Why do opinions need a place to go? Why can't we just demonize professionals who lack the ability to report factual content without mixing in their opinions as unfit to be writing?
Because expert opinions are sometimes the only data available. "What will computer architecture look like in 20 years?" Clearly there's no factual content to answer that question, but I would argue that it's still an interesting question to ask an expert.
Warp Drive is impossible? So never ever write about it or you are an evil person spreading false information?
Speculation is also about looking to the future, 'what might be possible'. These are opinions.
And. 'A Lot' of people confuse raw data with 'facts'. Every single paper or news report is taking 'raw data' and 'figuring out what it means'.
So, there is always bias, but also it is impossible to report anything without trying to 'infer' information out of the raw data. There is no such thing as 'just report the facts'.
I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness...
The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance”
Or maybe that cycle of the inferior by circumstance work hard to become the superior and displace the complacent superior. “history is filled with the sound of silken slippers going downstairs and wooden shoes coming up.”.
Yes, but Laura Helmuth is irrational. In her parting rant she decried the “racism” and “sexism” of half the country and invoked “the moral arc of the universe.” Is she speaking from rationality, or is that religion?
> Yes, but Laura Helmuth is irrational. In her parting rant she decried the “racism” and “sexism” of half the country
It's not half, but it's pretty clear that everyone who voted for Donald Trump is _at least_ fine with racism and sexism, which makes them easy to accuse of sexism and racism if nothing else by association. (In case you're wondering why, this is a guy convicted for sexual abuse, probable pedophile, including against his daughter, publicly admitted to multiple instances of sexual abuse; regularly demonises whole groups of people based on their provenance/ethnicity, such as the Haitians eating cats and dogs nonsense. It's impossible anyone voted for him without knowing at least one of those).
Did you vote for or do you support the "opposite team"? Because if your standard is "easy to accuse of 'ism' based on association", you might be in for a rude shock.
I'm not American nor do I live in the US. The mere fact that there are only two teams, and everything has to be the opposite (oh, you don't support X? you must be from party Z because they hate X, and if they hate it, I love it!) even if it's basic scientific facts is infuriating.
And one of the teams is actively racist and sexist, has shown a blatant disregard for rules, norms laws and ethics, and now has full power over all branches of government. There's no scenario this ends well in the long term, and it's sad to look at from across the pond.
You can't make people rational after their education, that's the whole insanity of all this: education is the key, critical thought, not creating gullible fools. But religion and many political ideologies depend upon gullible people or they would not exist, so the powerful members of those tribes impel society (for the children!) to denigrate education to produce morons. The United States is filled with them, they may have graduate degrees but they can't logically identify a con man.
Simple advertising too. It is a constant reinforcer of subconscious anti-rational thought.
Even if you imagine you never buy anything due to exposure to advertising, advertising is still hammering away, with its manipulative motivated based impressions on our minds.
If some source of information is worth consuming, at least for me it is worth paying to consume without advertisements if that is an option.
The fact that YouTube video advertising isn’t scratching the chalkboard level unacceptable to many people is all the evidence I need to know they have been deeply impacted by ad programming.
I agree that there seems to be, on the whole, a downward trend of educated, critically thinking populace. The statistics and anecdotes align to make this clear. But I struggle to pick the cause. Certainly I don’t buy into the idea that there are rooms of politicians and school board members discussing how to keep the population uneducated.
Behind every outcome is an incentive. So what do you think is the incentive that’s behind the decline?
Realize first that there is no single incentive, there is a diversity of incentives to "let others do it", "let others worry about it" and various other variations of "let others...". A nearly helpless person is good for business, a frightened with money person is also good for business, and a reasoned careful, informed consumer is not good for business. These basic truths end up running nearly all of society, which creates the drive to prevent consumers from ever becoming discriminating informed and critically aware in virtually all things they are not paid to be "the expert".
