Yeah, we have a mighty crusader here looking to start a holy war in solving all the world’s problems.
A zealot of a different variety.
You called me here and now I’ve answered. I think it’s sweet you were thinking of me.
Quite the assumption. Here’s a joke about as clever as your personality. “You know what they say about people who assume? They make an ass out of u and me.”
That was lame. Is that all you got? Color me not impressed.
Exactly.
That’s it? No witty remark or reply? No smart comeback?
Wait do you really not get it?
It’s not a good comparison. In Wyld’s case he is complaining about a specific forum to the members of that forum. One forum out of thousands. He has options to move elsewhere, is setting up the debate with the very people he is calling stupid and the issue is of little importance beyond the forum itself. Not to say it is wrong per se, but it is a completely different situation. To complain about the dumbing down of media in general is an important issue beyond this forum and one the effects of which are not easy to avoid and is being raised by Dan with people he has chosen to discuss the issue with. So no parallels as a social dynamic and getting pissed of at one but accepting the other is not hypocrisy.
Now let’s look at this idea that the complaint that media [aren’t] smart enough is a display of arrogance. Why would that be? Could you make that case?
The centralization of media in fewer and fewer companies each, the reduction of resources for journalists, and the increasing power of corporations to control media that they do not directly control - iow that owned by other corporations, seem pretty much like givens to me. Perhaps you think media has not become more centralized and that journalists have as good resources and time they used to have and that corporations do not have greater and greater control of all mainstream media. But at least make a case. SAying that people are somehow being hypocrites or are blaming what you consider cliche fall guys is not a case. And yes, people like treats, people’s attention spans are going down. Scenes in movies are much shorter and there is more pyrotechines per second. TV news is faster and more like entertainment and it is not a corporate secret that news is now conceived of as entertainment in a way that would have been foreign to journalists 50 years ago. New wireless media are reducing attention spans and reading in depth - and there is a lot of research that backs this up.
Did someone suggest the solutions you are suggesting here or are they straw men? I somehow doubt Dan did or that there was some consensus on that issue. Let’s say you are right and some people here are hypocritical in the specific - iow sometimes they indulge is mindless media - does this mean either 1) they can’t complain or 2) the are incorrect? Let me help you here: No.
Fuck, what human is immaculate when participating in the world today. Sure, I know Jesus thought we should get the mote cleaned out of our own eye first
before as part of a mob throwing stones at a woman who maybe had sex out of marriage.
Get it???
A mob of assholes with more power as individuals and then certainly as a group attacking a single person.
Here we have some people expressing various negative reactions to organizations and patterns with much more power than them.
Not a Christian myself, and I have no reason to suspect you are, but I think the little story works as an analogy because your thinking seems to parallel Jesus’ thinking.
How dare they complain since they to some degree -you assume- also engage. But of course perhaps, even if they do partake of mindless drivel on occasion, this may
not have much effect of what information they relay to others. Which would be the only way this would be meaningful as a critique. If they consumed mindless drivel and then passed it on as fact to other people, because that is the concern here.
It seems clear to me a real problem has been pointed out, not that they are the first mention it. Dan’s metaphor of predigested media seems less common to me.
Love, the ‘I think that’s a pretty safe bet’ ambiguous referent. It certainly is a safe bet that you think you do not need to know anything. It is also a safe bet it isn’t very relevent. It is also a safe bet that you have implied that the complaint that media have become more inane is incorrect, but in the safe way of not having defended that position in the slightest.
What has been done in this thread was to raise an issue and it seems to me more in the seeking of commiseration than building a case. What you have contributed is just noise. No problem is presented, certainly no solutions - your own criteria - just some kind of post-Christian outrage and a misplaced application of what has seeped into you rather undigested, showing the sloppy, mixed paradigm modern mind coming in to barf its own arrogance: How dare anyone complain. There is not problem. Be nice.
It’s like the NT for dummies. And if you think being an atheist means you didn’t just vomit some New Testament for Dummies in this thread, you don’t know much about your own mind let alone minds in general.
Damn, your description of the modern mind hit it right on the head.
The reason I ad hommed was because I was tired, your earlier post, being full of logical holes and contradictions, and emotional vomit would be quite a project to diagnose.
As for me I don’t read stupid pre-digested gossip magazines, such things are beneath me, at most I read a few online news articles here and there. If I pickup a magazine it is to read the “how-to” or life tips, not stupid celebrity gossip, and even the lifetips are of general low quality and unpleasant to read.
The comparison still holds. You’re assuming there is no other option besides the dumb media. Are tabloids the only reading option? No. Are they the only thing a person will do with their life? No, thus your point disproved.
If you’re going to isolate his post to the forum why not isolate dumb media to the people reading dumb media in the moment of reading dumb media? You can make the same cop out argument that dumb media only affects dumb media readings in whatever period of time. But you can also take a meta approach to wyld’s post that he is creating problems outside the forum and expand it the same way you’re doing with the dumb media problem. There’s no reason both perspectives can’t be applied to both issues besides convenience for your argument. Typing a thing that will be read on the internet isn’t so different to typing a thing that will be read on paper that you can’t make the same comparisons.
On top of that, now you’re assuming that media is getting dumber as if there was media prior to this that was more intelligent. In order to prove that you would need a standard for what intelligent media is, which you don’t have. You would then need to take that unit and measure all media which you didn’t do. And then you would need to compare past media with present media. Which you also didn’t do.
Yes. Because to say what you’re reading is so important you need to destroy and humiliate the people who read other things is practically the definition of arrogance.
Arrogant: having or revealing an exaggerated sense of one’s own importance or abilities.
That’s your problem then. “Givens” to you isn’t true because you want them to be. Can you prove that the monopolization of media has lead to less exposure to creativity? Because by most accounts, the internet is the golden age of the little guy. It’s so saturated with information that you can sit in a little echo chamber in your corner of the internet all day and believe whatever you want. Why do I have to make a case on such a baseless accusation? I’m not putting in the work on your bad assumptions. How are you going to blame other people’s short attention spans when the content of this thread is about as shallow and baseless as any tabloid? Shouldn’t you be providing well thought out measured content instead of baseless accusations?
Attention spans are going down. So what does that mean? Maybe the media they used to measure the attention span was shit. Is it reducing productivity? Because if it’s not then it isn’t a problem because if they’re still productive that means they can find ways to focus on things that require focus. Maybe the studies were just boring. If you don’t have the evidence and don’t know how to read the information then why talk about it? What is the actual research? Do you even know?
Media is entertaining? So what? You can be factual and entertaining. It’s not a requirement of learning to be bored. It’s actually the opposite. You learn more when you’re engaged.
Straw men? You have to assume they’re true for them to be strawmen. I was asking a question. Some of them “Good genes” was suggested. Which is the one I went with. Which is the basis for eugenics.
Not in a ‘those without sin cast the first stone’ sensibility, but in a logical consistency. Not so much Jesus as it is bad math.
You’re exaggerating my claim. I said it’s a safe bet that they indulge in stupid media. What are the chances that they have digested some piece of fluff art with some regularity in their life? I’d say that’s pretty damn close to 100%. Do you really want me to ask what their favorite movie is? If it’s anything besides a well researched documentary I can easily make the case that it’s stupid and impractical. Like I said, they didn’t find it important to define what dumb media is so I have quite a bit of flexibility here. Bad methodology makes for bad arguments.
More assumptions. No I’m neither Christian nor Atheist. I admit when I don’t know something and try my best to describe what I know in measurable terms or probabilities so people have a god damn reference to understand what I mean instead of spouting “THIS SHIT IS BAD AND I DON’T LIKE IT.” But yeah this thread is bad and I don’t like it.
Tabloids are the only option in many convience stores.
They bombard your consciousness the moment you walk in. The other magazines are located in the store elsewhere, off to the side.
and these other magazines are more or less drivel, popular science believes in quantum quackery, the philosophy mags don’t talk about anything important, etc.
What are those tabloids telling society? That you should feel stupid and be stupid.
If they instead replaced the tabloids with information of substance, about consciousness and ultimate things, society would start to be less dumb.
That’s because convenience stores are selling food not information. Is that the basis for your argument? Convenience stores sell tabloids when they could be selling scientific journals therefore it is making people stupid? So by that association, convenience stores sell tape when they could be selling power tools therefore it is making people worse at constructing houses? How many ridiculous assertions can I make using that approach?
Plus on top of that there are plenty of magazines that have useful information in them.
And on top of that, are you seriously going to suggest on a philosophy forum, a discipline so impractical it has become a cliche for wasted college tuition, that you’re spending your time more wisely? Wouldn’t you be wiser studying medicine, or engineering? At least a social science so you don’t end up with logical frameworks so flimsy that you can barely discuss them in any depth.
And finally and probably most importantly, the purpose of freedom of the press is to prevent people like you from imposing on the freedoms of others. The reason for that is because it’s almost universally frowned upon for people to roll up and be like “Hey you’re stupid for reading that.” People used to make the same argument, that a lack of Bible study would lead to immorality and chaos but it never happened for the same reason your paranoia that a lack of supposed intelligent media is going to lead to the downfall of human understanding. That reason is, there are a practically an infinite number of sources of information and people can do a practically infinite number of things throughout the course of their lives and you’ve essentially mistaken that infinity + infinity as like 5 tabloids.
So, you are for the freedom of idiots?
Seems like they are the once reducing freedoms, not me. Slavery to instinct is not freedom. Furthermore, if I go to the convinience sstore and politely tell them to make the magazines something intelligent, they will not do so. Yet, somehow am the one trouncing on people’s freedoms? So it is simply a case of corporations that couldnt careless about the downfall of mainstream civilization, moving on, nothing more to see…
Oh and I cant afford tuition in a broken education system, so here I am wasting my time talking to people like cba online…
Are you serious? I can’t believe any of this is the serious thought of an adult. Yes. There’s no IQ test for whether or not we can enslave people. We don’t have a right to treat people poorly because they’re uneducated, or mentally deficient. What do you want your argument to prove? Do you want to be able to go to a mental hospital and start ripping on people for not having the same capacity as you? Probably not right? That’s not ok? But ripping on people a step up is fine? At what point are you the dick for picking on people? I can’t believe that a hundred years after eugenics died down I’d be telling someone why the arguments that failed those idiots need to be disregarded.
Slavery to instinct… what… why? What does that even mean? Are you just throwing out a hyperbole you read in a teenagers diary? Is reading a tabloid slavery to tabloids now? If you want to repeatedly look at the world as some ridiculous caricature where only buffoons who are incapable of doing literally anything besides slobber and read tabloids then you’re not discussing anything useful. You’re just wasting time because those people don’t exist. You’re just making yourself feel better by being a dick to people you’ve projected a delusion onto.
Yes if you go to a store and tell the owner of the store how to run their store you are trouncing on their freedoms. I don’t get to go to your job and start demanding your money do I? Is this really news to you? Corporations oh god with the corporations are always the bad guys… There are plenty of corporations making money off of information. Don’t worry. Like I said just because the people who sell you lettuce aren’t trying to sell you Nietzsche doesn’t mean society is collapsing. You can still buy Nietzsche from the people who sell books. Imagine that. What a god damn fucked up system that must be where the book guy sells books and the grocer sells groceries. Armageddon has come. You’re right. You exposed it here on a philosophy forum. What next? The barber is going to cut hair? That’s just wrong and confusing. Why aren’t the scissors made of Nietzsche books? I can’t imagine why. I’ll make a topic about it. We can do some really important “philosophizing” there.
You can’t afford it? Wow it’s a good thing I’m not the type of dick who rips on people over their life choices. You know you don’t need people to teach you to learn things right? Oh wait, I see what the problem is. You don’t know where to get books from. Here’s a hint. First you gotta get out of the dorito and mountain dew aisle. That’s step one. That’s not where they sell books. You just gotta head over to your local community college’s book store. That’s where they sell the learning books. You can even buy them used real cheap. Or you can purchase one from one of those ‘evil’ corporations who sell used books for literally pennies because like you guys have been saying, society is collapsing and this is the dark age of information. Hell you could even go to one of those free book buildings, I think they’re called libraries that your evil corrupt government set up for you. They have books there too. All kinds of books. You can learn anything you want for free. That’s how far our society has fallen. Pretty fucked up right? I mean it’s like there’s a whole world outside the checkout stand in the grocery store.
Dan~, We have this media and enjoy this media for different reasons not just one. Most reasons are healthy and necessary for a healthy society. The major is connection to the society, this includes entertainment and a sort of social education. Take some time and truly observe social creatures. From birds to herds. You will see animals observing actions of their group while eating or resting. Sometimes the observed pulls a boner and the observer learns. Or the observed does something new etc. Leaders are the most observed.
The rags we read are truth and lie. Yet it allows connection and social learning. Can we do better? Hell yea but, social and genetic diversity makes massive changes slow and difficult.
You’re an idiot. The tabloids are an agent of enslavement, and there is something wrong with bombarding it in people’s faces. Junk food shouldn’t even be sold, it is cancerous.
That’s the smartest thing you can come up with? Repeating the stupid shit that I poked a bunch of holes in?
Like I said, there is the echo chamber and there is reality. Repeating this shit to your buddies over and over again isn’t going to make you a smarter person but you’re obviously not interested in that. I understand what Turd said in my other thread is true, you don’t win debates by berating people but God damn you expect more from people who pretend to be passionate about learning things.
Slavery… boy if you think slavery is a magazine you’re lost man. You’re probably white too. That’s a pretty safe bet, but I doubt anyone with an understanding of the actual horrors of slavery would compare a Taylor Swift article to being owned. What other spoiled entitlements are slavery? A lack of ice cream? Losing a video game? This shit is sad.
That’s consumerism right there. The three processes which you mentioned must only be a means to the opposite process of simplification. Not more demand, but less demand. Not more activity, but less activity. All growth must be a reaction to an external growth, and not an initiation without any external reference point, and its purpose must be to stop this external growth.
Either you are an ascetic and you strive to reduce your needs, or you are a hedonist and you strive to increase them.
Most people are hedonists, and that’s the root of all problems.
I want to warn you that people who enjoy slavery (i.e. those who are indulgent and who put personal or group interests above universal interests) will be insulted by your claim. Also, they won’t understand what it means to enjoy slavery (i.e. to be indulgent) and will try to make you look like an idiot who has no idea what he’s talking about.
They have no choice but to mock.