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Dangerous Bullshit

TedTed
edited February 2018 in Off-Topic
FYI: (Put your hip wadders on)

IT IS A TRUTH, widely believed if not universally acknowledged, that current American politics has an honesty problem. The epidemic of untruth is real and disturbing, but the standard diagnoses are suspect. We aren’t witnessing an unprecedented outbreak of lying. Another term is more appropriate: bullshit.
Regards,
Ted
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/dangerous-bullshit/#!

Comments

  • No hip wadders required, only an open mind.
  • edited February 2018
    That's damn good shit. It includes one of my favorite quotes, too--- from "A Man For All Seasons." "...For Wales, Richard? For WALES?" Paul Scofield was great in that. I just watched him last night in "The Train" with Burt Lancaster. The mathematician Clifford's argument is sound, insofar as we are dealing with 3 dimensions and physical, flesh and blood people and consequences. On the other hand, the reality and goodness of truths of a different sort, what may be generically called "The Humanities," are not the same sort of static, measurable things. Yet, we need THAT other sort of Truth, too. Today, there prevails what I call Science-olatry, which fits right in with Clifford's assertion. The value of the Humanities and of any sort of religious faith is belittled using such logic as Clifford's. (I do not want to lend legitimacy to a childish, naive faith, either, which is often indistinguishable from superstition.) The Truth is being crucified in our day. The way Kitcher finishes the article is perfect.
  • Ted, you're not saying you think this article is bullshit, are you ?
  • David, surely you jest.
  • edited February 2018
    The real bullshit tight now is going on in Florida. I’m willing to cut these foster parents some slack, since the kid moved in with them only last Thanksgiving. But how could you have “no idea“? Troubled boys that age send out sonic waves in all directions. Pretty hard not to sense something’s wrong.

    Don’t mean to place the blame. There’s more than enough to go around.

  • Mark said:

    David, surely you jest.


    Seems unlike Ted, but that aside, when someone tells me to don hip wadders [sic], I take it to mean to prepare to stomp through crap, material that is itself crap, not making an argument about it. No?
  • Good article.
  • Another take on the topic that this author calls "infoacoplyse":

    Article quote:
    The web and the information ecosystem that had developed around it was wildly unhealthy, Ovadya argued. The incentives that governed its biggest platforms were calibrated to reward information that was often misleading and polarizing, or both. Platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Google prioritized clicks, shares, ads, and money over quality of information, and Ovadya couldn’t shake the feeling that it was all building toward something bad — a kind of critical threshold of addictive and toxic misinformation. The presentation was largely ignored by employees from the Big Tech platforms — including a few from Facebook who would later go on to drive the company’s NewsFeed integrity effort.
    Article:
    https://buzzfeed.com/charliewarzel/the-terrifying-future-of-fake-news?utm_term=.ofMzWlvw4#.tv8Qe0RoA
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