
Very trading ... such amaze ...

Goehring & Rozencwajg estimate the carbon footprint of electric vehicles.
Obviously, their results contradict the Exeter, Nijmegen & Cambridge paper...

Glenn Greenwald writes about yet another corporate media tale.
I have my own theory why US media evolved from news reporting to political propaganda...

5 comments:

Lee said...

> I have my own theory why US media evolved from news reporting to political propaganda...

I'd be interested in knowing what that theory is.

wb said...

People prefer to hear stories rather than facts and numbers (thinking fast vs slow).
The US corporate media is motivated by profit and therefore people get what they prefer (this is different in EU, where tv is often state sponsored and consequently more focused on just reporting the news and therefore much less entertaining, like PBS or C-SPAN).

Obviously the stories have to be interesting, so the media narratives reflect what people are worried about or have some emotional involvement...
So let's look at the evolution of CNN: In the 90s the great stories were OJ Simpson, JonBenet Ramsey etc.
In the 2000s the interest moved to terror and the war ...
In 2015/16 Donald Trump appeared on the scene and captivated people's interest.
Obviously, CNN moved to Trump narratives.
Initially it was mostly "let's look what the guy is saying now" and "can you believe he is winning" ... but once he was in office a choice had to be made.
With the public more and more interested in politics and more and more polarized they had to be either for him (but Fox News occupied this position already and the majority of CNN viewers is center-left leaning) or against him (this was obviously CNN's decision).

But good and convincing narratives require some consistency. You cannot confuse people with facts that contradict the narrative (again people prefer to think fast and not have to switch to sorting out conflicting facts), which explains why the media on the left all tell the same stories, just like the media on the right sticks to their narratives.

Obviously this reinforces polarization of the viewers and the media and soon the media reporting can no longer be distinguished from political propaganda.
It will be interesting to watch how if and how the US cab get out of this trap ...

wb said...

I mangled the last sentence:
It will be interesting to watch if and how the US can get out of this trap ...

CapitalistImperialistPig said...

Yes, but I think some media still tries to tell the story straight, including CNN. On the other hand, how can you be even handed when one political party has dedicated itself to the Big Lie.

wb said...

CIP, I guess opinions about the meaning of straight differ ... 8-)

Btw Matt Taibbi wrote about this and we get a glimpse of how Jeff Zucker himself thought about it:



"Going more negative while increasing the raw amount of attention [..] allowed networks to retain or even increase the monster ratings Trump offered, without earning the social opprobrium that came with giving him softball coverage."



It was all about the ratings, which drive the interaction between viewers and media and determine the direction and intensity of narratives.



On the other hand, Glenn Greenwald collected many cases of corporate media propaganda and it seems he has a different and much darker explanation of what is happening now ...


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