Why Facts No Longer Matter
POSTED BY: Magonsdaughter
UPDATED: Sunday, June 16, 2024 02:43
VIEWED: 4546
PAGE 5 of 6
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For one, I don't think they are that cohesive or organised to do as such.
Remove the government. Would you call the results organized? A government of any particular region is the most organized... organization of that state, and is definitely going to be more organized than any public that might oppose them argument wise or warfare.
Whether your government is organized ENOUGH, I can't say, but the American government is, and if you have military like we do (you do) and counterintelligence like we do (you probably do) then you have the organization and the same two groups with the strongest motivation to control access to facts and information.
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I've worked in government here, and just don't think they have the will or capacity to do this on any national level.
Were you a policy-maker? If you weren't a policy maker, I don't expect anyone else working in a government to have any say in how that government is run. If you were a policy maker, congratulations, you might have been one of the rare honest ones.
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I also think that most people in government actually want the best for their country, it's just that often them and I disagree on what's best.
I'm half here, thinking policy makers are just well-intentioned extremists, and half thinking they're all just out for themselves.
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Well, shit, anywhere you got humans, you got bias, but still...
Compared to american "news", most foreign broadcasters are fairly impartial, the beeb and others are in fact a pretty good external source for stuff which'd never pass the filters of american media - which isn't to say there's no bias, but at least there's the pretense, while we don't even really pretend any more.
Kind of like how having a fat, lazy security gaurd in a little office at the front of an apartment complex actually DOES deter creepers a little bit, even though everyone knows his chances of catching any of em are about zilch - sometimes having the pretense is important.
So I don't think you two are actually in disagreement about the matter so much as simply having different perspectives about it cause of where your viewpoint is coming from.
-Frem
I do not serve the Blind God.
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But a pretense is still kind of a lie, isn't it? The appearance of effort without a result.
I'm not sure a lie which is just harder to see through is better than a blatant lie.
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This will explain it to you much better than I ever could, Byte.
-Frem
ETA: Will transcript, later - if I have time and you can't load the vid.
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Klesst... and you're a perfect example of how it is that facts don't matter.
Because the fact is that the neocons were around long before the Clintons.
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The problem is that human tendency to cling to old opinion in times of stress is one of those situations of "positive feedback"... like gravity and money, the more you have the more you have. People in power are able to manipulate by frightening their followers and thus gaining even more power. (Are you paying attention, Rappy? 'Cause you're a perfect example of someone who was frightened into supporting something you prolly wouldn't have otherwise.)
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Michigan’s Nyhan and a colleague devised an experiment in which participants were given mock news stories, each of which contained a provably false, though nonetheless widespread, claim made by a political figure: that there were WMDs found in Iraq (there weren’t), that the Bush tax cuts increased government revenues (revenues actually fell), and that the Bush administration imposed a total ban on stem cell research (only certain federal funding was restricted). Nyhan inserted a clear, direct correction after each piece of misinformation, and then measured the study participants to see if the correction took.
For the most part, it didn’t. The participants who self-identified as conservative believed the misinformation on WMD and taxes even more strongly after being given the correction. With those two issues, the more strongly the participant cared about the topic — a factor known as salience — the stronger the backfire. The effect was slightly different on self-identified liberals: When they read corrected stories about stem cells, the corrections didn’t backfire, but the readers did still ignore the inconvenient fact that the Bush administration’s restrictions weren’t total.
HOW do you break that cycle? One person at a time... waaaay too slow.
But as a matter of fact... facts DO matter. Being in denial about something (like global climate change or the frightening power of corporations) doesn't make it go away. In the end, facts will have their way. The fact that we have our collective heads stuck really far up our collective asses spells doom for this economy and this culture. When people get so far removed from real life they don't even see it anymore... well, they deserve what they get.
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Originally posted by SignyM:
HOW do you break that cycle?
By not teaching children that this is the way things were, are, and will always be.
Remember, in the end, Crazy Eddie always wins.
-Frem
I do not serve the Blind God.
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Originally posted by Bytemite:
These are good points.
I don't really trust that a legal requirement for impartiality is particularly enforceable, however. Impartial relative to what? How do they prove when a station is not being impartial? Clearly there are some statements under British Law which would not be impartial (and would also be offensive), like statements about the Holocaust. But what else?
I started a new thread to discuss this issue, but you can access the full broadcasting code (or just view the bullet point summary) here: http://www.independentproducerhandbook.co.uk/232/4f-due-impartiality/k
ey-points.html
As far as I can tell OFCOM responds to viewer complaints, and the requirements of 'impartiality' seem to be outlined in great detail, like other grey-area legal terms. I guess each broadcaster needs a lawyer to consult.
It's not personal. It's just war.
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People are stupid. But that's Ok, 'cause nature will bitchslap 'em back to reality. Or, into the grave. Whichever.
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Ah, but are we, people, not also part of nature ?
Cause I damn sure got a quick pimp hand when it comes to the bitchslappin!
-Frem
I do not serve the Blind God.
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