Comment by PlatoIsADisease

8 days ago

I remember this from literally 20 years ago.

Maybe the traffic made it not worth the cost?

And 'soft power'? Like lying about stats and using it for propaganda? Otherwise its just objective and someone else can do the work. For some reason I never attributed it to the US or CIA.

13 comments

PlatoIsADisease

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emsign  8 days ago

Under the current administration it wouldn't surprise me if they decided in their last budget cutting meeting to indiscriminately erase everything with the wildcard "fact" in the project's name.

woodruffw  8 days ago

“Soft power” refers usually to credibility. The point of the Factbook is to be a credible public resource for an entity that would otherwise not have much.

  • dragonwriter  8 days ago

    Credibility is not what soft power means, though they are related. Power is the ability to get other people to act in your interest. Hard power is when that is done through immediate, direct economic or military coercion. Soft power is everything else.

  • PlatoIsADisease  8 days ago

    In International Relations, my #1 or #2 hobby, credibility does not refer to soft power. (my number 1 hobby is philosophy)

    • jfyi  8 days ago

      Credibility is the core currency of soft power, whether one views its ultimate goal as manufacturing consent or fostering genuine cultural attraction. Without that perceived reliability, the indicator "soft" loses it's meaning.

      2 replies →

potatototoo99  8 days ago

You can make propaganda without lying, by choosing what metrics you value over others for example, by adding them or omitting them or implying whether a stat increasing is positive or negative.

  • wongarsu  8 days ago

    Also choosing which methodology is the "right" one to measure a specific number.

    There are lots of ways to measure ethnic groups, the size of the capital or the unemployment rate. If you publish the numbers you get to choose which one suits you best, you just have to be globally consistent