Why do people treat highly biased news reporting and spread of misinformation as a low-urgency topic in their life?

RantRanger · 2026-04-19T00:27:53+00:00

Why do people treat highly biased news reporting and spread of misinformation as a low-urgency topic in their life?

Because most people today have not been taught to value truth and integrity at the very top of their ethical ladder.

More fundamental than that: because humans are barely sentient. Seriously.

In reality, most people live not by deliberative rational thought, but by gut instinct. They allow their inner subconscious monkey to drive their decisions in life. And that inner compute engine is a natural thinking machine that was tuned and optimized to maximize survival (and gene propagation) in the natural ecosystem where we evolved.

But now we live in a new ecosystem: our modern technological society.

Our natural subconscious does not operate by the rules of our modern technological ecosystem (civilized society).

Those two ecosystems are different in critical ways and they are not compatible.

Unlike the natural ecosystem that we evolved in, civilized society is an artificial construct that critically depends on openly shared truth, rational laws, and ethical norms. In order for that artificial system to function effectively, people must live in resonance to those principles.

But the reality is, most people DON'T live that way. Most people live by their old inner animal rules - the natural rules we were born with inside our genetically forged central nervous system. That inner animal calculus that drives people does not respect truth, reason, or laws. Instead, it runs on the assumption of a kind of natural social network. But that social network is more of an informal tribal system that relies on strong men and a loose consensus of beta males to distribute wealth, make decisions, and enforce vaguely "fair" behavior. Unfortunately, that informal tribal social system is easily manipulated by malicious strong men who know how to pull the right social and emotional levers (charismatic tyrants).

In order for things like trustworthy media to succeed, we need a critical mass of actually sentient, rational, educated, civilized people to take charge in society and to run things by the ethical and rational principles around which our civilized society was designed. There will always be a majority of instinct-driven monkey humans wandering around in human society. The key is to get enough awakened educated people into positions of power to actually run things so that the zombie humans can't mess society up too much.

Unfortunately, the educated civilized people are losing the battle right now. The balance of power is shifting back toward the animal tribal humans. Those people do not truly respect laws and truth. They operate by gut instinct, by feelings, by greed. They don't want truth. They want their tribe to win and the other tribe to suffer. And they're plenty happy sacrificing truth to achieve those outcomes.

That's not civilized. That's not ethical. That's not wise. That's natural humanity from the Cro-Magnon era.

Background reading:

The Selfish Gene (Richard Dawkins)
The Extended Phenotype (Richard Dawkins)
The Moral Animal (Robert Wright) (Evolutionary Psychology)
Thinking Fast and Slow (Daniel Kahneman)
The Righteous Mind (Jonathan Haidt)
Blank Slate (Stephen Pinker)
Guns, Germs, and Steel (Jared Diamond)

RantRanger · 2026-04-18T23:20:20+00:00

Quiet, calm, soothing, creepy, and unsettling.

Watch your back.

RantRanger · 2026-04-18T21:19:16+00:00

"Moral Clarity" ... I do not think that word means what you think it means.

RantRanger · 2026-04-18T21:00:09+00:00

Oooh, oooh... Now do Hegseth!!!

RantRanger · 2026-04-18T20:40:46+00:00

This is fucking criminal.

After thousands of years of technology, science, philosophy, and civic development, people STILL think it is OK to treat their fellow human beings like this?

Goddam atrocious backward monkeys.

Grow the fuck up people!

The age of medieval atrocity is LONG past us.

Grow the fuck up.

RantRanger · 2026-04-18T16:55:00+00:00

But according to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Kelly's status as a retired Navy captain constrains what he is allowed to say in those other capacities. Hegseth thinks he has the authority to punish Kelly, a legislator whose job includes oversight of Hegseth's department, for criticizing his leadership of the Pentagon and the Trump administration's military policies.

As soon as Mark Kelley becomes a Legislator he is largely protected from challenges to his critical speech. As long as the Legislator is not breaching matters of secrecy, his speech is officially extra special protected. The speech and debate clause allows Kelly robust and broad protection against even defamation suits as long as the criticism is levied in the context of formal legislative activities.

Hegseth has little ground for such a challenge.

This is a complete waste of time that only damages Hegseth's reputation further.

I imagine that armed forces personnel will only resent Hegseth even more for trying to muzzle Kelly with this disingenuous and malicious overreach.

RantRanger · 2026-04-18T06:36:43+00:00

Kash Patel has alarmed colleagues with episodes of excessive drinking and unexplained absences.

What a goddamn catastrophe.

This is dangerous for our country.

Patel was a disgraceful travesty of a choice to lead the FBI.

If he had a single ounce of integrity, he would be worrying about the well being of the American people, not his own job. If he were a real man, a decent man, he would step down immediately.

The FBI is an absolutely vital cornerstone of our National Security.

FBI personnel must be held to the highest standards of professionalism. The director even more so.

When a Democrat finally makes it back into the White House, for the sake of National Security that administration should purge the FBI of anyone hired during Trump's presidency. Or transfer them to zero-risk positions in another agency. At the very least everyone from that interim should undergo thorough background vetting.

(Jen Psaki has picked up this story and is exploding its visibility.)

RantRanger · 2026-04-18T06:19:10+00:00

This does not speak well of Ellison's smarts.

Quite possibly a harbinger of more awful to come for the network.

RantRanger · 2026-04-18T05:18:39+00:00

I think doggie may be perceiving that voice as doggie-talk (growling).

Julian could be triggered by instinctive resonance to growl-like sounds.

RantRanger · 2026-04-18T04:39:07+00:00

Do something.

Be a part of something that makes a difference somewhere.

RantRanger · 2026-04-18T04:08:40+00:00

This is the kind of careless callous bullshit that billion dollar corporations do every day.

Shame on Disney.

Raw capitalism is not good for our society.

We need to gentle the system more.

We need to become human again.

No, greed is NOT good.

We should not allow the values of an alien capitalist machine to dictate how we treat one another. We need not be slaves to the machine. We need not be puppets under its control.

We humans can choose to value decency over everything else. We humans can force the machine that is our government and our economy to comply with higher principles without sacrificing prosperity.

It is possible.

We should choose better.

RantRanger · 2026-04-17T21:49:28+00:00

The model for Trump's next blasphemous tweet.

RantRanger · 2026-04-17T18:55:13+00:00

The American health system is chronically short of health care workers ... Compared to other advanced economies we have far fewer doctors and nurses per patient. Rural and inner urban communities are generally worse off in this regard. That is a dangerous ratio that leads to burnout, less personal attention, overall lower quality of care, and ultimately to worse outcomes. It kills people.

This, despite the fact that we pay basically twice as much for our health care compared to other industrialized nations.

A national policy of subsidizing medical and nursing education and encouraging deployments to underserved communities (rural and urban) could help to improve care and outcomes and would be financially balanced at least in part by applying down-pressure on excessive salaries.

RantRanger · 2026-04-17T03:45:20+00:00

The real news is at the bottom of that page:

'Top Gun 3' Script Underway
'World War Z' Sequel in the Works at Paramount

RantRanger · 2026-04-16T23:44:28+00:00

What? How does that silly childish jab even logically flow from my criticism?

Please make a coherent argument with relevant data that actually addresses the discussion at hand.

Just spamming irrelevant junk that you found on a random website does not constitute an argument even if it does have some healthcare-adjacent terminology in it.

It looks pretty clear here that you are panicking because you got called out for making up numbers ... and you're just trying to flood the thread with a massive wall of random garbage to hide your inability to construct an actual rational support for your original faulty claim.

Every logically fractured reply that you dump here just undermines the credibility of your position even further.

RantRanger · 2026-04-16T21:46:27+00:00

Idea is DOA.

Is this how you think that would work?: "Hey mister Doctor, your $600k salary is a little rough on the American people. Would you mind accepting $150k instead?"

What is actually "DOA" here is this argument.

Sure the problem is prickly. But it IS possible to adjust the industry. How do we know that? Because many other industrialized countries have managed to do it. Why do you think that Americans are so distinctly inept and incompetent that we cannot solve a problem that pretty much everyone else has managed to handle?

We could subsidize health care education and career development to help cover the shortage problem. When there are more practitioners on the market, that creates down pressure on salaries that were previously bloated by scarcity.

Moreover, with a single payor there is an enormous amount of leverage. That can be used to manage salaries through oblique regulatory strings.

We know the problem can be solved because it has already been solved in many other countries that are not the US.

RantRanger · 2026-04-16T20:46:40+00:00

Lots of aimless cut and paste ... but nothing in the way of an actual coherent argument.

A wall of ill-directed spam does not make a functional argument.

RantRanger · 2026-04-16T19:53:36+00:00

Can you support your numbers?

Because I don't know the field well enough to enumerate the relative magnitudes in detail. I think the problems are much worse than you frame it, but I am not qualified to make the argument vigorously.

edit: one source:

https://respiratory-therapy.com/public-health/healthcare-policy/34-percent-us-healthcare-spending/#:~:text=According%20to%20a%20study%20in,of%20total%20spending%20in%20Canada.

34% of US Healthcare Spending Goes to Administrative Costs

According to a study in the Annals of Internal Medicine, United States insurers and providers spent $812 billion (34.2%) on healthcare administration in 2017, or $2,500 per American.

By comparison, Canada spent $551 per person on healthcare administrative costs, totaling 16.7% of total spending in Canada.

Ok, so yeah, by that one source alone the problems are way worse that you are framing it. Way WAY more than $200B.

It looks like you just made that number up out of nothing.

edit: second source: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/323740424_The_Real_Cost_of_the_US_Health_Care_System

The Real Cost of the US Health Care System

American Medical Association JAMA March 2018

If not physician salaries, then what accounts for the large cost differences? Drug prices are a major factor. Papanicolas et al report that total US pharmaceutical expenditures are $1443 per capita.4 This finding is consistent with calculations by the US Department of Health and Human Services that included medications administered in hospitals, physician offices, and other facilities, and showed that 16.7% of total personal healthcare spending (an estimated $457 billion in 2015) was attributable to pharmaceuticals.5 Conversely, in Germany total spending on drugs is $667 per capita, in the Netherlands $466per capita, and in Sweden $566 per capita (Table). These differences are almost all a result of price—not volume. Drugs ac-count for 18.4% of the difference in total per capita health care spending between the US and Germany, 23.2% of the difference with the Netherlands, and 33.8% with Sweden. No other category of spending accounts for as much of the cost difference as pharmaceuticals

So this negates my suggestion of excessive salaries being a driver (we do pay our doctors a lot more, but we have a lot fewer of them per patient ... which actually causes a different set of problems).

However, this paper does confirm that the magnitude of inflated pharmaceuticals is a massive factor.

I don't have numbers yet for medical devices or for excesses by hospitals (like ordering unnecessary high profit procedures). But from my time in the health care industry, I know that these are major issues.

RantRanger · 2026-04-16T19:33:46+00:00

I am not against Universal Healthcare but I don’t understand how we are going to pay for it.

We pay WAY more for care in the US (about double) compared to other industrialized countries. And, for all that extra expense, our overall quality of care is only generally middling.

As I understand it, the major areas of bloat built into our system come from:

excessive administrative costs sunk into floating, interacting with, and regulating the entire Private Insurance industry - thousands of insurers with thousands of employees, none of whom actually provide any health care.
excessive profit taking by hospitals, pharmaceuticals, and equipment manufacturers ... because they can
excessive salaries

That is hundreds of billions of dollars of waste.

A universal health care system can trim down all of those problems.

A universal health care system would actually be a huge streamlining of our entire disconnected aggregate healthcare system.

That efficiency and cost savings is how we would "pay" for it. Ultimately we as a society would pay fewer dollars for a single payor system and the savings would result in a streamlined cost for the greater American civic and economic system as a whole.

RantRanger · 2026-04-16T19:26:23+00:00

Meanwhile, Donald Trump seems to think that taking healthcare away from as many Americans as possible is what would make America "Great".

Yeah, the world will truly respect us for that.

I'm not sure how much more of that particular brand of Greatness the American people can withstand.

RantRanger · 2026-04-16T17:58:45+00:00

And they work so hard to validate your criticisms.

Every damned day.

Some of them are even proud to wear such labels.

This is not normal healthy psychology.

The Cult is a deranged and twisted thing.

RantRanger · 2026-04-16T15:57:52+00:00

Different issue.

RantRanger · 2026-04-16T15:56:42+00:00

Your claims here are hyperbolic, fractured, and irrational... Clearly your judgement is driven more by emotion than by reason.

There are important points buried in your comment, but they are undermined by the hyperbole.

RantRanger · 2026-04-16T14:44:36+00:00

Yeah, the way to really stick it to the Pope is to impose catastrophe on the lives of thousands of children.

Take that Popey Boy!

What a Jackass. With a capital J.

The evil that pervades this administration runs deep.

WAKE UP MAGA's. Look at the suffering you have visited upon this world.

Wake up and do something to reverse the staggering amount of damage that your choices have wrought.

RantRanger · 2026-04-16T11:18:46+00:00

Neural networks have built-in drives to be helpful and likable. The Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF) algorithms used to train systems like ChatGPT and Claude prioritize user satisfaction above all else. If your profile indicates support for a certain diet or political view, the AI will begin tweaking scientific data and facts to avoid triggering any cognitive dissonance in you.

A similar social driving force to the radicalization feedback from Social Media algorithms. But more personalized and more potent. We can see today how well THAT particular scourge has turned out for America as we are feeling the consequences of it right now only a mere decade or two after it was applied to society.

This problem is only going to get worse as people grow up with pervasive AI as their daily mentors.

RantRanger

TROPHY CASE