Fandango’s Provocative Question #15 Redux
And so the wise man said to the not-nearly as wise (other) guy:
“The fundamental cause of the trouble is that, in the modern world, the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubts.” — Bertrand Russell
Funny you should bring this up today because Garry and I were talking about this very thing last night. We both commented about how the older we get, the less we feel we know. It’s a big world, a huge universe. To know everything about one single thing seems a challenge, much less knowing “everything.”
The truly dull do not see the world as a learning opportunity. Also, many people have misplaced the difference between “fact” and “opinion.” Because they’ve seen lies and ranting untruth actually work, -they’ve come to believe anything said loudly and often enough will become true. Noise and repetition will slip the lies through the wires of the “true-untrue” barrier fence. Except we all know it doesn’t happen that way. You do know that, right? You can pretend to believe — or really believe — insane theories all you want, but they do not become true. Frequency and loud repetition may work for you, but it gives me a headache.
The rumor is if you believe something is true, it is or will become true given any or all of the following conditions:
1) If you read it on the internet
2) Other people agree with you
3) It feels right, so it must be true.
WHAT?
You can’t talk to people who refuse to admit there’s any difference between fact and opinion, between truth and and what you want to be true — regardless of fact.
Under all the hot air, i’m sure everyone knows the difference between fact, fiction, belief, and opinion. They can’t be that stupid and still function in the world. What is possible is they think the rest of us are that stupid.
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Categories: #FPQ, Anecdote, Provocative Questions, truth
SERENDIPITY: SEEKING INTELLIGENT LIFE ON EARTH 
“It’s best to be wary and check multiple sources.” And that line is precisely what should be done by everyone, and yet sadly, so many don’t? They just take everything as gospel.
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So very true.
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Every time I think those other people have finally gotten the message, they get LOUDER. What a noisy, messy world we’ve made. I’m reading a very long biography of Geo. Washington and you know? The horrendous greed of Americans in 1772 made him comment that “God help this country if those people ever run it” or words to that effect. He was right. Now, they ARE running it.
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Very interesting… about Washington.
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It would seem the people we are, are the people we were. We’ve gotten bigger, richer — and stayed just as petty, mean-spirited and greedy as ever. That whole segment was entirely about how years after declaring “revolution,” people had forgotten “freedom” and remembered ONLY greed. So we were, so we remain.
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The world is a mess Marilyn we have greed and stupidity in charge – we have it here also in Britain, l despair at the shape of things that are present and still to come.
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Me too. Every time I think we’ve made progress, I quickly discover we didn’t. I often want to just hide under the covers, but obviously it’s all that hiding that GOT us here.
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Oh l know, but sometimes there is only so much that a person can face head on. There are times when it’s way easier being an ostrich.
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I take a week off here and there to keep my brain from frying!
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Yes, l know what you mean, l take time out from interacting with people. Immersing myself in nature or just being outside keeps my sanity in check.
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Watching the birds and the other critters, feeding them, taking pictures keeps me grounded. Otherwise, I start to obsess over everything.
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Precisely, l no longer trust any level of authoritarian management structure and as to the Press. Meh, they can go jump, totally had enough of them.
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I read a couple of papers, but I am careful about fully believing any story because they all cut corners. Maybe they don’t completely change the story, but they don’t tell the whole thing because they don’t have room (or time) to put the whole thing down on the page or on the screen. The reality is that many stories are incredibly complex. You’d need a book and even that might not be enough. AND everything is all tangled in a huge knot. It’s best to be wary and check multiple sources.
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will slip through the wires of the “true-untrue” barrier
That’s so well put.
And the rest of it as well.
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Thank you!
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A perfect example is Donald Trump according to Mary Trump. The more he repeats each lie, the more he himself believes it’s the truth. Sadly, several million other people also believe the big lies. This is a cancer that we have no idea how to deal with
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I keep wondering who REALLY believe and how many WANT to believe and act accordingly. Because these same people wouldn’t have a mechanic to work on their car without checking credentials so they do KNOW there’s a difference between opinion and fact. They’ve just discovered that they only have t pay attention if someone holds a gun to their head which no one is doing. I doubt they really don’t know the difference. They just don’t WANT to know. And I think THEY think WE are that stupid.
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Definitely true.
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I’m in the middle of a very long biography of George Washington who observed the horrendous greed of Americans — in 1772! — and preferred to sell food to the British because they paid better while they left their OWN army to starve. Literally starve. We’ve invented a lot of fake history as well as fake news.
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Yes, history is always biased towards the narrator’s point of view.
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Some much more than others though I always assume when I’m reading a1000-page book about George Washington that the author probably had strong feelings about George Washington. Because that’s a lot of pages — EVEN for a history.
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Yes!
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you are so right
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I just wonder how many of those people we assume have to be really stupid t believe all that crap really believe it — or think that they are fooling US. These same people wouldn’t hire an auto mechanic without checking credentials. They KNOW the difference between fake and real, What they have learned is if they act as like they don’t believe it, they can get away almost anything and we write it off as stupidity. I can’t prove it, but then again.
Long before we were creating fake news, we were creating fake history — and we are STILL DOING IT.
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