Saturday, December 10, 2022

Disinformation or Information

 Deception is a key element of disinformation. There are those among us who can't recognize disinformation because they were not taught how to discern the difference, but eventually find their way to the truth by developing critical thinking skills.

Critical thinking requires that one does not take information at face value. What is "face value?"

"Face value" is measured by who produces the information, what anecdotes or stories support the information, and finally, evidence that supports the information.

Unfortunately, that last part, evidence, is ignored by a roughly one-third of the population of not just the United States, but the whole world. Aristotle called it the "modes of persuasion," Logos meaning logic, the actual evidence that supports the argument, Pathos meaning emotions and feelings, where the story told is relatable to the audience, and Ethos meaning credibility and ethics, or the importance and popularity of the person telling the story.

That last part is especially important, because for a large portion of our population, it doesn't take much to become popular. All it takes, apparently, is the willingness to sacrifice one's own legitimate reputation to attack fellow intellectuals. To tell lies that you know will ruin your reputation among fellow elites. But they won't call you out. They will applaud your victory over the minds of Simpletons and Troglodytes.

These days it only requires that you claim you have files that show you are right, without even producing them for anyone to see. It's hard to believe that people are really like this, yet there are those who believe that the old films like 'Bedknobs and Broomsticks' and 'Chitty Chitty Bang Bang' are secret coded entertainment for child sexual grooming.

Films back in the day were meant to entice film studio executives to fund projects. The couch casting must have been phenomenal.

It's all totally fake. There is nothing here but fools. Disinformation affects only them. The most dangerous among us make themselves visible to society to criticize, and eventually arrest for crimes of civil rights.

Sunday, April 3, 2022

The State of the World

 I'll start with the punch-line: The world isn't what you think it is. 

Reality includes an enormous variety of matter and energy that humans are incapable of perceiving and / or processing.

Your perception of the world is biologically limited only to what your species needed to survive. Some animals need more, like flying animals that must process their surroundings much faster, some animals need less, like bottom-dwelling ocean scavengers.

Your perception of the world is also filtered by your neurology, hormones and other brain chemistry. Limitations of your neurobiology determine how you make inferences and assumptions about people, surroundings and situations.

The subtle differences in our neurobiology between each-other is what makes our personalities.

What is considered a "normal" range or spectrum of behavior is managed in two ways: Natural social development, I will refer to as "Natural Morality," and arbitrarily mandated morality of edicts I will refer to as "Arbitrary Morality."

OUR THREE SOCIETIES
If a truly normal range of naturally moral behavior dominated our society, the word "law" would not exist.

Unfortunately we live in a three-tiered civilization, one of which should be incarcerated.

  • NATURAL MORALITY
    • EMPATHY, LOGIC, FAIRNESS
    • HIGH EMOTIONAL SELF-AWARENESS
    • ABSTRACT REASONING WITH TIME, EFFECT & EFFICIENCY
    • HIGHLY IMAGINATIVE AND CREATIVE
    • HIGHLY ACCURATE INTUITIVENESS
  • MIX OF NATURAL AND ARBITRARY MORALITY
    • MODERATE GREGARIOUSNESS AND TOLERANCE
    • COGNITIVE BIASES AND LOGICAL FALLACIES
    • MODERATE SELF-AWARENESS BUT EMOTIONAL
    • SOMEWHAT SKEPTICALRIGID, ARBITRARY MORALITY
  • DOGMATIC UNREALISTIC BELIEFS
    • EXTREMELY DISTORTED PERCEPTION OF REALITY
    • EXTREMELY VULNERABLE GREGARIOUSNESS
    • HIGHLY SUSCEPTIBLE TO CULT MANIPULATION TACTICS
    • RESORTS TO BIGOTRY TO MAINTAIN SELF-ESTEEM
The bottom tier was once considered Paranoid Schizophrenic and were incarcerated and treated. They've since been released and exploited by the mass media for profit and politicians for votes.

They are manipulated by Dark Triad Personalities - self-serving megalomaniacal narcissists. Cult leaders, politicians, preachers, anyone seeking a permanent throne of power over anything, even a book club.

They are driven by such political rhetoric as "Take back America" and in the attempted process on January 6, 2021, nearly destroyed the U.S. Constitution's authority and destroyed Democracy, the very thing they are constantly told to be afraid of losing.

Wednesday, April 1, 2020

Covid-19 Propaganda

I can't stand by and watch the gullible fall for this B.S. floating around on Twitter, so I have to put this to rest once-and-for-all.

Reported on Marc 31, 2020, Mitch McConnell, according to Salon.com "blames delayed coronavirus response by President Trump on impeachment." Trump supporters are jumping on this bandwagon by connecting Senate Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi's work on the impeachment proceedings, claiming that Covid-19 arrived in the U.S. on January 21, 2020, according to ABC News, but the World Health Organization only issued a "Public Health Emergency of International Concern" on January 30, 2020. On February 28, Politico reported:


On March 9, 2020, the World Health Organization tweeted:

"Now that the #coronavirus has a foothold in so many countries, the threat of a pandemic has become very real. But it would be the first pandemic in history that could be controlled. The bottom line is: we are not at the mercy of this virus"-
@DrTedros
 #COVID19"


The New England Journal of Medicine documented the timeline of the first U.S. case in great detail. The patient arrived at a Snohomish County, Washington urgent care clinic on January 19, 2020 but he disclosed that he had been coughing for the previous 4 days, following his flight from Wuhan, China. All the people on that flight plus everyone including the attending health care providers were potentially exposed.

Mitch McConnell's claims about the impeachment being the culprit behind the slow response to the pandemic is not enough to cover up the fact that the Trump administration disbanded the U.S. Pandenic Response Team in 2018 and then according to Business Insider on February 25, 2020: "Trump spent the past 2 years slashing the government agencies responsible for handling the coronavirus outbreak"