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Aristarchus's avatar

This is among the most brilliant and sane analyses of the globus intellectualis I've ever read. I was reminded of the doctrine of tha ancient skeptics that the way to happiness (defined as tranquillity) was learning the art of not-believing until it becomes a habit. This is called 'equipollence' - posing the opposite belief as plausible whenever tempted to belief some dogma. I wish I could have this piece in PDF form so I could add it to the syllabus of my ancient philosophy course.

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Clever Pseudonym's avatar

I love this man called Gurwinder and hate to quibble with him, but this little piece of his delicious meal caught in my throat like a chicken bone: "The mainstream media....take care to get the actual reporting right, and when they don’t, they usually issue corrections."

This may have been true at some point but is not anymore in the Trump/social media era. The Pulitzers scored from the Russiagate hysteria were never rescinded (and never will be), the 1619 propaganda is still coming to a high school near you, the "lab leak is racist" narrative was never questioned (nor the vax mandates nor the uselessness of masking), and the endless propaganda about Amerikkka being a white-supremacist patriarchy festooned with nooses shows no signs of abating, and results in a daily flood of toxic lies.

If the goal is rhetorical accuracy and intellectual honesty in the name of having a much cleaner epistemic ecosystem (both socially and internally), I think it's important to be honest and clear about the greatest enemy to all these things: the mainstream corporate media, which has transformed into a Big Lie factory and Thought Police Dept on behalf of the globalist ruling class.

It may not be the best intellectual hygiene to always reflexively disbelieve any of MSM narratives, but they are still obviously unscrupulous and untrustworthy, and need to be recognized as such.

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