NPR’s CEO: truth is a distraction in the way of getting things done

[Josh]

NPR, a state-affiliated media outlet similar to RT from Russia, had its CEO give a talk where she claims “reverence for the truth gets in the way of getting things done”.

But don’t take my word for it! Listen to her yourself:



She also previously was head of Wikimedia Foundation, the foundation behind Wikipedia.

This attitude is concerning. Truth no longer matters if it gets in the way of “getting things done” (in this case, the context was around convincing people to get vaccinated for COVID-19, amongst other items). So… truth about vaccines doesn’t matter?

What does matter?

[Bootstrap]

She's talking about "personal truths" versus "absolute, knowable truth". And what happens when we clash over our "personal truths".

Full transcript here:

https://singjupost.com/what-wikipedia-t ... nglepage=1

Quote in context:

And after seven years of working with these brilliant folks, I’ve come to believe that they are onto something. That perhaps for our most tricky disagreements, seeking the truth and seeking to convince others of the truth might not be the right place to start. In fact, our reverence for the truth might be a distraction that’s getting in the way of finding common ground and getting things done.

Here's how she continues:

Now, that is not to say that the truth doesn’t exist, nor is it to say that the truth isn’t important. Clearly, the search for the truth has led us to do great things, to learn great things. But I think if I were to really ask you to think about this, one of the things that we could all acknowledge is that part of the reason we have such glorious chronicles to the human experience and all forms of culture is because we acknowledge there are many different truths.

And so in the spirit of that, I’m certain that the truth exists for you and probably for the person sitting next to you. But this may not be the same truth. This is because the truth of the matter is very often, for many people, what happens when we merge facts about the world with our beliefs about the world. So we all have different truths. They’re based on things like where we come from, how we were raised, and how other people perceive us.

The truth that is knowable is different from what each of us thinks is true when we mix that with our beliefs and values.

[Bootstrap]

Thought experiment: listen to the entire video. Then think about how MN would change if we followed her advice.

How can we have cooperative and productive conversations about things we disagree on? That's the focus of this talk. "The best that can be known right now" based on knowable facts seems like a good place to start.

Her "Minimum Viable Truth" concept seems genuinely helpful. Here, I think we have a LOT of shared belief, so our Minimal Viable Truth here may have a lot more in common than on Wikipedia.

[Bootstrap]

This attitude is concerning. Truth no longer matters if it gets in the way of “getting things done” (in this case, the context was around convincing people to get vaccinated for COVID-19, amongst other items). So… truth about vaccines doesn’t matter?

Is that true? Is that really what she is saying? When I listen to the entire talk, I don't think your summary is true.

Does that matter? I think so. I think she thinks so, too. I think this is a talk about the best ways that people who disagree can arrive at truth together when none of us is in possession of the absolute truth. On the whole, I think Wikipedia has been more successful at this than MN. And she puts her finger on some of the reasons for that.

[Josh]

This attitude is concerning. Truth no longer matters if it gets in the way of “getting things done” (in this case, the context was around convincing people to get vaccinated for COVID-19, amongst other items). So… truth about vaccines doesn’t matter?

Is that true? Is that really what she is saying? When I listen to the entire talk, I don't think your summary is true.

Does that matter? I think so. I think she thinks so, too. I think this is a talk about the best ways that people who disagree can arrive at truth together when none of us is in possession of the absolute truth. On the whole, I think Wikipedia has been more successful at this than MN. And she puts her finger on some of the reasons for that.

Sorry, Boot, but I disagree with, and I think you're underplaying the gist of her message here because it presents a difficult narrative for you.

Wikipedia has arrived at falsehoods, not truth - starting with that Wikipedia claims that some men are women, and studiously scrubs any reference of their real sex or real name from the records they have. People like Maher, who claim that truth is a "distraction", are behind this shift away from the idea that any absolute truth actually exists.

We also saw this during COVID, when Anthony Fauci just made stuff up (like the 6-foot social distancing rule), that he later admitted was just made up, but decided to push it on all of us anyway. Where does "truth" exist when we can't trust things that health authorities say we must absolutely do or else we will die? Doesn't this cause the collapse of trust in public institutions?

Maher needs to repent, and embrace God who is indeed truth and his son Jesus, who is the embodiment of truth. Then she can leave the state of confusion she is in. There is no such thing as "your" truth and "my" truth - there is only one set of things that is true.

[Bootstrap]

Sorry, Boot, but I disagree with, and I think you're underplaying the gist of her message here because it presents a difficult narrative for you.

I don't think so. I think she is acknowledging that doing truth together is hard, while saying there is truth. But it's not the same as my personal truth or your personal truth, and it is based in knowable facts.

Here's her conclusion:

Interdependence and Shared Power

The next piece of this is really about interdependence. The way that the system works is that you cannot go it alone. In order for your contributions to stick, they have to earn the agreement of your fellow contributors, which is a powerful forcing mechanism for people to work together. Next is the idea of shared power. All of those debates result in 350 edits a minute to Wikipedia, which means that no one person can be in charge of the whole thing. You have to let go of power, give it to other people, and trust in their ability to manage the areas of their own expertise and interests.

And by doing so, you earn their commitment and agency to make this project work. It also requires humility because you’re going to get it wrong some of the times. But getting it wrong some of the time is worth it for getting it right most of the time. And speaking of time, you have to have a very different relationship to urgency. So much in the world is about moving fast. But moving fast has actually broken a lot of things: it’s broken our trust, it has undermined our confidence in many of our systems of governance, perhaps even our faith in democracy itself.

By slowing down a little bit and bringing the conversation in, by listening with sincerity, debating with respect, consulting widely, and weighing difficult decisions with candor, you can actually build systems that endure. But most importantly, you can build trust, that quality that is in such short supply right now. And trust in one another is what we need in order to weather uncertainty and take brave action.

So what I’m asking all of you today is to set aside your own personal truth for just a minute, for the opportunity to sit in someone else’s. It’s to endure the productive friction of coming to common agreement with someone who you may not agree with or perhaps even like. And with just enough rules and a little bit of time, I believe that you can do it. And you just might find, we all just might find, that the most important things that we do are the ones that we do together. Thank you.

But she definitely cares about truth as you and I see it. She things productive friction is an important way to arrive at truth:

Productive Friction

Well, I’ve already talked a little bit about productive friction, the good kind that makes our ideas better. That is possible because of a few things: notably, clear rules and strong community norms. Clear rules help us engage on the substance of the issue rather than debating the identity of the author. Those rules are not upheld by any one individual on high; they’re actually maintained and uplifted by the entire community, so we all have a shared sense of responsibility for success.

But we are all biased, and that affects each of our perspectives on what is true. The best way to chip away at those biases is to engage in this "productive friction". And it works ...

But when we are forced to defend our biases, when we are forced to go into the data and the citations and really engage, grapple with the intellectual struggle that comes from meeting up against other people’s biases, our horizons can expand and we can get to new and better understandings about the world. How does this work? Well, in 2019, a group of researchers released a study looking at how Wikipedia writers take on the most contentious and difficult topics. And what they found was that the system actually works really well. These are some of the best articles on Wikipedia.

And many of them are written by people who fundamentally disagree with one another. They also found something interesting, which is that the more these polarized contributors engaged in conversation, the more balanced and productive their contributions became. Which means that Wikipedia may be one of the only places on the internet where disagreement actually makes you more agreeable. Now, I knew instinctively this is true because I’ve seen how productive friction can really get us places, how mistakes and debate actually bring people into the conversation.

You don’t sit back when you disagree with someone, because engaging offers you the chance to shape the public record. Through that process, ideas become sharper, better, and more understandable. In this way, the seeds of our disagreement can actually become the roots of our common purpose.

[Josh]

Boot, this is absurd coming from someone that oversees a news organisation that has an obvious progressive bias (does anyone really dispute that?) after overseeing the significant transition of Wikipedia from having a neutral point of view to also having a progressive-leftist bias in many areas.

(As a reminder, I used to work for public media, so I actually know what I'm talking about on this front. I remember sitting around making fun of Bush in 2001 as being stupid, calling him "chimpy" and making fun of him for having a face that supposedly resembled a chimpanzee, and the entire department I worked for being entirely Democrats. If you don't think NPR has a problem with leftist-progressive bias, I don't know how I can help you.)

[temporal1]

Josh:
.. ( .. If you don't think NPR has a problem with leftist-progressive bias, I don't know how I can help you.)

So much fraud in the world. Money, fame, power are great temptations. People WANT to believe, are easily deceived.

2023 / Martn Decoder / Why Elizabeth Holmes Is More Dangerous Than People Think / 17min

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viewtopic.php?t=6287

[Heirbyadoption]

Now, that is not to say that the truth doesn’t exist, nor is it to say that the truth isn’t important. Clearly, the search for the truth has led us to do great things, to learn great things. But I think if I were to really ask you to think about this, one of the things that we could all acknowledge is that part of the reason we have such glorious chronicles to the human experience and all forms of culture is because we acknowledge there are many different truths.

And so in the spirit of that, I’m certain that the truth exists for you and probably for the person sitting next to you. But this may not be the same truth. This is because the truth of the matter is very often, for many people, what happens when we merge facts about the world with our beliefs about the world. So we all have different truths. They’re based on things like where we come from, how we were raised, and how other people perceive us.

The truth that is knowable is different from what each of us thinks is true when we mix that with our beliefs and values.

At what are we shamelessly tap dancing on the thin-iced pond of relativism...?

[joshuabgood]

Boot and Josh have different truths clearly.