Our opinions have always been easily shaped by the media, mass entertainment and political campaigning. But lately it seems like there's less an ocean of information and more like a small puddle we're all trying to drink from at once. At the same time, the Overton Window seems to be slamming shut.
I have been suspecting this has all been a dress rehearsal for the societal changes that are coming soon to address climate change, a sort of "powering up" of the collective consciousness.
comments like this is for me a good signal that this whole climate change thing is just a front for something else.
Please note: I have no shares in fossil companies, I work for railway companies, I buy my stuff used and reuse and sort waste so much my wife gets crazy.
So I'm almost there already but for other reasons: I belive in ecology. Not wasting wildlife areas. Not polluting.
Climate? Anthropogenic changes?
Look at a globe. Put your fingers at the oil fields. Then think that all CO2 from these fields has to be spread out thin across the whole rest of the globe.
Or do something else: try to ask someone about some real numbers. I've been interested in those numbers.
I never get any numbers. I get dismissed rudely for using the "Just Asking Questions" tactic, a tactic I didn't know until I was told that I used it.
The only number I get is 2500 infallible scientists and as far as I now know a fair number of them weren't scientists but authors etc.
Who isn't?
The people that answered "I'm not" to that question, those people are the problem.
Let's get them fired, shamed, and ex-communicated.
Or what else, if they can't? They starve? Or I have to go to work and provide them food?
What exactly is your plan here?
Someone recommended that I supplement my news reading with newsprint from 20 years ago, just to get perspective on what matters and what doesn’t, and on how full of crap most of it is.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Crichton#GellMannAmnes...
I like to read international sources like DW, RT, Al Jazeera, and of course BBC. How do other countries want me to interpret current events?
Just go look at Infowars or Zerohedge for 5 minutes. I'm not sure what to tell you, if you come out of that thinking that they're not trying to take advantage of suckers.
If you read Matt Levine’s Bloomberg column (I highly recommend it) then you’ll eventually encounter a point he repeatedly makes about institutional investing: the best opportunities are always right at the edge of comfortable. Hidden gems tend to hang out in the same neighborhoods as outright frauds, metaphorically speaking.
I check ZeroHedge daily, not because I “trust” it as a news source, but in accordance with the principle I alluded to above: the really good stuff is probably going to be hidden among outright conspiracy theories and psyops. Most of the crap on ZH is just crossposts from various blogs anyway so it’s pretty easy to filter through it.
You recently said this to me:
”Part-time Portlander here! You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. Please stop basing your worldview on Infowars talking points.”
I’ve obviously never seen anything produced by infowars and this was a dismissive epithet, doing exactly the problem described here. You’re one of them. And my point you were responding to was objectively true.
"Whoever controls the media controls the mind" - Jim Morrison
Consider this: how frequently do you find the logical styles so common in this thread in threads where the topic is technology or things of that sort?
The collective narrative has existed in other media for as long as I've been alive. It's now invaded the internet.
People have always listened to the radio, watched cable news, read magazines to get talking points so they can repeat them and appear well informed and intelligent. To look good in front of others and convey status. People who counter the narrative are seen as low status, conspiracy theorists, cranks, disagreeable. My advice to anyone is to just repeat the narrative. I haven't and I have suffered. In the end, no one will remember that you were right. It's not worth it. Keep your contrary opinions to yourself or share them anonymous online, take positions to make money when you are proven right, but don't declare it. Unless your business is being counter narrative.
It's been a while but I think the chapter “WHAT MAKES A MESSAGE REPEATABLE? Techniques to Convince Others to Repeat Your Words” from the book “Impossible to Ignore.” by Carmen Simon discusses the science of how to make this happen.
I wrote about the change from a world of actual dialogue to one of mass media, here: https://simonsarris.substack.com/p/are-we-still-thinking
Would you mind sharing some examples, as well as the counterpoint arguments you add to the real life conversation?
I've seen claims like this before, and it almost always comes from people who get their news from places like Zerohedge or Infowars.
Ironically, their twitter account was banned precisely for reporting on the possibility that the virus was a lab leak:
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/zerohedge-twitter-ban-over-co...
A thread about how the mainstream media is eating crow over being so wrong here is not really the best place in the world for you to grind your axe with Zerohedge.
Also, what are info wars?
If you in good conscience think the above is at all similar to the current claim that the virus might have been an accidental leak, then there's no point in further engaging with you.
That was true in the sense that centre-left and centre-right points of view were expressed on all networks (by law because of the fairness doctrine), also because the cold war gave a broad framework for crafting a consensus within, consolidation of newspapers left only 1 or 2 major newspapers in most markets, and because the two parties were each much more ideologically diverse. There was a consensus, but it bounced around the centre, and on topics where there were large disagreements usually you could still count on people to at least be able to articulate the countering sides' views and why someone might hold them. There was a greater appetite for trying to figure out an issue by hearing the best arguments from the other side (watch old episodes of Firing Line on YouTube to get an idea of how it was).
When climate change first became an issue in the late eighties there were a wide range of opinions on it, even though people had no more expertise on the subject than they do now. But people had less confidence that their views were right and people with contrasting views were deplorable or had a secret agenda. Even in early naughts Gingrich and Pelosi did a commercial together about how it was an important issue [0], even though there were pro-growth republicans who didn't want to take action, and pro-labour democrats who wanted to preserve working class jobs that disagreed with them. It was more common to see someone's opinion move in the course of a conversation because the culture war lines weren't so sharply defined. Politicians also had less to gain by exploiting divisions because the structure of the political system rewarded politicians who could pull voters over the centre line instead of just firing up the base.
More than anything it was more acceptable to have heterodox views. You could be a pro-choice republican or pro-life democrat because on the balance you had more things in common with the party of you choice than you didn't. Did everyone have quixotic or unique views? No, but you didn't have to self-censor as often if you did. It was a lot easier to be intellectually curious and learn things from others.
The theory at the time was that the 500 channel universe and the internet would break the old consensus and there would be a whole universe of opinions available. But it seems that "the big sort", the weakening of the parties and strengthening of PACs through campaign finance reform, the modern primary system and how it allows activists to influence and take over the parties (which is really only 40 years old), filter bubbles and people discovering that they prefer not to read stuff they disagree with, and algorithmic newsfeeds that optimize for engagement (ie outrage and out-group homogenization)... all of that has formed 2 consensuses that are more doctrinaire because they are so clustered apart from each other.
It's increasingly uncommon for people to have many or any friends with different political ideologies than them. 50 years ago a majority of Americans said they would not be ok with their child marrying outside of their race now the vast majority are ok with it, but inter political marriage is the exact opposite with it becoming increasingly uncommon and socially unacceptable.
I tried to follow a range of non-political commentators over the last year, and always thought that lab leak was a hypothesis that couldn't be ruled out given what we know, but made a zoom birthday call go silent when I voiced that opinion because everyone on it was sure that only a right wing loon could consider such a thing. While there was persistent coverage of the hypothesis in alternate media like the Dark Horse podcast, and posts on medium by postdocs sticking their necks out, the liberal media seems to have committed epistemic closure on the topic, with the NY Times COVID reporter just yesterday bemoaned the hypothesis's "racist roots" [1] (despite, as Greenwald points out, that the wet market theory sounded a lot more racist than a mistake at an NIH funded lab). Even the NY Times' previous COVID reporter tried to excuse his blind spot by falsely claiming that the hypothesis was confined to right wing kooks. [2] Of course it's no more racist to blame the pandemic on a mistake made at an NIH funded lab than to blame it on wet markets, but once the lines were drawn it was more important to score short term points against the other side and never admit that someone like Tom Cotton, might have made a reasonable point.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qi6n_-wB154
[1] And the fact that she calls it a "theory" should discredit her as a science reporter https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1397623499888463872
[2] https://donaldgmcneiljr1954.medium.com/how-i-learned-to-stop...
Human nature being what it is, my unborn American great-grandson will feel he has little in common with any randomly-chosen Cambodian of his time, but the truth is that they'll listen to the same music, play the same video games, watch the same movies, argue across the same political spectrum, speak the same language, and get their education and news from an elite that is even more globally homogeneous than they are.
Whenever I talk to people about recent news stories in real life it feels like everyone is just repeating talking points they read online.
Its like we've been absorbed into the internet consciousness and talking to a person is like talking to "the internet brain".