{"id":1431,"date":"2011-08-18T14:07:51","date_gmt":"2011-08-18T18:07:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/?p=1431"},"modified":"2011-08-18T14:38:00","modified_gmt":"2011-08-18T18:38:00","slug":"listening-post-i-tell-you-three-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/2011\/08\/18\/listening-post-i-tell-you-three-times\/","title":{"rendered":"Listening Post: I tell you three times"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Cornell's first electronic analog computer.<\/p><\/div>\n

At the dawn of the computer age, computation was done on notoriously unreliable analog devices. To improve the chances of arriving at the correct solution, advanced setups used the principle “I tell you three times,” that is, using three identical devices to run the same problem. If the three answers agreed, it was accepted as accurate.<\/p>\n

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Plate V: The Hunting of the Snark. "But oh, beamish nephew, beware..."<\/p><\/div>\n

That might seem like a good model for a media consumer–to use multiple sources for information and trust the points of consensus to be a fair representation of the facts. But there are some problems with that. Fun geek fact: the quotation “I told you thrice, and what I tell you three times is true…” comes from one of Lewis Carroll’s loopier poems, “The Hunting of the Snark”–which does not bode well for those aspiring to fact-based decision-making.<\/p>\n

And in fact, the media landscape has become so fragmented and such an echo-chamber that one could easily get the same wrong information from dozens of sources. Another old saying runs “All the world is mad save for me and thee, and I wonder about thee.” Little wonder then that generic media trust ratings run right down in the basement with congress, and with Nigerian princes who say they want to send us money.<\/p>\n

Still, we do trust–we identify sources that we regard as reliable and useful. And if few trust congress as a whole, many more trust their own representative. As for the other cellar-dweller–well–“Put not your faith in princes.”<\/p>\n

As members of the much-vilified media “elite,” and at the same time reliant on member support, creating a relationship of trust is a core survival issue for NCPR. Which brings to mind three questions for you to compute. What does NCPR do that gives you reason to place credence in what we say? What might we have\u00a0 done that would erode your trust in our service? And what could we do (that we are not doing now) that would make our service more worthy of your good regard.<\/p>\n

We trust you’ll post reliable data in a comment below.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At the dawn of the computer age, computation was done on notoriously unreliable analog devices. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[6128],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1431"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1431"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1431\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1436,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1431\/revisions\/1436"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}