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The Bullshit

walterkirn.substack.com

211–214 of 214 posts

Re: The Bullshit

#211
post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always thought PBS and NPR were pretty good. What am I missing?

According to the author's examples of bullshit, NPR peddles the same stuff as the other for-profit main stream publications. > Immerse yourself in news of Russian plots to counterfeit presidential children’s laptops [0], viruses spawned in Wuhan market stalls [1], vast secret legions of domestic terrorists flashing one another the OK sign in shadowy parking lots [2] behind Bass Pro Shops experiencing “temporary” infl…

>According to the author's examples of bullshit

That's the author's definition of bullshit though, it doesn't necessarily constitute actual bullshit.

Re: The Bullshit

#212
post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gaddafi stated publicly that he was going to Benghazi to kill civilians, something which he had done in the past. He had a few battalions heading through the desert to do that. He was already causing great harm, or rather, the war was causing great harm. Choosing to tilt the game board to one side over the other is definitely something to ponder, and there's definitely a lot of information to dig up and report on, bu…

You're misrepresenting/misreading what I said, yes he was a scum doing great harm but it seems that the situation became a lot worse after France&England intervention as was to be expected , so what was the point of the intervention? Noone in the mainstream news AFAIK did its job and asked what will be going to happen next?

1) 'It was worse after UK/France intervened' is basically false.

"so what was the point of the intervention" - like I already said, at least to prevent an impending massacre, and then to tilt the outcome to 'one side', in which all things being equal, was preferable, and still is even in retrospect.

There was already a civil war, before any intervention.

If the UK and France had not intervened, there would have likely been a massacre - again, this is what Gaddafi stated he would do, moreover, there's no reason to believe that he would have unambiguously quashed the rebellion, meaning the civil war would have gone on in which he would have been a primary antagonist, possibly with the upper hand.

'The outcome' was titled by Western Powers, and it would have been better if there were more stability, but there's no reason to believe that it's worse after intervention.

The 2011 war was not hugely violent. In the entire war only a few thousand civilians and fighters died, which is frankly minimal. Through to the late 2010's the political instability was not very violent. The mini-war in the late 2010's was again, fairly specific and shortlived with few casualties.

2) 'Noone in the mainstream news AFAIK did its job and asked what will be going to happen next' - first, I don't think that this would represent any kind of fake news, just the media not having foresight, and often they do not. Second, Obama was very public with his statements of 'What Happens Next?' - it's why the US did only the frontline air support, AWACS, drones etc. and didn't do any of the main fighting. The 'big questions' around 'bad outcomes' definitely lingered, there were a lot of question marks about that during the war. Finally - none of that constitutes fake news or 'bullshit' really. If you wanted more specific and detailed covarage in the aftermath, you can see most of it on Al-Jazeera. CNN is not exactly going to have good coverage within Libya.

Re: The Bullshit

#213
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on what you mean by "these behaviours". I'm suggesting that the author is claiming some great injustice but conveniently trying to avoid letting anyone judge for themselves, and in my experience the people doing that usually aren't the world's most upstanding citizens. I'm certainly not suggesting that the author is prone to outbursts of racial slurs - that was just an example of something I encounter regu…

> but conveniently trying to avoid letting anyone judge for themselves Do you believe that your mind may be doing some interpretation (with or without "your" knowledge) in the formation of this conclusion?

Yes, generally speaking when I'm reading something I'd hope that my mind is doing some interpretation. It would be a rather difficult activity otherwise.

Re: The Bullshit

#214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but conveniently trying to avoid letting anyone judge for themselves Do you believe that your mind may be doing some interpretation (with or without "your" knowledge) in the formation of this conclusion?

Yes, generally speaking when I'm reading something I'd hope that my mind is doing some interpretation. It would be a rather difficult activity otherwise.

Agreed...the tricky part is realizing that it is doing interpretation, and realizing that what it ends up sending you is not reality, but an interpretation of reality, which is what you are discussing here (or all of us are discussing, in most any thread, or in life in general), as if it is reality itself. And then we're surprised when there are disagreements!!

The beauty of the mind though: even though it is doing this (manufacturing an interpreted version of reality in realtime), this tends to be an unpleasant idea to most people....but luckily, it also has the ability to interpret that away, allowing us to have our cake and eat it too (although this feature has some downsides of its own)!

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