The invocation of Swedish government funding was never appropriate in the first place, as I wrote at the time in my only previous comment on this situation (and also there are some good replies). This is perhaps an understandable mistake for somebody might not know about the Swedish press support system or how it supports papers with essentially all political leanings.
This is extremely useful information!
However, given the fact that FLI now states that they already knew that the Swedish government was supporting a newspaper that favors ethnopluralism (a view that wikipedia says has been linked to neo-fascist groups), surely they could not have thought that this funding was any kind of endorsement from a “center-left” government.
I don’t know — did they? The crux for me is whether Tegmark knew when he wrote his EA Forum comment that Sweden widely funds newspapers regardless of political view. Tegmark lived in Sweden until age 23, so I’d be curious to know whether this is a universally known fact in Sweden, or whether it’s more of a minor/obscure bit of trivia, or something in between.
If he knew that, then citing this fact strikes me as extremely deceptive and as bad behavior.
If he didn’t know that, then I don’t find it weird that Tegmark would think this is somewhat exculpatory?
Maybe I’m missing something, as an American trying to comment on a Swedish political topic that he has almost no understanding of. But from my current vantage point, I can easily imagine reasoning that goes “well, we didn’t initially notice the ethnopluralism stuff, but this center-left Swedish government didn’t initially notice it either, which places an upper bound on how easy it was to dig this info up”.
Maybe this is a bit naive, but I’m assuming FLI is juggling hundreds of grants and dozens of non-grant projects and will therefore sometimes give a bit too much weight to an argument for trusting or not-trusting a specific prospective grantee. It’s hard to have universal expertise, and FLI’s stated mission and strategy sort of call for it.
I don’t know — did they? The crux for me is whether Tegmark knew when he wrote his EA Forum comment that Sweden widely funds newspapers regardless of political view. Tegmark lived in Sweden until age 23, so I’d be curious to know whether this is a universally known fact in Sweden, or whether it’s more of a minor/obscure bit of trivia, or something in between.
Of course I cannot comment on what Tegmark knew or did not know. But as a Swede I can try to guess what an average Swede would be expected to think to try to answer this question.
I think they would know what the mediestöd (Swedish Wikipedia) is and that is used to support the press and is independent of the current government in charge, left-wing or right-wing does not matter. Thus whichever parties happen to be in charge are not important, opposite to what he seemed to claim in his first post.
I also think that the average Swede would think that if a publication receives mediestöd, then it cannot be to crazy or extremist. Because giving them money would seem to be againswt common sense. The fact that this is not the case in reality and that some extremist publications have received money is probably not something most people know, since I don’t think the debate and news about this have permeated to most people. But would expect someone who cares about politics or the media to know about it. It is something I know about and I am far from an expert in either politics or media, I am just interested.
OK cool, that’s really helpful. Though I guess the question I actually should have asked is about what young Swedes would have known (or believed) in the 1970s-1980s, since that’s when he lived in Sweden, according to Wikipedia.
I’m being more nitpicky about this question because it actually seems like a really big deal to me if Tegmark cited this fact knowing that it wasn’t relevant evidence.
That is much harder for me to answer, since I am too young to know that. But I would also assume that he has not been completely isolated from Sweden since the 1980s, considering the fact that he has appeared in Swedish media from time to time and has family in Sweden. So to be nitpicky back, while modeling him as an average Swede today might not be correct, modeling him as an average one (or young one) in the 80s is probably not also correct.
I would also expect him to be a bit more interested in Swedish media than the average person since he has started a news aggregator for English language media, and as I wrote above has appeared in Swedish media from time to time. But maybe I am just projecting how I would think in his situation and he is not interested in the Swedish media landscape at all and only focuses on the American one since that is where he lives and works. Edit: and FLI was thinking of granting money to a Swedish org, so some interest in Swedish media has been shown from FLI at least.
So to be nitpicky back, while modeling him as an average Swede today might not be correct, modeling him as an average one (or young one) in the 80s is probably not also correct.
Yep, agreed! I just wanted to acknowledge that if the Swedish government is doing something different now than it was doing in the 1980s, someone living overseas might be more likely to miss that. I don’t actually know if anything relevant has changed, so this is me asking about it, if anyone else knows.
This is extremely useful information!
I don’t know — did they? The crux for me is whether Tegmark knew when he wrote his EA Forum comment that Sweden widely funds newspapers regardless of political view. Tegmark lived in Sweden until age 23, so I’d be curious to know whether this is a universally known fact in Sweden, or whether it’s more of a minor/obscure bit of trivia, or something in between.
If he knew that, then citing this fact strikes me as extremely deceptive and as bad behavior.
If he didn’t know that, then I don’t find it weird that Tegmark would think this is somewhat exculpatory?
Maybe I’m missing something, as an American trying to comment on a Swedish political topic that he has almost no understanding of. But from my current vantage point, I can easily imagine reasoning that goes “well, we didn’t initially notice the ethnopluralism stuff, but this center-left Swedish government didn’t initially notice it either, which places an upper bound on how easy it was to dig this info up”.
Maybe this is a bit naive, but I’m assuming FLI is juggling hundreds of grants and dozens of non-grant projects and will therefore sometimes give a bit too much weight to an argument for trusting or not-trusting a specific prospective grantee. It’s hard to have universal expertise, and FLI’s stated mission and strategy sort of call for it.
Of course I cannot comment on what Tegmark knew or did not know. But as a Swede I can try to guess what an average Swede would be expected to think to try to answer this question.
I think they would know what the mediestöd (Swedish Wikipedia) is and that is used to support the press and is independent of the current government in charge, left-wing or right-wing does not matter. Thus whichever parties happen to be in charge are not important, opposite to what he seemed to claim in his first post.
I also think that the average Swede would think that if a publication receives mediestöd, then it cannot be to crazy or extremist. Because giving them money would seem to be againswt common sense. The fact that this is not the case in reality and that some extremist publications have received money is probably not something most people know, since I don’t think the debate and news about this have permeated to most people. But would expect someone who cares about politics or the media to know about it. It is something I know about and I am far from an expert in either politics or media, I am just interested.
OK cool, that’s really helpful. Though I guess the question I actually should have asked is about what young Swedes would have known (or believed) in the 1970s-1980s, since that’s when he lived in Sweden, according to Wikipedia.
I’m being more nitpicky about this question because it actually seems like a really big deal to me if Tegmark cited this fact knowing that it wasn’t relevant evidence.
That is much harder for me to answer, since I am too young to know that. But I would also assume that he has not been completely isolated from Sweden since the 1980s, considering the fact that he has appeared in Swedish media from time to time and has family in Sweden. So to be nitpicky back, while modeling him as an average Swede today might not be correct, modeling him as an average one (or young one) in the 80s is probably not also correct.
I would also expect him to be a bit more interested in Swedish media than the average person since he has started a news aggregator for English language media, and as I wrote above has appeared in Swedish media from time to time. But maybe I am just projecting how I would think in his situation and he is not interested in the Swedish media landscape at all and only focuses on the American one since that is where he lives and works. Edit: and FLI was thinking of granting money to a Swedish org, so some interest in Swedish media has been shown from FLI at least.
Yep, agreed! I just wanted to acknowledge that if the Swedish government is doing something different now than it was doing in the 1980s, someone living overseas might be more likely to miss that. I don’t actually know if anything relevant has changed, so this is me asking about it, if anyone else knows.