Once again, a scribe for the WokeLib Guardian raised her pen (or jabbed her pad) to excoriate Zuckerberg and Facebook for....
Actually, I'm not quite clear what the article was supposed to be about but the
gist and drift of it appears to be a complaint that Facebook allows
"right wing demagogues" to post content. Bleh. I'm pretty tired
of pseudo-left warriors calling for censorship, which is what all the
wokeness boils down to.
All media at all times have engaged in omissions, half-truths,
exaggeration, misrepresentations, doctored images and rhetorical
manipulation. Anyone who thinks that the New York Times or the
Guardian don't filter their output to conform to their ideological
views and political agendas is living in a land of self delusion. The
same can be said for Le Figaro or Razón.
The underlying fallacies of the outraged, woke brigades are the
assumptions (1) that "true facts" exist and (2) that
information is something we are fed... like food. Actually, the realm
of true, indisputable facts is rather small. Most so-called "facts"
are based on individual perceptions and opinions -- "testimony"
in lawyer talk. Even polls are subject to distortions. As Mark Twain
cracked, "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and
statistics."
What this means is that "news" and "information" is
never anything we should trust or rely on. What is called
being informed is not passive intaking but an occasion to exercise
our mental faculties. Anything we read calls for us to bring to bear
our experience and use our judgement. What makes us informed is
exposing our brains to as many lies, damned lies and statistics as
possible.
If people want to be stupid and just gulp down anything that CNN or
Facebook or Junge Europa put before them, that really is their
problem but it should not be used as an excuse to make safe and
sanitize information for the rest of us.
©barfo, 2020
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