We've pretty clearly answered that negatively, America values an indoctrinated public. To the point that our debates aren't about right or wrong, fact or fiction, but whose doctrine one hews closest to.
- The vast majority of people enjoy indoctrination and very few people will say "hold up" when presented with a story that doesn't line up with other stories or that seems synthetic. This is partly because doctrine is designed and evolved to be salient, and partly because many people have not experienced an environment of truth, where things make sense, that could give non-sensemaking a contrasting emotional character.
- There are occasional isolated incidences of powerful interests wanting very badly that the public stay uninformed, but no counterbalancing incidences of similarly powerful interests wanting the public to be informed. This averages out to a downward pressure, even though each instance is brief and each power incomplete.
- Even when people want to be informed, they will usually be satisfied with the synthetic feeling of being informed, and stop there. Realizing that what you think is informing you is actually wasting your time takes a humility and emotional fortitude only present in the strongest, most humble, and most epistemically virtuous people. Consequently it is rare for people to realize it.
That's not to say it's proven by any means, but various media outlets credulously accepting stories from conflicted sources and not even disclosing that conflict is itself a black mark whether or not the theory pans out later.
It was a wild political swing at a manufactured enemy to shift blame from a void of American leadership.
Yes, that's by no means conclusive, but they say that we should research this instead of coming to hasty conclusions in either direction that are, as you point out, manifestly political.
There were a lot of clues that it might indeed have originated from a lab but these were selectively ignored, thus it "didn't amount to a theory".
The hypothetical article may also be trying to cause people to act like the lab leak theory is false. The statement doesn't indicate whether the author believes the fact is true or false, it indicates the behaviors they desire from the reader - for example, not being biased against Asians. See also "You don't need N95 masks", which means is that the speaker doesn't want a panic buy of masks so they're unavailable for medical personnel.
It could also be written to cause people to believe that the speaker is part of the group that advocates against the lab leak hypothesis. "That sounds like a conspiracy theory, or racist, or nationalist, and I'm a part of the team that's against those things, go team, we're the best!". By taking a stance against the lab leak hypothesis they indicate their memebership in these causes, regardless of the truth or falsehood of the statement or the behaviors that belief or disbelief in the statement would entail.
Finally, it may be expected to benefit the speaker in an abstract sense. If you have any position at all on a hot news item, that brings in eyeballs, which the publisher values. None of the correctness, behavior, or group identification results really matter in this context, their incentive is orthogonal to the communicated information.
[1] https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/qDmnyEMtJkE9Wrpau/simulacra-...
I think what you're complaining is valid, but you need to look at both sides. There appears to be a million different hypotheses for how the first transition to human happened, the lab leak is just one of them. Responsible journalism would have included the other hypothesis instead of highlighting the most panic/profit inducing one.
IIRC, what QAnon pushed was beyond the standard lab-leak theory, that it was an lab leak of something created as an offensive bioweapon. I do think that that had the effect of poisoning the well on the plain lab leak theory (one might even speculate that that was the purpose for which QAnon pushed the theory.)
Now let’s say you read the vox article but nothing else. You might feel informed, like you’re doing something good keeping up on the news or whatever, but you’re potentially worse off if you don’t know the whole story
I am toying with GIS tools these days and it kind of shocked me that when I queried for "most common amenities" in a medium sized US city, I got:
1: parkings
2: places of worship
Well above any educational facility.
Also, lack of atheism is not a sign of lack of education or presence of ignorance.
Places of worship are places where you are taught to respect a lot of indoctrination techniques as valid and where you do weekly exercises at shutting down critical thinking. I can't imagine it having a positive contribution over the wisdom of the general public.
Having said that, skill-oriented communities would be great too - they primarily exist online right now because participants are often spread out, or otherwise take the form of friend groups based on shared interest.
Gather all the theologies into a room and get them to agree on the evidence for their points of dogma if you can. There's a first test of knowledge. Beyond pragmatic social strategy, these ancient tribal writings are a vestige of ignorant mummery.
"My Sky Avenger versus your Sky Avenger," as George Carlin might have said.
> Religion is the original form of moral philosophy and sociology, and contains thousands of years of experiential learning [...]
Sure, humans (and likely other extinct hominins) have speculated about their life and the world. It is not given that all their conclusions favoured a Sky Avenger. Some notable ancient Greeks were atheists. So, no, "religion" does not contain thousands of years of experiential learning. Speculation only becomes learning when it can be tested. Arrant nonsense is not learning, even if bound in leather and printed in gold on vellum.
Theology is knowledge only in the same sense that astrology, Scientology, or QAnon claims are knowledge. It is knowledge about a system of false and/or untestable assertions, constituting in all a set of conventions to which a power structure may ally itself. Old religions become mythology when there is no longer a power structure to promote them.
People make pragmatic choices every day to live in the real world. Purveyors of religion just build fantasies atop these pragmatic choices.
I used to believe this stuff when I was a know-it-all 15 year old too and used to joke about the flying spaghetti monster, but I've since attempted to actually understand some of these ideas rather than dismissing religion as crazy imaginings by those stupid people from over 70 years ago and all of history before that, compared to us modern enlightened atheists. I was raised atheist and have only come to understand some Christian ideas via learning some philosophy and 20th and 21st century scientific theory.
Although literary criticism far from a rigorous field of thought, I am happy to celebrate your interest, especially if you have devoted most of your adult life to it.
What ignorance, cruelty, strife, and murder have been committed in the cause of other interpretations of 4000 [1] years of mythology is to my mind the greater concern. But we can of course agree to disagree on the InterWobbles.
Cheers!
[1] An arbitrary number to include various artefacts.
I suspect that wars between sects is not a simple matter of killing the non-believer, but an excuse for the real reason wars have always been fought: expansionism and colonialism in order to control scarce resources.
And, of course, the winners of a conflict write the historical account and the myths. The losers lose their voice and often their lives.
There are some relatively lucid works in literature. But literature serves artistic purposes. There are honest and more rigorous works in economics, history, and anthropology that lead to a stark conclusion. [0]
Civilisation is a hard system to build. ^_^
I don't agree that there is any rigorous system to be found in the topic we are discussing. But we certainly can agree that anyone trying to be good is a welcome candle in the darkness. ^_^
You don't "need" to attend places of worship 80% of your life. A place of worship is usually a place where you are told to consider respectable several of the tools for indoctrination:
- Trust in a authority
- Faith over knowledge
- Revelation as a valid source of information
I think this is the main reason the US population is so poorly informed and polarized:
- For the last 40 years, the Republican Party has systematically defunded education and consolidated the news media.
The Democrats haven’t done enough to push back, and many of the left wing media outlets copied Fox’s playbook, but that’s not the same as spearheading these changes.
https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/5c8u9l/we_are_the_wik...
For example could allowing other countries to develop vaccines seriously damage American or European IP?
https://www.openglobalrights.org/vaccine-apartheid-global-in...