Historically, this is hardly close to nadir.

No, not in the least. The Mongols and yersinia pestis erased entire reservoirs of truth.

Right now, it’s just drowned by noise.

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You might be right. But maybe not.

I don’t know.

The new thing is the entrenchment of bull ■■■■ into all aspects of society, else society fails to function.

That sounds a lot like the old thing.

How timely!

https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/7/23/eabf1234

Solid research on the susceptibility of the conservative to misinformation. It’s long but thorough.

This study provides the most rigorous evidence to date that U.S. conservatives are uniquely susceptible to political misperceptions in the current sociopolitical environment. Data were collected over 6 months in 2019 and reflect Americans’ beliefs about hundreds of political topics. The topics were selected on the basis of social media engagement, suggesting that these are the very issues that Americans were most likely to encounter online. Analyses suggest that conservatism is associated with a lesser ability to distinguish between true and false claims across a wide range of political issues and with a tendency to believe that all claims are true.

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Here, I think we have to disagree.

Say what you will about roving bands of mercenaries criss-crossing the Italian peninsula, avoiding battle and ransoming aristos, but what kept society working wasn’t bull ■■■■■ but rather grain merchants and midwives.

Well, there is such thing as the truth but it isn’t located near the field of political discourse.

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Contamination avoidance is a good way to get infected.

Well, that’s certainly true - and that’ll certainly come back, if/when we want.

But I have no doubt there was some bull ■■■■ in there somewhere.

Never was. They just miss the good old days when there were only three networks and they had an effective monopoly on public discourse.

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Most societies produce bull ■■■■ . Ours needs it or it eats itself alive.

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But it’s not just conservatives. We are heading to a world with NO truth, where we all just believe what we want and SOMEBODY will affirm it. How bizarre is that?

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Needs or wants?

Or is there even a difference?

I don’t necessarily disagree. But I’ve only ever lived here and now

AZ,

That’s baseline human conduct. Fiction and bad faith are fundamentally human. Facticity is an accident.

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Ain’t that the truth!

Needs.

How many times have you heard some version of ‘thanks to our troops fighting there we have freedom here’?

It’s rankest bull ■■■■■ but it covers and obscures an essential truth: we are a predatory extraction regime and everything we call “liberty” is the excess labor of broken bodies commodified as disposable time-saving devices we buy on the cheap.

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When he was on the radio I would listen to Neal Boortz. And he always said the same thing after he told a news story. He would say, “Don’t believe me. Do your homework”. So when the term “fake news” came out I was upset, because there is no such thing. But people were using it to describe news stories based on hearsay. Which is fine as long as it isn’t presented as hard news. It is pretty easy to sort out hard news from hearsay news from op-ed and spin. And over the years I have seen where in most cases the truth will come out eventuality.

Of course. All of that is true.

I think there’s something to the want vs. need question, though.

I don’t place a lot of emphasis on ‘want’. Desire, yes. But, not ‘want’. It stinks of retconning.