http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2013/07/lies-damned-lies-and-popular-b.html

propaganda and education

TRX
July 10, 2013
20:
@8:
documentary on the public spending collapse and it's consequences. When there's 19 channels with the tv equivalent to crisps
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You're watching the documentary, but how do you know what you're seeing represents the truth, or even a commonly accepted viewpoint?

At one time you could put a fair amount of trust in things that came from the BBC, but not any more. The American shows have mostly descended to "infomercials." The Canadian ones aren't quite so biased, but the number of jaw-dropping errors is alarming.

Which is worse - being uneducated or misinformed? Having had to tediously guide young engineers through the practical application of things like the Ideal Gas Laws, I figure misinformed is much worse than stone ignorant... unlearning wrong things is harder than learning new things.

"The truth is out there, but the lies are inside your head." - pterry


TRX
July 11, 2013
42:
@37:
just look at the comments section of any news article on Yahoo news
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My local newspaper's web site is even worse, but the worst I've seen are the comments on YouTube. A good number of them aren't about the videos at all, just places where the disaffected and psychotic vent their rage against the world in general. There used to be a fair amount of that stuff on blogs in general; apparently most of them have moved to YouTube.

Somewhen, someone will mine YouTube's comments for a sociology thesis...


TRX
July 11, 2013
69:
@23:
The solution to ignorance is education.
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Um.

"Who watches the watchers?"

Back in the day, I had a basic American public school education, when each school was funded and controlled at the county level, with only minimal state involvement, and no Federal involvement. That was spread across five US states as we moved about.

We were taught a number of outright, bald-faced, easily-disproved lies, like "John Glenn was the first man in space" and "the Pilgrims discovered America." And lots of "history" and "sociology" that was little more than propaganda.

Later in college, taking engineering and math, I'd be instructed to "use this equation to solve these problems."

"Cool. Where did the equation come from?"

"You think you're some kind of smart ass, don't you?"

In the end, most of them appeared to be little more than codified rules of thumb...

Paul Simon wrote a song called Kodachrome, with the line "When I think back of all the crap I learned in high school, it's a wonder I can think at all." For both my public and paid school years, that could be my


TRX
July 11, 2013
71:
@47:
The "how closed is my mind" test is whether you actually listen to the stories that you declare to be lies - whether you've already decided that they're wrong because they don't support your belief, and you only listen to them in order to find a flaw...
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You should do that to ANY information source, whether it agrees with you or not. In fact, you should be particularly critical of ones that agree with you.


TRX
July 13, 2013
99:
@78:
Three Divisional Commanders (typically Major-Generals) were killed in battle in a single month at Loos; apparently, that's more than during the whole of WW2
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Now, for your amusement, look up how many British generals were captured by the Germans in WWI vs. WWII.

...and then you'll know where Rommel's famous sunglasses came from.