Friday, March 15, 2024

15 Ways that Media corrupts distorts public perception and shackles the truth - Decline #2

1. It sentationalizes events that have gut appeal to the population. Outrage is cultivated.

2.  The Narrative is favoured over the facts. Media blurs the distinction between the two in favour of the former.

3. It reports on partisan lines with deliberate recourse to confirmation bias. Inconvenient details and context are downplayed.

4. It misleads the reader with headings that don't reflect the essence of the story. Many people very rarely read past the headings so that obfuscation predominates.

5. It uses visual imagery (decontextualized) selectively. This resonates with many people.A picture is worth a 1000 words or so they say.

6. In a rush to publish first inaccuracy is sacrificed to swifness of scoop. Apologies for errors arrive much later after the damage has been done.

7. It plays loosely with the term 'expert' to give credence to its intended narrative.This creates the necessary Echo Chamber.

8. Statistics presented often lack nuance and the assumptions that they are predicated on are conveniently sidelined.

9. It grants far too much air time to celebrity opinion that is not relevant to the issue at hand but drives up clicks and likes.

10. It promotes logical fallacies eg. If x people agree on a point compared to y people and x is greater than y than x must be correct. The Truth is not a popularity contest.

11. It creates false dichotomies of victim v victimizer as this has a visceral impact for so many.

12. Much media reporting reporting is not original but is based on rechurned reports. This inevitably distorts the details. 

13. Social media algorithms and search engine priorities favours certain media outlets over others. Thereby biasing the feed stream. Shadow banning and full on cancellation further augments perceptions.

14. Media embedded in nations that have limited freedom of speech often self censure their reports. Thereby weakening our understanding of what really is happening.

15. Media News rooms have an overhelming partisan bias. In the West this largely leans toward the globalist left and drives the narrative.



Tuesday, March 12, 2024

13 Ways that Modern Education is failing in the West - Decline #1

 1. Decline of rigour in favour of 'kindness' driven education. You need both but the balance has shifted away from the former. Students should not be pushed through a course to make them feel better or improve school statistics.

2. Destreaming of subjects. This results in an overall lowering of standards. Excellence at the high end is being shortshifted.

3. Political Ideology finding its way in the classroom. Most of this is of the Green/Red/Wokeist type. However any ideology (regardless of Axis position) should not be promoted to a captive audience.

4. Grade Inflation.

5. An increasing emphasis on project based assignments that can be easily compromised using plagarism and artificial intelligence adjuncts.

6. Teachers Union protecting teachers whose job performamce is far from optimum.

7. Growing administration budgets at the school boards that create endless micro-managing and wasteful interference.

8. Lack of consistent standards by schools in the absence of standardized testing.

9. Political initiatives that treat students differently based on their ethnicity. This is anti-Liberal and fosters resentment.

10. A declining numbers of  male teachers and role models in the school system. Boys are ideed falling behind.

11. Down grading of the history of Western Civilization (plus the classics) in school curricula. This results in a lack of awareness of the giants who shoulders we stand on.

12. Too much emphasis on technology as a fix-it-all for various problems.

13. Lack of discipline and consequence for bad behavior.


Saturday, March 2, 2024

The West is in obvious decline.

 This off the top of my head...

These are either the symptoms or drivers (or both) for the decline.
1. Fall in Education standards
2. Extreme Media Bias, Frivolity and Twisted Narratives
3. Scientific Fraud
4. Post Truth in Academia
5. Historical rewriting
6. DEI obsession/Critical Race Theory
7. Decline of the Arts
8. Threats to open debate/Cancel culture
9. Cults of Victimhood, Self Flagellation, Entitlement and unearned respect
10. Deteriorating values
11. Cultural Relativism. Erosion of the concept of common values.
12. Institutional Corruption/Poor Leadership, Owned Leadership and Grifting
13. Aggression of Islamism
14. Illegal Immigration
15. Corporate hijack of Grassroots Capitalism
16. Overzealous state intrusion, Selective Policing
17. Growing Cycles of Debt (Personal and Private)
18. Gender Identity Post-structuralism
19. Expansion of the State enterprise
20. Middle Class Alienation and the heavy tax burden
21. Collapse of the family and the social hierachy.
22. The demise of Christianity.

Sunday, February 18, 2024

Sabine Hossenfelder looks at the fraud that is driving a retraction crisis in the science. She points a finger at the 'Special Issues' craze that has allowed the literature to become littered with published papers that are fundamentally flawed (deliberately or not). AI is partly to blame but like most critiques she avoids going deeper into a proposed solution. 

In addition she carefully avoids the politically motivated topic of Anthropegenic Climate Change that has for all intent of purpose become the poster child for groupthink, scientism and shoddy science. 

 Publish or Perish and competitive grant money have not helped the process but if science cannot extricate itself from the politics that skews its bias it runs the risk of crashing in on itself. Nobody will benefit from that. The success of Western Civilization is grounded in a solid science. This involves a science that incorporates rationalism and empiricism and places the truth at the apex of all investigation quests. 


An update

Since my book Navigating the Chaos was published in March of last year I have been somewhat lax in my personal writing. While I have answered questions on Quora I  have largerly resisted the urge to write more on a substantive level. 

The decay all around me has moved me in the direction of a negativity that I have found to be stifling of personal aspiration. I need to push on in my marketing of the book but I can't help but ponder the futility of all that there is.

The attack on Israel cut me to the soul and the rapid rise of obvious antisemitism has not helped with this onset of such an existential angst. It truly is frightening. 

However I am not one to marinate in self pity. I need to move on with my writing and this includes a motivated intent to outline, analyze and dissect the decline. This will now serve as the purpose of this blog.

It is my recourse to a continued sanity and I will follow through with it.

Saturday, January 27, 2024

More Answers to Quick Quora Questions II

Did Britain refuse to support Anti-Bolshevik forces in the Russia before World War II?

No. In fact between 1918 and 1920 The British together with France, the United States, Japan and Czechoslovakia actively backed the anti-Bolshevik White Movement in the Russian Civil War. Almost a thousand Brits died in this conflict.

Check out: Kinvig, Clifford (2006). Churchill's Crusade: The British Invasion of Russia 1918–1920. London


Can totalitarianism exist in a liberal form?


No. The key unit in Liberalism is the individual with the prime focus being its sovereignty. Any totalitarian system biases the collective over the individual and therefore ceases to be liberal. Progressivism is not liberal.    

Can Nuclear fusion be stopped or reversed if accidently started?

I assume you mean in a lab or power planet. The answer is yes. Nuclear Fission Processes are shutdown using the SCRAM procedure (safety control rod axe man - the term was coined by Enrico Fermi). In light reactors (water cooled) this done by inserting a control rod that absorbs neutrons. For CANDU reactors a neutron poison is injected via the EPIS system (Emergency Poison Injection system).

In Nuclear Fusion the process is stopped by releasing the pressure on the plasma/fuel mix. Worth thinking about is that a fusion reaction is easier to control as it is not a chain reaction.


When did the meaning of Liberalism change from its classical roots?


It didn’t. Liberalism is the authentic classic version. In the United States Progressive groups co-opted the name in the early to mid 20th century as a way of polishing their progressive image which had become increasingly tarnished over time. The re-brand unfortunately stuck with the details lost to history. In Europe and Australia, Liberal Party Parties are closer to the original definition in political philosophy (although not always in action) than those who go by the same mantra in North America.


Why did Germany betray Austria and not provide assistance during World War I?


The Germans were fighting the French/British Empires on one front and the Russians on the other. The fight against the Russians relieved some of the pressure on the Austrian/Hungarian forces who could concentrate more of their efforts against the Italians and the Serbs. Anymore German assistance was unlikely as the nations was under naval blockade and was stretched to the limits on both the Western and Eastern Fronts for most of the war. While there was some relief to Germany when Russia pulled out of the war this did not last long as the Allied forces were bolstered on the West by the entry of the United States.


When did the Canadian Liberal Party become left wing?

 My answer in Quora.

The shift started with the outsize influence of Pierre Trudeau (Prime Minister from 1968–1979 then 1980 to 1984) and his strong pro-labor, Federalist and social democratic stance. Trudeau enjoyed close ties with the CCF (the forerunner of the left wing New Democratic Party) and was essentially a man of the left for most of his life. Big government economists Joseph Schumpeter and Kenneth Galbraith both influenced his economic outlook.

He was actually was a latecomer to Liberal politics only joining the party in 1965 (well into his 40s) and was described by a former Cabinet Minister, Judy LaMarsh, as not being ‘a liberal’. She was correct. Trudeau never left his social democratic roots.

In office Trudeau greatly expanded Canada’s social welfare system, ran large budget deficits throughout his term in first rem in office (with the slight exception of 1969), implemented wage and price controls, forced the Western Canadian provinces to freeze oil prices and eventually created a nationalized oil company.

He was also a strong friend of Fidel Castro, an opponent of gun ownership, a champion of high capital gains taxes, and a Federalist whose top down approach alienated both Western Canada and Quebec,

Supporters credit him though with Canada’s policy of official bilingualism, the abolition of the death penalty, multiculturalism, expansion of unemployment insurance, the Criminal Law Amendment Act and the Patriation of the Constitution. The latter led to the Constitution Act of 1982 and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms