Disinformation, distractions and influencers here on ET

Discussion in 'Politics' started by Gringinho, Oct 6, 2008.

Are there active attempts at organized political disinformation her on ET?

  1. Yes, there are seemingly organized groups of people consistently pushing political agendas

    20 vote(s)
    76.9%
  2. No, "I now nooothin..." (Manuel - Fawlty Towers)

    6 vote(s)
    23.1%
  1. Obama has achieved a million times more than you ever will, and he's going to be the next POTUS, so the sky is the limit, so what does that say about you?
     
    #51     Oct 8, 2008
  2. obsama is gonna get the hot potato, he's gonna become president, but what a loss, he's a loser anyways
     
    #52     Oct 8, 2008
  3. Mav88

    Mav88

    you said: "You have responded before to my posts with nothing useful or insightful, and there was no 'sparring'."
    I just said, that if you felt it was being only a "superficial debate" - then please, get to the level where you find it meaningful... You also said that "mental sparring" is for college sophomores, so that makes it difficult to understand what you are wanting from participating in debates...



    why is it on me to get your posts to be useful? do it yourself

    You don't understand the difference between useful information and mental masterbation, sparring for the sake of debate is what people do in college- where there doesn't have to be a connection to the real world outside of the science and engineering departments.

    90% of philosophy is useless drivel, so is most of so-called political theory, and economic theory.

    Discrediting, smear campaigns, disruptions of group gatherings or discussions - those are well known tactics to sabotage opinion forming debates or exchanges of opposing views - where personal attacks are key. Have you really not noticed anything of Karl Rove's masterpieces of opinion manipulations when he was most active? He had "Jesusland" wrapped around his little pinky...

    did you not notice that I posted a much more real world and important event in another thread? Barney Frank engages in this all the time.
     
    #53     Oct 8, 2008
  4. How do I not understand what is useful information? Do I not understand what is a science, a system or a logic model - where very strong reasoning can be used to describe in a consistent way the relations and interactions -- resulting in strongly supported truths about the systems... ?

    Your other statement must stand for your own account... Could you enlighten me as to examples of philosophy, political theory and economic theory examples - which are useless drivel -- and please not just one example - but you could categorize so that it reflects your 90% claim. Otherwise, I would assume you are generalizing, lying or just clueless.


    Dannazione,
    I think you are right about Iran - however, I can't say I have seen anyone here on ET who look organized in such respect. On Wikipedia however, it is probably true - and just like Israel has professionals skewing information, and the US -- there are certainly people from China as well. But I don't see so many seemingly organized opinions from Iran or China here on ET, there is much more pro-Israel misrepresentation of information.
     
    #54     Oct 8, 2008
  5. Mav88

    Mav88

    How do I not understand what is useful information? Do I not understand what is a science, a system or a logic model - where very strong reasoning can be used to describe in a consistent way the relations and interactions -- resulting in strongly supported truths about the systems... ?

    Your other statement must stand for your own account... Could you enlighten me as to examples of philosophy, political theory and economic theory examples - which are useless drivel -- and please not just one example - but you could categorize so that it reflects your 90% claim. Otherwise, I would assume you are generalizing, lying or just clueless.




    you confuse pseudo science with the empirically supported science. You think qualitative analysis is complete and rigorous, you think that just because you think a model is logical then it must be sound.

    Philosophy, political science, and economics have no external objective yardsticks to measure them with. There are no correct or incorrect answers because it all boils down to human psychology which cannot be quantified. Small kernels of interesting 'truth', but they are not sciences by any stretch. You can blather on all you want about this or that theory but if I simply disagree with one assumption then your argument is lost.

    Take Marxism, whole treatises written on it, but the Labor Theory of Value can be discredited in about one paragraph, and so all the rest is a useless waste of time. The type of mental masterbation I'm talking about.

    Philosophy is simply a matter of taste, nothing else. Constructing self consistent systems is for people who can debate amongst themsleves, but they are otherwise useless as for a description of nature.

    Economists cannot give accurate 3 month forecasts with all their machinery. Always backward looking historians. Samuelson has been discredited, Keynes shown to be folly, it is easy to show that supply and demand curves are bogus, etc. There is but one principle that has shown useful for wealth creation- freedom, a few concepts that ring true like currency, rule of law, hard work. Outside of that there isn't much to go on that's really useful when you have live in the real world.
     
    #55     Oct 8, 2008
  6. Mav88,

    I gather you are not religious - from your support of only empiricism and your disdain for philosophy, political studies and economics.

    You are a strong believer in capitalism, or just simply Darwinism?
     
    #56     Oct 8, 2008