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Post by inavalan on Jan 19, 2021 16:05:54 GMT -5
OTOH, thanks to the internet and social media, fake news gets debunked almost in real-time these days. I don't understand why people call cnn and the washington post "fake news". and if you attempt to debunk.. the next thing you know you're trapped in a conversation about Bezos running the world..   I guess they should be called just "fakes" ...? They aren't news organisations anymore. |
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Post by inavalan on Jan 19, 2021 16:07:33 GMT -5
I don't understand why people call cnn and the washington post "fake news". and if you attempt to debunk.. the next thing you know you're trapped in a conversation about Bezos running the world.. the key, they say*, is dispassion and a calm emotional center..  lest one spend four years in a blind rage  *different venue I guess you referred to the losers of the 2016 elections. |
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Post by inavalan on Jan 19, 2021 16:13:43 GMT -5
I don't understand why people call cnn and the washington post "fake news". and if you attempt to debunk.. the next thing you know you're trapped in a conversation about Bezos running the world.. well there are lots of reasons. billionaires attempting to control the masses.. or investors demanding a profit.. or biased writers spinning a narrative.. or whatever but facts are facts Firstly, "facts aren't facts" because "facts are what you believe to be facts". Secondly, it isn't billionaires who attempt to control the masses, it is the regular folks that honestly believe they know what they are doing, and who scramble headlessly. They created all this mess; they are the only ones to get themselves out of it. |
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Post by laughter on Jan 19, 2021 16:31:57 GMT -5
I'm grappling this week with the appearance that a large number of republicans in the US have formed themselves into an alternative reality in which they believe they are in the majority and the only possible way for the democrats to have won the election is for nefarious forces to have rigged it. And presumably (because the democrats won the popular vote also in 2016) that the previous election was also rigged, but 'They' just failed to rig it sufficiently in key states. This is not particularly a spiritual matter, but it has a parallel. We're all here (I hope) attempting to see What Is. What is true. What we have here is an opportunity to examine at a macro level, the motivations and mechanisms for a denial of reality (small r). The filters of selecting things we like and discarding the things we don't like until a world view is formed. Well I guess people have always believed what they want to believe and/or take on the beliefs handed to them by their parents. And then taken that view, identified the opposition as 'Other' and 'Evil' and kill them for it. But when it was just in the realm of religion it was one unprovable belief against another unprovable belief. In the political sphere though, we're saying there are facts and that they can be proven. The claim by some is that there was a substantial degree of irregularity in the vote that was likely outcome determinative. The suspicion of this is based on the events that led up to the election, the differences between the way this election was conducted relative to previous instances of Presidential elections, and certain statistical anomalies about the result. Beyond the suspicion, the truth or falsity of the claim is ultimately a matter of fact applied, in particular, to the election results in the states of AZ, PA, MI, GA, WI and, to a lesser degree, each of NV, NC, VA, as well as the nature of results in certain other states such as TX and CA relative to past elections, and, all, certainly, in comparison with the results from and conduct of FL, especially in light of the notable year 2000 FL result and subsequent dispute. Alternate realities of this nature are quite common and play out in court systems across the globe, constantly. The sincerity of the beliefs asserted by either (of often multiple, more than two) side(s) are always a complex matter of degree. Now, this description of the competing set of narratives doesn't go as far as you've described, nor does it touch on some of the more emotionally tinged and derivative movements of mind that result from the underlying competition for the claim to primacy of relative truth, but, hopefully, it might offer the potential of a neutral statement of WIBIGO, as a basis for a deeper dialog exploring the disputed facts, for anyone interested in a perspective other than their own. |
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Post by laughter on Jan 19, 2021 16:44:18 GMT -5
You are talking about a mindset, vasanas. They are hard to let go. You feel as if you're protecting some sacred idea. Been there. In seeking relative truth vasanas will be a fact of life. Perhaps some ideal free of them is possible, that's not for me to say, one way or the other. But, the best us mere mortals can ever do is remain conscious of them during the search. Now, this search is not the same as the search for absolute truth, and sometimes, the search for relative truth simply cannot be avoided - which is what I take as one of the primary points of the Bhagavad Gita. |
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Post by laughter on Jan 19, 2021 16:57:47 GMT -5
The claim by some is that there was a substantial degree of irregularity in the vote that was likely outcome determinative. The suspicion of this is based on the events that led up to the election, the differences between the way this election was conducted relative to previous instances of Presidential elections, and certain statistical anomalies about the result. Beyond the suspicion, the truth or falsity of the claim is ultimately a matter of fact applied, in particular, to the election results in the states of AZ, PA, MI, GA, WI and, to a lesser degree, each of NV, NC, VA, as well as the nature of results in certain other states such as TX and CA relative to past elections, and, all, certainly, in comparison with the results from and conduct of FL, especially in light of the notable year 2000 FL result and subsequent dispute. Alternate realities of this nature are quite common and play out in court systems across the globe, constantly. The sincerity of the beliefs asserted by either (of often multiple, more than two) side(s) are always a complex matter of degree. Now, this description of the competing set of narratives doesn't go as far as you've described, nor does it touch on some of the more emotionally tinged and derivative movements of mind that result from the underlying competition for the claim to primacy of relative truth, but, hopefully, it might offer the potential of a neutral statement of WIBIGO, as a basis for a deeper dialog exploring the disputed facts, for anyone interested in a perspective other than their own. weird that nobody objected to how the states conduct their elections BEFORE the election you know, when, and if there was a provable irregularity, it could have been properly litigated Actually, I can think of at least two court cases where there were pre-election objections. In each case, they were eventually, ultimately, sustained, but then the resulting orders were ignored. Would you like links and detailed descriptions? The topic of the litigation of this election is a complex one encompassing hundreds of cases fought over the months both before and after, with several of the most relevant not even completed by the time the results were formalized on 1/6. In many if not most cases the post-election measures were dismissed on procedural grounds. Usually on issues of standing or laches. In the business this is called "not reaching the merits". One instance that I know of where facts were presented was in NV, and the Supreme Court of that state gave the Trump campaign exactly two hours to prepare their appellate brief so that the Dec 8th "safe harbor" deadline could be achieved by their executive branch. Did you know that in one case brought by the Republican Party of WI the Supreme Court of that state did rule (after the recount) that well over 100,000 votes were cast improperly? Did you know the reason they took no action based on this finding was because they required proof, on a vote-by-vote basis, as to whom exactly each of those votes was cast, and that some subset of them were potentially valid? Were you aware of those two cases, and if not, why do you think that is? Was your perception, instead, the widely reported press-meme of "Rudy is 2-89", or whatever the details of the meme was at the time? |
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Post by laughter on Jan 19, 2021 17:07:28 GMT -5
Debunks are not as effective as you imply. You have to be willing (or something) to accept that one of your views was based on an inaccuracy. Certainly. But I was thinking more about situations with video evidence, which are usually pretty straight forward once you've seen ALL the footage. In the news you usually only see a short clip from only one angle and also heavily edited because they tend to use it to support or establish a certain narrative. So, very often when you get a chance to actually look at the raw footage, and from multiple angles because someone posted it somewhere online, the story told in the news falls apart quickly. That's where social media can be very helpful in terms of WIBIGO. Now compare that to Churchill's times, where no one was able to get an event on video or even a photo of an event, let alone distribute it independently from major news agencies directly to the people. We are living in revolutionary times. A dude with a cellphone at the right place at the right time and internet access can be more powerful than all the news agencies of a country combined. But only few actually realize that. Because they are not even aware of all the awesome tools in their hands that could help them cut thru the matrix and the fog of the current info war. So I think it's really down to the individual. People need to get pro-active. Even professional fact checkers regularly get things wrong. If people got fooled in Churchill's times by fake news, you can't really blame them. They had next to no chance to verify anything in the news by themselves. Our situation today is quite different. So if people with internet access get fooled by fake news these days, then I'd say, that's on them, mostly. Because the correct information is usually available, and for free. That's how times have changed. So that quote will remain true as long as people remain complacent, passive news consumers instead of alert, pro-active news seekers. But that's an individual choice again because it does take time and effort. But it is an option that we haven't had in the past, so why not use it to the max for the sake of WIBIGO? Most of the "fact checks" I've read over the past few months on this topic were not objective, but rather, subjective advocacy, and, much of it was overt character assassination. |
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Post by laughter on Jan 19, 2021 17:28:10 GMT -5
OTOH, thanks to the internet and social media, fake news gets debunked almost in real-time these days. I don't understand why people call cnn and the washington post "fake news". and if you attempt to debunk.. the next thing you know you're trapped in a conversation about Bezos running the world.. Because it seems to me that there are several high-profile instances in which their reporting has been subsequently falsified - the Sandman incident is one in which it cost them, for example. There is also a pattern to much of their reporting in which they write about information from anonymous sources as if it's fact, and overlay it with opinion, and much of their content these days is editorial, but not presented as editorial. Now, I'm not claiming that FOX or some of the newer alternatives are completely free of this either, and that's just to say, that if you want to go looking for the fake in the news these days, it's really not all that hard to find, and if you're going to consume any of it, you either do so with a hyper-critical eye, or risk being deceived, influenced and manipulated. |
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Post by laughter on Jan 19, 2021 17:30:56 GMT -5
Yes, there was funny little short science fiction story many years ago. Maybe written by Frederick Brown. A guy goes into a patent office carrying a small briefcase. He tells the patent agent that he wants to patent an anti-gravity device. The agent says, "Anti-gravity is not possible because it would violate laws of physics." The guy reaches over and pushes a button on his briefcase, and the briefcase immediately jumps up into mid-air and hovers there motionless. The agent looks at the briefcase and says, "Anti-gravity is not possible because it would violate laws of physics. Your patent is denied." haha. Sometimes seeing is NOT believing. Ideas are often more powerful than direct experience. This reminds of Einstein having worked in a patent office .. .. and, his findings are ultimately quite contrary and counterintuitive to the common direct experience.  |
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Post by laughter on Jan 19, 2021 17:41:51 GMT -5
I don't understand why people call cnn and the washington post "fake news". and if you attempt to debunk.. the next thing you know you're trapped in a conversation about Bezos running the world.. I guess they should be called just "fakes" ...? They aren't news organisations anymore. There was never a time in my memory where they were free of projecting a top-down narrative with an agenda, and that projection has never been free of the inevitable underlying cognitive dissonance. Countering this is what led, for example, to the arguable success of the popular movement in opposition to the Vietnam War. As another example, this is what I see as the root of Trump's popularity, that he simply spoke certain harsh truths that exposed the dissonance that some people were relieved to finally hear uttered, but that made other's quite unhappy - usually, by him punching up. During one of his primary debates he blurted to Jeb Bush "you invaded the wrong country!". Everyone knew this to be true, but no Republican had ever come out and said it, and it was comedic in the extreme given that Jeb never invaded anyone. Circumstances have conspired to amplify this dissonance of late, which requires the censorship and the eliding of past events and coloring of new "facts", in an ever cascading set of failures and attempt at remediation of the preferred top-down narratives. |
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Post by laughter on Jan 19, 2021 17:44:43 GMT -5
I guess you referred to the losers of the 2016 elections. um, yes, I think that was the context (perhaps I should add, I was referencing (mocking ) a side conversation from elsewhere) Emotion is the enemy of objectivity. |
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Post by Reefs on Jan 20, 2021 7:42:17 GMT -5
Would you like links and detailed descriptions? Absolutely not! What?! No interest in WIBIGO? |
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Post by roydop on Jan 20, 2021 8:18:20 GMT -5
I'm grappling this week with the appearance that a large number of republicans in the US have formed themselves into an alternative reality in which they believe they are in the majority and the only possible way for the democrats to have won the election is for nefarious forces to have rigged it. And presumably (because the democrats won the popular vote also in 2016) that the previous election was also rigged, but 'They' just failed to rig it sufficiently in key states. This is not particularly a spiritual matter, but it has a parallel. We're all here (I hope) attempting to see What Is. What is true. What we have here is an opportunity to examine at a macro level, the motivations and mechanisms for a denial of reality (small r). The filters of selecting things we like and discarding the things we don't like until a world view is formed. Well I guess people have always believed what they want to believe and/or take on the beliefs handed to them by their parents. And then taken that view, identified the opposition as 'Other' and 'Evil' and kill them for it. But when it was just in the realm of religion it was one unprovable belief against another unprovable belief. In the political sphere though, we're saying there are facts and that they can be proven. People are missing the big picture that is playing out literally through our eyes. There is a literal alternate digital reality being created and humanity's addiction to the screen and all that mind has produced is the manifestation of such. The continuing degradation of truth and reality is a result of the phase transition occurring within human consciousness. Our consciousness is being affected in a similar way as passing the event horizon of a black hole. Beyond the event horizon time and space are no longer clearly distinguishable. As we apporach the technological singularity (occuring ~ 2040) space/time becomes more ubiquitous. Space, time, everything that makes this realm what it is, is being twisted, deformed, inverted, as spacetime merges into the singularity. Everything, even climate change, is a fractal/hologram of this fundamental phase transition. The poles are experiencing 2-4xs as much heating as the rest of the planet. The earth is transitioning from a stable climate with a type of thermal layering where the poles are cold and the equator is hot. What's happening is that the layers are collapsing which is causing the cold air from the poles to mix with the hot air from the equator. So the climate that use to be separate (cold at the extremes, hot in the middle) like space and time, is becoming ubiquitous; the temperature will be more or less the same at every location on the earth. During this process all of the millennia-old systems (the jet stream, gulf stream, etc) are shifting and breaking down. This is what is happening to the collective human consciousness. WE ARE GOING MAD. Those who are more addicted to the screen and what mind creates will fall into madness quicker than those who are less addicted. The way to combat this is by turning away from the screen and all that mind creates. This process is the equivalent of incest. It turns out really badly. |
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Post by laughter on Jan 20, 2021 15:36:34 GMT -5
What?! No interest in WIBIGO? Ha! in the back of my head there is a picture of a cat with tape over it's mouth but Laffy's offer was to describe two obscure legal cases that had zero impact on the national election.. ..and I think I would pass on that in any setting No the offer was to add specific facts that ran counter to your perception that noone had challenged the electoral procedures prior-to the election. IOW: WIBIGO. That the cases are obscure to you speaks to your sources of information, and is as about as relevant to the OP as it could ever possibly get. |
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Post by laughter on Jan 20, 2021 15:43:59 GMT -5
(** muttley snicker **)Emotion is the enemy of objectivity. "Not influenced by personal feelings or opinions in considering and representing facts" Nice trick if you can pull it off. It's not that hard, really. There are two ways to go about it. One is the effortful way of the stoics, which involves first recognizing that the only thing you ultimately control is your own internal mental/emotional state. The other way, I assure you, is quite effortless.  And, it's not that you're ever really completely free of personal feelings and opinions, it's just that once you see them for what they are, you can always get as present to the fact and content of them as you choose to be. |
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