- As it turns out, the tools needed to unmoor people from our shared reality already exist and are less technological than societal.
Why bother with deconvolving the two if we can agree that it is how society and technology feed back into one another that primarily drives this problem?
And don't you worry your pretty little head, the deepfake(s) is(are) coming. Late October.
... fan death persists in being a thing in Korea. There are ideas that rocket around that are stupid, that are based on nothing, and that people believe deeply. We've traditionally been able to make fun of these ideas because we have Science and we are Smart and they have Superstition and they are Stupid. But I mean, look. There were people who bitched about corn syrup before it was cool. Any number of arguments have been made against artificial sweeteners. Johnson & Johnson just said they'd stop selling baby powder with talc in it. And most of Europe regulates GMOs substantially more strictly than the US. I'll whip out some "amazong asbestos" cartoons if I have to. Us Smart, Science people love to lean on our Science and Smartness as the One True God, not as the more-true, more-easily-defendable perspective and it's not fucking helpful. Tying it into deepfakes is not helpful. There's a core crew that believes this shit and every time you pick a fight over their Stupidness you create a conflict into which a million bots that don't believe shit can jump into and before long we're throwing memes at each other as if it'll convince someone. The real problem is we've monetized "engagement" such that something that pisses you off is lucrative for Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey. It's not that we're dealing with an "information apocalypse" it's that we're dealing with a medium that prioritizes conflict. Even phrases like "our shared reality" imply that there is absolutely no justification and no middle ground to find with a bunch of scared people who are distrustful enough that they'll latch onto anything convincing. Until the "reality" side can come up with a more compelling argument than "I'm right because my sources say I'm right the "skeptical" side will continue to believe in chemtrails. Which is the subject of an Anne Heche movie you can watch on Amazon, by the way. And here we are, with Buzzfeed claiming the moral high ground, arguing that because they hosted Jordan Peele doing an Obama impression they somehow "warned" the entire fucking universe two years ago and meanwhile Facebook is somehow worth $300 per user.
It’s also inherently unexciting being establishment science. Answers like “we can’t know that” aren’t as seductive as QAnon’s bullshit absolutism, and plus you get to cast yourself as the underdog. Like how the Christians are so persecuted! I grew up Southern Baptist in the south thinking and feeling like that, for a while. Maybe we all crave it. What if that’s impossible? I also feel like that puts the onus entirely on team "reality", which isn't fair. If you can point to successful examples of rehabbing a healthy respect for science in the modern age (like this side of 2016), I'm all ears. Totally hate posting Buzzfeed, but I'm grateful for the conversation. Hey what about my electronica penance, btw?Until the "reality" side can come up with a more compelling argument than "I'm right because my sources say I'm right the "skeptical" side will continue to believe in chemtrails.
Let's talk about this. My mother is an animist at best. My father is a rabid atheist. I grew up in a town with nineteen churches and one bar; two of those churches were LDS, who accounted for an easy 40% of the kids I went to school with. I have no idea what level of fatwah was issued against my family but I do know that some of my sister's classmates told her they weren't allowed to play with her because she was going to hell and I know that the cops singled me out from the minute I could drive (I shared the last name with the police chief, a mormon who really didn't care for my family because he'd accidentally gotten my mom's invitation to a lesbian wedding in 1983). You may have noticed the alacrity with which atheists lean into persecution. For a bunch of people who don't believe in shit, they sure do crave sainthood. My father's refusal to profess a belief in a higher power (that's all it takes) is why my grandfather was a 33rd degree mason and my sister, my mother and I had to go to Rainbow Girls bullshit for my cousins by ourselves. And yeah - you can point to a lot of nasty shit done in the name of religion. That's not a fact unique to the religious, however. The last substantive discussion I had with my father was me taking the standpoint that religion is not 100% absolute evil 100% of the time. I couldn't get a word in edge-wise. He damn near threw me out of the house. Note that I haven't been inside a church I didn't design or help design more than a half dozen times in my entire goddamn life. I am one of the most fundamentally faithless individuals walking the earth. But I've seen it be a great comfort to a lot of people so I can't be a fundamentalist atheist. I can't default to "GOD=BAD" and go all OftenBen on people. I recognize that people have a need to align themselves with worldviews, align themselves with people who share that worldview, and devote themselves to proselytizing that worldview to those who don't share it because it brings them comfort. The Smarmy Atheist Class of the Internet aren't here to listen. They aren't here to bring anyone into the fold. They're here to score points with each other by belittling anyone who doesn't choke down their dogma with a smile on their faces. Because that's what it is: sure, there's a lot more evidence behind it and yeah, it's scientifically demonstrable but nobody ever fucking bothers with the evidence. They go straight to the scorn, they start screaming infidel and they cast whatever fucking stones they can find. Especially when they're scared, or confused, or have any doubts of their own. There is nothing so dangerous is a zealot with his faith challenged. "Fucking magnets, how do they work?" Read the lyrics to Insane Clown Posse's "Miracles" then read the lyrics to Jim Henson's "Rainbow Connection" and tell me they're not the same goddamn song. One of them is from a beloved muppet and the other is from some white trash crackers out of Detroit tho so fuck the Juggalos. Every asshole posting that "here's how magnets work" meme didn't fucking know. They can look it up? But 99.9% of the assholes on line heaping scorn on a song that dared to express wonder in a tone of voice they didn't care for can't say more than "something something atoms mumble mumble." And that's the real problem. On the one hand you've got a whole bunch of smug-ass mutherfuckers for whom "something something atoms mumble mumble" is the One True God, unassailable, unknowable, Wisdom Without End and on the other hand you've got a bunch of people for whom conventional wisdom hasn't played out quite right. They can't make ends meet, they can't afford to give their kids a salad, every time they go to the doctor they get scolded for this that or the other, and if they express a doubt? Someone is going to call them a fucking asshole. So they start hanging out with people who don't call them fucking assholes for doubting and before too long they're aligning with the idea that the earth is flat because fuckin' hell at least the flat earthers are inclusive. The people who could actually walk them slowly through the discovery process of determining the earth's curvature AREN'T because any assault on their tenuous understanding of the accepted wisdom is the tempting tongue of Satan while the people who have already accepted that 5G exists to command our implanted microchips are all about increasing the flock. This is a battle I'd have on r/skeptic all the time. People would gripe about the money spent on studies proving once again that vaccines don't cause autism, homeopathics don't work and cell phones don't cause cancer BUT FUCKING HELL YOU CHOADS it is so much cheaper and effective than to try to give people a reason to believe than it is to give them a reason to rebel. If another ten million dollar study will get another ten million people to vaccinate their kids? Take my fucking money. Society only works if we care about the more vulnerable than ourselves because if they fall out of society they're an outgroup problem, not an ingroup problem. Meanwhile those who pass the purity test are sitting there fretting about an "information apocalypse" because it's more fun to huddle with your buddies and scream about the invader than it is going "hang on a sec guys vaccines don't alter your DNA."Like how the Christians are so persecuted! I grew up Southern Baptist in the south thinking and feeling like that, for a while.
Tell it to the dead. There's a mountain of corpses growing outside of every church in the country because religious ignorance is of equal value as basic, reproducible medical science. Edit* One day I'm going to start posting the full text of the emails I get and maybe the point will filter through that there are behaviors associated with the things people believe.
From a couple of churches that I receive weekly/quarterly updates from. I made a point several years ago to purge my digital identity of religious stuff. I'll go look if anything remains that would be interesting but you have to understand that to a biblical literalist the ONLY written words of importance are found in the king james.
No, I just felt like this piece agreed with me. I made it to the end. Admittedly, they should've #opinion'd it, though perhaps we are to infer such from the /authorname/ address. I also send money to the NYT. The only other organization is the WSJ, but that’s getting tiring, lately. I usually try to disregard the information source and consider whether people's ideas seem sound. I can’t get past even the headlines of Fox or Buzzfeed or whoever, but this article focuses on something that I also perceive to be happening. My feeling is corroborated by previous NYT article readings. snark paragraph removed before posting draft, not worth it FOrrealre you doing OK? Things are actually not great for me, there's a thing going on right now. Couple things. Legitimately sorry, may be a bit hair trigger lately. Which, is relevant, because I haven't shaved in almost two months and this POS " 'stache" is going into a stupid film.