Monday, September 01, 2014

I don't Believe Any of it

Case in point - I no longer believe the "Western Press" is the free press, or believable at all. I used to spend so much time watching news analysis until a few years ago. Now I challenge the basic premises of the article at hand (using logic) and I find them wanting. Not just a little bit wanting, but completely off the wall out and out lies. 

Another case in point - I struggle to even read articles to do with evolution or abiogenesis, because I think they are not being scientific enough. They jump to too many conclusions about the overall structure of the question at hand - not because I think I know the correct structure, but because the structure is never questioned, and is almost certainly wrong.

I don't want to necessarily get into specific examples, but it is quite frustrating to feel like I am the only one who sees a problem. Peer pressure, blindly following authority, parsimony, groupthink, loyalty to country, loyalty to like-minded individuals, inability to overturn a precedent, fitting new data into an old way of thinking, rather than letting new information speak for itself and allow new forms of thinking to shine through. 

5 comments:

Chris Fellows said...

I also see the problem. I was thinking about this very thing lying awake this morning. I have felt this way about the Western Press since approximately the Al-Aqsa Intifadeh, and the feeling has been strongly reinforced year by year. I also went off New Scientist at about the same time because of their credulous, breathless, politicised take on nearly everything.
Sometimes I am comforted by the thought, and sometimes just depressed more, to realise that it has ever been thus. :(

Marco Parigi said...

Yes. I think the Western press has never been as free as we'd imagined in our youth. However, until a few years ago, it was still freer than Russia's press. Now I think western press is about as free as the RMP's. Instead of the press in restricted countries becoming freer, Western press has become less free to match and worse. I am starting to believe almost all left wing conspiracy theories regarding the press, against my instincts. In scientific journals I am ignoring everything that cannot be verified experimentally, which is virtually everything.

Dr Clam said...

I believe almost all *right-wing* conspiracy theories about the press, so luckily there's no chance of us forming our own groupthink bubble. :P

As I've said before, I think that the politicisation of Anthropogenic Global Warming in particular will do - probably already is doing - severe, systemic, long-term damage to the public perception of science.

Marco Parigi said...

This article from the economist, for instance, I find to be starting from a basis of propaganda, rather than fact.

Marco Parigi said...

I am convinced that Russia is following a strategy of humanitarian relief, combined with a very defensive posture and gaining the support and trust of the Ukranians under its influence. It calculates that strategy will win - as it seems to be.