Thursday, May 31, 2018

The Internet Outrage Industry™ is Working Overtime...

to melt your mind and make you stupid.

How much craziness are we expected to wallow in before completely shutting down?

I suggest we've reach peak shut down on our outrage meters.

While I mulled over the current state of the internet, Francis Porretto jumped into the void with his post What Becomes The Thinker and does a masterful job of putting "truth" on trial - and we thank him.
     To do anything of consequence, thinking included, we must make certain assumptions. The first of these is the assumption that the evidence of our senses is trustworthy. Thinking – the use of data to formulate abstractions and reach further conclusions from the use of those abstractions – requires data. Moreover, the data must be reliable: an accurate report on some aspects of the objective state of reality. 
     But our sense organs aren’t our only source of data, and a good thing, too. We include in our data stores:
  • What we’ve been told by others;
  • What we’ve read, or heard on some medium that conveys information;
  • Earlier conclusions we’ve drawn, or that trusted sources have drawn and conveyed to us.
     To the extent that we employ data provided by those sources in our thinking, we tend to treat them as essentially equivalent to our sense impressions. But there’s a problem there: the statements and conclusions of others might not be reliable. It can take quite a lot of work to determine whether those others have conveyed accurate information to us...and whether they intended to do so in the first place.  Read the Rest and Ponder
I would like to think the peeps on the right did not fall prey to this insidious manipulation of brain cells, but it is not to be.  We are all human and as such wish events to conform to our jealously guarded belief systems.

As Francis pointed out in his essay it can take a lot of work to determine the truth.  Many of us have completely given up and just wander down the path of least resistance.  If it sounds okay and fits our conformity bias we're good to go.

Steve McCann, over at American Thinker, pointed out The Permanent Adolescence of the American Left in his article today.

His closing paragraph (but, do read the entire article)
But the United States cannot remain overwhelmingly powerful and prosperous if the American left continues to maintain its disparate and overwhelming impact on society and government.  This nation must not be destroyed by a handful of egotistical and permanent adolescents, therefore the counter-strategy is to denigrate the left by never missing an opportunity to call its members out and above all ignoring their infantile tactics.  In other words, treat them as the adolescents they are – a strategy currently being essentially utilized, either deliberately or inadvertently, by Donald Trump and one the bulk of the populace must adopt.
Long ago I decided not to be that person - you know, the one who just follows the crowd.  I wanted to be a "seeker of truth." Following the crowd never worked out well for me, but going in search of the truth does.





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