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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: 2, Disagree) by khallow on Friday July 20 2018, @12:44PM (11 children)
I have little to say on the alleged classification, virulence, and contagiousness of bullshit except to say that it can be more humorous than the story claimed. You showed that.
Dark enlightenment [wikipedia.org] != libertarian. People willing to eschew democracy (a key tenet of the "Neoreaction" theory) aren't libertarian by definition. And it's worth mentioning that though apparently former libertarians have joined Neoreactionary theory, that doesn't mean the two theories are equivalent. People change their minds all the time. And some people hop around various ideologies. It doesn't mean that the past ideologies they dallied with are the same as the present ones.
Contrary to your assertion, being libertarian means accepting that others will have (not merely could have) different viewpoints, including viewpoints hostile to libertarianism. For example, the common tenet of non-initiation of force means that peaceful means to persuade others are acceptable while using the power of the state to compel others to superficially support ideological points is not. Neoreactionary theory on the other hand has the usual "I know best" condescension of many ideologies created in the past two centuries both with a strong dependence on merely asserting things (for example, at a glance I see that the Wikipedia article quotes an adherent as claiming aristocratic systems are more efficient than democratic or communist systems) and a willful ignorance of the various ways their ideology can break down in practice (such as ignoring the history of France prior to the French revolution).
Ultimately, it's the weakness of present day democratic systems that fuels ideologies like "dark enlightenment". So many are remarkably uninterested in solving the problems that power these movements.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday July 20 2018, @07:00PM (10 children)
How dare you sit here and post as if you aren't one of the major problems on this site. You've reduced yourself to nothing but Uzzard's echo-bot.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 20 2018, @07:22PM (2 children)
such a hateful wench
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday July 21 2018, @04:04AM
Aww, I'm sorry cupcake, did I make you cry? What is it like to be so weak that the words of a woman you've never even met, displayed on a screen, are so deeply hurtful to you?
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Saturday July 21 2018, @06:35PM
Well, khallow is just like that: a hateful, whiny wench.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday July 21 2018, @04:16AM (6 children)
Sorry, I too would like to think that it takes some sort of extraordinary courage to face down blowhards on the internets. But it doesn't.
Thank you for the promotion, but again, I must apologize. I think your idea of "problem" has been watered down to uselessness.
Well, he has done a bit more to earn my respect and we happen to be of similar outlook.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday July 21 2018, @05:53AM (5 children)
Thanks for illustrating my point so very nicely. The one good part about dealing with you self-satisfied jackoffs is you're always willing to double down on your own utter lack of basic humanity in public.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday July 21 2018, @11:55AM (4 children)
No problem. You're doing all the work.
Indeed. But who is showing the "utter lack of basic humanity"?
(Score: 3, Informative) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday July 21 2018, @04:53PM (3 children)
Uh, you are. Hallow, this "I know you are but what am I" game only works if the other person actually is in the wrong. You can try and play it, but anyone watching you and who's ever read your post history knows I'm spot-on about this. Which makes your behavior even worse, as it now also includes insulting the intelligence of every single person who reads your posts.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by khallow on Sunday July 22 2018, @12:21AM (2 children)
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday July 22 2018, @03:44AM (1 child)
No, there isn't, for the simple reason that we don't work anything alike. And, again, you can't win by accusing someone else of what you yourself are guilty of. I have my own faults, but they lie in being overly-serious and sometimes positively wrathful. This kind of human-Klein-bottle yoga posing isn't one of them.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday July 22 2018, @12:37PM
Indeed, we can see that right in this thread. Projection isn't about working alike. And just because you say that you recognize that we don't work alike doesn't mean that you actually do. Once again, words aren't actions.
In other words, being an immature brat who insists on entangling innocent people in their ridiculous narratives.