Here is a reality check including alternate facts.
History is the version of past events that people have decided to agree on.
History is the version of past events that people have decided to agree on.
https://mynews4.com/news/local/traffic-stop-leads-to-889500-...
I think we've lost the context here. The point was that, compared to Russia, our media has much more freedom to break stories. But, I'll admit, I've never lived in Russia. I only work with friends that have (previously) lived there. In our discussions, it's never really been a question that the Kremlin has much more control over the media than US administrations (despite their best effort, otherwise).
Guess what happens in russia for the same?
Not to mention that they will also lock you up and/or shove a bottle up your ass and/or kill you for any political action whatsoever challenging the Gremlin.
>RU are in war time, are they not?
Have you heard of what happened to Boris Nemtsov who dared to speak out about the fact that putin was grooming his country for war?
When the state can control (subvert) media without public knowledge then how do you determine accuracy?
For example, if I claim to my insurance company that my house burned down yesterday, they are going to want objective measurements to ensure that's true.
The problem comes down to what happens the further away from an event you get. I can claim my house burned down twenty years ago and it would be more difficult to prove me wrong. But you could still use things like police reports, satellite photographs, interviewing people alive at that time, etc. to provide what I would consider objective truth. Of course, you can always play the pessimist view and assume everyone and everything is a lie. Which is valid, I suppose, but not very useful.
Outside, people might claim that Pepsi has microchips in it put there by Soros to control you. You can buy a pesi a microscope or some other clever device and check it then share your findings with your group.
Same with flat Earth, you can buy a balon, a camera and find the truth.
What if you think Putin is a saint? You can go in Ruzzia capital and test this out by saying something bad about Putin, if youget fucked you know you were wrong and your group will also know.
The issue is that propaganda made people deny the truth, like idiots would deny that there is a war in Ukraine and said it is fake news. Some big orange idiot still pushes the narrative that Ukraine started the war when we had live streams of the invazion happening, not sure if USA has the ability to fix the crisis and a civil war is probably IMO
The examples given are also convenient in the sense that they have relatively easy answers. What about something like the existence of quarks? What kind of equipment would I need to see for myself that they exist? What if I want to "see" the Higgs Boson for myself?
That's not even getting into non-falsifiable ideas like "last Thursdayism" that can't really be proven to be not true no matter how many observations you make.
Edit:
Here's another example - Elon Musk.
Is he a brilliant engineer? A ruthless businessman? A fool? A Nazi?
You can probably make a case for any of these conclusions by picking and choosing things he's said and done. How do you even start to determine the objective truth of his capabilities and intentions?
We are talking about propaganda, about paid Ruzzians that create for example fake documents daily, some show that Zelensky bought some sports car today, a mansion yesterday, an apartment last week. Is it very possible to figure out that they are fake, maybe not for each of us, but as a group we could find someone that has experience in the domain and can tell you that the document shown is not how such a document looks in real life and is an obvious fake.
or a super recent example, you have a protest or gathering and some people claim there were 400k people present and others say there were only 10k people i that town square, there are videos and photos, sure not every person has the ability to evaluate the number but if we combine as a group we can gfind someone intelligent that can figure out what number is correct (except if the group is filled with less intelligent people then someone needs to take pity on them and explain as to children how you can count and estimate a crowd size)
And there is always absolute truth if you want to be scientific, like "I do not know" or 2+2=4 where 2 is s(s(0)) , + is well defined, and 4= s(s(s(s(0)))) , and is also truth that 1>0 for real numbers(where...definition of all those symbols) etc
Most of the people in the flat earth community were there for the sense of community and interaction with other people. That says a lot about why people hold on to illogical beliefs so strongly. Because society today has removed a lot of the regular social contact that existed in decades past, people are looking elsewhere to fulfill that need. I'm not a theist, but the fact that nearly everyone in our community used to go to church every weekend back in the 1980s filled a need that people have for socialization. Today my dad thinks it's lucky if they have even 8 or 9 people at the same church.
What was happening is that we had no other way to communicate and socialize so people would just randomly go and visit each other unannounced or go to a bar/tavern and meet there. I think today we feel that it is not OK to bother a friend or relative , maybe if there is some celebration, back then it was OK (sure you had to read the situation or the host could tell you to come another time if they are busy).
Anyway, in my village it was not the church, my grandfather would not go to church even if he believes in God (he considers church as a man made thing), one of his nephews would stop often (maybe 2 times a week) when passing by and bring a newspaper, my grndfather would bring out some alcohol and they would talk politics and curse on politicians.
I do not have the perspective of the city experience though, what woud they do before social media or cable TV.
I live in a rural area, and we still get random drop ins from out neighbours occassionally. It's part of what makes rural life a bit more enjoyable. We have pretty good relations with our neighbours, which is easier when there are only a handful.
When I lived in Toronto for years it was a vastly different experience. What I found is that because one passes by so many people each day on the street, subway platform, bus or streetcar, you have to switch your default to actively ignoring people. There just isn't the capacity to make eye contact with hundreds or thousands of people every day. And yes, I did go out a lot more often to a pub or bar or cafe a lot more simply to randomly meet people.
Now that I'm out in the country again, that social contact is rare, so I take the time when chancing upon someone and am much more likely to strike up a conversation.
There is always a line beyond which everything can be negated. This line is where disinformation thrives and you have to develop your own sense of how to find it.
That's a nice sound bite, but history is a lot more than that. That's why we have historians, archeologists and material basis of history.
We should strive to get closer to practical reality.
History is what other people decided to say about the past events.
I believe 'history' is very often wrongly taken as source of truth.