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Aeon has an interesting article on bullshit:
We live in the age of information, which means that we also live in the age of misinformation. Indeed, you have likely come across more bullshit so far this week than a normal person living 1,000 years ago would in their entire lifetime. If we were to add up every word in every scholarly piece of work published prior to the Enlightenment, this number would still pale in comparison with the number of words used to promulgate bullshit on the internet in the 21st century alone.
If you find your head nodding, start shaking it. I’m bullshitting you.
Ha! I knew it!
How could I possibly know how much bullshit you have come across this week? What if you’re reading this on a Sunday? Who is a ‘normal’ person living 1,000 years ago? And how could I know how much bullshit they had to deal with?
It was very easy to construct this bullshit. Once I set out to impress rather than inform, a burden was lifted from my shoulders and placed onto yours. My opening statements could very well be true, but we have no way of knowing. Their truth or falsity were irrelevant to me, the bullshitter.
[...] In his book, On Bullshit (2005), Frankfurt noted that ‘most people are rather confident of their ability to recognise bullshit and to avoid being taken in by it’. However, more than 98 per cent of our participants rated at least one item in our bullshit receptivity scales to be at least somewhat profound. We are not nearly as good at detecting bullshit as we think.
So, how might you – the reader – vaccinate yourself against it? For a non-spiritualist, it might be relatively easy to recognise when Chopra or Oz are concerned less with the truth than selling books or entertaining viewers. But think back to my opening paragraph. Bullshit is much harder to detect when we want to agree with it. The first and most important step is to recognise the limits of our own cognition. We must be humble about our ability to justify our own beliefs. These are the keys to adopting a critical mindset – which is our only hope in a world so full of bullshit.
(Score: 3, Informative) by c0lo on Thursday July 19 2018, @11:33PM (7 children)
Aaaand...?!
E.g. why is the immediate reaction "I believe it because I have no evidence to the contrary"? What makes something to "sound right"?
(my upbringing in that East European communist country - apologies to mention it again - taught me exactly the contrary. In the everyday life, the acceptance would have been a survival impediment. Even the secret police needed to play long term games to entrap someone and "justify" their existence)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 20 2018, @12:09AM (2 children)
Santa never brought you presents ..?
(Score: 2) by jelizondo on Friday July 20 2018, @12:28AM
He was a commie... commies don't get no presents.
(Score: 3, Funny) by c0lo on Friday July 20 2018, @12:28AM
He tried. Once.
At 3-4 years age, I ran away crying scared of somebody with a large something white on his face and dressed in red, that my parents let inside the home.
After that, only my parents brought me presents
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Friday July 20 2018, @05:24AM (3 children)
Incidentally, Sean Carroll, physics bod extrordinaire and skeptic, has just started an audio podcast where he chats with people mostly about fields he's only familiar with, rather than hardcore guru in. His first episode was about this very topic. Easy to find on youtube.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 4, Insightful) by c0lo on Friday July 20 2018, @05:06PM (2 children)
If this would be the only way to accept bullshit, it wouldn't be that bad - after all, one should have enough control over oneself to apply corrections.
But... what if is there something more? Something you, as an individual, can't control?
A very hypothetical example... what if the trolls convince a lot of people that "objective reality does not exist, there's only narratives"? How do you think the individuals of a society structured like this will behave? I mean, look, isn't the "bullshit creation" the next "logical" step an individual that accepted "no reality, there's only narratives" will take?
"You aren't bound by reality, you're free to choose which bullshit serves you better, here and now, accept it and start producing it. There's no global warming, it's only a narrative. Social protection doesn't have societal value, it's for weaklings; you are strong, you have the freedom to create your own narrative, the Constitution guarantees your right to narrate.
Don't worry, if the narrative you chose doesn't serve you for long, you are free to change it later, remember? there's no reality."
I wonder how long can a rational person can resist to a deluge of bullshit until it becomes impossible to discern the objective reality? (there is a point where quantity becomes a quality on its own)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Saturday July 21 2018, @05:36PM (1 child)
Any information obtained through human communication -- the written or spoken word or really any human produced audio or visual media can now be completely falsified, rewritten, hidden or destroyed, such that it would be impossible to determine its truth or falsehood unless there still exist other forms of evidence that can be examined.
Barring some kind of nervous system implants or holographic projections, we'll still be able to go and see things first hand or perform our own science experiments to establish true facts. The trouble is, you could spend a lifetime trying to conduct such investigations on your own and hardly get anywhere. If the bullshit becomes so ubiquitous that there are no longer any trusted institutions, where do you find trustworthy scientists to cooperate with?
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday July 22 2018, @01:44AM
Create new institutions and systems. It's not that hard. There's already a variety of systems that are resistant to trolls and other sorts of defection, fraud, etc.