[ExI] fake news again was: ian came home

[William Flynn Wallace]

I am just finishing Pinker's book Rationality, in which he deals with every
boner of thinking that man can make - over 200 types of cognitive errors,
for instance.

It is true that raw intelligence is highly helpful in mitigating the
effects of biases and beliefs in witches and so on, but decision-making
style shows up on regression charts too.

Teaching basic skepticism is great.  It should start in kindergarten!  They
can think - teach them to think better.  I wish I could get out there,
somewhere, and do it.  No use in preaching it to our chat group choir.

But the world is slowly getting better.  Think of how these things have
diminished:

slavery, human sacrifice, harems, foot-binding, sadistic corporal capital
punishments (public disembowelments), persecution of heretics and
dissidents, oppression of women and of religious, racial, ethnic and sexual
minorities.  In every case plotted, all are fading out.

My question for Pinker:  where do these biases come from?  Are they really
all learned?   I have my doubts.  bill w

On Thu, Sep 29, 2022 at 1:27 PM spike jones via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

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> *…*> *On Behalf Of *William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat
> *Subject:* Re: [ExI] fake news again was: ian came home
>
>
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> >…Barring the man on the street, everyone you see on TV is an actor with
> a script. Esp. 'reality shows' -  bill w
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> Billw, this gets where I was going originally with the offshoot thread:
> the internet has collectively educated us.
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> Consider the famous misunderstood line by PT Barnum:  A sucker is born
> every minute.
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> That comment was made in a boardroom meeting where there was concern that
> people were growing too sophisticated in 1900 to fall for a lot of the acts
> they were accustomed to selling to local rubes.  Barnum assured the board
> that the target audience was the young people who hadn’t actually seen it.
> He cynically referred to the young as suckers.  The way we use the term
> today is gullible people.  He meant it more literally, which also explains
> the “…born every minute…” comment.
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> OK well then, consider young people today.  I did community volunteer
> service this week assembling charge carts for a kinder thru grade 2 school,
> so the kids could all have computers on which they do their studies.  They
> have restricted internet in all these public schools.  Result: these
> suckers grow up fast.  They know a lot about skepticism, which is the
> result of internet use, at an early age.
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> When I was their age, we were urged to trust, to step out on faith.  Now
> the opposite is the norm, so I suppose we could even kinda make a rhyme: at
> an early age, we take the step of skep.  We learn to cross check, being as
> it is suddenly very easy to do.
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> This alone has an enormous impact on society.  We catch the phony nonsense
> offered to us as news.
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> spike
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> On Thu, Sep 29, 2022 at 12:29 PM spike jones via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
> …leaning into it, the way even a cow (a stupid COW fer cryin out loud)
> understands:
>
> https://youtu.be/tocuyJ1Fu7U
>
> spike
>
>
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