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When you already have a bunch of fires burning setting more fires makes them compete for oxygen, but that doesn't help living things. I would say the proper re

When you already have a bunch of fires burning setting more fires makes them compete for oxygen, but that doesn't help living things. I would say the proper reaction to bullshit is critical thinking. Take someone like James Randi, and imagine instead of disproving deceptions he had just pretended to receive a message from spirits that this or that person was faking something. That's "competition" alright, but it's not helping, and it just helps normalizes something that has greater potential for abuse than use.

limist 8y ago
James Randi has been caught outright lying and is not to be relied on: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/film-news/11270453/James-Randi-debunking-the-king-of-the-debunkers.html https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/film-news/11270453/... http://zthoughtcriminal.blogspot.com/2013/04/randis-involvement-with-identity-theft.html http://zthoughtcriminal.blogspot.com/2013/04/randis-involvem...
- PavlovsCat 8y ago
  Thanks, I had no idea, but that was really just an example I made up on the spot. In some cases, you can fight wildfires with fire, but that's also besides the point, which isn't about James Randi or fire but propaganda and deception, and how best to counter it.
anon_d 8y ago
Critical thinking is good, but we have a system that only applies it to ideas that it doesn't like and a culture of hostility towards applying it to it's own sacred ideals. The result of this system is not truth. The result of this system is propaganda successful disguised as objectivity... which is exactly what you need in order to effectively manipulate a democracy.
- PavlovsCat 8y ago
  > Critical thinking is good, but we have a system that only applies it to ideas that it doesn't like and a culture of hostility towards applying it to it's own sacred ideals. Yes, and it makes it all the more damning, because it kinda shows we know how logic works, what standards or principles are, but for "social reasons" we can suspend that. > Unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official ban. [..] Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the highbrow periodicals. -- George Orwell This now split up into more echo chambers, little "orthodoxies", but the sum of that is not truth either.

limist 8y ago

James Randi has been caught outright lying and is not to be relied on: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/film-news/11270453/James-Randi-debunking-the-king-of-the-debunkers.html https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/film-news/11270453/... http://zthoughtcriminal.blogspot.com/2013/04/randis-involvement-with-identity-theft.html http://zthoughtcriminal.blogspot.com/2013/04/randis-involvem...

PavlovsCat 8y ago
Thanks, I had no idea, but that was really just an example I made up on the spot. In some cases, you can fight wildfires with fire, but that's also besides the point, which isn't about James Randi or fire but propaganda and deception, and how best to counter it.

anon_d 8y ago

Critical thinking is good, but we have a system that only applies it to ideas that it doesn't like and a culture of hostility towards applying it to it's own sacred ideals. The result of this system is not truth. The result of this system is propaganda successful disguised as objectivity... which is exactly what you need in order to effectively manipulate a democracy.

PavlovsCat 8y ago
> Critical thinking is good, but we have a system that only applies it to ideas that it doesn't like and a culture of hostility towards applying it to it's own sacred ideals. Yes, and it makes it all the more damning, because it kinda shows we know how logic works, what standards or principles are, but for "social reasons" we can suspend that. > Unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official ban. [..] Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the highbrow periodicals. -- George Orwell This now split up into more echo chambers, little "orthodoxies", but the sum of that is not truth either.