Why are smart people fooled

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Peter
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Re: Why are smart people fooled

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Never alturistic and always for an agenda. But by competing groups in the distant past.
Last edited by Peter on Sun Jul 07, 2019 10:48 am, edited 2 times in total.
Peter
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Re: Why are smart people fooled

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111111
Mansur
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Re: Why are smart people fooled

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Years ago, watching the election advertising posters, I had a sentence arisen in me that I would have liked to write down and put it under one of them :

"If you would not lie to yourself and each other, the politicians [or any form of media] will not be able to lie to you."
(Maybe some reminiscence of Nietzschean mood is therein.)
Peter
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Re: Why are smart people fooled

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Mansur » July 7th, 2019, 3:41 pm wrote:Years ago, watching the election advertising posters, I had a sentence arisen in me that I would have liked to write down and put it under one of them :

"If you would not lie to yourself and each other, the politicians [or any form of media] will not be able to lie to you."
(Maybe some reminiscence of Nietzschean mood is therein.)
Why won't they be able to lie to you?
Mansur
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Re: Why are smart people fooled

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Peter » July 7th, 2019, 5:17 pm wrote: Why won't they be able to lie to you?
Well, that is exactly what I would have left to the voters for consideration.

:)

Let me join Flabbergasted's remark about the many good points in that post of yours.
Mansur
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Re: Why are smart people fooled

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@Peter -- To your former question :
Why won't they be able to lie to you?
It is not about ability (maybe I mistranslated my imagery flyer or poster) but… simply… will they?

The point is that credulity or naiveté I think is not (in adulthood at least) an innocent thing.
A great Frenchman said “What could have put me up to accept this world?!”

---
Peter » July 5th, 2019, 12:41 pm wrote:
thisisunreal » April 29th, 2018, 8:41 am wrote: … The manual written by arguably one of the most important thinkers alive today, Noam Chomsky…
I think that, in this level, there is no legitimate reason to say who wrote and what book, the authorship being totally a question of the “image” of certain media man or woman. Even if he is really an author himself, the end-form of a given book (if it is of any importance) will be a job of a team more or less extended. (Maybe it should rather be said that “the book is one of the most influential works in learned circles” or something like that.) Of course I have no evidence to support this thought -- if not that these “great thinkers” do not, in all their interviews and other appearances, seem to be thinkers at all. Quite on the contrary. (So when Peter says
“…I think Chomsky has always been controlled opposition but only from time to time is it obvious”
one has to stop and ask: at what time or occasion is it not? And what was the need to lessen the statement?)

It is strange (and characteristic at the same time) that Chomsky officially is not a philosopher (not even a “thinker”), he is a professor of linguistics at MIT. A professor of linguistic -- pontificating about all possible political and media, and of course scientific, “questions.”
Peter » July 5th, 2019, 12:41 pm wrote: As always we were foretold in fiction. Hidden totalitarianism from Huxley and Orwell. Maybe the idea is that when we are told as fiction we mentally file the information as fiction and leave it there.
These two “classic” works became (or rather are made) “classical” only recently, during the “conspiracy era.” They seem being chosen among many to be “classics,” meaning that they keep on being continuously referenced and are repositories of actual catchwords. Similar seems to be the case with the figures of Huxley and Orwell themselves. (“Cult-figures.”)

Maybe I'm wrong but I don't think the book is being particularly read, or even known, or that they have been so at any time, or with any particularly significant intensity. Though I remember clearly when I read Brave New World decades ago…

What a “prophecy” or utopia is telling are not things to come at some future time, but, in terms of future, what are already at the present - as tendencies or germs so to speak. And anyway, this is the right interpretation (or its principle) of any written work. What any thoughtful person is interested in is the present; while it is the language of the propaganda (and our propagandistic understanding) that is stuck always on the honey string of “future.” (Anyway, it is interesting that this book is by far the weakest of Huxley's works.)

By the way I don’t think any reader of the book has taken it as “fiction”, even less as “information.” Fiction is a literary form.

And, to my feeling, “totalitarianism” or “hidden totalitarianism” is anachronistic and rather “conspiracyy” term. The thing towards which modern world is running is I think not a kind of dictatorship but chaos (or “darkness”). Historical conceptions especially old ones are incapable to denote our present situation. (History seems unhistorical.)


“Why are smart people fooled?” - Because they are smart, one could be tempted to say.
bongostaple
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Re: Why are smart people fooled

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I interpreted that as : If I do not lie to myself and others, then politicians (etc) cannot successfuly lie to me. About 10 years ago I had a very full-on experience around the subject of truth, the lies I told myself and others. I stopped lying, and my life got a lot better. But a side-effect was that I became a lot more tuned in to smelling bullshit. I lived in a flat for 9 months with no TV, I didn't read newspapaers, I didn't listen to the radio, I wasn't using any social media. When I moved in with my current partner, I would sometimes watch TV - but I couldn't watch the news (or a lot of other programmes) any more because it was an overwhelming experience that felt like everything in the news was false—at least on some level.

I don't evangelise my opinions, I don't like being told what to think - which is effectively what consuming mass media does to you - so I wouldn't expect someone else to just concur with me all of a sudden without any further research. I have a few friends with broadly similar views, but outside of that, I focus on what I can do in real life to help other people in any way. It's really good for me, it involves being part of community in some way, and not isolating myself.

I think that if I aim to put my positive energy out there, rather than stealing the energy of others or hiding from life, everything seems to be just fine. This has worked very well for over 10 years now...
ICfreely
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Re: Why are smart people fooled

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bongostaple wrote:...I focus on what I can do in real life to help other people in any way. It's really good for me, it involves being part of community in some way, and not isolating myself.

I know exactly what you mean, bongostaple.

I met an American pastor of a fledgling church here in Vegas about a year and a half ago. He’s a truly decent person. As are his wife and two (biological) children. He and his wife have also foster parented 35 special needs children (two of which they’ve formally adopted). Although he’s a couple of years my junior I can honestly say that I look up to him. The guy’s a constant do-gooder; always generous with his time and money for anyone in need. IMO, he’s the epitome of what it means to be a Christian.

Anyhow, about a year ago he gave a sermon on the Book of Esther. I could barely sit through it. Felt like ripping the hair out of my head. Instead of confronting him aggressively, telling him to “wake the f up,” I began to (gradually and very patiently) diffuse verifiable information to him. For instance, when I first told him about Iran being home to the largest community of Jews in the Middle East outside of Israel I could see the smoke coming out of his ears. His response was, “Dude, you’re like literally blowing my mind!” Long story short, we’ve both learned a lot from one another and I enjoy the fellowship.

This time last year, one of his foster kids (two years old) died in his sleep of “Sudden Infant Death Syndrome” a few days after getting vaccinated. It was truly heartbreaking. His wife told me that they must vaccinate their foster kids but don’t vaccinate their biological kids who are home schooled. Initially, she believed that most (but not all) vaccines were unnecessary. Suffice to say, her opinion has drastically changed since.

I’ve learned, over the years, that it’s best not to overload people with information because it almost always backfires. Wiser to carefully choose your battles. It’s really not about what you know (or think you know), but how you can best make use of it at any given point in time to help people in meaningful ways in real-life situations.


P.S.
I interpreted that as : If I do not lie to myself and others, then politicians (etc) cannot successfuly lie to me.
Agreed!


*Correction: The foster child that died last year officially died of cardiac arrest according to his death certificate. Another one of their foster children officially died of SIDS four years ago. I confused the two. My apologies.

Both of them were vaccinated shortly before they died but, in all fairness, there's no way of proving vaccines caused either death. I'll refrain from getting into the correlation/causation of vaccines and SIDS/SBS (Shaken Baby Syndrome) in this thread.
Mansur
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Re: Why are smart people fooled

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ICfreely » July 15th, 2019, 12:25 am wrote:
I interpreted that as : If I do not lie to myself and others, then politicians (etc) cannot successfuly lie to me.
Agreed!
Godspeed, of course, to all who are endeavoring and who will never give it up; but the point is much more general than that, namely that media can (and maybe should) be viewed as phenomenon (even when it seems to cover not only social life so-called but life so to speak in its whole). It has its causes, and the imaginary flyer has made its proposal as to where it seems logical to shop around first.

bongostaple » July 13th, 2019, 9:39 pm wrote:…About 10 years ago I had a very full-on experience around the subject of truth, the lies I told myself and others. I stopped lying, and my life got a lot better. But a side-effect was that I became a lot more tuned in to smelling bullshit…
…It's really good for me, it involves being part of community in some way, and not isolating myself…
As to isolation and the fear of it, a famous anecdote comes to mind: Diogenes was told “They say you’ve been sentenced at home to leave your country (polis),” at which he replied “And I sentenced them to remain there.”

That the “stopping to lie” in the personal endeavor is and must be, in my view, a process and not a single act, seems crucial to state here, - simply because, among our present circumstances, it is just as unrealizable as to possess the truth. One cannot stop lying except in very definite cases to which his conscious efforts and practices are concentrated. In all other respects the question remains open.

The following is a rather word-for-word rendering from a book (written about 1960), with one word emphasized.

“…The fact, by the way, that government can maintain its power, is due to one single condition. Bourgeoisie knows very well what the truth is, but it knows as well that to place oneself on that basis of truth would mean becoming an enemy to the power, and truth will not defend him against power, nor will it give him bread or take him out of prison or acquit at bar. One is forsaken by truth. This is the only reason bourgeoisie pretends submission to authority. They know what the truth is but they know also that their direct aims in life will not be assisted by it, and one is chiefly but on the standpoint of “one just has to live”. Justice will be sacrificed to getting fine employment. Government is not based on solid principles but on human cowardice and meanness. And just because of that, the themes of governmental ideology, let it be either monarchic or democratic or tyrannical, are quite accidental. The power’s strength is secured by man’s weakness in truth, and the greater this weakness is the greater is the strength of the power…”

For those favoring “reform” thoughts and either implying or explicitly saying like “the evil psychopaths hijacked our media” and similar phrases, media can be likened to a bitch who’s trying to please one by showing willingness to amend her ways.
ICfreely
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Re: Why are smart people fooled

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Without naming any names, why do smart people against their better judgment suffer fools?

Because they’re foolish enough to believe that there’s hope for the fools they’re trying to help. That said fools are as well intentioned as they themselves are.

Proverbs 23:9
Do not speak to a fool, for he will despise the wisdom of your words.

Proverbs 26:4
Do not answer a fool according to his folly, or you yourself will be like him.

Matthew 7:6
Do not give dogs what is holy, and do not throw your pearls before pigs, lest they trample them underfoot and turn to attack you.


Lessons learned!
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