31–36 of 36 posts
“Falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping after it” - Jonathan Swift, 1710 “...a lie can run around the world before the truth has got its boots on” - Terry Pratchett, 2000
the pratchett quote actually dates to much earlier. it's been attributed to churchill and twain. I used the Swift quote in my writeup of this study, though! https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/07/13/truth/
Nothing has changed over the centuries but the mechanisms by which propaganda is spread. The term "fake news" is itself propaganda, playing to people's innate sense that they are not, in fact, irrational and emotional beings, and are somehow better than the "morons" who fall for false stories. The sad truth is that even the smartest of us are, in some degree, intellectually lazy and hold at least one false belief. Th…
What makes you think this? Galileo was hung for what he said.
"Another approach is to follow that word, heresy. In every period of history, there seem to have been labels that got applied to statements to shoot them down before anyone had a chance to ask if they were true or not. "Blasphemy", "sacrilege", and "heresy" were such labels for a good part of western history, as in more recent times "indecent", "improper", and "unamerican" have been. By now these labels have lost their sting. They always do. By now they're mostly used ironically. But in their time, they had real force."
Nothing has changed over the centuries but the mechanisms by which propaganda is spread. The term "fake news" is itself propaganda, playing to people's innate sense that they are not, in fact, irrational and emotional beings, and are somehow better than the "morons" who fall for false stories. The sad truth is that even the smartest of us are, in some degree, intellectually lazy and hold at least one false belief. Th…
"increased over the last decades is the average westerner's desire to force those beliefs upon their fellow citizens" What makes you think this? Galileo was hung for what he said. "Another approach is to follow that word, heresy. In every period of history, there seem to have been labels that got applied to statements to shoot them down before anyone had a chance to ask if they were true or not. "Blasphemy", "sacrile…
Those days are gone, and a emboldened radical left, hell bent on stamping out heterodoxy through violence and intimidation, has the silent consent of progressives.
Nothing has changed over the centuries but the mechanisms by which propaganda is spread. The term "fake news" is itself propaganda, playing to people's innate sense that they are not, in fact, irrational and emotional beings, and are somehow better than the "morons" who fall for false stories. The sad truth is that even the smartest of us are, in some degree, intellectually lazy and hold at least one false belief. Th…
"increased over the last decades is the average westerner's desire to force those beliefs upon their fellow citizens" What makes you think this? Galileo was hung for what he said. "Another approach is to follow that word, heresy. In every period of history, there seem to have been labels that got applied to statements to shoot them down before anyone had a chance to ask if they were true or not. "Blasphemy", "sacrile…
I get the point of what you are saying (that times in the past have had very extreme responses to people stating things that were accurate but unpopular), but Galileo was not hung or even executed. He was placed under house arrest (the trouble he got into was also more about stepping on the Church's domain of interpreting Scripture rather than astronomical facts, but that's a tangential popular misconception).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
nice site, but i'll never understand the thinking behind "let's ask if they want to receive notifications immediately upon first page-hit" does anyone actually click 'yes' to that prompt?
Notifications on websites are just the pop-ups of 2018.
Everything new is old and notification prompts on first visit are still a terrible idea.