Okay Elon Musk, Calm Down
Pravda Sounds Great On Paper But…
Daily Blog #15
Some people don’t care about the truth.
It’s becoming a huge issue today, with the rise of political affiliations creeping into everything that I hold dear to me (science, journalism and tech), nobody wants to be objective anymore. Everyone has a bias and an end game.
Pravda sounds great, a platform that allows us to track and rate how credible a source is? That would get rid of all the bias that is so rampant today. But the issue is this, what happens when people start lowering someone’s credibility score because they disagree, not because it actually lacks credibility, merit or fact, but purely because they disagree.
Something like this puts a lot of power in the public’s hands and frankly, the public is dumb.
As humans we are constantly trying to avoid cognitive dissonance, that’s why we usually believe things that we already think are true or that we can relate to things that we already perceive as fact. Now, when you let any average Joe essentially peer review an article by a journalist or let’s say an academic writing for a publication, you’ve decided that an uneducated KKK member has as much say in what’s credible information as a PhD. This is going to come off as anti-free speech, but I personally believe in keeping your mouth shut when you don’t know what you’re talking about. That’s why most people don’t take Wikipedia articles seriously unless they’re cited. That’s why we peer review academic articles. That’s why we have experts and specialists, because not everyone is going to have the same level of accuracy in what they say regarding certain topics.
Allowing any person to rate credibility means that you believe that every person has a credible opinion about everything. That’s really not the case, it’s far from the case.
I believe in open forum and that if you want to share your beliefs or opinions, you can, but I also believe that we confuse opinion and fact and because of this, you can’t have an opinion on everything. Unless you have evidence that a fact is falsifiable, you can’t say there’s any opinion to it.
Elon Musk wanting to fact check journalists can stem from a few places — his name’s been in the media a lot more recently for allegedly dating Grimes, Tesla production slowing down and even news of his companies tolerating racists behaviour. He’s supposedly had the name Pravda certified as a foreign incorporation since last year, but this still seems like a “vanquish all the fake news about me I’m just like Donald Trump move”.
Musk’s intention seem pure, believing that the “holier-than-thou hypocrisy of big media companies who lay claim to the truth, but publish only enough to sugarcoat the lie, is why the public no longer respects them”, but the project will need a well planned and thoughtful execution. The issue with this is, we seldom see Elon Musk make well planned and thoughtful moves when it comes to social issues.
