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Anatomy of a Moral Panic

idlewords.com

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Re: Anatomy of a Moral Panic

#31

Post by Typhon »

Cleisthenes wrote: post #22
cisanti wrote: post #20

Well written piece. I stopped reading news after Trump got into office and I have no shame about it. It feels great and I don't I miss out on anything. When people talk or ask me about politics I just say I don't know because I don't read. They make s surprised face and then continue talking and arguing about absolutely pointless topics and about the upcoming apocalypse. I just hope someone tells me an hour beforehan…

That was your lesson from this? Stick your head in the ground and pretend politics is pointless? Ignorance of politics is a luxury afforded only to citizens of authoritarian regimes. You live in a democracy (assuming that discussion of Trump in politics means you live in the US). Politics is how society chooses to make and use government. People pretending they are morally superior or lead better lives through ignora…

You can pay attention to politics, you can do politics without necessarily following obsessively every little happenstance of things. Once you know some politician is a racist crook, you don't need a reminder every day. You especially don't need a remind from people who will give the same amount of space to the president's crooked necktie or and to the healthcare reform. What you mostly need is coordination to fight his politics, which is not what the media give you.

The american media were bad before Trump, and they have remained bad as far as I can tell. They completely fail to disentangle the serious from the merely ridiculous.

Re: Anatomy of a Moral Panic

#32

Post by tdb7893 »

Cleisthenes wrote: post #22
cisanti wrote: post #20

Well written piece. I stopped reading news after Trump got into office and I have no shame about it. It feels great and I don't I miss out on anything. When people talk or ask me about politics I just say I don't know because I don't read. They make s surprised face and then continue talking and arguing about absolutely pointless topics and about the upcoming apocalypse. I just hope someone tells me an hour beforehan…

That was your lesson from this? Stick your head in the ground and pretend politics is pointless? Ignorance of politics is a luxury afforded only to citizens of authoritarian regimes. You live in a democracy (assuming that discussion of Trump in politics means you live in the US). Politics is how society chooses to make and use government. People pretending they are morally superior or lead better lives through ignora…

99% of political news has no significant impact on my life (and actually focusing on it makes me less happy). You can significantly reduce the amount of news you get while still getting the few things that really matter. I've found personally there's about one news story every other week that I think is important to know

Re: Anatomy of a Moral Panic

#33

Post by dom96 »

dwaltrip wrote: post #21

Is there no robust way to hold publications accountable for carelessly peddling bullshit? I fear it will be incredibly difficult to improve the existing incentives.

This is a good question and I have given some thought on this. One quick idea would be to somehow shame publications for incorrect coverage, but doing so seems like an uphill battle. It will always be significantly easier to peddle bullshit than it is to disprove that bullshit.

Re: Anatomy of a Moral Panic

#34

Post by treehau5 »

Cleisthenes wrote: post #22
cisanti wrote: post #20

Well written piece. I stopped reading news after Trump got into office and I have no shame about it. It feels great and I don't I miss out on anything. When people talk or ask me about politics I just say I don't know because I don't read. They make s surprised face and then continue talking and arguing about absolutely pointless topics and about the upcoming apocalypse. I just hope someone tells me an hour beforehan…

That was your lesson from this? Stick your head in the ground and pretend politics is pointless? Ignorance of politics is a luxury afforded only to citizens of authoritarian regimes. You live in a democracy (assuming that discussion of Trump in politics means you live in the US). Politics is how society chooses to make and use government. People pretending they are morally superior or lead better lives through ignora…

> You live in a democracy

> People pretending they are morally superior or lead better lives through ignorance never cease to amaze me.

First of all, we don't have a direct democracy. This concept that everyone has to be 100% engaged (or even 90, or 80, or whatever subjective figure in your head that qualifies good enough is, which is another issue, your concept of being engaged enough doesn't match another) need not apply. Just enough people have to be engaged, which historically speaking has happened.

Second of all, I don't think anyone is claiming a moral high ground here, and if they are you are correct to say shame on them.

Third of all, people who place the same onus of keeping up with whatever the hell is going on in the world as some moral duty never cease to amaze me because it is so easy to flip the script on you and say you don't know enough. There is an endless amount of information out there. "News" as a concept is not even a fraction as old as the concept of government and democracy. We face information overload. How can you blame people for just wanting to live their lives? What if I never signed up for this system? Most people care more about their issues locally (which is in line with human psychology, we weren't meant for these large social networks) but people who sit here and cast stones at people who aren't keeping up with what happens with the Mueller investigation, for example, (which something happens every 2.5 seconds) is what never ceases to amaze me.

Re: Anatomy of a Moral Panic

#35

Post by chris_wot »

cisanti wrote: post #20

Well written piece. I stopped reading news after Trump got into office and I have no shame about it. It feels great and I don't I miss out on anything. When people talk or ask me about politics I just say I don't know because I don't read. They make s surprised face and then continue talking and arguing about absolutely pointless topics and about the upcoming apocalypse. I just hope someone tells me an hour beforehan…

I don’t get this. You want the news media to give in-depth, accurate and insightful articles about complex issues and topics but you want it summarised into a several paragraph summary once a month.

And you complain about the news media now...

Re: Anatomy of a Moral Panic

#37

Post by mustaforgot »

Cleisthenes wrote: post #22
cisanti wrote: post #20

Well written piece. I stopped reading news after Trump got into office and I have no shame about it. It feels great and I don't I miss out on anything. When people talk or ask me about politics I just say I don't know because I don't read. They make s surprised face and then continue talking and arguing about absolutely pointless topics and about the upcoming apocalypse. I just hope someone tells me an hour beforehan…

That was your lesson from this? Stick your head in the ground and pretend politics is pointless? Ignorance of politics is a luxury afforded only to citizens of authoritarian regimes. You live in a democracy (assuming that discussion of Trump in politics means you live in the US). Politics is how society chooses to make and use government. People pretending they are morally superior or lead better lives through ignora…

I am not morally superior to you, and I don't even know that such a thing exists because it makes no sense.

I do however have a heightened sense of empathy and awareness of the things going on around me, which means I'm not well suited to caring or paying too much attention to global or even national-level politics, because it would literally make me physically ill.

So I might be superior to you when it comes to caring about local politics, whereas you might be superior to me when it comes to caring about broader scope politics.

Re: Anatomy of a Moral Panic

#38

Post by chris_wot »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #15
rdiddly wrote: post #2

Minor additional point - if you're trying to create dangerous shrapnel, don't you pick something angular & sharp like crushed gravel, nails or even hex nuts, instead of nice round ball-bearings?

And now for the follow-up from Channel 4 and other media outlets: "hacker forum tries to find the best shrapnel for home-made explosives".

They should really report on how dangerous our wild speculation is.

Re: Anatomy of a Moral Panic

#39

Post by jjoonathan »

idlewords wrote: post #14
ocfnash wrote: post #12

This is a good piece but I have one nit: it is incorrect to say "thermite [...] will not detonate." I was shocked to discover this first hand some years ago: http://olivernash.org/2009/11/12/fun-with-thermite/index.htm... I can still recall the echoing boom of that (copper) thermite.

Thank you for this correction. Do you know whether Al + Fe2O3 thermite as normally prepared (meaning, not ground up into nanoparticles) will detonate? I'll update the piece accordingly. Moreover, are you sure this was a detonation (shock wave) rather than a deflagration?

Given that ocfnash's page never uses the term detonate, never discusses the difference between detonation and deflagration, and doesn't describe the experiments that would distinguish them, I'm pretty sure they were not in fact performed, and the (informal) explosion he witnessed was not a (formal) detonation.

That's not to say it isn't worth a footnote to explain that "doesn't detonate" does not mean "won't go pop and propel burning material everywhere." Even a campfire can do that, but I could understand if someone heard "doesn't detonate" and drew the wrong conclusion.

Re: Anatomy of a Moral Panic

#40

Post by whorleater »

treehau5 wrote: post #34
Cleisthenes wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was your lesson from this? Stick your head in the ground and pretend politics is pointless? Ignorance of politics is a luxury afforded only to citizens of authoritarian regimes. You live in a democracy (assuming that discussion of Trump in politics means you live in the US). Politics is how society chooses to make and use government. People pretending they are morally superior or lead better lives through ignora…

> You live in a democracy > People pretending they are morally superior or lead better lives through ignorance never cease to amaze me. First of all, we don't have a direct democracy. This concept that everyone has to be 100% engaged (or even 90, or 80, or whatever subjective figure in your head that qualifies good enough is, which is another issue, your concept of being engaged enough doesn't match another) need not…

> First of all, we don't have a direct democracy.

This isn't an argument against being informed, it's a pointless debate over semantics. You and anyone reasonable understood what GP meant, they meant democracy as a "national built on foundations of democratic values, such as freedom of press, freedom of speech (to varying extents), right to assemble, etc" in contrast to "authoritarian regime where those values are not enshrined in the government legislature or cultural values".

> There is an endless amount of information out there. "News" as a concept is not even a fraction as old as the concept of government and democracy. We face information overload

The concept of modern news may not have been a invented at the same time, yet it remains a fundamental core part of many democratic-leaning nation's values.

> How can you blame people for just wanting to live their lives? What if I never signed up for this system?

You're probably free to move to an authoritarian regime if you cared to. No one chose to be born into a government system, but to claim no responsibility in a system that you've benefited from since you were born is passing the buck.

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