Alternate Truths/Facts vs. Reality

[noonereal]

Trump is a symptom.

He is the false prophet but he didn’t make our society ripe for the appearance of one. Right out of the unrealistic “Reality TV” screen. Trump didn’t tell “Average Joe” to believe what appears on the boob tube. He just showed up at an opportune time.

Wrong

 

[Gozaburo]

Sure. But none of them said science should not be foundational to what we claim to know. It was mostly about how to interpret those facts- "the phenomenology of spirit", so to speak- not the facts themselves.

Yeah of course. No serious person rejects scientific empirical facts. Even in the case of MAGA, I think it's less about challenging scientific fact and more about ultra skepticism of institutions and authority. Still dumb, but I think the distinction is important.

So then I'm confused in how to reconcile what you said earlier: "people are going to overdose on "facts" and create an absurd worldview which is incoherent and devoid of actual reason", with the above.

How can anyone create an "absurd worldview" based on facts?

My point is that a fact observed without context isn't useful at all in politics. You're viewing a crisis like the conspiracy of vaccines as a failure of people understanding scientific facts, but this was a second order issue. The first order issue is that institutions had lost so much legitimacy over time that a significant portion of the population no longer had in any faith them. The one silver lining here is that Trumpian populism is so skeptical that it eventually eats itself - it's not a sustainable platform.

My prediction, which I make when I look at a piece of shit like Vance, is that post-Trump MAGA becomes more refined, intellectual, and cultured. We will see the popularization of the technocratic ideology which plucked him from obscurity via his backers like Thiel and its intellectual base in Yarvin and Nick Land.

It's funny because in many ways the ideology of Peter Thiel and Marc Andreesson are the radical conclusion of scientific pragmatism - if resources are finite and natural disaster is imminent, then we need a technocratic AI revolution to propel the most intelligent among us into the cosmos so that we may spread our consciousness as quasi-Gods and avoid the inevitable environmental holocaust. We must achieve this prime directive at any cost, even if it means sacrificing massive amounts of human and environmental capital for pragmatic purposes. It's radically pragmatic, radically secular, and radically scientific and it leads to a hypothetical future where we will see the worst crimes in human history.

Just some thoughts.

 

[ataraxia]

Yeah of course. No serious person rejects scientific empirical facts. Even in the case of MAGA, I think it's less about challenging scientific fact and more about ultra skepticism of institutions and authority. Still dumb, but I think the distinction is important.



My point is that a fact observed without context isn't useful at all in politics. You're viewing a crisis like the conspiracy of vaccines as a failure of people understanding scientific facts, but this was a second order issue. The first order issue is that institutions had lost so much legitimacy over time that a significant portion of the population no longer had in any faith them. The one silver lining here is that Trumpian populism is so skeptical that it eventually eats itself - it's not a sustainable platform.

My prediction, which I make when I look at a piece of shit like Vance, is that post-Trump MAGA becomes more refined, intellectual, and cultured. We will see the popularization of the technocratic ideology which plucked him from obscurity via his backers like Thiel and its intellectual base in Yarvin and Nick Land.

It's funny because in many ways the ideology of Peter Thiel and Marc Andreesson are the radical conclusion of scientific pragmatism - if resources are finite and natural disaster is imminent, then we need a technocratic AI revolution to propel the most intelligent among us into the cosmos so that we may spread our consciousness as quasi-Gods and avoid the inevitable environment holocaust. We must achieve this prime directive at any cost, even if it means sacrificing massive amounts of human and environmental capital for pragmatic purposes. It's radically pragmatic, radically secular, and radically scientific and it leads to a hypothetical future where we will see the worst crimes in human history.

Just some thoughts.

Wow. Interesting.

Dark. But interesting.

Basically a view of humans as a parasite which, after killing its host, travels out to the stars in search of new hosts to infect and destroy. Interesting indeed.

 

[Gozaburo]

Why is that though. That governing, those institutions, they are made up of us. So they reflect us. We have no absolute certainty of them because we have no absolute certainty of ourselves. We have internal notions of right vs wrong. Internal micrometers, our ‘Jimmy Crickets”, the conscious. We know we are full od shite these days, which makes it very easy to come to the conclusion so is just about everyone else. That is what leads to the distrust and breakdown of systems, the breakdown if the self.

We get messed up, than the things we make get messed up.

Our politics will get fixed when we fix ourselves.

I actually 100% agree and perhaps a loss in faith of our institutions points toward a loss of faith in ourselves, of our civilization. Perhaps the liberal projects has yielded results we aren't fully satisfied with, perhaps those results are so difficult to reconcile we'd rather smash the entire project like petulant children.

Our founding fathers weren’t particularly religious. They were philosophical thinkers. They derived their concepts less from religious dogma than intellectual, humanistic, criteria.

I'm not sure if I'd call them particularly religious, but they were certainly divinely inspired, almost in the Platonic sense. I wouldn't call all of them humanists, nor would I call religious and antique concepts of ethics and morality purely anti-intellectual and dogmatic.

 

[ModernDiogenes]

Wrong

Why?

 

[noonereal]

Why?

Trump and right wing media is the cause.

 

[CimpleMan]

Blame everything happening today on the 80's Decade. Reagan, rise of mass marketing, big box retail, glorification of the rich and famous. Etc Etc

 

[Jay59]

How did we get so messed up?

You live in an information bubble that discards half of the information unread.

Our politics, like much of everything else, is f##ked up because we let ourselves get f##ked up. After all, our politics are merely a reflection of our society as a whole. Our current state of ethical thinking, how we deal with facts at issue, etc. it’s a mirror reflecting an image of who we are at the moment, and according to that image we are in a sorry place. The most telling societal image that points to the issue is the suggestion that there is such a thing as an “alternative fact”. The worst sort of “alternative fact” being the laughable notion that there is something real in the idea of “my truth”. Truth, if real, concrete, substantive, belongs to everyone. There are no individual truths. Your perceptions, if actually valid, will be real, substantive, concrete, to anyone who recognizes truth. They aren’t unique to you. Your perceptions are your own but that doesn’t make them truthful. Metrics; that which can be measured, deduced, communicated to others in strict scientific terms that can be substantiated and reproduced under like circumstances are what truth is. Not opinion. As long as we are walking around with our “individual truths” we will continue to be this kind and level of f##ked up; socially, culturally, certainly politically. It’s time we get back to the reality that TRUTH isn’t a personal thing, and there are no such things as “alternative facts”.

It's not alternate facts so much as excluding half of the relevant facts.

That said, the result is the same.

Trump and right wing media is the cause.

What right-wing media? It's a myth.

Trump, I give you.

 

[ModernDiogenes]

You live in an information bubble that discards half of the information unread.

I take pains for that not to be the case.

I take in WSJ, WaPo, Star Ledger, New York Daily News, Al Jazeera and BBC plus a variety of pod casts. Political and business news from all manner of schools of thought.

Where to you get your news from?

It's not alternate facts so much as excluding half of the relevant facts.

Wow.

That said, the result is the same.


What right-wing media? It's a myth.

Trump, I give you.

Wow.

 

[Jay59]

I take pains for that not to be the case.

I am not seeing any evidence of such.

I take in WSJ, WaPo, Star Ledger, New York Daily News, Al Jazeera and BBC plus a variety of pod casts. Political and business news from all manner of schools of thought.

No wonder you seem to have a strong slant.

Where to you get your news from?

If you are not checking both Politico and The Federalist you don't have the full range.

Wow. Wow.

The right-wing media is a myth. Talk radio, blogs, and magazine formats are the only things of note.

Fox is centrist with a right lean and it's the only main stream short form outlet that is even partly sympathetic.

 

[Kelby]

I am not seeing any evidence of such.


No wonder you seem to have a strong slant.


If you are not checking both Politico and The Federalist you don't have the full range.


The right-wing media is a myth. Talk radio, blogs, and magazine formats are the only things of note.

Fox is centrist with a right lean and it's the only main stream short form outlet that is even sympathetic.

Fox has a right-wing "lean" you say?

Fox, Dominion reach $787M settlement over election claims

Fox and Dominion Voting Systems have reached a $787 million settlement in the voting machine company’s defamation lawsuit. The agreement averts a trial in a case that exposed how the top-rated network chased viewers by promoting lies about the 2020 presidential election. Dominion lawyer Justin...

apnews.com

Next up: Smartmatic.

 

[Jay59]

Fox has a right-wing "lean" you say?
https://apnews.com/article/fox-news...l-trump-2020-0ac71f75acfacc52ea80b3e747fb0afe

Correct.

Their magazine format is further right, but the straight news is central.

Next up: Smartmatic.

How many media outlets are having to pay President Trump?

 

[Kelby]

Correct.

Their magazine format is further right, but the straight news is central.

Their radio news is down the middle, Fox news anchors are generally close to the truth.

It's their opinion hosts who are most popular, including the cozy couch five, and consistently lie to and mislead their viewers.

How many media outlets are having to pay President Trump?

None, actually.

The CEO's succumbing to Trump's extortions in order to reap profit down the line.

 

[ataraxia]

Blame everything happening today on the 80's Decade. Reagan, rise of mass marketing, big box retail, glorification of the rich and famous. Etc Etc

Absolutely: the rise of this toxic myth of trickle down economics, the Christian Coalition, the rabid gun lobby, the increasing disparities of wealth and poverty, the destruction of unions and social safety nets, the resurgent racism, this worship of unbridled greed and villification of poverty as a personal moral failure, etc, etc...

The more I grow up, the more I realize what an absolute catastrophe the Reagan presidency was to America. We are feelings its devastation even this many decades later. It irreversibly changed what America represented.

 

[Craig234]

How did we get so messed up?

In a word, oligarchy. It corrupts and destroys.

Our politics, like much of everything else, is f##ked up because we let ourselves get f##ked up. After all, our politics are merely a reflection of our society as a whole. Our current state of ethical thinking, how we deal with facts at issue, etc. it’s a mirror reflecting an image of who we are at the moment, and according to that image we are in a sorry place.

I think that point is right about the MANGA part of the country.

 

[Jay59]

Their radio news is down the middle, Fox news anchors are generally close to the truth.

It's their opinion hosts who are most popular, including the cozy couch five, and consistently lie to and mislead their viewers.

Your opinion is noted.

None, actually.

https://www.npr.org/2024/12/16/nx-s1-5230274/abc-settles-with-trump-for-15-million-now-he-wants-to-sue-other-news-outlets

The CEO's succumbing to Trump's extortions in order to reap profit down the line.

 

[ModernDiogenes]

I am not seeing any evidence of such.

That doesn’t mean that it’s not there.

No wonder you seem to have a strong slant.

If you are not checking both Politico and The Federalist you don't have the full range.

I read Politico frequently. It’s a go to for fact checking. I don’t read “The Federalist” often. I check it now and then.

The right-wing media is a myth. Talk radio, blogs, and magazine formats are the only things of note.

Talk radio was “Right Wing” for ages. It still has the leaning though it’s not what it was in the Limbaugh days.

Fox is centrist with a right lean and it's the only main stream short form outlet that is even partly sympathetic.

That’s not the way Murdoch tells it. Nor the way the jury found it in the lawsuit that cost Murdoch over 700 million dollars.