its about who supplies russia, venezuela, the middle east
if the liberal west gets its energy only 1% from russia, but russian revenue is 60% from energy exports (bullshit made up numbers to make my point), it behooves the liberal west to starve russia of energy revenues by investing in alternative sources for ideological and geopolitical reasons, since russian ideology is artificially propped up by, and pointed against, western liberal democracy
its good foreign policy to starve your ideological enemies economically. its not good foreign policy to fund your ideological enemies. it doesn't matter where the majority of our petrol comes from, it matters where the majority of your ideological enemy's funds come from: us
all that interfered before was economic ability, that's the only reason china lagged behind japan and europe in rail adoption
india likewise is similarly dense, and as it matures economically somewhat behind china, watch india too make a massive increase and rail in a few years/ decade or so
my man mansu musa has just built the statue of zeus in djenne and built a gold mine in timbuktu. now i can wage war on the persians. i just to need to build 4 more skirmishers. dang! i have to lower science research again, my income is so low because i built too many cities. i can't wait 36 turns for feudalism. hmmm maybe i can trade music for feudalism with the koreans. if only that bastard wang kon wouldn't hold it against me that i won't convert to judaism...
you don't need to get in a car once you arrive at your destination in a well-planned city like new york or chicago. the newer car-dependent cities like dallas and phoenix: yes, you need a car. but dallas and phoenix, any low density city (really not cities per se, more like large suburbs), will be the dying cities of the 21st and 22nd centuries, while more compact cities will become more attractive
and yes, population density is most certainly the reason why japan (and now china) and europe have embraced rail more than the usa. do you have some alternative theory?
and cities like chicago and new york, where public rail was built into the city's dna, will do a lot better in the future than places like dallas and phoenix. places like dallas and phoenix aren't even really cities. more like huge sprawling suburbs connected by insane amounts of multilane highways with insane amounts of lanes
such "cities" are unsustainable in an era of gas prices that are only going to creep up. the late 20th century was a special era of cheap energy that led to the creation of suburbs and highways and the love affair with ICE automobile. previous eras and eras after won't know such cheap energy, and we will see a return to more compact living. which is good for the environment: pack the humans into cities, let the earth heal. suburbs are ugly and alienating places anyways
you should be able to code in straight javascript in all browsers the same. obviously, you can't do that now. but that doesn't justify the existence of libraries, it just means they are temporary bandaids that should go away with the implementation of the next javascript (crossing fingers)
if the iraqi kills the americans because his parents were killed (by sectarians in iraq, but nevermind that detail for the moment) and in your mind this is inevitable, then by the same token, the americans overreacting after 9/11 is equally inevitable
or perhaps you believe only americans should be held to responsibility and accountability, and arabs can't be held to those standards?
so which is it?
1. arabs and americans are feral dogs, incapable of extricating themselves from a cycle of violence 2. arabs are feral dogs, and americans should be pantheons of responsible behqavior (ie, you're a racist) 3. arabs and americans are capable of extricating themselves from mindless violence, and they will
rail is king is japan and europe because these places are so much more dense population wise than the usa. however, this is on average. rail can be king in the usa in dense areas like california, and the northeast. rail doesn't make sense in kansas or nebraska. still, a high speed rail link between major urban centers has some value. fast enough, and they can compete well with air travel. it will be very expensive to set up, but once the infrastructure is in place, its nothing but gravy savings
even with all of that considered, the usa still has to look beyond the automobile in an age of ever increasing energy insecurity, and rail and nuclear are neglected and unsexy but utterly solid alternatives to oil funded geopolitical problems and oil fueled atmospheric degeneration: never mind the CO2, air quality in our cities is a valid reason to go to more rail. when you fill up your SUV, you fund russian neoimperialism, you fund islamic fundamentalism, you fund trolls like chavez in venezuela. who funds the enemies of the usa in this world? soccer moms do. this is an insanity that has to end, and if it means we ride more trains, then its a no brainer
your continues grouping of this completely bogus analogy belies the fact that you don't understand the subject matter
the subject matter is the ability of a smattering of random people to correctly guess nonobscure trivia. as my example of poll-the-audience on "who wants to be a millionaire" demonstrates, this is 95% accurate. because, yes, the random guesses cancel each other out as noise, and those with an inkling of an answer is then revealed as a valid signal. you didn't even mention this in your argument, because its too damning a proof of your incoherence on the subject
you obscure the essential point by saying because you don't have an exact answer, or you don't have a statistically valid sampling, that this method of finding a good approximation of the truth is invalid
In fact, poll people about the number of planets in the solar system. You'll probably get an answer between 8 and 9. But I guarantee you it will not be an integer value, say 8.713452, which will be a fairly strange answer for the number of planets.
again, you are focusing on nonessential aspects of the essential point here. you are focusing on minor laughable mediocre issues, like the fact that the number of planets is fractional when averaged. really? you think that's a valid point that somehow disproves the larger issue?
nothing you have said counteracts what i am saying. you say the age of the earth or the chinese population won't be exact. again: why do you think this counteracts the issue here? do you think anyone with the slightest common sense thinks you will get an exact factual answer? especially since these "facts" themselves have a +/- built into them. even the number of planets: some insist pluto is still a planet. you will get an APPROXIMATE value that has some validity. it won't be wildly divergent. that's all i am saying. and you think by saying i can't nail the answer on the head, that there is no validity at all to this phenomenon. what?
you have a mind which seems focused on brittle process-oriented thinking. you can't see the forest for the trees. you think all of the minor niggling points you bring up somehow amount to somehow sort of disproving of the essential thrust of the observation that a random smattering of people will actually reveal a pretty good guess on nonobscure trivia questions
and that's the truth
please, by all means, dismantle the "who wants to be a millionaire" example
your example sites an unknown quantity. of course a statistical averaging of an unknown quantity is meaningless
meanwhile, the population of china is a known real nonobscure quantity
and i'll support my assertion:
there is a once popular game show in the usa called who wants to be a millionaire. you are asked trivia questions, each one of increasing obscurity for more cash, and given 4 choices. if you are having difficulty, you can phone a friend, have the 4 choices narrowed down, or have the audience polled
this last option is an exact analogy to asking a bunch of random folk a trivia question like what is the population of china
Ask the Audience: The contestant asks the studio audience which answer they believe is correct. Members of the studio audience indicate their choices using an audience response system. The results are immediately displayed on the contestant's and host's screens. This is a popular lifeline, known for its near-perfect accuracy. Philbin once said that the audience's answer is statistically 95% of the time correct.[citation needed] For some time on the syndicated U.S. version, the question was also asked through AOL Instant Messenger to those who had signed up to answer questions for this lifeline. The contestant saw the studio-audience and AOL responses displayed separately. The AOL tie-in was discontinued beginning with the 2006-2007 season. Also, the Norwegian Version uses the Ask the Nation, similar to that lifeline.
and it makes sense. like i said before, the answers will bell curve. idiocy is random, it does not skew in a particular manner. the idiots randomly cancel each other out, and become noise, while anyone with the real answer will stand out as a signal against the background noise. involving quantities like a population count, they simply bell curve to the right answer
its really quite a simple concept, i don't know why you can't grasp it. perhaps you don't need to brush up on your statistics, you just need to brush up on your grasp of common sense reasoning
perhaps we should poll a thousand random people about the accuracy of random trivia polls. i think you would be one of the idiot outliers who would be canceled out to background noise;-)
if you poll a thousand random americans about the population of china, the answer will be a statistical bell curve centered on the actual population of china
the idiots cancel each other out, to each degree of idiocy, in either direction
#1: no one can know the real truth. everyone's conception of the truth is fuzzy, out of focus. so the problem is your stated goal: that because you can't get to 100% truthfulness, the effort is not worth it. no. your yarstick for measuring success on understanding the truth is the problem. and by using your insane yardstick for truthfulness, it just means you won't get anywhere near the truth because you have impossible standards. the solution to your problem is to stop applying such ridiculous standards to what the truth is or is ever supposed to mean to you or anyone else. no one will ever satisfy your demands on that subject, so drop your ridiculous demands
#2: you are 100% correct: you need to spend hours reading different sources to understand the truth. but you have it completely wrong on who's fault that is. there is this insane attitude of yours that you need to approach every news story like a scientific research paper. question: how much do you a read story? answer: as much as you are interested in it, no more. question: how much will you understand the truth of a story? answer: as much as you are interested in it, no more
let's make believe for a moment that there really is a 100% impartial completely trustworthy news source out there. ok, a scenario in this alternate reality is like this: some awful event happens, but you're not interested in this awful event. so you skim two sentences and move on and barely give the event a thought. now i come up to you 3 hours later and ask you the truth of what happened.
guess what: in this hypothetical world of a perfect omnipotent media, there is still no way you can know what the truth is. because understanding the truth is dictated by how much effort you devote to the news story, REGARDLESS of the quality of your media. the ultimate yardstick of you understanding the truth isn't the media at all. its your own interest level
It was a sociopolitical attack that had a lot of factors, perpetrated by a group that we created in the middle east to do our bidding before we left them in the cold.
so if my girlfriend wears the dress i told her not to wear, its her fault when i beat her face to a pulp. this is the mentality you are supporting with your understanding of how responsibility and accountability works in regards to al qaeda
a real artist does not speak of their identity as an artist as if it were a movie role. no one with real pain speaks of "the pain" as if it were character development. if they could put a word to "the pain", they'd probably lose their artistic drive in the first place, and would have never become an artist were it that easy for them to grab onto and rationalize their drive
that you CAN put word to it means you are something else entirely: a poser. you think being an artist is about adopting a shallow lowest common denominator image of "the artist"
if you want to be a real artist, lose the act, and focus on you art. a real artist has no such narcissistic ideation of self. for a real artist, there is only his work
your search for the "real truth" belies a cognitive weakness of yours. you either have a fantastical devotion to the "truth" being something like the da vinci code or your average hollywood potboiler political thriller. when reality is always much more mundane. conspiracy theories are the mark of a weak mind, or wonderful entertainment, but are never the truth
or you already have it "figured out", and you are attempting to fit the facts to your preconceived notions, "the truth" as it were. and you are unsatisfied, because your preconcieved notions are wrong, fringe. and so you react to the media antagonistically, all of it, because you can't find the support for your wrong ideas that you desire
people who reject ALL of the media, and speak of "the media", as if it were some monolithic edifice allayed against them, are really speaking of their own fringe ideological identity, not about the reality of the media. the way you speak belies the fact that whatever problems media companies have with the truth, you have greater problems with the truth. it is you has the problem, not that bogeyman (dum dum DUM), "the media"
as for 9/11, i left work at the world trade center building #5 at 9 pm on monday 9/10/01, heard a guitar player by the fountain in the dark, looked back at him, then up at the towers, and went into church street subway station and went home and went to sleep, and woke up late to my telephone ringing off the hook the next morning. i never made it back to that job. what happened? some islamic nutjobs highjacked airplanes and flew them into the towers, out of simple spite and hate
that's the truth. really. sorry there is no hollywood plot twist involving jack ryan and the illuminati
there is no such thing as a fount of absolutely impartial, absolutely trustworthy information. so go ahead and watch fox news... then listen to the bbc. then pravda. then read a chinese news site. then a venezuelan one. then an iranian one. finish it off with pbs
in this way, by being exposed to as many different half truths as possible, from as many different sources, do you begin to actually see the real truth
meanwhile, your prescription to stop exposing yourself to the media actually makes you more vulnerable to propaganda, because you have nothing to judge against what little slivers of info that do reach you
this is the value of a free press: let anyone publish any goddamn lie they want. the truth will bubble up the surface, atop a rotting festering pit of lies. this is only possible with a free press. in countries without a free press, you are breeding weak flabby partisan minds who can not know the truth
a free press, sleazebuckets of media (which is the way its always been, by the way, there was no glorious past of impartial media), is really the only way it can ever be. because there is no such thing as an absolutely impartial and trustworhty news source. they all pander to our lower instincts. and only through repeated exposure to this bullshit do you develop a healthy bullshit meter. and we all need that, badly
so bring on the lies, the half truths, the propaganda, the demagoguery from all ideological sides. atop that festering pile of bullshit we will sit, with a good lock on the real truth. its the only way to discover thr truth, the only way media can work. the more free it is, the more festering lies out there, the better for your understanding of the truth. paradoxical, but true
the essential source of your failure to understand the human condition is that you view us as vessels of purity that are corrupted by exposure to some foreign agent. when the truth is that we are born raging pits of violent behavior, and we are gradually tamed and civilized. go view a roomful of toddlers for 15 minutes and come back again and tell me with a straight face that violence is something that we are introduced to. no: we are born violent, and we are taught social ways to mitigate and control our violent tendencies
in this way, violent media is actually a way for us to jettison our violent impulses in harmless ways. catharthis. but, for the already deranged 1% who were set off by violent media (and would have been set off by some other bad excuse, if no violent media existed), violent media is merely a trigger for a defect already inside them. meanwhile, for the other 99% of us psychologically normal, the violence we exert on a keyboard is violence we will not exert in real life. that, in actuallity, violent media DECREASES violence in society
and if you still don't believe me, please, demonstrate to me how things were so peaceful and buccolic in say, ancient rome or with the ancient aztecs. pffft
fact: the more violent media we have, the more peaceful society is. its called catharsis. 1% of previously defective individuals being set off by violent media in sensational ways notwithstanding
there are millions of hunter s thompsons in regards to self-destructive behavior. thats nothing rare or unique. hunter s thompson, meanwhile, IS rare and unique, but not because of his self-destructive behavior, but because of his communicative skills, on top of his self-destructive behavior
but people glorify his self-destructive behavior, when thats not what makes him a great artist
my whole point is that the glorification of the self-destruction is wrong
if you want to be a great artist, you'll create art. anything you snort along the way is baggage, not some intrinsic part of your art form... which is exactly what you said. i'm just trying to do away with the glorification of self-destruction
if you look at a PET scan of a male mind, its a few bright spots, the rest mostly dark. if you look at a PET scan of a female mind, the whole thing is lit up in a low warm glow. in other words, the female mind is very balanced, while the male mind is highly focused. this results in all sorts of sexual differences in psychology, but when it comes to addiction, which is a sort of highly focused feedback loop to begin with, it means the male mind is in some ways more predisposed
for example, you mention shoe shopping. well, that same woman with the pile of shoes also has a boyfriend and a job. meanwhile, the guy addicted to the videogame has lost his job, has lost his girlfriend, and is still playing WoW in his underwear at 4 AM
in other words, the real yardstick of addiction is supportability: does it get in the way of maintaining a valid life outside of your obsessive pursuit? as long as the woman with 5,000 shoes is gainfully employed and in a relationship, no, its not addiction, or, if you still want to call it addiction, its not dangerous. likewise, if the guy can play WoW 8 hours a day while still maintaining a job and a girlfriend, its not dangerous addiction either. but thats not usually what happens with guys. they usually fall off the wagon completely, due to their more focused nature to begin with
the male WoW addict never leaves the computer monitor except for bathroom breaks and cheetos for 48 hours straight without sleep, failing all his courses, and having no relationships. while the female shoe shopper is fully aware of her need to be gainfully employed to support her shoe habit. supportability makes all the difference
real addiction, clinical addiction, what makes addiction dangerous, is when you pursue the activity at the detriment of being able to support yourself. and in this regard, many "male" pursuits are in fact more dangerous, more "addictive" in the sense they are dangerous addictions, than traditional female pursuits
just look at a PET scan, and you will see why this is true, for basic psychological differences between the sexes. men have a lot more to lose for being addicted than women, simply because their minds are more predisposed to be locked into obsessive feedback loops with activities that can interfere with their ability to support themselves, by taking up inordinate amount of absorbing time and energy. women, with a more balanced psychology than men, take up pursuits that can take up slices of time and energy, but never really force the woman to lock themselves in their parent's basement
i'm talking in broad strokes of course, but hording shoes is a lot different, in terms of committed time and energy, than building a level 63 WoW character
in all of the endeavours you mention, 99% of people don't make any success in the field
and this bit is especially ridiculous:
"Hey, be addicted to real drugs and write incredible novels, poetry, or music, and you'll be applauded for it."
nobody takes drugs and makes great art. rather, some great artists, after already having great talent, enter a stage of self-destructive hubris, and start wasting their talent on drugs. classic correlation!=causation
your understanding of the relationship between art and drugs is kind of like the cargo cults of the south pacific: that if you build bamboo control towers and bamboo radar arrays, airplanes full of cargo will magically appear out of the sky. saying that taking drugs will let you make art is exactly the same sort if foolishness
Slashdot Mirror
its about who supplies russia, venezuela, the middle east
if the liberal west gets its energy only 1% from russia, but russian revenue is 60% from energy exports (bullshit made up numbers to make my point), it behooves the liberal west to starve russia of energy revenues by investing in alternative sources for ideological and geopolitical reasons, since russian ideology is artificially propped up by, and pointed against, western liberal democracy
its good foreign policy to starve your ideological enemies economically. its not good foreign policy to fund your ideological enemies. it doesn't matter where the majority of our petrol comes from, it matters where the majority of your ideological enemy's funds come from: us
right now
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123987956572324825.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
http://sev.prnewswire.com/transportation-trucking-railroad/20090415/DA9992115042009-1.html
all that interfered before was economic ability, that's the only reason china lagged behind japan and europe in rail adoption
india likewise is similarly dense, and as it matures economically somewhat behind china, watch india too make a massive increase and rail in a few years/ decade or so
nihilism is purposeless and random. coding therefore cannot have anything to do with nietzsche, since it is all structure
the first virus/ worm/ trojan author?
my man mansu musa has just built the statue of zeus in djenne and built a gold mine in timbuktu. now i can wage war on the persians. i just to need to build 4 more skirmishers. dang! i have to lower science research again, my income is so low because i built too many cities. i can't wait 36 turns for feudalism. hmmm maybe i can trade music for feudalism with the koreans. if only that bastard wang kon wouldn't hold it against me that i won't convert to judaism...
you don't need to get in a car once you arrive at your destination in a well-planned city like new york or chicago. the newer car-dependent cities like dallas and phoenix: yes, you need a car. but dallas and phoenix, any low density city (really not cities per se, more like large suburbs), will be the dying cities of the 21st and 22nd centuries, while more compact cities will become more attractive
and yes, population density is most certainly the reason why japan (and now china) and europe have embraced rail more than the usa. do you have some alternative theory?
and cities like chicago and new york, where public rail was built into the city's dna, will do a lot better in the future than places like dallas and phoenix. places like dallas and phoenix aren't even really cities. more like huge sprawling suburbs connected by insane amounts of multilane highways with insane amounts of lanes
such "cities" are unsustainable in an era of gas prices that are only going to creep up. the late 20th century was a special era of cheap energy that led to the creation of suburbs and highways and the love affair with ICE automobile. previous eras and eras after won't know such cheap energy, and we will see a return to more compact living. which is good for the environment: pack the humans into cities, let the earth heal. suburbs are ugly and alienating places anyways
you should be able to code in straight javascript in all browsers the same. obviously, you can't do that now. but that doesn't justify the existence of libraries, it just means they are temporary bandaids that should go away with the implementation of the next javascript (crossing fingers)
if the iraqi kills the americans because his parents were killed (by sectarians in iraq, but nevermind that detail for the moment) and in your mind this is inevitable, then by the same token, the americans overreacting after 9/11 is equally inevitable
or perhaps you believe only americans should be held to responsibility and accountability, and arabs can't be held to those standards?
so which is it?
1. arabs and americans are feral dogs, incapable of extricating themselves from a cycle of violence
2. arabs are feral dogs, and americans should be pantheons of responsible behqavior (ie, you're a racist)
3. arabs and americans are capable of extricating themselves from mindless violence, and they will
i'm going with #3. how about you?
rail is king is japan and europe because these places are so much more dense population wise than the usa. however, this is on average. rail can be king in the usa in dense areas like california, and the northeast. rail doesn't make sense in kansas or nebraska. still, a high speed rail link between major urban centers has some value. fast enough, and they can compete well with air travel. it will be very expensive to set up, but once the infrastructure is in place, its nothing but gravy savings
even with all of that considered, the usa still has to look beyond the automobile in an age of ever increasing energy insecurity, and rail and nuclear are neglected and unsexy but utterly solid alternatives to oil funded geopolitical problems and oil fueled atmospheric degeneration: never mind the CO2, air quality in our cities is a valid reason to go to more rail. when you fill up your SUV, you fund russian neoimperialism, you fund islamic fundamentalism, you fund trolls like chavez in venezuela. who funds the enemies of the usa in this world? soccer moms do. this is an insanity that has to end, and if it means we ride more trains, then its a no brainer
this is an unknown quantity
your continues grouping of this completely bogus analogy belies the fact that you don't understand the subject matter
the subject matter is the ability of a smattering of random people to correctly guess nonobscure trivia. as my example of poll-the-audience on "who wants to be a millionaire" demonstrates, this is 95% accurate. because, yes, the random guesses cancel each other out as noise, and those with an inkling of an answer is then revealed as a valid signal. you didn't even mention this in your argument, because its too damning a proof of your incoherence on the subject
you obscure the essential point by saying because you don't have an exact answer, or you don't have a statistically valid sampling, that this method of finding a good approximation of the truth is invalid
In fact, poll people about the number of planets in the solar system. You'll probably get an answer between 8 and 9. But I guarantee you it will not be an integer value, say 8.713452, which will be a fairly strange answer for the number of planets.
again, you are focusing on nonessential aspects of the essential point here. you are focusing on minor laughable mediocre issues, like the fact that the number of planets is fractional when averaged. really? you think that's a valid point that somehow disproves the larger issue?
nothing you have said counteracts what i am saying. you say the age of the earth or the chinese population won't be exact. again: why do you think this counteracts the issue here? do you think anyone with the slightest common sense thinks you will get an exact factual answer? especially since these "facts" themselves have a +/- built into them. even the number of planets: some insist pluto is still a planet. you will get an APPROXIMATE value that has some validity. it won't be wildly divergent. that's all i am saying. and you think by saying i can't nail the answer on the head, that there is no validity at all to this phenomenon. what?
you have a mind which seems focused on brittle process-oriented thinking. you can't see the forest for the trees. you think all of the minor niggling points you bring up somehow amount to somehow sort of disproving of the essential thrust of the observation that a random smattering of people will actually reveal a pretty good guess on nonobscure trivia questions
and that's the truth
please, by all means, dismantle the "who wants to be a millionaire" example
you can't
you lose
be a man and admit defeat
in canadian hosting and colocation companies, since everyone will be relocating there
your example sites an unknown quantity. of course a statistical averaging of an unknown quantity is meaningless
meanwhile, the population of china is a known real nonobscure quantity
and i'll support my assertion:
there is a once popular game show in the usa called who wants to be a millionaire. you are asked trivia questions, each one of increasing obscurity for more cash, and given 4 choices. if you are having difficulty, you can phone a friend, have the 4 choices narrowed down, or have the audience polled
this last option is an exact analogy to asking a bunch of random folk a trivia question like what is the population of china
their accuracy over the lifetime of the show?
95%
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Wants_to_Be_a_Millionaire%3F#Lifelines
and it makes sense. like i said before, the answers will bell curve. idiocy is random, it does not skew in a particular manner. the idiots randomly cancel each other out, and become noise, while anyone with the real answer will stand out as a signal against the background noise. involving quantities like a population count, they simply bell curve to the right answer
its really quite a simple concept, i don't know why you can't grasp it. perhaps you don't need to brush up on your statistics, you just need to brush up on your grasp of common sense reasoning
perhaps we should poll a thousand random people about the accuracy of random trivia polls. i think you would be one of the idiot outliers who would be canceled out to background noise ;-)
no no. the FapperFon was market tested and it was found that the FleshLiteFon was more positively received. the latest advances in 4G teledildonics
its called the VaporFon
if you poll a thousand random americans about the population of china, the answer will be a statistical bell curve centered on the actual population of china
the idiots cancel each other out, to each degree of idiocy, in either direction
#1: no one can know the real truth. everyone's conception of the truth is fuzzy, out of focus. so the problem is your stated goal: that because you can't get to 100% truthfulness, the effort is not worth it. no. your yarstick for measuring success on understanding the truth is the problem. and by using your insane yardstick for truthfulness, it just means you won't get anywhere near the truth because you have impossible standards. the solution to your problem is to stop applying such ridiculous standards to what the truth is or is ever supposed to mean to you or anyone else. no one will ever satisfy your demands on that subject, so drop your ridiculous demands
#2: you are 100% correct: you need to spend hours reading different sources to understand the truth. but you have it completely wrong on who's fault that is. there is this insane attitude of yours that you need to approach every news story like a scientific research paper. question: how much do you a read story? answer: as much as you are interested in it, no more. question: how much will you understand the truth of a story? answer: as much as you are interested in it, no more
let's make believe for a moment that there really is a 100% impartial completely trustworthy news source out there. ok, a scenario in this alternate reality is like this: some awful event happens, but you're not interested in this awful event. so you skim two sentences and move on and barely give the event a thought. now i come up to you 3 hours later and ask you the truth of what happened.
guess what: in this hypothetical world of a perfect omnipotent media, there is still no way you can know what the truth is. because understanding the truth is dictated by how much effort you devote to the news story, REGARDLESS of the quality of your media. the ultimate yardstick of you understanding the truth isn't the media at all. its your own interest level
It was a sociopolitical attack that had a lot of factors, perpetrated by a group that we created in the middle east to do our bidding before we left them in the cold.
so if my girlfriend wears the dress i told her not to wear, its her fault when i beat her face to a pulp. this is the mentality you are supporting with your understanding of how responsibility and accountability works in regards to al qaeda
filipinos laugh at the unintended linguistic joke
balut
althoug, using the word for something that is half-duck half-egg, is a pretty good metaphor for this polymorphous device
a real artist does not speak of their identity as an artist as if it were a movie role. no one with real pain speaks of "the pain" as if it were character development. if they could put a word to "the pain", they'd probably lose their artistic drive in the first place, and would have never become an artist were it that easy for them to grab onto and rationalize their drive
that you CAN put word to it means you are something else entirely: a poser. you think being an artist is about adopting a shallow lowest common denominator image of "the artist"
if you want to be a real artist, lose the act, and focus on you art. a real artist has no such narcissistic ideation of self. for a real artist, there is only his work
your search for the "real truth" belies a cognitive weakness of yours. you either have a fantastical devotion to the "truth" being something like the da vinci code or your average hollywood potboiler political thriller. when reality is always much more mundane. conspiracy theories are the mark of a weak mind, or wonderful entertainment, but are never the truth
or you already have it "figured out", and you are attempting to fit the facts to your preconceived notions, "the truth" as it were. and you are unsatisfied, because your preconcieved notions are wrong, fringe. and so you react to the media antagonistically, all of it, because you can't find the support for your wrong ideas that you desire
people who reject ALL of the media, and speak of "the media", as if it were some monolithic edifice allayed against them, are really speaking of their own fringe ideological identity, not about the reality of the media. the way you speak belies the fact that whatever problems media companies have with the truth, you have greater problems with the truth. it is you has the problem, not that bogeyman (dum dum DUM), "the media"
as for 9/11, i left work at the world trade center building #5 at 9 pm on monday 9/10/01, heard a guitar player by the fountain in the dark, looked back at him, then up at the towers, and went into church street subway station and went home and went to sleep, and woke up late to my telephone ringing off the hook the next morning. i never made it back to that job. what happened? some islamic nutjobs highjacked airplanes and flew them into the towers, out of simple spite and hate
that's the truth. really. sorry there is no hollywood plot twist involving jack ryan and the illuminati
there is no such thing as a fount of absolutely impartial, absolutely trustworthy information. so go ahead and watch fox news... then listen to the bbc. then pravda. then read a chinese news site. then a venezuelan one. then an iranian one. finish it off with pbs
in this way, by being exposed to as many different half truths as possible, from as many different sources, do you begin to actually see the real truth
meanwhile, your prescription to stop exposing yourself to the media actually makes you more vulnerable to propaganda, because you have nothing to judge against what little slivers of info that do reach you
this is the value of a free press: let anyone publish any goddamn lie they want. the truth will bubble up the surface, atop a rotting festering pit of lies. this is only possible with a free press. in countries without a free press, you are breeding weak flabby partisan minds who can not know the truth
a free press, sleazebuckets of media (which is the way its always been, by the way, there was no glorious past of impartial media), is really the only way it can ever be. because there is no such thing as an absolutely impartial and trustworhty news source. they all pander to our lower instincts. and only through repeated exposure to this bullshit do you develop a healthy bullshit meter. and we all need that, badly
so bring on the lies, the half truths, the propaganda, the demagoguery from all ideological sides. atop that festering pile of bullshit we will sit, with a good lock on the real truth. its the only way to discover thr truth, the only way media can work. the more free it is, the more festering lies out there, the better for your understanding of the truth. paradoxical, but true
the essential source of your failure to understand the human condition is that you view us as vessels of purity that are corrupted by exposure to some foreign agent. when the truth is that we are born raging pits of violent behavior, and we are gradually tamed and civilized. go view a roomful of toddlers for 15 minutes and come back again and tell me with a straight face that violence is something that we are introduced to. no: we are born violent, and we are taught social ways to mitigate and control our violent tendencies
in this way, violent media is actually a way for us to jettison our violent impulses in harmless ways. catharthis. but, for the already deranged 1% who were set off by violent media (and would have been set off by some other bad excuse, if no violent media existed), violent media is merely a trigger for a defect already inside them. meanwhile, for the other 99% of us psychologically normal, the violence we exert on a keyboard is violence we will not exert in real life. that, in actuallity, violent media DECREASES violence in society
and if you still don't believe me, please, demonstrate to me how things were so peaceful and buccolic in say, ancient rome or with the ancient aztecs. pffft
fact: the more violent media we have, the more peaceful society is. its called catharsis. 1% of previously defective individuals being set off by violent media in sensational ways notwithstanding
there are millions of hunter s thompsons in regards to self-destructive behavior. thats nothing rare or unique. hunter s thompson, meanwhile, IS rare and unique, but not because of his self-destructive behavior, but because of his communicative skills, on top of his self-destructive behavior
but people glorify his self-destructive behavior, when thats not what makes him a great artist
my whole point is that the glorification of the self-destruction is wrong
if you want to be a great artist, you'll create art. anything you snort along the way is baggage, not some intrinsic part of your art form... which is exactly what you said. i'm just trying to do away with the glorification of self-destruction
if you look at a PET scan of a male mind, its a few bright spots, the rest mostly dark. if you look at a PET scan of a female mind, the whole thing is lit up in a low warm glow. in other words, the female mind is very balanced, while the male mind is highly focused. this results in all sorts of sexual differences in psychology, but when it comes to addiction, which is a sort of highly focused feedback loop to begin with, it means the male mind is in some ways more predisposed
for example, you mention shoe shopping. well, that same woman with the pile of shoes also has a boyfriend and a job. meanwhile, the guy addicted to the videogame has lost his job, has lost his girlfriend, and is still playing WoW in his underwear at 4 AM
in other words, the real yardstick of addiction is supportability: does it get in the way of maintaining a valid life outside of your obsessive pursuit? as long as the woman with 5,000 shoes is gainfully employed and in a relationship, no, its not addiction, or, if you still want to call it addiction, its not dangerous. likewise, if the guy can play WoW 8 hours a day while still maintaining a job and a girlfriend, its not dangerous addiction either. but thats not usually what happens with guys. they usually fall off the wagon completely, due to their more focused nature to begin with
the male WoW addict never leaves the computer monitor except for bathroom breaks and cheetos for 48 hours straight without sleep, failing all his courses, and having no relationships. while the female shoe shopper is fully aware of her need to be gainfully employed to support her shoe habit. supportability makes all the difference
real addiction, clinical addiction, what makes addiction dangerous, is when you pursue the activity at the detriment of being able to support yourself. and in this regard, many "male" pursuits are in fact more dangerous, more "addictive" in the sense they are dangerous addictions, than traditional female pursuits
just look at a PET scan, and you will see why this is true, for basic psychological differences between the sexes. men have a lot more to lose for being addicted than women, simply because their minds are more predisposed to be locked into obsessive feedback loops with activities that can interfere with their ability to support themselves, by taking up inordinate amount of absorbing time and energy. women, with a more balanced psychology than men, take up pursuits that can take up slices of time and energy, but never really force the woman to lock themselves in their parent's basement
i'm talking in broad strokes of course, but hording shoes is a lot different, in terms of committed time and energy, than building a level 63 WoW character
in all of the endeavours you mention, 99% of people don't make any success in the field
and this bit is especially ridiculous:
"Hey, be addicted to real drugs and write incredible novels, poetry, or music, and you'll be applauded for it."
nobody takes drugs and makes great art. rather, some great artists, after already having great talent, enter a stage of self-destructive hubris, and start wasting their talent on drugs. classic correlation!=causation
your understanding of the relationship between art and drugs is kind of like the cargo cults of the south pacific: that if you build bamboo control towers and bamboo radar arrays, airplanes full of cargo will magically appear out of the sky. saying that taking drugs will let you make art is exactly the same sort if foolishness