Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
So over the holidays, or shortly after, I joined the swelling ranks of those who received notice their Facebook accounts had been restricted. I have been caught, so goes the tale, repeatedly spreading misinformation. The process of reviewing my sins is comical and sad at the same time. My assertion that such-and-such a link represented true information, is often missing, and in many cases my assertion is something very different — in one of them I’m specifically saying “OMG someone please tell me this isn’t real” or words to that effect. So the admins, or their algorithms, really don’t want anyone posting the contraband, at all, in any context. They’ve digitally-fingerprinted the links and they don’t want ’em anywhere. Good to know!
It goes without saying that we don’t all do things this way. If I ran the system and “caught” someone posting something I thought was untrue, my solution to the problem would be to discuss it rather than censor it. Sunlight is the best disinfectant. Facebook takes the opposite view. This doesn’t prove the truth is on my side, of course, but it raises serious doubts against it being on theirs.
A lot of people would like to keep the discussions about these things limited to “Do they have the right?” I imagine such discussions are consistently short, and not very enlightening, because of course they do. In a free society in which people have rights, among these must be the right to do dumb things; and if you have the right to do dumb things, a conclusion of “Do they have the right?” can never be final, for it must necessarily lead into subsequent questions of “But is it smart?” Or, if you want to consider different and competing interests, “What is the likely result?”
I see a result in which we, as a society, at least within the culture of things that are affected by social media — which is a lot — are becoming detached from the fundamental concept of truth.
This word “misinformation” is supposed to be applied to untrue things. If there’s one example of it that guides our current understanding, upon which I can look with the greatest sympathy, it is “Barack Obama was born in Kenya.” When that controversy was aroused years ago, and then re-aroused by Obama’s friend as a publicity stunt a short time later, I reviewed both sides, couldn’t see proof one way or another, and at some point became convinced it wasn’t plausible for Obama’s mother to have given birth in Africa because her known whereabouts didn’t place her there during this time. So today I believe He was born in Hawaii, but I’ll stop short of calling other people loony tunes if they believe otherwise. Then, as now, I concluded that questioning the Hawaii-birth narrative, and skeptically, is what reasonable people should be doing; the controversy exists because Obama created it. He acted sketchy. It worked to His advantage. But back to the claim…Obama born in Kenya…misinformation, therefore, false. Okay, I’ll buy that.
There has been a campaign to reduce “In the 1970’s, they were trying to scare us about a new Ice Age” as misinformation. Well, that would depend on who “they” is. As I understand it, the argument was “Hold up, that was a bunch of raggedy old magazines you read while you’re waiting in dentist’s offices, not scientists. This climate change stuff today is much more scienc-y, or something.” See the slippage? We’re going from…”Misinformation is something false, that I can prove as false, or at least bring some industrial-grade doubt against” — like Obama being born in Africa — to, “Misinformation is me going back in time to these old claims, and selling you on the idea that it was those people making them, not these people.” Already, we’ve slipped down a few notches and we’re not talking about false stuff anymore.
“The polar bear population has actually increased” is something else we often see identified as misinformation. As you peruse the various debunkings, you see we really don’t know what’s been happening to the polar bear population. We slip another peg. Now we’re applying the M-word to things that aren’t known.
Gender is the same as sex, and there are only two sexes — that’s supposed to be misinformation. Here we slip yet again. Now we’re applying the word to things we know are true, but that make certain people feel not very good. The intent of the movement is to reserve the word “sex” for the biological configuration, whereas “gender” is supposed to be how a person identifies. And, we must be ready for the situations in which these two are different. Well if misinformation is supposed to have something to do with deceptive things, the word should be affixed to that effort, because this is deceptive. “Sex” is measurement of, and “gender” is feelings about, a common attribute. Sex vs. gender is thought vs. feeling. It’s not like “hair color vs. height.”
Now that we’ve crossed the Rubicon of attaching the word “misinformation” to true things, anything is possible. And we’ve seen lots of topsy-turvy twisty-bendy nonsense take place before our eyes. It’s misinformation that George Floyd was strung out on Fentanyl when he died; that the resulting Black Lives Matter protests were coordinated, with plans deliberately put in place to wreck things and damage businesses; that Kyle Rittenhouse acted in self defense. That COVID came from China; that Joe Biden, or his campaign, cheated in the 2020 elections; that Antifa members were involved in the Capitol Penetration event of January 6, 2021. All of these things are either proven true, or if not proven, at least highly probable.
Let’s stop pretending now. “Misinformation” means, if you define “truth” according to what’s not going to tick off people who have power over you, this stuff is in conflict with that. But deep down I think we all know, it’s wrong to define truth that way.
The M-word, now, means that we — some undefined “we” — have mobilized a campaign to make people doubt it, even though it might very well be true. Because people believing in it would be inconvenient to…someone.
Who is that “someone”? That’s the question people should be asking now that we’ve essentially re-defined what “misinformation” is.
This is an old issue. Ayn Rand pointed out,
It only stands to reason that where there’s sacrifice, there’s someone collecting the sacrificial offerings. Where there’s service, there is someone being served. The man who speaks to you of sacrifice is speaking of slaves and masters, and intends to be the master.
It’s a lot like that. Where we’re obliged to pretend true things are false because they’re not approved…or known things are unknown because they’re unapproved… someone, somewhere must be doing this approving.
And where this approval is being withheld from known, true things… someone, somewhere is lying.
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Do remember that Zuckerberg is Jewish. Shades of Pravda, Tass, and Izvestia, bro.
- MarkMatis | 01/11/2022 @ 06:44Of course, the originator of the “Obama was born in Africa” theory was Obama himself.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2146622/Barack-Obama-Kenyan-born-2007-according-literary-agency–months-announcing-bid-U-S-presidency.html
It takes a level of credulity of which I am incapable to think that the literary agency came up with that all by themselves without Obama’s approval.
Now, I believe the true explanation is that Obama lied in his literary bio for exotic diversity cred, not considering at the time that he’d be an eventual Presidential candidate. He of course couldn’t just come out and say “I lied.” He had to throw the literary agency under the bus as he did every other inconvenient person in his life. Fortunately the press was all too eager to aid him — they were driving the bus!
But, it’s far too much fun to poke at people by suggesting that Obama is a secret Kenyan to just not do it.
- cloudbuster | 01/16/2022 @ 13:47I think you’re right on the money on that. Barack Obama is capable of many things, but being born in two places is not one of those things. And “His literary agent” came out with this “fact” much earlier than anyone else.
The 2nd most likely thing is that Obama is completely correct. The L.A. saw Obama’s family was in Kenya, leaped to a conclusion to embellish things because of his emotional excitement, and no one bothered to question it until years later. Obama must be innocent! But…not entirely. He almost certainly had opportunities to notice the mistake, and speak up about it. Speaking up about mistakes is supposed to be His big thing. And then once the opportunity emerged to ridicule His political enemies, well, this is B.O. we’re talking about, so no way He’d take a pass on that.
- mkfreeberg | 01/30/2022 @ 09:26