How Reliable is Anything?

Yoda, Silver Bullet, QUIT CRAPPING ON MY THREAD!!!

How many times do I have to repeat this before it finally sinks into your head?

About Pidzilla, what possesses you into believing that I have alienated him from myself? I get along just fine with Pidzilla! I don't know what exactly your problem is, Yoda, but if I need a nanny or chaperone, I can look up the Yellow Pages, thanks!

Now, back to the topic under discussion . . .

Does anyone have anything to add that is RELEVANT to the subject at hand?

Can't we all just get along???

__________________
The novelist does not long to see the lion eat grass. He realizes that one and the same God created the wolf and the lamb, then smiled, "seeing that his work was good".

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They had temporarily escaped the factories, the warehouses, the slaughterhouses, the car washes - they'd be back in captivity the next day but now they were out - they were wild with freedom. They weren't thinking about the slavery of poverty. Or the slavery of welfare and food stamps. The rest of us would be all right until the poor learned how to make atom bombs in their basements.

*craps on dijango's thread and leaves*

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Hey yo this is no lie-i-i
Me and my nexijuns gettin' high-i-i
Hey yo if you look up into the sky-i-i
You might see us floating by-i--i

Wow...Django giving me thread etiquette lectures. I wonder if I can hire Marlon Brando as my personal trainer while I'm at it.

A word of genuine advice: you will not regain the respect you so utterly lost site-wide by dodging accountability and refusing to discuss the (valid) gripes people have with you. It is only by owning up to your mistakes and altering your behavior for the better that you'll be afforded the kind of consideration you so rabidly demand.

No thread is an island. Your statements in one can and will be applied and considered in others.


Apparently it hasn't occurred to you that I hear you just fine, but have chosen to disobey your "order."


"I am starting to understand why people here are so frustrated with you."
-- Pidzilla

He doesn't seem to despise you, but the above is a step down from his earlier (seeming) indifference on the matter.

I have actually reach the point where I am so influential on this board that people cites me!! I did it!! I'M A MOFO CELEBRITY!!!

Well of course you are, dingleberry. That new sig and avvie are really quite cool if I haven't mentioned it before.

Well thank you, huckleberry. You hadn't but now you have. Do you love me again?

I always love you... even when I want to kill you.


You were right, by the way. I shouldn't have said it was boring without reading it through. You were right to nail me for it.

AARRRRGGGHHH!!!! Don't do that!! I like you better when you're an *******!!

Chris vs. Django=comedy gold

__________________
"I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore!" - Howard Beale

Yoda and Silver Bullet:

HERE is a thread especially designed for the two of you.

Feel free to move there and crap all you like!

I'm just trying to keep my own thread clean, crap-free and smelling sweet!

Anyone out there wanting to actually debate the issues about the reliability of our sources of information in this, the Information Age? Anyone out there with a contribution to make that is relevant to the subject matter? Just wondering!

Dear Buds,
Don't know how relevant my remarks EVER are, but . . . there are some things that can be verified by our own senses and our own experiences. (Note that I don't buy that stuff about "am I an emperor dreaming I'm a butterfly?")

I think it's true that our governments (the US in my case, but it applies to all governments) lie to us a whole lot -- sometimes on purpose to acheive a specific goal, but often just for the hell of it. And sometimes just because they're mistaken & don't know the dif between what's true & what's not.

And of course the media lie because somebody had paid them to lie. Why else would Saudi Arabia NOT have a bad press? (BAD idea to reduce the number of owners of radio stations/TV broadcasters & print media! VERY bad!)

And sometimes men and women lie to each other

And sometimes we lie to ourselves.

But if we are thoughtful and watchful, we can often tell in our real lives what's true and what's not, though as you say, it's sensible to be a little skeptical.

But maybe not always knowing which "truths" are untruths helps us to stay alert and thinking. And continuing to think is a good remedy for a lot of the world's troubles, don't you agree?

Love,
Jozie

But unless you and 'Chris are really good friends and are just playing, I think that all that name-calling and four-letter wording is a real waste of time. There are better things to do with your lives, pals!

Jozie

Hi, Jozie! Your remarks are always welcome and always relevant! Thanks for your comments addressing the topic!

About my feud with Chris--I agree, it is a waste of time! Let's hope things change for the better in the future.

I see your points, but my intention was not so much to advocate a conspiracy theory as to simply point out that only about 25% (if you take a generous view) of the average person's worldview or perception of reality is actually based on 1st hand experience. The VAST majority of anybody's concept of the universe they live in--anything from 75% to 99%, I would argue--is based on 2nd hand sources. Considering this fact, the issue becomes--how reliable are any of these second-hand sources? Fact is, most of what we accept as truth and fact remains unverified by us--because, quite simply, we don't have the time. We turn to supposedly reliable sources for our information--reputable media outlets, for example, or reliable documentary sources. But how reliable are theses sources really? Quite apart from the possibility of contrivance or fabrication is the issue of cultural or social bias or prejudice, or any other factor that compromises strict factual objectivity. Like the example I cited earlier, if you take any arbitrary news item from, for example, msnbc.com, and strictly analyse it, the truth that comes to light is that 99.9999% of the world only are aware of that piece of information through some second-hand source (and this invariably includes the journalists reporting the story) and the only people who experience it first-hand are the eyewitnesses and others actually involved in the story--around 0.0001% of the world! That's a sobering thought--to me, at least! How reliable, then, is ANY news story? Of course, these statistics are not based on any scientifice study, but are only rough, hypothetical figures that I'm using to illustrate my point. And, of course, they wouldn't apply to something like 9/11, which was witnessed by pretty much everyone--but even an event like that is only witnessed by a few people first hand, strictly speaking. Most people see it only on TV--live, perhaps, but that's still second hand. And even the people who experience it 1st hand only experience a small part of the entire event.

If you imagine yourself locked in a tiny room with only a TV or radio or internet access as your only outlet to the outside world, there would be no way for you to know whether or not everything you watch or listen to or read was totally fabricated or not--no way for you to ever corroborate any of your sources. And that is how most of us live our lives with relation to the media.That's why when a reporter from a reputed Newspaper like the New York Times gets fired for fabricating news stories, leading to the resignation of several of the management at the institution, it raises some serious questions about the reliability of modern journalism. That's just my take on the issue.

i think that we should remember that conflict is a part of our lives these days, and that yes, it is a waste of time yelling at someone and being mad at them, but it is also necessary. why, i don't know but if everyone was perfect, how boring would everything be?

i rest my case.

__________________
let me know you'll wait for me..

The firing of the reporter and resignation of several of those in management should instill a little more faith in the institution of journalism, not cause us to be MORE skeptical. It's nice to know that things like this don't go on without penalty. This reporter was caught because it was inevitable that people with first-hand experience would expose the lies he tried to pass as truth (in his case, the origianl journalist who wrote the article he plagerized). The skepticism, to an extent, should have been present in all of us in the first place. We should always be analytical thinkers when presented with "facts," but to discard all faith in journalism because someone was caught and punished for unscrupulous acts would be like losing faith in your religion because of something immoral in which the pastor/priest/rabbi of your church may have been involved.

Journalists can get away with fabricating the truth to an extent, and governments can manipulate media, I agree, but I don't think it is necessary to experience first-hand the things we except as truth. Faith, trust, common sense, and the scientific method make up our analytical thinking and help us decide in our own minds what is truth and what may have been fabricated.

If the media tells me it is 93 million miles to the sun, I can accept that without first-hand experience. I trust that all the scientists in the world would not conspire to fabricate this figure.

Should we be skeptical? Yes. Should we use common sense? Yes. Should we trust respectable news sources? Yes, because it is inevitable that reporters who fabricate stories will become exposed.

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NEW (as of 1/24/05): Quick Reviews #10

Apple Pie and Baseball.

For every one reporter who does get exposed, how many thousands, or even millions, remain unexposed? Who knows? And this was an extreme case, regarding a journalist who completely contrived his stories, apparently. But what about others who may not necessarily contrive their material, but may compromise on its objectivity, to some degree, adding a personal bias to it or distorting the facts in some way? How is there any possible way to verify any of what goes on here? Not without corroborating the sources or channels of information, and given the speed of the information highway, who has the time or capability to do something like this? It's hardly the same thing as religion. It is serious because we, as citizens of the world, deserve to know whether or not the worldview that is being presented to us in the media is an accurate picture of reality or has been distorted in some way, if not wildly inaccurate. Whether governments are responsible, or corporations or other vested interests is besides the point. The question is how accurate a picture of reality does the media present to us and what means do we have of corroborating any of their claims? I don't see how common sense or intuition can help you discern the facts from the lies. Of course, in some cases, when the claims made defy logic or experiential reality, one can contest them and make them out to be fallacious. In most cases, however, there is really no way of discerning reality from fantasy, when it comes to the media. That is disturbing to me, and that is why I'm advocating a healthy dose of skepticism, as opposed to complete paranoia.

Millions? Zuh?

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www.esotericrabbit.com

Blind skepticism is no better overall than blind acceptance.

More importantly, I don't believe your behavior is consistent with your claims. If you're so high on first-hand information, why do you so often shirk even the most basic of verification and research?

I think you ARE advocating paranoia. And frankly, I think the reason for it is based in part in your desire to believe what you will no matter what evidence (be it a statistic or a news item) is presented to the contrary. Your rampant distrust of the news is a crucial component in any philosophy whose first priority is not truth, but self-preservation.


I said the same thing to myself. Probably more of Django's trademark "exaggeration."