on facebook my dialogue on re-count

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Jim B.
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Re: on facebook my dialogue on re-count

Post by Jim B. » Sat Dec 03, 2016 2:34 pm

Metacrock wrote:
that's right. Fox is nothing but propaganda it no news value. CNN is no better. NYT is good for a lot of things, but NYT backed Hillary,
You think CNN is no better than Fox? They're both corrupt but there are degrees and kinds of corruption. And the NYT is deeply entrenched in the center-left establishment-regime. They were adamantly pro our Vietnam involvement. But Painting everything with a broad brush is what rv hill is doing. It's lazy and kinda sloppy, imo. (I'm not accusing you of that ;) )

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Re: on facebook my dialogue on re-count

Post by sgttomas » Sat Dec 03, 2016 2:45 pm

Prophet Muhammad (God send peace and blessings upon him) is reported to have said, "God says 'I am as My servant thinks I am' " ~ Sahih Al-Bukhari, Vol 9 #502 (Chapter 93, "Oneness of God")

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Re: on facebook my dialogue on re-count

Post by Jim B. » Sat Dec 03, 2016 7:22 pm

sgttomas wrote:....that would be here: http://doxa.ws/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4637#p33553
What would be here? How does this relate to this thread?

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Re: on facebook my dialogue on re-count

Post by rvhill » Mon Dec 05, 2016 2:35 am

Jim B. wrote:
Metacrock wrote:
that's right. Fox is nothing but propaganda it no news value. CNN is no better. NYT is good for a lot of things, but NYT backed Hillary,
You think CNN is no better than Fox? They're both corrupt but there are degrees and kinds of corruption. And the NYT is deeply entrenched in the center-left establishment-regime. They were adamantly pro our Vietnam involvement. But Painting everything with a broad brush is what rv hill is doing. It's lazy and kinda sloppy, imo. (I'm not accusing you of that ;) )
I am not painting just stating facts

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Re: on facebook my dialogue on re-count

Post by sgttomas » Mon Dec 05, 2016 10:37 am

Jim B. wrote:
rvhill wrote:wait CNN MSN, Fox, NYT and the Washington post are not opinion? wait did you not watch the same last year that I just been watching?
I agree that they all have corporate/ideological agendas that bias their reporting. Doesn't mean there's no distinction at all between their editorial page and their front page. It's not that black and white. Otherwise they could say anything their bosses/stockholders wanted them to say and there'd be no negative consequences. The actual news organizations, unlike Fox, Drudge, etc, are loosely constrained by facts, even though they select and frame the facts in ways that benefit themselves and their shareholders. There's still this profession called journalism, just like there's a profession called medicine. My doctor is biased in favor of his bottom line, big pharma, insurance co.s etc, but that doesn't mean I'm gonna stop going to my doctor when I need to.

No, I haven't bought into that story for well over a decade now. Here's the why those outfits are not "journalism" either:

Because THEY decide what is NEWSWORTHY. <--- world view.

They reinforce your worldview with cherry picked stories. It doesn't matter how well "reported" they are. It's a fictive view of what's important, because you bought in (literally...you are a $$ stream) and they have a "perspective" of what's important.

It's bullshit.

Stop watching / reading that shit...unless you can do so in such a completely self-aware manner that you take it only for what it is: entertainment.

What's going on outside your door? What's happening in your neighbor's lives? How are your friends and family doing?

~*~Oh sure Ryan, but don't you think it's important to know about the national and international issues that affect our...~*~

NO! NOT IN THE SLIGHTEST. How can you consider that anything so broad and complex as that can be really *known* in any substantive way by watching tabloid news? It's ALL tabloid news and it's killing your spirit. Stop letting your ego and your lower desires fool you into believing that A) you actually understand any issue that reaches in scope beyond your neighborhood and B) that you are capable of understanding these issues even if you had perfect information. It's all just confirmation bias. And sure, 1% is actually something important and it sunk in with clarity and truth, but you don't know what that 1% is, and what good does it do you to understand 1% of what is going on in the world at large? Especially when you don't even know your neighbor's names (probably).

In that sense, rvhill is correct and you may as well listen to Mr. What's His Face talk about his opinions on Youtube. At least you know what you're getting there and there is no pretense (it's just entertainment, folks).

Peace,
-sgttomas
Prophet Muhammad (God send peace and blessings upon him) is reported to have said, "God says 'I am as My servant thinks I am' " ~ Sahih Al-Bukhari, Vol 9 #502 (Chapter 93, "Oneness of God")

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Re: on facebook my dialogue on re-count

Post by Jim B. » Mon Dec 05, 2016 3:18 pm

sgttomas wrote: No, I haven't bought into that story for well over a decade now. Here's the why those outfits are not "journalism" either:

Because THEY decide what is NEWSWORTHY. <--- world view.

They reinforce your worldview with cherry picked stories. It doesn't matter how well "reported" they are. It's a fictive view of what's important, because you bought in (literally...you are a $$ stream) and they have a "perspective" of what's important.

It's bullshit.
This is total bullshit. Of course I am the product as a viewer, and they get to pick the stories. That's corporate media where the news division is a profit center. But setting aside the profit motive for a moment, the news, at least tv and radio news in the US used to be a "lost leader" so that profitability did not exert direct or anywhere near the pressure it does today. Or state sponsored news media where profit isn't a direct issue. THEY still decide what is newsworthy in line with THEIR worldview. THIS IS WHAT JOURNALISM IS. There will always be a worldview, hidden assumptions, an agenda in all human communication. To take that trivial fact and then use it to level all distinctions between all information brokers is intellectually disingenuous at best. I'm being charitable here.
Stop watching / reading that shit...unless you can do so in such a completely self-aware manner that you take it only for what it is: entertainment.
You're using a chainsaw where a scalpel is needed. No distinction between a reporter embedded in the pipeline protest watching events unfold and CNN doing a 30 second segment on those protests or Fox doing a 10 second segment or a Hannity rant or Entertainment Tonight or an Infomercial or a schizophrenic's delusional word salad! I hear you well, George Orwell!
What's going on outside your door? What's happening in your neighbor's lives? How are your friends and family doing?
But I have an agenda and a worldview as do every one of my neighbors and family members. At least I claim to be dimly aware of my own biases so eventually I'm restricted to listening to the voices in my head.

NO! NOT IN THE SLIGHTEST. How can you consider that anything so broad and complex as that can be really *known* in any substantive way by watching tabloid news? It's ALL tabloid news and it's killing your spirit. Stop letting your ego and your lower desires fool you into believing that A) you actually understand any issue that reaches in scope beyond your neighborhood and B) that you are capable of understanding these issues even if you had perfect information. It's all just confirmation bias. And sure, 1% is actually something important and it sunk in with clarity and truth, but you don't know what that 1% is, and what good does it do you to understand 1% of what is going on in the world at large? Especially when you don't even know your neighbor's names (probably).
Right, so if a tropical storm is coming my way but it's still a thousand miles from here, why worry? The weather is also a profit center and part of the tabloid news. The loss of the ability to make relevant distinctions is the most important step in creating a populace that will be compliant with the establishment of tyranny.

By this logic, since I'm not a climatologist and am not able to interpret the raw data, I should pay no attention to that silly tabloid "climate change" bullshit. Of course the mainstream corporate media won't talk about it but many media are, and they all have agendas! I agree that it takes much more discernment now to be a responsible news consumer (I hate that word), and to be able to sift through the agendas of the various outlets, but without any media at all, there'd be precious little to sift through beyond gossip and rumor. It's seriously flawed and fucked up but what isn't?
Last edited by Jim B. on Mon Dec 05, 2016 3:30 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: on facebook my dialogue on re-count

Post by Jim B. » Mon Dec 05, 2016 3:26 pm

BTW, this is exactly what Trump is trying to do, to level all distinctions. It's all the "lying, crooked media." They're all the same. Anything they write about him is not to be trusted. Just read his tweets! The victor creates the truth. Same old authoritarian bullshit.

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Re: on facebook my dialogue on re-count

Post by sgttomas » Tue Dec 06, 2016 12:07 am

I am digging in my friend. Trench lines being drawn :mrgreen: :mrgreen:
Actually let me back track on something for a minute. The vulgarity and raw emotional tone that I took isn’t helping us come to terms. I’m sorry. I’m going to take a more measured and calm tone, because I would actually like to have a heart to heart.
Jim B. wrote:You're using a chainsaw where a scalpel is needed. No distinction between a reporter embedded in the pipeline protest watching events unfold and CNN doing a 30 second segment on those protests or Fox doing a 10 second segment or a Hannity rant or Entertainment Tonight or an Infomercial or a schizophrenic's delusional word salad! I hear you well, George Orwell!
You are trying to decipher where along a spectrum of information about a single story you need to draw the line between “informative” and “entertainment” and what I’m saying is that 99.9% of what is depicted as “news” is not newsworthy, including pipeline protest news by embedded reporters. It all constitutes noise that you force your brain and your emotional core to deal with. And if you are serious about the news, there is no end to it. So you arbitrarily parse the world simply by the accident of not being omniscient. You get a partial view (I mean, like 0.00000000000000000000001%) and try to synthesize that into something meaningful.

Current events are almost entirely unimportant. Shoot, I recently spouted off in another post about some people’s pronouns and in reality I will regret 50% or more of what I said there, simply because it turned out to be unimportant and I wasted a few hours of my life. I’m not immune to it, either.

And let’s turn back to pipelines and protests. What are you going to DO about it? Probably nothing, but you’ll feel that you have the right ideas about things, at least, and that will emotionally stabilize you from the chaos you willingly inflicted upon yourself. I’m contending that you are doing absolutely nothing good to yourself, nor anything virtuous in the world, by simply knowing about that story.

Basic tenets, foundational beliefs, core emotions. We try to extrapolate from that, but the more abstract and chaotic the moral puzzle, the more we do injustice by over simplifying the problem and ignoring the things that don’t confirm our biases. Most of that plays out sub/unconsciously.

Be honest, you probably aren’t going to do anything beyond retweeting a few stories and displaying some moral outrage about the North Dakota pipeline (or whatever pipeline it is that’s bothering you). And if you do? What about the umpteen million other "worthy" causes that you'll hear about, or those that you AREN’T hearing about? On the balance of things, which are more important? (hey Jim, it’s all of us, so don’t take what I’m saying the wrong way)

If you pledged not to watch even 1 minute of news for the next year you would be happier, you would be more productive, you would have deeper relationships with the people you love and you may find that if something important does come to your attention, you have the emotional resources to do something about it at that point.

Do you think that you will become more emotionally stable, less wasteful of your time, more impactful with your actions, and less driven by your ego if you watched MORE news and informed yourself of MORE things about the world? You got caught up into one story because it had a good hook and you invested. What good did it do for you?
I think you’re claiming that it is fighting back the forces of tyranny who want to pull the wool over our eyes. But what about the tyranny of your own soul?

What about the imposed impotence to actually FIGHT BACK TYRANNY when a person’s emotional core is exhausted from the trauma of watching horrible events unfold around the world all the time? You’re going to say that *this* is a false dichotomy I’m setting up. Sure. On paper. In the real world you have a limited amount of time, a limited amount of emotional resources, and an extremely limited ability to understand complex systems (which is all you will encounter when the number of factors exceeds about, oh I dunno, 4?).

So in reality it is not a false dichotomy because you are going to be paralyzed by the news into nonaction on nearly every damn atrocity and injustice you will ever hear about.
Right, so if a tropical storm is coming my way but it's still a thousand miles from here, why worry? The weather is also a profit center and part of the tabloid news. The loss of the ability to make relevant distinctions is the most important step in creating a populace that will be compliant with the establishment of tyranny.
The very first tyranny is that no one really takes confirmation bias seriously.

You aren’t saying anything in favour of reading/watching the news, but rather of investing one’s self deeply into critical analysis!

If I live in a place with repeated tropical storms I either A) have the necessary precautionary measures at the ready as soon as storm season is on the horizon, B) I MOVED… BECAUSE TROPICAL STORMS!!! lol. I’m not waiting for the goddamn news to tell me when I need to get prepared for a storm. I remember a song from my childhood:

~*~Don’t build your house on the sandy land, don’t build it too near the shore. It might be kinda nice, but you’ll have to build it twice, oh you’ll have to build your house once more. You gotta build your house upon a rock! Find a good foundation on a solid spot. Oh the storms may come and go…

….but the peace of God, you will know.~*~ (OMG!!!! PSALTY THE SINGING SONGBOOK!!!! AAAAAAHHAHAHAHAHHA YYEESSSS!!!! SUPER AWESOME!!!! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2Q_6srXLfE)

Building that peace of God in your heart will allow you to overcome any tyranny and have patience through any trouble. How in God’s holy Name does the news contribute to that at all? Dammit Jim! Wake up! You're a man of God!!!!!

And there IS a storm coming. I feel incredibly strongly that 10 years from now our world is going to be drastically different and many of our lives will be altered in bad ways. It’s not possible to still one’s self against the myriad of factors that loom on the horizon. The world is far too complex and interconnected now to do so. The vast majority of people could not buffer their way through a single week of basic services being disrupted (power, food, water) and there are too many things that have the potential to cause disruption on a large scale. The news doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface and only harps on a few in very superficial ways. It will, however, bombard you with emotionally damaging and soul crushing images, sounds and words that are doing real damage to your psyche and are really, actually, literally impeding you from acting towards instilling the peace of God. (I accuse my self first and foremost in all of this)

Do you remember the image of that dead boy laying face down in the surf? He was some migrant refuge or something? Remember how that was going to galvanize the world? How it was so important? How self congratulatory people were that they were witnesses to injustice. Nothing.

It. Changed. Nothing.

It. Meant. Nothing.

And we've all forgotten about it. But deep down it did a little bit of trauma and made the next such image a little more innocuous.

I still don't think I've seen that image...maybe I did. I tried very hard to avoid it.

And I’m not saying that you ought to be completely uninformed about the world. I’m saying that every minute you spend in the news is robbing you of time you could be spending actually sharpening your critical thinking, deepening your relationships, shoring up your emotional resolve, and bring peace to you soul....which when it really does come time to oppose tyranny will be your strength and your orientation.
By this logic, since I'm not a climatologist and am not able to interpret the raw data, I should pay no attention to that silly tabloid "climate change" bullshit. Of course the mainstream corporate media won't talk about it but many media are, and they all have agendas! I agree that it takes much more discernment now to be a responsible news consumer (I hate that word), and to be able to sift through the agendas of the various outlets, but without any media at all, there'd be precious little to sift through beyond gossip and rumor. It's seriously flawed and fucked up but what isn't?
Well, actually yes, I would precisely advise you to immediately ignore every single news article about climate change from now until the end of your life. And I can't imagine it doing you, or the world, any harm. I simply don't think you have the time, energy, or background to adequately understand the issue, then learn practical skills that can have impactful change. Or, actually, you CAN do ALL of that by simply following your grandparent's wisdom to waste less, save for the future, and work hard. That's sufficient.

But regarding the news, if a person does want to get informed about an issue there is a certain way to incorporate information like this. You can parse the news by quickly sampling about a dozen articles and reading as little of it as possible. Look for jargon and names. That jargon and those names can link you up with “think” pieces by other people, who will be slightly less ignorant than you, but ignore all of their conclusions and again, parse their work as quickly as possible. They will introduce you to certain “insider” terminology and information about the sources of the news item. With that terminology you can search out academic pieces that also use those terms. With that information, you can understand the basic competencies you need to critically understand the subject. Then you set about educating yourself in those basic competencies (which would require hours of study at a university level). You do this by directly referencing basic research and first hand accounts / data as much as you possible can. And if you can’t do that? You won’t ever know something adequately enough to be knowledgeable. (To actually have an opinion might take years more work in order to develop an expertise.) Sometimes I get lucky in an area of engineering knowledge because I will find a body of standards that embodies all of that work into actionable and practical measures. But outside of engineering I don't see too many options for such shortcuts, because the work isn't subjected to actual real world tests that force it to conform to reality.

You clearly cannot do that for more than one or two pieces of news per year. So what are you really doing with “the news”, then? What do you really know? How do you know which one of those million really really really important stories deserves critical analysis? As I said at the start, by the simple fact of you not being omniscient you’re left with a pitifully meager portion of information about the world. So why are you watching the news? Either entertainment, or to confirm your biases and placate your discordant soul (in the same way that candy placates your appetite).

On a principled basis we can act, but you don't get principles from the weather network, you get noise and confusion.

I’m pretty certain that life 10 years from now is going to be drastically different, and this change may come as a result of Trump, or probably it will come from somewhere else. What we need to do is turn back to God. That isn't an expression of powerlessness. There is no power and no ability except by God. And without the peace of God, built upon a firm foundation, we won't have the emotional resolve, or the intellectual faculties, to really invest ourselves in the one or two good things that we can do that may have an impact beyond our immediate surroundings. And more important than that would be a million small acts of kindness. Just live your life, but be a better human. It actually works. But not if you're firing up the cylinders of opposing tyranny by being really outraged at Trump's latest tweet. It causes dischord in your heart that isn't earned. It's emotional manipulation and you're doing it to yourself.

What is the transhuman movement going to inflict upon the world in the next 10 years? What are genetically engineered organsisms going to do? What are destabilized nations the world over going to lash out with? What is the massive debt/inflationary calamity that we are staring down the barrel at going to do? …there is an endless list of tyrannies and disasters that we are facing and if you want to be serious about the news then I’m going to call you to action and really pay attention to EVERY DAMNED IMPORTANT thing that will be said on those topics and the hundred other things that pose serious threats to humanity. But what are you doing to yourself? What do you hope to gain from that? Not hope, that’s for certain.

Satan is real. God is real. Let’s get real about that. What does a moral life demand of us? It ain’t watching news, it’s action and contemplation. But it’s principled action, and it’s true action, and both of those require tremendous investment in fighting back the tyranny of our own souls. And contemplation requires stillness and an absence of chaos in one's soul.

I think my neighbor would have been a great president. Write her in on your ballot next time, if you like her too. Anything else is compromising your principles (or ought to have been) because the “ends justify the means” <---- now THAT’S that path to tyranny if I’ve ever heard one.

Peace,
-sgttomas
Prophet Muhammad (God send peace and blessings upon him) is reported to have said, "God says 'I am as My servant thinks I am' " ~ Sahih Al-Bukhari, Vol 9 #502 (Chapter 93, "Oneness of God")

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Re: on facebook my dialogue on re-count

Post by Jim B. » Tue Dec 06, 2016 4:43 pm

sgttomas wrote:I am digging in my friend. Trench lines being drawn :mrgreen: :mrgreen:
Actually let me back track on something for a minute. The vulgarity and raw emotional tone that I took isn’t helping us come to terms. I’m sorry. I’m going to take a more measured and calm tone, because I would actually like to have a heart to heart.
Come, come, now, my good man. Don't be reticent! :)
You are trying to decipher where along a spectrum of information about a single story you need to draw the line between “informative” and “entertainment” and what I’m saying is that 99.9% of what is depicted as “news” is not newsworthy, including pipeline protest news by embedded reporters. It all constitutes noise that you force your brain and your emotional core to deal with. And if you are serious about the news, there is no end to it. So you arbitrarily parse the world simply by the accident of not being omniscient. You get a partial view (I mean, like 0.00000000000000000000001%) and try to synthesize that into something meaningful.
Well, I would question whether meaningfulness is a quantifiable thing. I never am able to know more than a tiny fraction of the raw informational data about anything, and yet I can still draw meaning (sometimes) from what I experience, imo.
Current events are almost entirely unimportant. Shoot, I recently spouted off in another post about some people’s pronouns and in reality I will regret 50% or more of what I said there, simply because it turned out to be unimportant and I wasted a few hours of my life. I’m not immune to it, either.
It's at least encouraging to read that you're making some distinctions (I hope). Some current events are not entirely unimportant(?)

Let's start with the recent US election. I would contend that the outcome of that election was entirely and extremely NOT unimportant, not only for me. The results will probably determine the make-up of the US Supreme Court for the next 30 years at least, the direction the US takes regarding climate, war with Iran and other countries, the state of the global economy, etc. I happen to think it's vitally important for US citizens to try as best they can to responsibly inform themselves. How do we do this other than through news outlets? And I agree that confirmation bias is always a problem, not just with the news but with all beliefs, but that doesn't mean I shouldn't try to gain knowledge just because I have a strong inclination to confirm what I already believe. People's beliefs do change in light of reason and other evidence. Bias doesn't equal determinism.

Trying to inform oneself is a necessary part of being a responsible citizen in a democracy. Jefferson thought it's the cornerstone, in fact. What I learn about current events can and does have a very real impact on my actions, as in who and what I vote for, where I live, if I vote at all, what groups I affiliate with, where I shop, how I allocate my time and other resources. I may go to a city council or school board meeting based on what I've learned. Heck, I may run for school board or city council.

I agree that the news can have a pornographic lurid kind of draw, that you can be swept up into the sensationalistic aspect. There can be a lot of voyeuristic sadism involved. It can be very upsetting, very seductive, if you let it be. A few points: Life itself is very discordant and chaotic and ego-stoking, especially life today with the total media-immersion, social media etc. Unless one resolves to be a recluse, then that seduction will pull at all of us everyday. So it can't be just a question of exposure but mainly one of spiritual resolve and equilibrium. Be in the world but not of it. One can use gadgets all day and still not buy into the cult of technique. Secondly, people have had discordant souls forever, long before what we think of as the media was around. "Isolates" are not generally the most tranquil, harmonized of folks. Look at Ted Kazinsky. Third, we can't always use our own "bliss-index" to determine what's right and wrong. Often, the right thing to do, even spiritually, is very hard. And the consequences of ignorance, especially politically, can be far more upsetting and chaotic than what results form the evening news. Sometimes social and collective action doesn't bear immediate spiritual fruit.

We all have to act all the time on issues that can have major impacts on us and others. Where I live, what career i choose, who I marry, whether or not to have kids, their schooling, healthcare choices, on and on, have momentous consequences even tho I can never have more than a tiny and selective sliver of information to guide me. Think of a jury. We are all jurors, whether we like it or not, and those who reject that assignment automatically defer their opinion to others. That's the "thrownness" of living in civil society, the 'social contract' which is a myth but a meaningful one. We the jurors can never ahve more than the most superficial info on what we're deciding on, and instead of one prosecutor and one defense atty, there are hundreds, thousands. We have to sift through what's available and come to the best decision we can, not just regarding the news but all of our life decisions. Whether we abdicate or not, we still decide, except that the one abdicating is leaving it to others.

As far as the Pipeline protest, there are many ways it could affect my actions. I may contribute money or food etc to the protesters. I may go up there myself (unlikely, but several thousand have already), I will definitely learn more about it, more about the people effected, their culture and history. I'll want to know what candidates for office believe about it. It could affect my vote or encourage me to vote in the first place. But If you're asking for what is the immediate 'cash value' to knowledge, that's a direction you're probably not going to want to go down. ;)

As far as news impacting people's behavior, it happens all the time. Look at the Pizzagate guy in DC! :shock: Hell, even single news images have had major impacts. Images of burn victims in Hiroshima had a major stimulus on the ban the bomb movement, and the self-immolating monk on the Vietnam protests and the picture of Emmett Till on the Civil Rights movement.

Getting back to Pizza Gate, the fact that we can distinguish between "fake" and "real" news does suggest tthat there's some room for nuance and disctintion. And it's not necessarily a distinction between lying and bias. The Pizza Gate source, if there was just one, may not have been purposely lying but reporting something they thought was true. What I'm saying is that news can't ALL be Pizza Gate. That would be tantamount to fostering an epistemic vacuum just waiting for the most powerful authoritarian force to swoop in and fill. "There are no facts" as a Trump surrogate recently said. Facts are what "we" say, whatever flatters the leader and his ideas. There has to be a reason why the press is the first thing that strong men have to neutralize and co-opt when they come to power or as they're gaining power.

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Re: on facebook my dialogue on re-count

Post by sgttomas » Wed Dec 07, 2016 11:57 am

Jim B. wrote:Well, I would question whether meaningfulness is a quantifiable thing. I never am able to know more than a tiny fraction of the raw informational data about anything, and yet I can still draw meaning (sometimes) from what I experience, imo.
Jim, I'm not trying to engage in some esoteric ~*~*let's re-evaluate the nature of reality and the words we use~*~* kind of discussion here. I'm trying to appeal to a deep and abiding sentiment that God has given us, but that we obscure with noise.

The other aspect is how we are as biological entities, and how essentially irrational, emotional, and self-deluded we are.

We are meaning making machines. (I hate that expression) We can make "sense" out of anything. Most of it isn't really as great as we think, if we were to see it through, or see the big picture. It just happens, automatically. When we are bombarding ourselves with a constant stream of chaos we are not capable of drawing valid conclusions. It happens too quickly, and it triggers too many confirmation bias emotions and automatic thought patterns inside of us.
sgttomas wrote: Current events are almost entirely unimportant. Shoot, I recently spouted off in another post about some people’s pronouns and in reality I will regret 50% or more of what I said there, simply because it turned out to be unimportant and I wasted a few hours of my life. I’m not immune to it, either.
It's at least encouraging to read that you're making some distinctions (I hope). Some current events are not entirely unimportant(?)
That's not what I'm saying. I'm acknowledging that I get caught up in current events despite not seeking out the news in any capacity. A friend told me about the story and it sounded interesting. It *IS* interesting to me. There are threads of arguments that I started picking at back in my university days and it's fascinating for me to re-evaluate them now. But I really don't think it's important *as news*.

...I mentioned my friend told me about this story. Well, I'm not denying a person find out ANY information about the outside world. I'm asking you to consider the way that you access it and in what quantities. See, I'm still engaged in this story, and yes, it happens to still be making some "news" but it won't in another month...and I'll still be working my way through some of the questions and issues. You will find out the important things in life from the social circles you have, and I do NOT mean Facebook. That's just another news media, and it's a particularly insidious and revolting kind.
Let's start with the recent US election. I would contend that the outcome of that election was entirely and extremely NOT unimportant, not only for me. The results will probably determine the make-up of the US Supreme Court for the next 30 years at least, the direction the US takes regarding climate, war with Iran and other countries, the state of the global economy, etc. I happen to think it's vitally important for US citizens to try as best they can to responsibly inform themselves. How do we do this other than through news outlets?
The most important thing is occurring right now beyond the realm of news and without anyone's knowledge, save maybe one or a few persons. 10 years from now it's going to obliterate 20% of civilization and upend the entire world into chaos. But go ahead, worry about Supreme Court elections....I didn't know you were on the Senate sub committee of whateverthenameis who will be making those decisions. :shock: LITERALLY! The moment has passed. The decision is done, in that sense. Do you have ANY impact on those policy decisions. Do you have ANY influence. How can something that you have no power to affect, have no influence to shape, have no voice to be heard actually be "important" in any sense?

How can you adequately inform yourself of even one of those issues? You're talking about climate change....I'm vastly more knowledgeable in that area than you and I don't see it with any concern whatsoever that the general public become "informed"....because they cannot. In a very, very complex world it's just the ego and ideological simplification that makes you think you even can attempt to understand any of those issues. I'm not saying avoid trying to learn about them, but why not go read a book about the history of the Supreme Court? ...or, if you want to be more entertained, subscribe to the podcast More Perfect. I don't have a problem with that. I subscribe to a few podcasts that I suppose are based on current events. Some of them are just entertaining, while others give me the door to open should I choose to follow it. But it's a very limited stream and it already comes with quite a bit more "clothing" than the news cycle can. I told you about my paradigm for taking a piece of information and becoming informed about it. I'm not telling you to bury your head in the sand, I'm saying that you're running around like a dog in an offleash park if you watch the news. Just one excitement to the next. It isn't noble.

Your argument - in my reading of it - is that it is important to draw false conclusions about things. Let's pick apart one of your "informed beliefs" about the world that has been programmed into you by the chaos and emotional turmoil of the news. Let's talk about climate change, specifically coal -vs- photovoltaics. Do you have an "informed belief" about it?
As far as the Pipeline protest, there are many ways it could affect my actions. I may contribute money or food etc to the protesters. I may go up there myself (unlikely, but several thousand have already), I will definitely learn more about it, more about the people effected, their culture and history. I'll want to know what candidates for office believe about it. It could affect my vote or encourage me to vote in the first place. But If you're asking for what is the immediate 'cash value' to knowledge, that's a direction you're probably not going to want to go down. ;)

As far as news impacting people's behavior, it happens all the time. Look at the Pizzagate guy in DC! :shock: Hell, even single news images have had major impacts. Images of burn victims in Hiroshima had a major stimulus on the ban the bomb movement, and the self-immolating monk on the Vietnam protests and the picture of Emmett Till on the Civil Rights movement.
I am precisely saying that the news affects people's behavior. I'm asking you to think critically about how that process actually occurs, and to be honest with yourself about how well informed you really are, and if you wanted to be adequately informed about any serious and complex issue just how much time and energy would you have to invest into it?

Why are you in support of the protestors? I think they could be doing tremendous harm to society. On the balance of things, it would be better to have the pipeline proceed. Eminent Domain exists because of the greater needs of society and demands personal sacrifice from the few who are affected. ~*~*~*CAVEAT: I'm saying this for the sake of argument, but I could probably make a good argument and I may actually find that I do believe this...I haven't looked into it though~*~*~*

When this thing passes from the news cycle in a few weeks (let's say), how long will you hold onto the memory of it when it comes to the next election cycle? Maybe you have a big bookmarked list of every news story and how you feel about it. Perhaps you then rank those stories in terms of importance to you. Maybe you then go through that list with whatever candidate publishes about their position (which may or may not reflect their actual beliefs, or be indicative of their future actions). I'd like to see how "informed" you would sound in a conversation with experts from each of those fields.

What would be different from ignoring everything and simply evaluating the candidate based on what they say they are going to do. If something strikes you as important, look into it sufficiently to be knowledgeable, such that you could speak to the issue if posed questions by a panel of experts and have them provide critical comments on your answers that are actually relevant to the issue....and not just a frustrated *eye roll*, such as you get when you read a post from The Pixie. <-- to me, you sound like The Pixie in terms of climate change. You heard some stuff, it kinda makes sense in your mind, and to a person who is knowledgeable it's clearly not based on knowledge but on conjecture and emotion.
Getting back to Pizza Gate, the fact that we can distinguish between "fake" and "real" news does suggest tthat there's some room for nuance and disctintion. And it's not necessarily a distinction between lying and bias. The Pizza Gate source, if there was just one, may not have been purposely lying but reporting something they thought was true. What I'm saying is that news can't ALL be Pizza Gate. That would be tantamount to fostering an epistemic vacuum just waiting for the most powerful authoritarian force to swoop in and fill. "There are no facts" as a Trump surrogate recently said. Facts are what "we" say, whatever flatters the leader and his ideas. There has to be a reason why the press is the first thing that strong men have to neutralize and co-opt when they come to power or as they're gaining power.
Here is the real issue. This world is so utterly, vastly beyond our ability to understand in any sufficient detail to be knowledgeable except for one or two things. Everything else is just superficial gloss, and you're lying to yourself. There are very, very few facts. It's almost entirely opinion. Trump is right in that sense. He's also a villain. I consider him to be one of Satan's minions. I'm not terribly enthused about how his vulgar words and opinions about Muslims are causing reverberations of hatred and lies that impact on my brothers and sisters.

There are facts, they just come with tremendous effort. I'm forced to confront this reality all the time. I (**edit** delete: "live") work in a highly simplified environment where nearly everything is placed under restrictive control to reduce the complexity and provide a means to predict the outcomes.....and I can spend weeks trying to validate the simplest of statements to determine if it is a "fact" or not. What happens is that most of your "informed beliefs" from the news are never put through a rigorous examination. They agglomerate into a simplified ideology that appears to give you complete coverage of an issue, but that's only because you never dig deeply to inspect it for accuracy. And you cannot do that if you are constantly subjecting yourself to the churn and emotional manipulation of the news. Your biology forces you into accepting those simplifications. You're telling me that you need to follow the news to be an informed citizen, and I'm telling you that you are almost entirely an ignorant citizen (and I'll back that up) and you are being emotionally manipulated, by yourself, and yes, by moneyed interests.

In the real world that does not pause for us to consider our actions, there are very few facts.

But there is wisdom. Wisdom dictates that Trump is a terrible, horrible, awful result. Really awful. It's scares me. It really does. Stop watching the news. You need to prepare yourself for what's coming.

Peace,
-sgttomas
Prophet Muhammad (God send peace and blessings upon him) is reported to have said, "God says 'I am as My servant thinks I am' " ~ Sahih Al-Bukhari, Vol 9 #502 (Chapter 93, "Oneness of God")

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