I appreciate you bringing up this issue on this highly-provocative claim, but I'm a little confused. Isn't that a pretty solid source...? Obviously it's not as good as a scientific paper, but it's also more than a random blogger or something. Given that most enterprises operate on a closed source model, isn't it reasonable that there wouldn't be methodology provided directly?
In general I agree that this sounds hard to believe, I'm more looking for words from some security experts on why that's such a damning quote to you/y'all.
Nobody trusts anyone or anything anymore. It used to be the fact that this was printed in the Washington Post was sufficient to indicate enough fact checking and background sourcing had been done that the paper was comfortable putting its name on the claims, which was a high enough bar that they were basically trustworthy, but for assorted reasons that’s not true for basically any institution in the country (world?) anymore.
For the average person, being published in WaPo may still be sufficient, but this is a tech related article being discussed on a site full of people who have a much better than average understanding of tech.
Just like how a physicist isn't just going to trust a claim in his expertise, like "Dark Matter found" from just seeing a headline in WaPo/NYT, it's reasonable that people working in tech will be suspicious of this claim without seeing technical details.
> For the average person, being published in WaPo may still be sufficient
I genuinely do not know if this is the case anymore - I really do think we’ve reached a level of epistemological breakdown societally where “God is dead” again for us.
I think it really depends on how 'poisoned' the person is. I can totally believe that my politically-disconnected parents would consider being published in WaPo or NYT to be a strong sign of reliability. It helps that headlines that amount to "China is doing comically evil things again" tend to be taken at face value by many people, just for confirming their own biases, regardless of actual evidence.
Yeah, and that’s my concern right now - I think going back ~10 years or so, the percentage of “poisoned” (and we’ll use that term as in a dataset or something - the percentage of values in this set that have been affected by the contaminant) people was a minority, in the 10-20% range (just throwing out numbers). That meant if the NYT or WaPo published something, as a nation, we could generally debate our values and opinions based on a common set of facts - the credibility of those institutions was high enough that if they asserted, for instance, that Paul Ryan wore a toupee, we’d be arguing whether or not the wearing of a toupee was worth caring about and what the proper response to the toupee was, not whether or not he actually wore a toupee.
My fear right now is the percentage of the population that’s “poisoned” is well over 50% - that more people than not distrust those types of institutions, which is sufficient to mean that we’re no longer arguing as a nation whether toupee-wearing fits into our national ideals or who we want to be as a people, and indeed we cannot have those debates, because for us to discuss our values or positions, they need to be in reference to some shared common set of facts, and there’s not a source of facts shared in common by enough of the population for us to be able to generate any kind of consensus worldview to even debate.
Isn't the goal of disinformation campaigns to create a post truth era?
It's very hard to combat. I hope since HN has an at least above average intelligence userbase and familiarity with the internet that we'd be better at fighting this. I hope we don't give up the fight.
I think some advice I got from another academic about how to serve as a reviewer applies more broadly.
The point is that nothing is perfect. So the real question is if we're making progress to finding truth or if we're just being lazy or overly perfectionist. Or Feynman said something similar. (Not a precise quote) "the first rule is not to be fooled and you're the easiest person for you to fool"> Isn't the goal of disinformation campaigns to create a post truth era?
I dunno, and I'm not sure if you are including the major newspapers on the campaigner or victim group... but it would help if they weren't caught in blatant lies all the time.
Gell-Mann amnesia stops working once people hear about the concept.
Anyway, if the NYT published something on the lines of "public person X says Y in public", that would have high odds of being true. But "cybersecurity issue X identified in country-the-us-doesn't-like-Y" is almost certainly bullshit and even if there is something there, the journalist doesn't know enough to get the story right.
It was a rhetorical question. I actually would really encourage you to read about post truth politics if you haven't because it ties into what you're discussing.
I am including the major news organizations and I specifically think they're a major contributor to post truth. It can't happen without them. Being caught in lies enables post truth because the point of this strategy is to make it difficult to determine what truth is. To overload the populous. The strategy really comes out of Russia where they specifically would report lies such as Putin killing dissidents, only for those people to turn up alive. You encourage conspiracies. The most recent example I can think of is how Trump going offline for a few days lit the world with conspiracy theories about him dying. Fucking major news networks bought into that too! It's insane to operate like that. But that's the point. That you have to question everything. I guess to put it one way, you need to always be in system 2 thinking. But you can't always be operating at that level and when doing for long periods of time you'll end up with an anxiety disorder.
I don't know if all major news networks are doing this intentionally or if it's a steady state solution optimization for engagement, but the result would be the same.
I'm saying this because look at my main comments. I'm trying to encourage finding the truth of the matter rather than react (which is what the OP was (rightfully) criticizing WaPo for).
People here aren't responding as techies, regardless of them being techies or not. I'm asking for help demonstrating or countering the claim but most responses are not responding in a way where we're trying to do this. Most responses are still knee jerk reactions. I understand how people misinterpret my comment as a stronger claim, and that is my bad, but it's also hard to avoid. So I want to agree with you but I also want to make sure *our* actions align with *our* words
I would like to keep HN a techie culture but it's a battle we're losing
But every hole has its expertise. If IT has, other areas would have.
For the last decade or so, there's been a huge, sustained war on expertise, and an effort to undermine the public's trust of experts. Quoting an expert isn't enough for people, anymore. Everyone's skeptical unless you point them to actual research papers, and even then, some people would rather stick to their pre-existing world views and dO tHeIr OwN rEsEaRcH.
Not defending this particular expert or even commenting on whether he is an expert, but as it stands, we have a quote from some company official vs. randos on the internet saying "nah-uh".
> Everyone's skeptical unless you point them to actual research papers, and even then, some people would rather stick to their pre-existing world views and dO tHeIr OwN rEsEaRcH.
I think saying things like "dO tHeIr OwN rEsEaRcH" contributes more to this deep distrust, because "do your own research" means different things to different people. To some people it means "read the same story from multiple sources rather than blindly trusting <whatever>" (which I think is good advice, especially nowadays), while to others it might mean "don't trust anything that anybody says, regardless of their qualifications" (which is bad advice). At a minimum, I think you should clarify what your actual position is, because the mocking way you've phrased it to me heavily implies that your position is the opposite, or "don't do your own research, just trust the experts." Don't forget that for most of history the "experts" were religious leaders. Where would we be today if nobody ever questioned that?
To be clear, when I mock "do your own research," I'm specifically mocking 1. the people who go out there cherrypicking only information that confirms their own preexisting views and 2. those who simply default to being contrarian for the sake of contrariness. Naysayers for the pure sake of naysaying. Both mentalities, I believe, are rooted in a belief that everyone is against you and a desire to be one of the few who Know The Truth That Experts Are Hiding From Us.
What gets more views/attention? Someone saying, "Yea, the consensus opinion makes general sense, although reasonable people can disagree about some details." or someone saying, "Scientists are trying to keep this knowledge away from us, but I know the truth. Keep watching to find out and join our club!"
I'm not asking people to blindly trust experts, but to stop blindly opposing them.
Appreciate the clarification! I think we're in complete agreement then
> there's been a huge, sustained war on expertise, and an effort to undermine the public's trust of experts.
I find your verbiage particularly hilarious considering the amount of media and expert complicity that went into manufacturing the public support for the war on terror.
The media has always been various shades of questionable. It just wasn't possible for the naysayers to get much traction before due to the information and media landscape and how content was disseminated. Now, for better or worse, they laymen can read the bible for themselves, metaphorically speaking.
Fifty four percent of Americans read below the sixth grade level.
They shouldn't be reading anything for themselves and should be trusting the experts, even if those experts are sometimes wrong they will be more accurate than the average American.
Teaching someone to think for themselves, without first teaching them how to think is an invitation to disaster.
You gonna complain that they drink light beer and eat junk food while you're at it?
Only showboating "english language for the sake of it" type use cases need much beyond middle school reading level. News and the like aren't that because they need to reach a mass market. Professional communication needs to reach the ESL crowd and be unambiguous it too isn't that. Even legal literature is very simple. Professional and legal communication just have tons of pointers going all over the place and a high reading level won't help you with that.
People who lack literacy are not just bad readers, they are bad thinkers.
It is fine to be simple, and to live a simple life. That does not mean that your ignorance is as good as an experts knowledge.
Worse, teaching people to think for themselves without first teaching them how to think does not just halt progress, it put's it into full retreat.
Exactly--it's not English language snobbery. It's just that the median person out there is simply not capable of doing a satisfactory depth of research to reach a conclusion about most topics. This is exactly why we have experts who dedicate their lives to understanding niche and complex topics. I consider myself a smart guy, and I know I don't have the time or knowledge to sufficiently research the vast majority of topics.
I agree with you 100%. Most people do not have the time or knowledge to become experts in all the fields they hold opinions in.
However, I actually AM being a bit of a snob as well. I'm proposing the deeply unpopular idea that not every person even has the capability to. It seems to have become a little-known fact that fifty percent of people are of below the median intelligence.
A lot of people are reluctant to admit that to themselves. They shouldn't be... It's an enormous relief when you finally realize that you don't have to have an opinion on everything.
You make it sound like the newspapers/companies are un-culpable for that effect. I believe it to be the case because I've seen cases were a newspaper presents a narrative as fact when those involved know very well it's just someone's spin for their own benefit. See <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect>.
It's been a failure from both sides, attack on expertise and education from regressive elements, media abusing 'experts say' to produce all sorts of clickbait, experts choosing political/PR/convenience over honesty/sincerity and people who are not experts claiming to be experts (the situation here, or where they ask a 'smart guy' like a pop-physicist to talk about something they aren't actually an expert in)
I mean, you are effectively defending this particular expert, with your insinuation that the public should be more trusting of people framed as experts like this. As someone moderately knowledgeable in this area and moderately skeptical of CrowdStrike, the claim a priori seems far fetched to me. You can't say there's a war on expertise and then turn around and say "whether or not the person portrayed by this WaPo article as an expert is an expert or is correct...".
The problem with expertise is anyone can be an expert. I would challenge the integrity of anyone claiming any field has precisely zero idiots.
I don't feel they can be trusted on tech reports since 7 years ago, Bloomberg "The Big Hack".
I'll say it's ironic that the strategy comes out of Russia because there's an old Russian saying (often misattributed to Reagan) that's a good defense: trust but verify
And yet, I suspect if you look at the publications of "reliable" institutions in the 1980s, you'd find far more ridiculous things than you'd ever see in the modern era.
For one, half the things I see from that era had so much to gain from exaggerating the might and power of the Soviet Union. It's easy to dig up quotes and reports denying any sort of stagnation (and far worse - claiming economic growth higher than the west) as late as Andropov and Chernenko's premierships.
The Washington Post was always bad. Movement liberals just fell in love with it because they hated Trump. Always a awful, militaristic, working-class hating neocon propaganda rag that gleefully mixed editorial and news, the only thing that got worse with the Bezos acquisition were the headlines (and, of course, the coverage of Amazon.) The Wall Street Journal was more truthful, and actually cared about not dipping their opinions in their reporting. I could swear there's a Chomsky quote about that.
People put their names on it because it got them better jobs as propagandists elsewhere and they could sell their stupid books. It's a lot easier to tell the truth than to lie well; that's where the money and talent is at.
I'm way more confused why you think a company that makes its living on selling protection from threats, making such a bold claim with so little evidence is a good source.
Compare this to the current NPM situation where a security provider is providing detailed breakdowns of events that do benefit them, but are so detailed that it's easy to separate their own interests from the attack.
This reminds me of Databrick's CTO co-authoring a flimsy paper on how GPT-4 was degrading ... right as they were making a push for finetuning.
The person you replied to says there was no methodology. This is standard for mainstream media, along with no links to papers. If it gets reported in a specialist journal with detail I'll take it more seriously.
>Isn't that a pretty solid source...?
What, CrowdStrike?
Not sure why downvoted. Good journalism here would have been to show the methodology behind the findings or produce a link to a paper. Any article that says "Coffee is bad for you", as an example, that doesn't link to an actual paper or describes the methodology cannot be critically taken at face value. Same thing with this one. Appeal to authority isn't a good way to make a conclusion.
I'm not even gonna ask them to explain the methodology but it's 20-goddamn-25, link your source so that those who want to dig through that stuff can.