/lit/ - Literature

>>18180615
You're not worrying about epistemology you just want a braphog

>>18180615
Didn't read but appreciate the slampig

>>18180615
Didn’t read your post but the death of low-rise jeans as a fashion trend was a sad turn of events

>>18180630
God please let it come back bros

>>18180615
Read Hayek and Milton and then be at peace

>>18180615

Togi was perhaps my first Internet crush. She awakened things in me, things having to do with chubby women and knots...

>>18180615
>When I read the NYT and WaPo I get one picture of the world, but then I read RT and Sputnik and I get a completely different picture

Never take mainstream sources at face value. Look to commentators, but discard every commentator who refuses to engage with the mainstream sources. You'll be left with a few. Of these few, discard those who worry about ideological purity. You'll be left with even fewer. Read what these commentators write. Adopts their methods. Learn to read between the lines.

You're right and 95% of people choose which flow of information to believe in based on other considerations, like what is expected from them socially and what groups they want to belong to. If you want to rise above you need to read theory and develop principles and frameworks to interpret the world and set political goals on a longer term, rather than going along with the momentary cycle of news. This also comes with a certain indifference towards the details and specifics of the media, because for example someone who would actually change their mind on important geopolitical issues due to a war crime here and there are probably narrowminded in the first place.

>>18180668
Based

>>18180615

>>18180615
The best thing to do is ignore politics altogether. Drop out of that aspect of society. It’s all propaganda and it’s too muddled to trust anyone. I’m fairly young, but I’m on my 5th president and haven’t noticed a single change in my quality of life. Everyone screams the sky is falling when they don’t have the power, but nothing really happens. Wars break out under both parties, economic booms and recessions do to. It literally doesn’t matter (assuming you’re American) just focus on your own life day to day because no matter how invested in politics you become, even if you find the “truth” you will still never be able to have a legitimate impact on it.

For me it’s
> have no opinion at all
> default to my gut

I have an MA in Economics from a top 25 University in the US and I’ve taken this approach for my entire life.

>>18180615
Because they have no power in their day to day lives and are completley at the mercy of the political machine. They pick a side to feel power over others.

Also intertwined with this is that they haven't discovered that the collective wellbeing isn't inherently valuable, and nothing really matters outside of the individual.

They don't understand that ideologies are a retarded LARP at worst and controlled opposition at best.

>>18180615
You seem to be lacking an understanding of both ideology and spookology.

Nobody the masses of normie sheeple don't "make up their minds"about these issues : they follow the herd and the media is the shepherd. NYT and WaPo are ideological platforms for pushing a neoliberal agenda and maintaining the status quo.

Politics has nothing to do with the truth. It's about foisting your view of the world on everyone else and trying to make others believe it to fit into your desired social order. i.e it's a spook.

No one is going to read this, but I don't care. (1/2)

>How do people make up their minds about politics, economics, and similar topics
They listen to different opinions, choose one that aligns best with their values and persona, and stick to it.

>How CAN you make up your mind about these things?
You can't. Let's take your example of the Douma chemical attack in Syria. Assume that you have just fleetingly heard about it from a colleague, and like a good citizen, would like to look up news sources for the bare facts of it, before you form an opinion on what governmental action ought to be taken, if any, so you can evaluate the actions of your representatives and decide whether you will vote for them again in the future.

The first obvious problem is the mis-/dis-information one, which you brought up yourself. You intuitively understand that without a good understanding of the evidence, it is ill-advised to claim to have an opinion on an issue. Unfortunately, there is no peer-review system for published articles or reports. Neither are there frequent meta-analyses of reports published on a certain event. This leaves you, the layman, responsible for cross-examination of the claimed facts, often on diverse and unfamiliar topics, sometimes with no real way of knowing the truth as narratives may directly contradict. There is no obvious solution to this. Grassroots/guerilla journalism like early 2010s Vice and first-hand photo-video evidence can help on this front, albeit in a limited way.

But let's, for the sake of argument, set that entire problem aside. Let's assume that all of the facts were provided to you perfectly objectively in an anonymous piece of paper on any issue you would like to examine. How long would it take you to understand the situation appropriately, with all its background, context and nuances, before you can draw a first-principles based opinion and confidently say whether your elected representatives acted in a way with which you agree with or not? A week? More? How many more crises and headlines would have arisen in that time, all in diverse sectors of finance, external affairs, internal affairs, education...? You can't possibly evaluate governmental policy on any significant number of them, let alone the majority.

Democracy is a failed concept in the hyperconnected, globalized world, as it currently functions. There is no way for you to effectively process, filter and use the information available on any complex issue to evaluate government policy. The best you can hope for is that the proclaimed values of your elected "representatives" align with yours, and that they don't fuck you over during their reign.

>>18180615
>>18180874
(2/2)
If you want my personal pipe dream solution, I'd push for a news-oriented decentralized autonomous organization funded by untraceable crypto, that would publish bare facts on major headlines, with monetary incentives for peer-reviewing the output. Said facts would then be funneled to a chosen, decently sized group of subject matter experts that would process them through the Delphi method and publish a report at the end of the month.

>>18180719
>haven’t noticed a single change in my quality of life
Things have gotten steadily and noticeably worse for my whole life

>>18180874
>first-hand photo-video evidence can help on this front
The New York Times will just claim it's a "deep fake" and dismiss the photo/video evidence.

>>18180615
Is that...uh...the sweet bottom of a nerdy girl? OH GOD IM GONNA IM GONNA COOOOOOOM OH GOD IM COOMING.

>>18180895
>that would publish bare facts on major headlines, with monetary incentives for peer-reviewing the output
Giving monetary incentives for publishing fact-based news sounds like a good idea, but who is paying for it? You say through crypto, but out of whose pocket? I doubt that some grassroots donations would be enough. Those who fund the journalists also control the news.

>>18180970
DAOs are a very new and evolving technology, but at the very minimum you could transparently measured whether the output is controlled through governance token distribution and the relevant Nakamoto coefficient. There's already decentralized services for solving minor subjective disputes. Give them time, maybe something will come of it, maybe we'll be all stuck in the pretense of freedom ad infinitum.

>>18180615
>Everyone seems to have such solid convictions
You 100% don’t know what a conviction is to the point where your essay doesn’t even make sense.
It’s the opposite. They don’t have any convictions; they mainly have opinions that are not held very strongly and subject to whimsical changes based on whatever the media shows them in productions that are designed to draw an emotion response.
For instance, you might claim Free Speech and Privacy are both “very important” to you but the minute the government proposes to violate it to bring down something odious to you like Nazis or Terrorists you’re all for it.
If more people had beliefs they held to the point where they could call them convictions, decisions would be a lot easier because the two or three solid convictions you had about politics would overrule all the opinions even if it made you risk being unpopular.
The Washington Post has proved that their only priority is fighting “racism” and bringing down the autocratic, Republican Party (now the minority party) I don’t know why you would go to them for anything. You could at least choose an example that at least tries to hide their biases.

The majority of people make up their minds by what is popular at the time or what is ingrained to them by their parents.

That's it.

>>18180615
damn, 2000s 4channers looked like that?

>>18181279
>You 100% don’t know what a conviction is
I don't know man, so many people seem pretty convinced that transwomen are "real" women and no amount of evidence to the contrary would persuade them. I think the brainwashing has been so successful that it won't be easy even for the government to undo it at this point. If the government for some reason decided that the public had to flip-flop on the issue of transwomen, would they really be able to make the public believe transwomen are men after all? It would be a difficult task and it may take generations to achieve, just as it has taken generation for the slippery slope of gay rights to reach this peak clown world levels of ridiculousness. Many people of the older generations remain firm in the convictions that the government implanted in them in a previous era, and new convictions take root first and foremost because young people with more malleable minds are available, and after the old people die out you're left with a new generation with a different indoctrination.

>>18180615
I didn't read a word you said but I love girls with fat asses

>>18180615
I want to slap a woman's ass so bad bros

>>18180647
Lucky desu that your standards were set at an easily obtainable level.

If you have to read something to learn about it, that shit is way beyond your reach and isn’t your concern. Who gives a shit about Syria but Syrians? Don’t waste your time, spend it instead knowing your neighbor.

>>18180615
>>18180668
Butterfaces truly are a blessing hmm.

>>18180615
One way of figuring out if you're being lied to is to read articles about subjects where you're familiar with the primary sources.
For example, if a politically controversial public intellectual is being profiled, and one is familiar with the writing of him or her, you're in a position to evaluate if the media outlet is making an attempt at a honest interpretation.
If you're broadly informed on several subjects, and you find an outlet which consistently manages to fairly represent peoples, facts and ideas with which you're familiar, it is not unwarranted to trust that outlet on things you don't have any expertise on.
This is a lot of work, barely anyone does this, no outlet manages to achieve perfect objectivity, and you yourself are also of course biased on things and thus not perfectly able to evaluate things.
However it's the only path I can see towards some approximation of the truth.

who cares you just figure stuff out as you go and be happy. fuck anyone wanting to convert you or join their revolution, you don't owe them shit. just never stop learning.

Literally I just believe what my father does

if you REALLY want to know about the world you have to put in the effort. it's not about "agreeing" with someone else. you could also join the Navy Seals and actually make history but that takes effort.

>>18181922

Based and trad-pilled

>>18180615
>Everyone seems to have such solid convictions
No they don't why would you think that.
Most people are small c conservative in that they support the status quo unless the staus quo is doing direct injury to them

>>18180615
Read your brain on porn or easypeasy method.
Seek help or ngmi
https://youtu.be/aOCZfnu1r_Y
https://youtu.be/sVaCBm_NQT8
https://youtu.be/F0w_7_96CJc

They believe what their parents did or the complete opposite. It's that simple

>>18180647
Post more of her

>>18180874
Good post.

>>18180615
Poopa

>>18182342

As I recall it, she was one of the first women to reveal herself to the anonymous denizens of /b/ in its early days. There was something revolutionary about it.

https://4archive.org/board/s/thread/16866345/togi-chan