tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6590358285673767171.post484804427559903430..comments2023-05-28T17:47:26.943-07:00Comments on A Nice Place To Live: Probabilistic Needle TheoryAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08064363064872625529noreply@blogger.comBlogger11125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6590358285673767171.post-68085810385366579902013-12-04T20:03:40.836-08:002013-12-04T20:03:40.836-08:00Yes, but it would be a "new" conservativ...Yes, but it would be a "new" conservative. :) A lot of conservative / liberal disputes are not about "keeping things the same" vs. "changing things." You could keep liberal policies the same.Brian Tomasikhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10510289096715716609noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6590358285673767171.post-40117804277854487182013-12-04T19:03:55.216-08:002013-12-04T19:03:55.216-08:00Yep. Would you not expect their views to gradually...Yep. Would you not expect their views to gradually shift more conservative as they gain popularity?Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08064363064872625529noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6590358285673767171.post-3548929767450247842013-12-04T15:19:38.525-08:002013-12-04T15:19:38.525-08:00Amazon trying to put competitors out of business i...Amazon trying to put competitors out of business is an example illustrating that companies defect in a corporate tragedy of the commons. The companies would all be better off with agreed-upon higher prices but instead choose to defect for selfish gain. Similarly, a media company that could promote anti-capitalism and thereby acquire significant market share would do so.Brian Tomasikhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10510289096715716609noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6590358285673767171.post-30333127540455360432013-12-04T11:49:18.746-08:002013-12-04T11:49:18.746-08:00I think major corporations make short-term sacrifi...I think major corporations make short-term sacrifices for long-term gains pretty regularly, but not for ideological reasons. Amazon has huge revenues but loses money each year. They're powerful enough that they can offer prices so low that they lose money - in the hopes of putting their competition out of business, so that they can then dominate the industry. Google also bought YouTube despite not having a way to monetize it. I think they're still losing money from YouTube.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08064363064872625529noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6590358285673767171.post-91867380256718955862013-12-04T08:39:12.745-08:002013-12-04T08:39:12.745-08:00Yes, some of the dynamics are random, e.g., some n...Yes, some of the dynamics are random, e.g., some new charismatic figure espouses a view and convinces many other people of the view. There's also the fact that those who succeed will tend to have more appreciation for capitalism and therefore like it more. But I think a hypothesis about explicitly favoring the status quo for strategic reasons (rather than just because the elite like it emotionally) is implausible, because no single corporation has so much control over national politics to outweigh the temptation for higher short-term profits.Brian Tomasikhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10510289096715716609noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6590358285673767171.post-28198590858094269952013-12-03T19:30:27.370-08:002013-12-03T19:30:27.370-08:00Agreed, but "what people actually want" ...Agreed, but "what people actually want" is only understood vaguely and there's sometimes a lot of room for variation in catering to that want.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08064363064872625529noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6590358285673767171.post-2211603986401429032013-12-03T08:53:07.326-08:002013-12-03T08:53:07.326-08:00Without knowing a detailed backstory, my guess for...Without knowing a detailed backstory, my guess for the Murdoch case would be that he personally has enough power over his franchise to steer it in directions he prefers. People are not wealth maximizers. However, if there were profit to be made from appealing to different audiences, <i>other people</i> should enter and fill the void that Murdoch left. So what's relevant is the distribution of opinion across all media outlets weighted by their influence/popularity.<br /><br />The selection effect seems to be the best explanation for the observation. Suppose stance X was actually very popular. Then it the major media outlets would pick it up and go along with it. That they don't go along with it suggests that it's not widely popular. Of course, the influence goes both ways and can be self-reinforcing. A little perturbation either from the bottom up or the top down could lead to a slightly bigger push in that direction, leading to a slightly bigger push, etc.<br /><br />Of course, many factors ultimately all contribute to the distribution of media, but it seems like the prevailing one is likely to be what people actually want.Brian Tomasikhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10510289096715716609noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6590358285673767171.post-14200555034065270022013-12-01T11:01:30.327-08:002013-12-01T11:01:30.327-08:00I don't want to come off as saying that only p...I don't want to come off as saying that only pro-capitalist and conservative messages exist in the media. Rupert Murdoch, the owner of NewsCorp, is strongly associated with conservative views yet he also owns a lot of individual publications known for their liberal views. The fact that he is a conservative comes second to the fact that owning a diversity of media outlets that express a diversity of views will help NewsCorp make profit. On the whole though, NewsCorp expresses conservative values and even it's "liberal" publications are conservative by the standards of some other countries, and they certainly don't express anti-capitalist or even anti-consumerist values. This could be a form of "manufacturing consent" or it could just be good business sense.<br /><br />Without knowing anything about a given society, we should expect the radical and anti-norm media outlets to be smaller. I think that is partly because it is in the best interests of small companies to signal opposition to the structures that keep them small. Large corporations have no reason to complain about the current system. We should expect, either by "intelligent design" or by "natural selection," for the major media outlets to express status quo and uncontroversial beliefs, while smaller media outlets push for more radical social change.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08064363064872625529noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6590358285673767171.post-35101274697592164822013-11-30T14:47:33.147-08:002013-11-30T14:47:33.147-08:00"(1) the world's major corporations have ..."(1) the world's major corporations have similar interests and (2) they wish to act in their own best interests."<br />But they don't <i>all</i> have similar interests. If there were a new media company that could appeal to the supposed anti-capitalist masses, it would succeed and prosper in spite of hatred from the other corporations. Indeed, there are small companies of this sort, but the fact that they're not bigger suggests something about their audience size.<br /><br />Good point about advertisers. That said, one could imagine a media outlet that accepted money from half of the advertisers and then badmouthed the other half. Indeed, competing companies could get ads in competing media outlets. Maybe there are norms that help prevent this, but it seems like a theoretically stable possibility.Brian Tomasikhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10510289096715716609noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6590358285673767171.post-62078549892822757732013-11-29T15:39:42.938-08:002013-11-29T15:39:42.938-08:00There doesn't need to be a formal conspiracy. ...There doesn't need to be a formal conspiracy. We only need to believe that (1) the world's major corporations have similar interests and (2) they wish to act in their own best interests.<br /><br />Also, with advertising increasingly becoming the dominant source of revenue for many media outlets, advertisers have an increasing amount of control over content. A newspaper might be in favour of printing a story, but one of its major advertisers might threaten to leave them if they print it. Many media outlets are dependent on their advertisers and thus require their approval. I heard in one of my classes that there at least used to be rules for television along the lines of "if a businessman is ever portrayed in a show, he has to be a good guy." (Again, no formal conspiracy, just a few people at the very top trying to protect their lead.)<br /><br />That being the world's culture isn't being lorded over by some small group of billionaires. Those billionaires possess a lot of power but in addition to having a top-down probabilistic needle view, I think we need a bottom-up theory of how the masses can make a difference.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08064363064872625529noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6590358285673767171.post-24245549888731235902013-11-29T02:31:41.248-08:002013-11-29T02:31:41.248-08:00These theories strike me as implausible if they pr...These theories strike me as implausible if they presuppose conscious design of a propaganda system. Rather, it looks like media content evolves with a life of its own, absent a series of masterminds who make it that way. For example, TV ratings are the bread and butter of producers, and companies that don't heed them will decline. This suggests that most of media content seems to be driven by what people want to consume, not by a top-down master plan. There may also be some influence of, say, the intellectual backgrounds from which the content producers come, as well as a desire to stay within certain journalistic bounds (sometimes).<br /><br />As far as your hypotheses for the convergence of cultural goods, #1 seems spot on (c.f., <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotelling's_law" rel="nofollow">Hotelling's law</a>), but #2 seems dubious, because unless there's robust collusion among many parties, the selfish value of preserving capitalism is tiny compared with the prospect of more profits for you specifically. It's like the tragedy of the commons. If anti-capitalist media would sell well, some big media company would start doing that.Brian Tomasikhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10510289096715716609noreply@blogger.com