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In Praise of Print: Reading Is Essential in an Era of Epistemological Collapse

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11–20 of 351 posts

Re: In Praise of Print: Reading Is Essential in an Era of Epistemological Collapse

#11

The message is fair and valid, and seemingly true, but cripes, that's some thick reading unless you are literally a scholar. Dial it back. Talk about never use 5 words when an opaque and obscure reference will do.

Which of those references are obscure?

Re: In Praise of Print: Reading Is Essential in an Era of Epistemological Collapse

#12
post #4

It's not what you know, but who you know. Any type of mass-media is fodder for the have-nots, while the haves get their information from trustworthy sources through their in-group. The more addictive facebook, tiktok and twitter are, the bigger the premium is of being part of the right group. Whether the memes you consume are in print is entirely incidental.

> the haves get their information from trustworthy sources through their in-group

Then why are their actions more harmful than any other class? I see them:

* Starting proxy wars, fueling climate doubt, lobbying/destroying governments to allow every kind of degradation of every commons.

* Paying people 6 or 7 figures to confuse and divide the people earning 5 or 6 figures.

* Apparently utterly ignorant of their legacy, which will be one of murderous self-interest and absurd delusion.

Do all their "trustworthy sources" feed their biases and class interests, their self-delusions, their greed? It's astounding how people can have all the facts and teachers in the world, while dodging genuine understanding of everything most important.

Re: In Praise of Print: Reading Is Essential in an Era of Epistemological Collapse

#16

That we are entering a crisis of epistemology is a positive sign that we are recognising all produced information is unavoidably narrativization. We can't - and shouldn't want to be - certain of anything. Buyer beware and we'll be ok

I feel both strong agreement and strong disagreement with your comment.

Epistemology is probably the only topic that I would recommend being 30+ before you read. Before that, in my opinion most folks aren't ready for it. You need to both accept ultimate uncertainty and also deliberately create your own certainty in your life. That's a tough ask even for many older people.

I've come to believe that an important part of any society is creating a series of positive narrative myths that are increasingly-detailed and nuanced. Why positive? Because introducing negativity in any form early in the education process turns the kids off to receiving anything more on that topic or from that viewpoint. We need optimistic learners, not pessimistic curmudgeons.

So yeah, we're going to lie to you about the number line. We're going to lie to you about history. We're going to lie to you about damned near everything, and a simple search online will prove the lie. But we lie in order to encourage you to rebel, not to indoctrinate. Find the problems and fix them. It's not our business to tell you what they are. Hell, we don't know ourselves. We're in the same boat you are.

This is not a declarative, literal topic. Already comments here decry the big words. So while I agree with you, epistemology is just like any other intellectual super-power: you gotta be able to deal with the repercussions or you shouldn't dive in. The water's deep.

You lose all of that googling around for Wikipedia articles. Long-form books are the only way forward, along with the confidence and intellectual curiosity needed to eventually make a difference.

Re: In Praise of Print: Reading Is Essential in an Era of Epistemological Collapse

#17
post #2

The irony of praising print and rhetoricizing reading on a website that is nearly unreadable due to intrusive visual ads is kind of a sign that collapse is an era behind us.

I went and checked the page in another browser with my adblocker off. Wow. Just wow. I started using ad blockers on everything a few years ago because they became a little too annoying. I somehow missed when the web became nigh unusable from them.

Re: In Praise of Print: Reading Is Essential in an Era of Epistemological Collapse

#18
post #4

It's not what you know, but who you know. Any type of mass-media is fodder for the have-nots, while the haves get their information from trustworthy sources through their in-group. The more addictive facebook, tiktok and twitter are, the bigger the premium is of being part of the right group. Whether the memes you consume are in print is entirely incidental.

Well just change your URL to something better, right. The curse is not the lack of information but the lack of will to change the channel from whatever feeds their (our!) biases.

If drugs flood my community, you can't say the solution is simply "just don't do drugs, duh". If you put the burden on the population when everything in society works against them, it's not productive in any way.

Re: In Praise of Print: Reading Is Essential in an Era of Epistemological Collapse

#19

The message is fair and valid, and seemingly true, but cripes, that's some thick reading unless you are literally a scholar. Dial it back. Talk about never use 5 words when an opaque and obscure reference will do.

I don't think so, I suspect that this is standard fare for the audience of a website called 'lithub.' In the words of gamers: git gud, scrub. (<- light hearted jab)

Re: In Praise of Print: Reading Is Essential in an Era of Epistemological Collapse

#20
post #4

It's not what you know, but who you know. Any type of mass-media is fodder for the have-nots, while the haves get their information from trustworthy sources through their in-group. The more addictive facebook, tiktok and twitter are, the bigger the premium is of being part of the right group. Whether the memes you consume are in print is entirely incidental.

You really think the elites are generally better informed than the rest? They don't fall prey to stuff like celebrities, gossip media and so on?

I haven't seen any sign that this is the case among politicians where I live, or among the few quite rich people I've looked into the lives of, mainly through their email and interviews. Compared to the leftists in my "in-group" they're generally very uncritical, poorly informed and pretty narcissistic.

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