Did You Hear We Got Osama?

Post by bilban » Sat, Feb 18, 2012, 12:40 PM UTC

petewailes wrote: post #166

batista wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I stopped reading the news at one point -- for a couple years -- because of its persistent lack of depth. I realized that reading 100 BBC articles on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would leave me knowing virtually nothing about it, other than some factoids, whereas the same time spent reading books would be worthwhile. Not to mention that you would have read 100 articles from a single source that is a government-co…

There's so much wrong with this that it's hard to know where to start. The BBC is pretty much the gold standard for un-biased reporting, regularly taking the government to task on issues of the day. As John Humphreys said to a minister once before interviewing him, "I'm not here to make you look like an idiot, but if you choose to, I won't stop you". It even takes itself to task hugely, as shown recently when a BBC r…

Post by jopt » Sat, Feb 18, 2012, 12:49 PM UTC

rimantas wrote: post #168

chimeracoder wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really think his qualifications have much of a bearing on that - you could easily think of knowledge as a function of time and effort, which are certainly limited and finite resources for everyone, so the analogy still holds.

Or you can look at it as an interconnected pathways, and that the more different stuff you learn the more efficient your brain is.

Post by ricky_rozay » Sat, Feb 18, 2012, 12:56 PM UTC

halvsjur wrote: post #81

derleth wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am arguing that democracies can't work due to the impossibility of having informed voters by the way our democracies are organized. And I am arguing that undemocratic forms of government have been tried repeatedly and found wanting repeatedly.

There are very many different ways to do "democracy" though, it's not just the one axis with more democratic or less.

Post by bilban » Sat, Feb 18, 2012, 1:09 PM UTC

mediaman wrote: post #27

peterwwillis wrote: post #20

It is really, really, really, really, really hard for me to find a good temporary distraction nowadays. The noise is so monotonous, so repetitive, so completely devoid of intellectual stimulation that I go between four websites in a loop looking for something interesting to read. HN has maybe one article every two hours that pops up to the top that I find worth reading, and maybe half the time worth upvoting. And tha…

Frequency and quality are negatively correlated when it comes to news. I would recommend Instapaper's curated list of articles, which tend to be long-form and more interesting than most, as well as The Browser ("Writing Worth Reading") for curated quality content. http://www.thebrowser.com But you're not going to find quality content many times a day, no matter where you look.

Post by bilban » Sat, Feb 18, 2012, 1:21 PM UTC

Tossrock wrote: post #57

Reminds me of the classic Sherlock Holmes quote: "His ignorance was as remarkable as his knowledge. Of contemporary literature, philosophy and politics he appeared to know next to nothing. Upon my quoting Thomas Carlyle, he inquired in the naivest way who he might be and what he had done. My surprise reached a climax, however, when I found incidentally that he was ignorant of the Copernican Theory and of the composit…