Why don't they just support the growth of their own homegrown "WhatsApp"?
With government support and financial support, india could easily have an indian "whatsapp". WhatsApp isn't technological sophisticated. It's simply a large network. With government/business "tweaking", india could help their own "whatsapp" company take over much of that market from facebook.
Why hand the entire indian market over to facebook and zuckerburg?
There is no reason why large and significant markets shouldn't be dominated by local businesses. Not to say whatsapp should be banned from india, but it's only the incompetence of government/business that cedes their market to foreign companies. This also applies to the EU. It's insane to me that the EU doesn't have their own google, facebook, etc.
It's in a replication crisis because pretty much none of it is science ( no replicable testing possible - hypothesis, experiment, theory ). It's why Richard Feynmann associated social science with pseudoscience.
Because real science destroyed the credibility of religion and religion in much of the world is no longer a credible social control tool, the elites needed a new form of religion to control society. That new religion is social "science". Whereas religion controlled everything from economics, schooling, family, culture, society, law, etc, now they all fall under the pseudoscience/religion called social "science".
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Reply to ziddoap.
Considering you tossed around "illumati-esque", I doubt you are interested.
I consider social science to be a pseudoscience for the same reason richard feynmann did. Did you bother watching what he had to say?
Social "science" is a humanities. It belongs in the category with philosophy, ethics, literature, religion, etc.
Just because I said it is a pseudoscience doesn't mean that I think it is useless or bad necessarily. No more than I think literature, ethics, philosophy or even religion is bad.
I just think social "science" is a "religion" trying to latch onto the good name of real science. Just like creationism "science" or all the other fake "science" trying to gain credibility by associating itself with science.
I see this position somewhat often, almost unavoidably accompanied by a reference to Feynman. The position is, of course, pure nonsense if you take a few moments to think it through.
Not only has the world moved on drastically from when Feynman, a non-expert in the area, wrote that essay, but it is also ludicrous to claim that a part of existence is unamenable to scientific study. If it exists and has an effect, it can be studied. There is no reason to believe human behaviour and thought is beyond this.
>Not only has the world moved on drastically from when Feynman...
You're right, social science got even less replicable and less scientific.
>If it exists and has an effect, it can be studied.
Yes, you're right. But that doesn't mean that you can ground it in empirical evidence or effectively apply the scientific method of inquiry. Philosophy is a method of studying human behavior -- it is not, however, science. And for substantially the same set of reasons the social sciences are also not science.
> You're right, social science got even less replicable and less scientific.
You'll need to substantiate this claim, of course.
> Yes, you're right. But that doesn't mean that you can ground it in empirical evidence or effectively apply the scientific method of inquiry.
Why not?
> Philosophy is a method of studying human behavior -- it is not, however, science. And for substantially the same set of reasons the social sciences are also not science.
You are simply repeating the old misconception I've hinted at: that human behaviour is off-limits to scientific inquiry, even though it is real and physical. I fail to see why this would be the case. We are, after all, talking about measurable, quantifiable things inputs and outputs regarding human behaviour.
You're arguing that everything can be subject to exploration via scientific method, and he's arguing that some people reject this anyway. Here is a quote about an ideological split that happened in the anthropology community:
>The divide is trenchantly summarized by Lawson and McCauley (1993) who divide between ‘interpretivists’ and ‘scientists,’ or, as noted above, ‘positivists’ and ‘naturalists.’ For the scientists, the views of the ‘cultural anthropologists’ (as they call themselves) are too speculative, especially because pure ethnographic research is subjective, and are meaningless where they cannot be reduced to science. For the interpretivists, the ‘evolutionary anthropologists’ are too ‘reductionistic’ and ‘mechanistic,’ they do not appreciate the benefits of subjective approach (such as garnering information that could not otherwise be garnered), and they ignore questions of ‘meaning,’ as they suffer from ‘physics envy.’
>We are, after all, talking about measurable, quantifiable things inputs and outputs regarding human behaviour.
I don't think it's true. Looking at behavior is like trying to guess at the internals of a black box piece of software that's very well obfuscated + randomized.
The empirical way to do it is more along the lines of neuropsych -- taking a look at the physical processes involved. I think human psychology and behavior is a lot like the plumage of a peacock; pretty, loud, but ultimately an abstraction above what is really going on.
> The empirical way to do it is more along the lines of neuropsych -- taking a look at the physical processes involved. I think human psychology and behavior is a lot like the plumage of a peacock; pretty, loud, but ultimately an abstraction above what is really going on.
There is no denying it is an abstraction. I would in fact claim the converse: all human scientific study to date has dealt with abstractions of varying degrees.
To offer a counterargument, we treat a great deal of systems like (semi-)black boxes and ultimately manage to derive useful statements about those systems. Examples include economics, black-box software analysis (like fuzzing), biology (e.g. we've learned many useful facts about the human body before we even knew of the existence of the cell), even basic physics (like the physics of gasses, as an epitome of something randomized, but still following broad rules). There is no reason to assume human psychology is different in this particular aspect.
In fact, we cannot assume so, as a lot of psychological knowledge we've gleaned demonstrably works, despite other results proving to be irreproducible due to the usual reasons[1]. As an example, it's hard to deny the existence and predictive power of modern human personality trait models.
It should also be telling that many modern, advanced statistical tools were invented by none other than psychologists, for use in psychology.
Neuropsych is definitely a worthwhile approach and I wouldn't separate it from the rest of psychology. Ultimately, we cannot really hope to derive everything using the bottom-up approach any time soon so a variety of approaches are needed. Also, to continue the above example, many studies of personality traits have shown connection to underlying genetic and environmental factors, such as this one: http://doi.org/10.1016/S0191-8869(01)00137-4
[1]: Science is hard, humans like and many times need to cut corners, the black-box system is extremely complex (as you noted).
Because most humans behave sufficiently different from each other. Even if you experiment on a subset of humans and get knowledge about this subset, a different subset of humans could react completely different. It's so bad that even the same subset of humans could react completely different if you do the same test 50 years later.
> Even if you experiment on a subset of humans and get knowledge about this subset, a different subset of humans could react completely different.
They could, but that does not mean they do. There are quite obviously rules and patterns to much of human functioning. Denying so seems like human hubris.
Even if each human displays unique behaviour for a particular trait, knowing that it is so for that particular trait is useful and therefore still amenable to scientific exploration. Even if humans reacted randomly in some situation, the random behaviour would be subject to a probability distribution and knowing it would be useful.
It's hard for me to see where exactly the leap to "it's impossible to study human behaviour scientifically" is necessary, particularly when we have so much evidence to the contrary.
Sorry, but this just sounds like a deepity. Science is a process, not a result.
It holds for most of science most of the time that you don't reliably get the same output if you provide the same input (because you don't know all the variables or the entire set of equations). Only when a phenomenon is completely known does this stop being true.
But when is a phenomenon completely known? After all, for a long time we've known classical mechanics to be completely known... Except it wasn't. And during the time we thought it was, you could get into exactly the type of situation you describe above: for the "same" input, you could get a different output, depending on the components of the stress-energy tensor you were not aware were relevant. The effect was subtle there of course, but there are many examples where it's not (e.g. the entirety of biology and medicine).
So I disagree with this description of science.
EDIT: Also, it completely slipped my mind the first time around because it's such a stupidly strong counterargument, but by your definition the entirety of modern physics (quantum mechanics, quantum field theory and beyond) is not science.
Science is useful because it has the power to predict. It gains this power from getting the same output when providing the same input. If what you are doing doesn't have the power to predict it's not science. You can still apply the scientific method to what you are doing and if you're applying that method you might as well call yourself a scientist and what your doing science, but then again, a few hundred years ago scientists didn't yet know that things like alchemy weren't science, so they applied the scientific method to it and figured out that it isn't useful.
> Even if you experiment on a subset of humans and get knowledge about this subset, a different subset of humans could react completely different.
The same is true of chemicals, rocks, or lots of other categories of things subject to scientific inquiry. In fact, interesting scientific results tend to come from how the behavior of different subsets of categories like that behave in similar conditions, rather than being made impossible by such differences.
> But that doesn't mean that you can ground it in empirical evidence or effectively apply the scientific method of inquiry.
Yes, it does. The scientific method and empirical investigation apply to any phenomena in the material universe, including human behavior.
Such investigation might lead to models with irreducible areas of randomness if there is some.ares of human behavior not controlled by deterministic laws, but our best models in certain areas of the physical sciences also have irreducible randomness, so that's not a distinguishing feature.
> pretty much none of it is science ( no replicable testing possible - hypothesis, experiment, theory )
By this standard, neither is most preclinical cancer research as so few of them replicate (11% - source: https://www.nature.com/articles/483531a). Even social science puts up better numbers than that (~60%)
There is a difference between bad science and "not being a science" ( aka pseudoscience ).
The difference is that in one you can formulate replicable science. In the other, by its nature, you can't. Because on deals with "natural law" and the other with society.
There is no "replicable scientific test" to determine whether capitalism or socialism is the best economic system. There is no "replicable scientific test" to determine whether to have the death penalty or not. So on and so forth. Much of it is pretty much a "religious" endeavor. Pretty much those with power decide and social "science" is used to justify whereas in the past religion was the justification.
"... Because on deals with "natural law" and the other with society..."
Society isn't... natural?
"There is no "replicable scientific test" to determine whether capitalism or socialism is the best economic system. There is no "replicable scientific test" to determine whether to have the death penalty or not. "
I wasn't aware that social science even attempted to answer these questions? Like most sciences, and this study, it attempts to study phenomenon as they occur. In this case this meta-study was trying to see if the backfire effect actually exists... which isn't making any moral or societal debate or opinion, just trying to verify a phenomenon existing. Which sounds pretty scientific to me?
Studying behavior is not equivalent to studying, say, astrophysics.
It is of course "natural" in the same sense that everything is natural, but the lack of the ability to ground research in empirical evidence means that the fields of economics, social science, psychology, and especially evolutionary psychology etc. are not actually engaging in science.
The form, structure, tendencies, or beliefs of a human culture are not at all analoglous to say studying a distant and ancient star by observing its emission spectrum or investigating the nature of reality by investigating subatomic particle interactions. This fundamental difference means that these fields will never be as dependable as true science; to be clear that doesn't mean they're useless, only that they're not science.
Not sure if you'd see my edit so I thought I'd reply directly.
>Considering you tossed around "illumati-esque", I doubt you are interested.
I am interested.
>Did you bother watching what he had to say?
I have.
>Just because I said it is a pseudoscience doesn't mean that I think it is useless or bad necessarily. No more than I think literature, ethics, philosophy or even religion is bad.
I never said that you think it's useless, or bad.
>I just think social "science" is a "religion" trying to latch onto the good name of real science. Just like creationism "science" or all the other fake "science" trying to gain credibility by associating itself with science.
I actually agree here, to be honest.
>the elites needed a new form of religion to control society.
This is literally the only thing I took issue with. I was, and am, genuinely curious on all the other stuff. I was hoping you would expand on it. I, however, thought it prudent to mention that I'd not be interested in reading it from the "elites controlling society" position.
>the elites needed a new form of religion to control society. That new religion is social "science".
Source?
I'd be interested in hearing more about why you think all social science is pseudoscience. However, if it's going to be the illuminati-esque, I'll take a pass.
Not exactly a source, but from my person experience I have seen people believing in social science results with a fervor that matches religious people believing in religious material. Questioning a study, even with valid reasoning, causes one to receive treatment that compared to questioning religious teachings. Bringing up an alternative study, if it disagrees with the person's own leanings, is comparable to quoting the wrong religious book to a religious individual. Having significant experience in both religious communities and the social sciences, there feels to be a lot of overlap and I personally see nothing wrong with seeing it as serving as a replacement religion for those who have left the classical ones behind.
Now to clarify, I am not saying it is psedoscience or some conspiracy by the elites. I think it happens, to give an overly summarized summary, because religion fills a spot in the average's human psyche that when empty people seek to fill with something else and social sciences are similar enough to serve as a good replacement. As for the reliability of the science, there is a reproducibility problem and the social sciences are plagued with issues to a far greater extent than the hard sciences. That doesn't mean it is fake, but that studies, especially those with little variations and replications, need to be taken with a measured serving of salt.
Interesting perspective for sure, and I think I can agree that people seem to get incredibly invested in some of these studies and subsequently defend them, as you described, with a religious fervor.
My bigger issue with the parent comment was more aimed at the matter-of-fact "it's the elites" statement, which I have little patience for. Using a conspiracy to justify your thoughts that something else is a conspiracy is a bit circular.
People believe in "science" with the same fervor. The scare quotes are because someone will point to a study as definitive - the final answer - and use it as a blugeon (even if the subject is far from settled or the science itself questionable).
Science is a method of inquiry, it's not a tool to "win" a debate. I think you are just observing human nature, in this case reflecting in the so-call social sciences but can manifest in relation to hard science as well.
In both cases people are inclined to support what already matches their world view (which they project with their thoughts and actions and are reflected back filtered through their belief systems).
HTTP has been misused recently though, applications that really have nothing to do with HyperText Documents using it as a communication protocol when a lower level protocol would have been more appropriate...
Rather than being an honest game to reduce "disinformation", this game is simply defending mainstream media. It's message is essentially "trust mainstream media". Not that shocking coming from cambridge considering they are at the forefront of cultural war being waged in the west today.
How about get opinion/news from a wide variety of sources ( mainstream and fringe, big and small, national and international, right and left, globalist and nationalist, etc )? That's the only reliable way to wade through all the disinformation.
Especially regarding controversial, cultural, military, trade and geopolitical issues.
If you are getting your "news" from one source then you are getting propaganda and lies. How many wars have we been sold on lies by the media? And yet, we are expected to trust them regardless of their lies. And that's just the most glaring and obvious example.
For example, with the recent hong kong protests. It would have been nice to see what the chinese media or asian media were also saying about the issue. I suspect it's a lot different than the "news" we've been seeing about it in the US. If we are interested in the "truth", then it would be nice to see what iranians/iranian media and the media of nearby countries are saying. Rather than just a one sided pro-war "news".
But I suspect that neither cambridge nor the media they are protecting truly care about "news, disinformation, fake news, etc".
1. I didn't say all news sources are "equally biased". Saying all news sources are biased is not the same as saying equally biased. Some are obvious more biased and more propagandistic than others. But without a doubt, every news source has biases. If you think I'm wrong, feel free to look into the history of every news company. Who created them, funded them and who is running them. But I suspect you already know this.
2. I didn't say the "aggregates" produce an unbiased result. I didn't mention anything about "aggregates". Seeing different opinions exposes to you the biases of every news source. If you just watch foxnews or cnn all day, you won't be able to pick up on the bias. But if you watch both, the biases of both become blatantly obvious. I'm not saying watching both somehow magically makes CNN or Foxnews "objective" and "honest". Quite the opposite.
3. Neither of those assumptions are credible because I didn't make them. You made those assumptions in an attempt to defend mainstream media. Which I see all over social media recently.
Every comment about being skeptical about media ( especially mainstream media ) gets met with your type of comment. Makes me wonder.
Pulitzer Prize winning news source : Nayirah, Yellow cake, assad syria chemical attack, Trump working for Putin conspiracy.
But then again, Pulitzer was the founder of yellow journalism, the original fake news.
I don't think winning an award named after the founder of yellow journalism is anything to be proud of.
"Back to Moscow comrades"?
That sounds like the fake news we've been hearing from many pulitzer winners.
The difference between infowars fake news and pulitzer winners fake news is that the pulitzer winners' fake news has resulted in the death of millions of people and the pulitzer winners should be facing war crime charges.
You mean Assad has never conducted chemical attacks on his people? Even though Syria, Russia, Iran and youtube conspiracy theorists claim he is Innocent, the actual fact of chemical attacks it is well established. It is actually found in victims blood.
And Nayirah was invited by congress to lie in those chambers in order to give Bush justification for his war. None of those parties are news papers. In fact it was the press that ultimately exposed those lies, not a guy in his basement on youtube.
By yellow cake, I assume you are referring to the article[1] that _exposed_ Bush's lie about WMD in Iraq coming from Africa. The article that resulted in white house retaliation threatening the life of Valerie Plame.
In addition, there were a series of op-eds _opposing_ the war by Joseph C. Wilson and others. The only degree to which real journalism is guilty is the degree to which it gullibly repeated what the whitehouse said. I believe we are all aware now that the whitehouse lies profusely.
And indeed, the respectable papers report the Trump organization's meetings and deals with Russia. If this data looks like an accusation to you, I have to agree that evidence is quite damning.
So here is a counter proposal: The far right is trying to discredit and ultimately crush the free press and academia as always. One of the tools is a re-write of history so that somehow those institutions that opposed war are now blamed for it. And the hawkish right who actually did start the war is falsely portrayed as opposing it.
>One of the tools is a re-write of history so that somehow those institutions that opposed war are now blamed for it. And the hawkish right who actually did start the war is falsely portrayed as opposing it.
I've been noticing more frequent references to WMDs lately, which is meant to imply that people who follow the mainstream media are being duped again. The issue with this narrative is that they weren't really duped the first time. Iraq was the most widely protested war internationally in modern history. The whole comparison between modern news events and WMDs is just grasping at straws.
>I didn't say all news sources are "equally biased".
>I didn't say the "aggregates" produce an unbiased result.
This is correct. I didn't quote you. I'm saying that in order for your conclusion to hold, the above assumptions must be true, which they're not. Whether or not you stated the assumptions is irrelevant.
>Seeing different opinions exposes to you the biases of every news source. If you just watch foxnews or cnn all day, you won't be able to pick up on the bias. But if you watch both, the biases of both become blatantly obvious.
There is zero reason to believe that watching one source will accurately expose the bias in another source, rather than simply contradict it. What I mean is that watching multiple news sources will not necessarily help you distinguish fact from bias.
To give an example, if news A presents a factual statement, and news B presents a lie that contradicts A, you are no better off by watching both news sources.
My statement has exactly nothing to do with "mainstream media." I'm just addressing the fallacy stated above.
I told you why your assumptions were false. And please don't use philosophical and logical concepts you clearly don't understand.
> To give an example, if news A presents a factual statement, and news B presents a lie that contradicts A, you are no better off by watching both news sources.
Actually you are better off since you can then verify the "factual statement".
You are assuming "news A" is pushing "factual statements". That is itself a logical fallacy. I'll let you furiously google a list of logical fallacies to find out which.
You aren't addressing any "fallacy" because you built up false assumptions and are now arguing against your incorrect assumptions. That is also another logical fallacy.
You have a very "journalist" way of thinking. Illogical, agenda driven and misleading.
Crossing into personal attack like this is a bannable offense on HN. I don't want to ban you, but if you keep posting flamewar comments, we're going to have to. We've already asked you repeatedly to stop.
>But if you watch both, the biases of both become blatantly obvious.
I don't think this is true, though. You may be able to see differences between them, but without access to the "ground truth" (whatever that might be) you can't tell how each source differs from the ground truth.
It's called propaganda. Go back 4 or 5 years ago. The NYTimes, Bloomberg, WSJ, etc all ran the same stories back then. The comments were the same. Usually some "expat" living there giving his "expert" propaganda or some "expat" talking about had he had to leave hong kong because it was so bad. Back then, there was a lot of "ghost cities" scare mongering. A lot less of it today. You notice the same patterns. The "britain tried to give democracy to hong kong" propaganda. The "people of hong kong" prefer britain propaganda. China is about to collapse.
Once the trade war nonsense ends, you'll see these stories and comments disappear. Just like all the "I hate facebook" stories and comments. Just like the "Russia controls everything in the US" stories and comments.
Until it's time for "We've always been at war with eurasia". If only these people cared about freedom here at home as much as they "care" about freedom in china. You'll notice that most of the people ( journalists and commenters ) crying about censorship, privacy, freedom etc in china are the same ones demanding more censorship, less privacy and less freedom here and on social media.
Would you please stop posting in the flamewar style to HN? It is not a place for ideological battle and this sort of comment is super low-quality, regardless of how good your underlying points are. Internet rage is the most predictable and tedious commodity here. It has the effect on thoughtful conversation that salt has on a slug.
There was a time when reddit, HN, digg, etc were all tech oriented. The problem is that once a platform gets slightly popular, journalists, NGOs, PR, foreign actors, think tanks, etc sneak in and push their wares ( sometimes with the help of the forums themselves ). Slashdot might be worth a look but I gave up on them years ago.
The problem is that so much of "tech" forums, magazines, sites, etc are not run by "techies" but agenda driven media people masquerading as "techies". TheVerge, arstechnica, etc being prime examples.
My advice is to browse the "new" section of HN for the interesting tech/science/hack stuff. But unfortunately, most of the interesting stuff has no traffic or discussion. But maybe that's a good thing.
I didn't say HN was "all tech oriented". Please stop misquoting me. I said "There was a time when reddit, HN, digg, etc were all tech oriented. Meaning "HN was tech oriented", "reddit was tech oriented", "digg was tech oriented", etc.
I didn't say HN was all tech. My point was that HN was tech oriented like reddit, digg, etc.
Ah, I see that I misbound that pesky "all". Sorry! But the point is more or less the same. Actually, let me reply to all your points.
HN isn't less tech-oriented now than it used to be. The mix of topics fluctuates, but within a stable range which has been about the same since pg renamed Startup News to Hacker News 12 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/hackernews.html. That announcement is where this language originated: "That includes a lot more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity." Anyone who's read the HN guidelines should recognize that.
We've put a ton of effort into countering wares-pushing. If you think you see a story that is only on HN's front page because "journalists, NGOs, PR, foreign actors, think tanks, etc" are sneaking it in, you should let us know right away at hn@ycombinator.com.
I don't know if we count as "techies" in your book but if there's one thing I'm sure we're not, it's "agenda driven media people".
If "most of the interesting stuff has no traction or discussion", you could help out a lot by upvoting it. That's at least an easier problem to solve than interesting things not getting submitted in the first place.
Newspapers aren't competing with google or facebook. No more than newspapers were competing against news stands. Newspapers are competing against each other and those that have the power to force google and facebook to give it preferential treatment will do well. Those without the power to strong-arm google and facebook will do poorly.
Newspapers biggest enemy are "authoritative sources" and the preferential treatment these "authoritative sources" get. Small and local newspapers are going to suffer as their top enemies ( NYTimes, WSJ, CNN, Foxnews, MSBNC, WashingtonPost, etc ) get the "authoritative source" special treatment on social media and the internet overall. This applies to other smaller outfits like huffpo, vice news, vox properties, etc. As they get squeezed more and more, they'll fold if they are independent or if they are owned by a larger parent companies, the parent company will either absorb them out of existence or slowly shut them down.
When the CEOs of Facebook, google, apple, etc all bend to pressure by "authoritative sources" and pledge to give them special treatment on their platforms, it spells doom for smaller competitors.
Look at how many nytimes articles we have here. As time goes on, it'll get worse and worse. The diversity of news, thought and speech online is slowly being destroyed by a handful of state backed news companies.
Apple, Google, Facebook, etc are each worth hundreds of billions of dollars. NYTimes is worth a fraction of that. Yet the nytimes is able to bully these massive tech companies. Strange huh?
How much would "special treatment" on facebook, google, apple, etc be worth? Tens of billions? Hundreds of billions?
Imagine you had a business and you could force google, apple, facebook, etc to show your product to customers first . How about you could get them to only show your product. How much would that privilege be worth?
WSJ didn't break the story. Other people broke the story. That story was "broken" on forums all over the internet. A WSJ journalist just collated the story and wrote a book about it. And keep in mind the WSJ journalist who broke the story refused to criticize the reporters from forbes, fortune, etc who created the theranos story. I'd have more respect for John Carreyrou if he had the professionalism and morals to go after obvious bad journalism. But he chose to stand by the journalism's equivalent of the "blue wall of silence".
Lets not forget that elizabeth holmes and the theranos nonsense was built up by journalists. Lets not forget that she was the media darling of an agenda driven "journalists" who wanted to push a narrative rather than search for the truth.
Crediting the WSJ or journalists for the theranos story is like crediting an arsonist firefighters for putting out the fire they themselves set.
It wasn't a book about prophecy. It was a book on his present. He just set it in the future since he couldn't afford to tick off the censors in britain.
1984 was inspired by his work as a propagandist for the BBC Eastern Service during ww2. He based the "Ministry of Truth" on the BBC and the dreaded room 101 on a BBC conference room.
Animal Farm is about the absurd and hypocritical political structure of the Soviet Union. 1984 has always been about Britain/West with a heavy focus on truth, propaganda and the news. But whether eastasia, eurasia or oceania, the ultimate message is that it's all one and the same and 1984 applies to all of them.
"In the end he succeeded in forcing her memory back until she did dimly recall that at one time Eastasia and not Eurasia had been the enemy. But the issue still struck her as unimportant. 'Who cares?' she said impatiently. 'It's always one bloody war after another, and one knows the news is all lies anyway.'"
- Orwell 1984
Sound familiar? What was true of orwell's 1940s britain or oceania seems true today.
Funnily enough, the BBC ( in the 1984 style ) "rehabilitated" orwell's legacy for their own purposes. Just like big brother "rehabilitated" winston in 1984.
In 1984, who are the champions of censorship? The ministry of truth. Who are the champions of censorship in the west? The news industry - one of the major supporters of censorship is oddly enough the new yorker. Who are the ones demanding that social media censor and who are the ones insisting certain words or topic shouldn't be discussed?
> Who are the champions of censorship in the west? The news industry
What 1984 is talking about is state-wide censorship, where news organizations are punished for reporting on topics that make the state look bad. That is Russia, China, North Korea, and other repressive regimes.
In the west, some media might choose not to cover a topic, but you still have other news organizations, and now blogs and social media.
So, yes, censorship does happen within bubbles, but if you live in a free country you can simply look into another bubble to get the other perspective.
> What 1984 is talking about is state-wide censorship, where news organizations are punished for reporting on topics that make the state look bad. That is Russia, China, North Korea, and other repressive regimes.
Sadly, it seems that Australia can now be added to this list.
I suggest you read 1984 critically instead of repeating the nonsense you were told.
Which "news organization" in 1984 was punished for reporting on topics that made the state look bad? Did you even read the book?
The point of 1984 was that even the opposition was controlled by the "state".
You can talk about Russia, China, North Korea and mindlessly participate in your 2 minute hate. But 1984 was not about Russia, China or North Korea. It was about 1940s Britain and the West.
And your comment didn't address what you quoted: "Who are the champions of censorship in the west? The news industry". Who were the champions of censorship in 1984? The Ministry of Truth.
Even if everything you wrote was true ( which it is not ), it didn't address what you quoted.
Feminism is a symptom rather than the cause. The cause is the commoditization of humans into productivity and consumption units in a post-industrial environment where the state and corporations dominate. Corporations want to extract every bit of production and consumption out of individuals. A woman taking time off for pregnancy or deciding to become a stay-at-home mom is a drain on corporate productivity. And every state has to some degree tried to diminish the role of parents and family in order to sap every ounce of allegiance from an individual to the state. In totalitarian states, the head of the state becomes the father of the people and the state becomes its family. It's easier to control and manipulate individuals with weak family ties. And it's easier for entities to inject themselves into a controlling family role with individuals with weak family ties. It's why pimps and madams target runaways and make themselves into paternal or maternal figures.
Society and culture doesn't grow organically. They are created and manufactured by the people with wealth and power. For the time being, those with wealth and power have decided that the breakdown of the family is in their interest. But it could shift quickly if the people in charge want it to. An extreme example is china where they encouraged women to have lots of children in order to strengthen their country. And not too long after that, they had a change of heart and encouraged the complete opposite - one child policy. Now it seems like they are backing off of it after a few decades of one child policy.
Agreed. A large part of american culture has been engineered consciously or unconsciously to be some sort of productivity/materialistic porno. It is completely unbalanced. The american values nowadays all go towards trying to create an "Übermensch".
> Society and culture doesn't grow organically. They are created and manufactured by the people with wealth and power.
BS. You give them way too much credit. The world is too complex and dynamic for a queen ant to "create and manufacture" the efficiency of the ant hill.
I didn't credit them with creating the world. I credited them with creating society, culture, etc. It isn't really a matter of debate. It's well understood the elites create societies and the institutions underlying them. The masses didn't create the US government or any of the systematically important institutions. A handful of elites did. This is pretty much true of every country/society on earth throughout history.
With government support and financial support, india could easily have an indian "whatsapp". WhatsApp isn't technological sophisticated. It's simply a large network. With government/business "tweaking", india could help their own "whatsapp" company take over much of that market from facebook.
Why hand the entire indian market over to facebook and zuckerburg?
There is no reason why large and significant markets shouldn't be dominated by local businesses. Not to say whatsapp should be banned from india, but it's only the incompetence of government/business that cedes their market to foreign companies. This also applies to the EU. It's insane to me that the EU doesn't have their own google, facebook, etc.