A model for journalistic copypasta(dynomight.net)
dynomight.net
A model for journalistic copypasta
https://dynomight.net/copypasta/
25 comments
Yes, whenever there is an abundance of data (= subjective, feeling of overwhelmed), we need curation which aligns with whatever your interests are. Grep, for example, is a data curator. Even flags in ls could be.
Do you remember the very first time you went online, perhaps with dialup? The sheer adrenaline rush of paying by the minute. Every second counts. Imagine having a good data curator back then. It would have saved tons of money, and time.
Do you remember the very first time you went online, perhaps with dialup? The sheer adrenaline rush of paying by the minute. Every second counts. Imagine having a good data curator back then. It would have saved tons of money, and time.
I particularly love how the chronological order of events ends up being wrong in a lot of articles.
It usually starts with an article being written in not-chronological order, jumping ahead at first, rewinding, maybe sprinkling in a few interludes, and then some journalist hastily copying it assumes it's in chronological order(?) and gets everything completely wrong. A common theme with accident reports involving something the journalist in question clearly doesn't understand.
It usually starts with an article being written in not-chronological order, jumping ahead at first, rewinding, maybe sprinkling in a few interludes, and then some journalist hastily copying it assumes it's in chronological order(?) and gets everything completely wrong. A common theme with accident reports involving something the journalist in question clearly doesn't understand.
There’s a “hook, early life, side story, actual thing in the headline” style that is SO common in “long form” journalism and I hate it with the passion of a thousand suns.
What you're describing is actually the artefact of a popular method of organising information in articles called the inverted pyramid[1]. Essentially what happens is the chronological order is discarded in favour of ordering the information by perceived importance
> It is sometimes called a summary news lead style, or bottom line up front (BLUF).[3] The opposite, the failure to mention the most important, interesting or attention-grabbing elements of a story in the opening paragraphs, is called burying the lede.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_pyramid_(journalism)
> It is sometimes called a summary news lead style, or bottom line up front (BLUF).[3] The opposite, the failure to mention the most important, interesting or attention-grabbing elements of a story in the opening paragraphs, is called burying the lede.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_pyramid_(journalism)
This is perhaps one of the best pieces of writing I've ever seen on HN. Very, very pertinent.
Things that I post here, on my site at CircuitBored.Com, and even ideas from TikTok and other social media places have been increasingly paraphrased and reposted a lot lately. I've frequently observed bots crawling through my site pages in logs... We're in an age of content theft because there is desperation for profit and continually renewed posts and reposts.
I have no idea where it ends, there are even AI driven sites dedicated to reword text that is copied and pasted into them, so there's an endless supply of resources for plagiarism now. I think the only real thing I can do is keep my deepest ideas and inventions to myself and to not share them until Wikipedia feels like I'm relevant enough to vouch so I can be verified.
Many of the people and resources that steal text over years have already achieved verification off the back of content and idea paraphrasing. The Internet has turned into a steaming pile of misrepresentation lately... Be careful what you share on it. Some of my most dedicated followers might even be the ones waiting for me to post IP so they can claim it first... The common factor on most content scheme sites is how verbose they are, and how grammar is often suspect, in non-human looking ways. I also notice high engagement numbers with my most pirated posts, but often no likes, that's a sure sign that something is afoot.
I have noticed hijacked ideas on even resources that would normally be considered reputable. I'm pretty sure this is happening to everyone who posts input that makes sense. I have even observed questions posed on sites like HN bust for the purposes of crowd-sourcing research in a very lazy manner. Be careful what you share publicly if it's patent-worthy folks... As opportunity for growth and recognition shrinks online, content and idea theft will only increase.
Copywriting may eventually make a strong, shocking, and quite disruptive comeback once a content paraphrasing search solution is reverse engineered.
I have no idea where it ends, there are even AI driven sites dedicated to reword text that is copied and pasted into them, so there's an endless supply of resources for plagiarism now. I think the only real thing I can do is keep my deepest ideas and inventions to myself and to not share them until Wikipedia feels like I'm relevant enough to vouch so I can be verified.
Many of the people and resources that steal text over years have already achieved verification off the back of content and idea paraphrasing. The Internet has turned into a steaming pile of misrepresentation lately... Be careful what you share on it. Some of my most dedicated followers might even be the ones waiting for me to post IP so they can claim it first... The common factor on most content scheme sites is how verbose they are, and how grammar is often suspect, in non-human looking ways. I also notice high engagement numbers with my most pirated posts, but often no likes, that's a sure sign that something is afoot.
I have noticed hijacked ideas on even resources that would normally be considered reputable. I'm pretty sure this is happening to everyone who posts input that makes sense. I have even observed questions posed on sites like HN bust for the purposes of crowd-sourcing research in a very lazy manner. Be careful what you share publicly if it's patent-worthy folks... As opportunity for growth and recognition shrinks online, content and idea theft will only increase.
Copywriting may eventually make a strong, shocking, and quite disruptive comeback once a content paraphrasing search solution is reverse engineered.
TL;DR automated stuff happened.
That's not theft; it is copyright infringement. We are indeed in an age of copyright infringement, but also in an age of abundant availability of data.
For sharing inventions, we have a patent system. Otherwise, we have secrecy. If you don't want something to be shared easily, don't digitize it. Or, if you must, don't connect it to the internet. Keep it airgapped. And even airgap is relative these days.
That's not theft; it is copyright infringement. We are indeed in an age of copyright infringement, but also in an age of abundant availability of data.
For sharing inventions, we have a patent system. Otherwise, we have secrecy. If you don't want something to be shared easily, don't digitize it. Or, if you must, don't connect it to the internet. Keep it airgapped. And even airgap is relative these days.
I'm not worried about ideas being posted online being abridged by automation. Of course publicly shared ideas can be copied.
It's the fact that original independent (unsponsored) content and idea creators are often suppressed (downvoted or ignored) on many points, then their ideas are blatantly lifted and rip-posted by others on platforms that give credit and monetization to blatant hijackers... That's a bit beyond copyright infringement. It's a new and higher level of offense than simple copyright infringement.
It's driving real scholars (and people who could actually complete presented ideas) to give up and wither away in desk jobs. Then the world doesn't realize that fraud has taken over and looted everything until real problems get trumped by profit seeking and vanity for decades.
It's the fact that original independent (unsponsored) content and idea creators are often suppressed (downvoted or ignored) on many points, then their ideas are blatantly lifted and rip-posted by others on platforms that give credit and monetization to blatant hijackers... That's a bit beyond copyright infringement. It's a new and higher level of offense than simple copyright infringement.
It's driving real scholars (and people who could actually complete presented ideas) to give up and wither away in desk jobs. Then the world doesn't realize that fraud has taken over and looted everything until real problems get trumped by profit seeking and vanity for decades.
> Now, there’s no special brilliance needed to come up with this kind of test. Frankly, it’s pretty obvious and I’m sure the Wirecutter is aware they could do it. They just don’t.
They are giving others way too much credit here. If Wirecutter is aware they could do it they probably also think that their test and this test are equivalent.
They are giving others way too much credit here. If Wirecutter is aware they could do it they probably also think that their test and this test are equivalent.
Wire cutter are professionals - it’s their job and they work to get it done to the lowest possible acceptable standard at the lowest effort and cost.
For these things you want amateurs - people who are doing it for love, out of an obsession over the subject.
They can be found but it can be tricky (and a bit weird).
For these things you want amateurs - people who are doing it for love, out of an obsession over the subject.
They can be found but it can be tricky (and a bit weird).
He's missing an important step. The author(s) institution(s) PR department usually put out a press release, and that gets low res copied by everyone. Journals do it too, but in my experience it is the academic/corporate institution who does it.
Is there a browser add-on/site that'll figure out the original paper when reading a science news story?
Maybe it can use the fact that multiple outlets will copypasta at the same time to help
Maybe it can use the fact that multiple outlets will copypasta at the same time to help
>I think most people don’t realize how much of what they read is regurgitated press kits.
Are there any websites that just cut the middleman and link or reproduce the press kits themselves?
Are there any websites that just cut the middleman and link or reproduce the press kits themselves?
I see that subsection 5 mentions the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect so it is again time for me to again scream into the void about this ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18005236 ):
In the speech where Crichton proposes the Gell-Mann amnesia effect he argues against almost all forms of attempts to predict the future. Crichton opposes most or all "speculation"; I think he would find probabilistic reasoning distasteful at best. His approach is a remarkably nihilistic response to the normal human situation of reasoning under uncertainty.
Read it for yourself. He proposed this 20 years ago ( http://web.archive.org/web/20070714204136/http://www.michael... ).
And to his great credit, he gave a specific example of what he was talking about!
He claimed that it was "useless" to write or read a March 2002 newspaper article quoting experts predicting the impact of the 2002 United States steel tariffs. Specialists should not be quoted, he said, because "Nobody knows the future."
Can we check this out?
Let's look at the 2002 United States steel tariffs. Crichton is dismayed by the following predictions in a newspaper article:
(1) Mr. Bush's action "is likely to send the price of steel up sharply, perhaps as much as ten percent.."
(2) American consumers "will ultimately bear" higher prices.
(3) America's allies "would almost certainly challenge" the decision. Their legal case "could take years to litigate in Geneva, is likely to hinge" on thus and such.
(4) In addition, there is a further vague and overarching speculation. The Allies' challenge would be "setting the stage for a major trade fight with many of the same countries Mr. Bush is trying to hold together in the fractious coalition against terrorism." In other words, the story speculates that tariffs may rebound against the fight against terrorism.
He hates that someone wrote this. He thinks it is the biggest waste of anyone's time. None of it should have been printed, he says.
So - let's check. Were these predictions useless? Were they correlated in some way to reality?
I argue that these predictions do two valuable things:
First, they may help a contemporary reader know what's coming.
Second, they may help future readers judge whether the quoted experts were capable in the past of predicting things, which might be useful to know.
So:
(1) The price of steel did not go up ten percent as predicted. Instead, the price of some steel products rose 60-80% from January 2002 to July 2002 according to this random PDF I found from a group that publishes studies about trade (page 6 : http://www.tradepartnership.com/pdf_files/2002jobstudy.pdf ) whose authors appear to have international-trade credentials. The authors say that the tariffs contributed to the price increase along with other factors.
(2) Whether US consumers bore higher prices is unclear. I do see at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_United_States_steel_tarif... that a study determined 'the impact of the tariffs on the U.S. welfare ranged between a gain of $65.6 million (0.0006% of GDP) to a loss of $110.0 million (0.0011% of GDP), "with a central estimate of a welfare loss of $41.6 million."'
(3) Whether allies challenged the decision is an easy one! Yes, the decision was challenged, and an overwhelming, strong international trade war occurred. The US backed down. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_United_States_steel_tarif... ($2B of WTO sanctions threatened, threat of retaliatory tariffs from the EU).
(4) I could not find any evidence that the steel tariffs made it harder to enlist other countries in the Iraq War.
Side note -- contra Crichton, I think I am glad that people publicly predicted what would happen with the Iraq War and that we are able to compare their predictions versus reality ( https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Backchannels/2011/1222/Iraq-... ).
If defense officials had instead merely said "well, we're launching a war, but we will not speculate on how long it will take, what it will cost, or how many people will die, because no one can know the future", well gosh, that would really have been something.
Overall, I think 3 of the 4 pieces of expert speculation about the 2002 United States steel tariffs which Crichton cited as "a complete waste of time" were interesting. They presented an expert's testable hypothesis about the future result of actions; and they helped others judge the credibility of those experts in the future.
Crichton seems to be saying instead that there is no point in publishing anything about how air purifiers perform, because who can know the future? Maybe they will change how they manufacture their air purifiers and consumers will start buying bad ones instead of the tested good ones. Maybe your house will be totally different from the test house used in the dynomight tests. Maybe forest fires will make your air quality so bad that you enter a regime no one tested in advance.
Now, in retrospect there is a bit of irony in Crichton choosing to "predict" a certain future prediction as being a bullshit one -- and in being able to see after the fact that it was pretty spot-on.
But the deeper irony to me is that Crichton does not ever give any evidence for his claim -- he does not publish any percentage of news reporting which is bullshit!
Imagine if he said "I have analyzed predictions made in news articles for the past X years, and judged the accuracy of N predictions -- Y% of them were accurate. Frustratingly none of them expressed any degree of confidence in their predictions so I treated all equally for this analysis. This percentage is [no worse than guessing | worse than guessing, so you should expect the opposite of what is predicted with weak/strong confidence | better than guessing, so you should expect what is predicted with weak/strong confidence]. Here are my data so you can see for yourself."
Did Crichton do his homework? It feels like, when he defined the Gell-Mann amnesia effect, he just give up in dismay and cherry-picked his best examples of failed predictions. I find it hurt to trust his anecdotes.
With respect to opinion columnists (not the same as newswriters), this work has been done at an undergraduate level -- see https://www.hamilton.edu/news/story/pundits-as-accurate-as-c... , https://www.hamilton.edu/documents/an-analysis-of-the-accura.... Crichton says that pundits are worthless, but this one study found that certain specific opinion writers tend to make predictions which are accurate, and certain others tend to make inaccurate predictions.
In the speech where Crichton proposes the Gell-Mann amnesia effect he argues against almost all forms of attempts to predict the future. Crichton opposes most or all "speculation"; I think he would find probabilistic reasoning distasteful at best. His approach is a remarkably nihilistic response to the normal human situation of reasoning under uncertainty.
Read it for yourself. He proposed this 20 years ago ( http://web.archive.org/web/20070714204136/http://www.michael... ).
And to his great credit, he gave a specific example of what he was talking about!
He claimed that it was "useless" to write or read a March 2002 newspaper article quoting experts predicting the impact of the 2002 United States steel tariffs. Specialists should not be quoted, he said, because "Nobody knows the future."
Can we check this out?
Let's look at the 2002 United States steel tariffs. Crichton is dismayed by the following predictions in a newspaper article:
(1) Mr. Bush's action "is likely to send the price of steel up sharply, perhaps as much as ten percent.."
(2) American consumers "will ultimately bear" higher prices.
(3) America's allies "would almost certainly challenge" the decision. Their legal case "could take years to litigate in Geneva, is likely to hinge" on thus and such.
(4) In addition, there is a further vague and overarching speculation. The Allies' challenge would be "setting the stage for a major trade fight with many of the same countries Mr. Bush is trying to hold together in the fractious coalition against terrorism." In other words, the story speculates that tariffs may rebound against the fight against terrorism.
He hates that someone wrote this. He thinks it is the biggest waste of anyone's time. None of it should have been printed, he says.
So - let's check. Were these predictions useless? Were they correlated in some way to reality?
I argue that these predictions do two valuable things:
First, they may help a contemporary reader know what's coming.
Second, they may help future readers judge whether the quoted experts were capable in the past of predicting things, which might be useful to know.
So:
(1) The price of steel did not go up ten percent as predicted. Instead, the price of some steel products rose 60-80% from January 2002 to July 2002 according to this random PDF I found from a group that publishes studies about trade (page 6 : http://www.tradepartnership.com/pdf_files/2002jobstudy.pdf ) whose authors appear to have international-trade credentials. The authors say that the tariffs contributed to the price increase along with other factors.
(2) Whether US consumers bore higher prices is unclear. I do see at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_United_States_steel_tarif... that a study determined 'the impact of the tariffs on the U.S. welfare ranged between a gain of $65.6 million (0.0006% of GDP) to a loss of $110.0 million (0.0011% of GDP), "with a central estimate of a welfare loss of $41.6 million."'
(3) Whether allies challenged the decision is an easy one! Yes, the decision was challenged, and an overwhelming, strong international trade war occurred. The US backed down. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_United_States_steel_tarif... ($2B of WTO sanctions threatened, threat of retaliatory tariffs from the EU).
(4) I could not find any evidence that the steel tariffs made it harder to enlist other countries in the Iraq War.
Side note -- contra Crichton, I think I am glad that people publicly predicted what would happen with the Iraq War and that we are able to compare their predictions versus reality ( https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Backchannels/2011/1222/Iraq-... ).
If defense officials had instead merely said "well, we're launching a war, but we will not speculate on how long it will take, what it will cost, or how many people will die, because no one can know the future", well gosh, that would really have been something.
Overall, I think 3 of the 4 pieces of expert speculation about the 2002 United States steel tariffs which Crichton cited as "a complete waste of time" were interesting. They presented an expert's testable hypothesis about the future result of actions; and they helped others judge the credibility of those experts in the future.
Crichton seems to be saying instead that there is no point in publishing anything about how air purifiers perform, because who can know the future? Maybe they will change how they manufacture their air purifiers and consumers will start buying bad ones instead of the tested good ones. Maybe your house will be totally different from the test house used in the dynomight tests. Maybe forest fires will make your air quality so bad that you enter a regime no one tested in advance.
Now, in retrospect there is a bit of irony in Crichton choosing to "predict" a certain future prediction as being a bullshit one -- and in being able to see after the fact that it was pretty spot-on.
But the deeper irony to me is that Crichton does not ever give any evidence for his claim -- he does not publish any percentage of news reporting which is bullshit!
Imagine if he said "I have analyzed predictions made in news articles for the past X years, and judged the accuracy of N predictions -- Y% of them were accurate. Frustratingly none of them expressed any degree of confidence in their predictions so I treated all equally for this analysis. This percentage is [no worse than guessing | worse than guessing, so you should expect the opposite of what is predicted with weak/strong confidence | better than guessing, so you should expect what is predicted with weak/strong confidence]. Here are my data so you can see for yourself."
Did Crichton do his homework? It feels like, when he defined the Gell-Mann amnesia effect, he just give up in dismay and cherry-picked his best examples of failed predictions. I find it hurt to trust his anecdotes.
With respect to opinion columnists (not the same as newswriters), this work has been done at an undergraduate level -- see https://www.hamilton.edu/news/story/pundits-as-accurate-as-c... , https://www.hamilton.edu/documents/an-analysis-of-the-accura.... Crichton says that pundits are worthless, but this one study found that certain specific opinion writers tend to make predictions which are accurate, and certain others tend to make inaccurate predictions.
You've written a lot there, so on the first line of your comment, please write one sentence that summarizes what you want to say.
Because without that context, it's very hard to process the rest of it, and I guess many people won't bother.
Because without that context, it's very hard to process the rest of it, and I guess many people won't bother.
His post is quite well summarised by his second sentence. "Gell-Mann Amnesia" gets quoted a lot as "why trust journalists when you know they misunderstand stuff you understand", but Crichton's actual article wasn't just targeting the media but expertise in general and the idea that there was any point to making any predictions at all about the future, without any evidence base and with a layman's drive by attack on climate science, economic forecasting and medical testing ethics. Ironically considering the contexts the Gell-Mann Amnesia meme gets used, Crichton's article that coined it was a pretty broad ranging rant including about academics doing science!
And I say this as someone who's cited the Gell Mann Amnesia effect meme before without having come across Crichton's original article.
And I say this as someone who's cited the Gell Mann Amnesia effect meme before without having come across Crichton's original article.
Thank you. But I was hoping for a one sentence summary that begins somewhat like: "Crichton's famous 'Gell-Mann Amnesia' effect is usually misunderstood, Crichton actually wanted to say ..."
I thought OP's comment was interesting, but that it would be unfortunately ignored, because one must read most of the comment to begin to understand what OP is trying to say, and then read it again, with that knowledge, to really understand.
And in fact, I think I was right, because the comment has not received the attention it probably deserves
I thought OP's comment was interesting, but that it would be unfortunately ignored, because one must read most of the comment to begin to understand what OP is trying to say, and then read it again, with that knowledge, to really understand.
And in fact, I think I was right, because the comment has not received the attention it probably deserves
Does you know of a good resource to learn this kind of research/fact checking. I don't have an academic background but recently got interested in improving my ability to identify "fake news" and assess the validity of some paper.
Where does one even start? Even finding the original paper seems a challenge, news articles mention one and then just to another news article. If I search the web for the title and author it feels like most websites are just rehosting the content, like with manuals/datasheets. Not sure how to get started here but your comment makes me think you might know some resources.
Where does one even start? Even finding the original paper seems a challenge, news articles mention one and then just to another news article. If I search the web for the title and author it feels like most websites are just rehosting the content, like with manuals/datasheets. Not sure how to get started here but your comment makes me think you might know some resources.
Here’s my go-to? Is it actionable? Are people actioning on it? If the end “action” seems to be tending me toward a certain activity then I wonder.
If it’s not actionable, it’s entertainment and the truth value doesn’t matter.
If it’s not actionable, it’s entertainment and the truth value doesn’t matter.
Okay, I read the speech.
He's not formulating the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect in that speech, he's referencing an existing idea he had some time before, and which he's not even the first person to observe.
And that idea is not about speculation per se, even though the article is. He's saying "as a way to understand why speculation is dangerous, consider this phenomenon I'll call Gell-Mann Amnesia" and then building from there. I don't think the meaning or validity of the Amnesia effect is related to that specific example about the tariffs.
I didn't need him to give more examples to understand the meaning of the observation: isn't the point that we've all experienced this when reading outsiders write about our own domains of expertise?
In general, I think the author of the original, linked article uses the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect correctly, and that the description given by Crichton in that speech more or less accords with what most people understand it to be.
He's not formulating the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect in that speech, he's referencing an existing idea he had some time before, and which he's not even the first person to observe.
And that idea is not about speculation per se, even though the article is. He's saying "as a way to understand why speculation is dangerous, consider this phenomenon I'll call Gell-Mann Amnesia" and then building from there. I don't think the meaning or validity of the Amnesia effect is related to that specific example about the tariffs.
I didn't need him to give more examples to understand the meaning of the observation: isn't the point that we've all experienced this when reading outsiders write about our own domains of expertise?
In general, I think the author of the original, linked article uses the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect correctly, and that the description given by Crichton in that speech more or less accords with what most people understand it to be.
This is thought-provoking and may change my views - thanks for taking the time to share.
HN itself is one of these curators, and it does require effort. You can find others.