tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6565812401229570524.post2399740272061017716..comments2018-06-08T10:37:55.223+03:00Comments on Moroccan mint and double apple: Conspiracies or just theories?Katieendeqhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00241028539311426763noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6565812401229570524.post-68158182145454195692013-12-20T00:34:33.788+02:002013-12-20T00:34:33.788+02:00Conspiracie theories or not, right now we have swe...Conspiracie theories or not, right now we have swedish secret service pressing on for instant access to all data... Anybody remember Snowden?<br /><br />http://sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.aspx?programid=1650&artikel=5735355Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03820637760381921126noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6565812401229570524.post-79159202028555978122012-05-10T10:57:16.160+03:002012-05-10T10:57:16.160+03:00Firstly I have to say how glad I am that my blog p...Firstly I have to say how glad I am that my blog post is raising conversation. Secondly I have to admit that I might deliberately have been provocative and making things look black and white. Which they really are not. It was not my intention to state that a person should base their knowledge on trust. I was merely encouraging critisism towards information sources. Like I said in my post, I believe one should base their knowledge on a variety of sources instead of believing everything blindly. It is always good to question so called facts, because this is the only way for science to develop and go forward. I absolutely agree with you that there are trustworthy and reliable main media and also untrustworthy 'free media'. Still I want to encourage critisism. However I don't think that trust is the wrong word for it, everything in this world is about beliefs and trusting. Whether it is scientifical 'facts', religion or anything else. Most things can never be certain. We see that everyday as the science develops. A scientific result can be proven wrong the next day. Research on food is good example of this. Almost every day new research is stating that some food cause cancer, just to be proven wrong the next day (okay, provoking a bit here as well).<br /><br />My comment about global warming was also a bit misleading, mostly because I tend to have difficulties ordering my thoughts into words. Especially when the thoughts are overwhelming me and making my head spin. What I was referring to is what you were saying about the idea of global warming not being entirely man made. Of course global warming exists, but the question is whether it is normal change or man made. The word I probably should have used here is green house effect...<br /><br />Finally about conspiracies. Sometimes I tend to go overboard with my thoughts, that's when they start racing at a pace that my brain can't handle. Again one reason for these suggestions is to provoke conversation. Being critical against authorities is only a good thing if you ask me, but only as long as it stays within a rational range. I don't want to challenge the reliability of the government or the authorities, that would lead to revolution. I am just questioning the idea of trusting everyhting without doubt. Still I can't get over the idea that it might be possible to live in a double universe where we are being held in the dark and that there might be things that are to great for us to understand. That's when we come to the idea of conspiracies and theories. But that is a whole other subject, which I might write more about at some point.Katieendeqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00241028539311426763noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6565812401229570524.post-80588749494820303852012-05-10T09:56:40.411+03:002012-05-10T09:56:40.411+03:00One last comment I wish to make relates to the ide...One last comment I wish to make relates to the idea of 'free-press', or 'free-media'. I strongly agree that free-press is an absolute prerequisite to avoid articles that simply follow (directly or indirectly) the interests of some particular group of people. But this is far from enough to garantee objective articles, or even quality article. Some state-owned media produce great content (BBC?), as well as some family-owned (New York Times). And some free media produce rather low-quality content. Again what matters is the method applied to produce articles, the professionalism of the journalists, the editorial line, etc. Nowadays it seems that 'information' is seen as simply providing 'facts' (taking AFP telegrams, adding a few sentences, and publishing it). Real information is putting cultural, historical and economical context to fact, trying to track the real motivations behind a political action, debunking public communication from states or big companies, and... uncovering conspiracies if there are some. This is what journalism should be about. Free-press is necessary for that, but very far from being enough.<br /><br />Instead of talking about conspiracies, I prefer to talk about self-sustained, self-evoluting systems. The way media work today is probably mostly the result of the way our capitalist economy works and evolves, the way technological changes questioned the very existence of 'old' media, forcing them to optimize their expenses, therefore limiting their investigative capacity, having them look for new investors etc. Same for public communication (from the state or a company): there is not necessarily anything to hide. Sometimes people make mistakes. Sometimes they only follow some protocal, even though it would not be suitable for all given situations. There is no need to have a top-down conspiracy to have a system very detrimental to people as a whole. And this is very unfortunate, because unmasking a conspiracy would be much easier than changing a system, however wrong this system is for the people!Thomashttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12125423300358493294noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6565812401229570524.post-14194209450995718142012-05-10T09:55:56.214+03:002012-05-10T09:55:56.214+03:00Posing the problem of valid knowledge as 'who ...Posing the problem of valid knowledge as 'who we choose to trust' is problematic, because if pushed further, it means that we cannot advance our knowledge, as we would have to rely on sources which we don't consider reliable. The reliability of knowledge should not be measured in terms of trust or then we have to evaluate this trust in terms of the method used to produce such knowledge.<br /><br />Let's begin with global warming: knowledge related to climate warming has nothing to do with media, it has to do with science. The main principle of reliability for scientific knowledge is refutability, i.e. the possibility for fellow colleague researchers to prove the theory wrong, through criterias defined within the theory itself. 'Current' scientific knowledge comes from research results which have not yet been proved wrong, and have been 'approved' by other researchers (through peer-review process, responding articles, complementary researches, etc.). Derived from this, scientific knowledge is always 'temporary', and major trends are mainly the result of wide consensus in the scientific community. But this method is solid enough that we can build on it, and make progress, step by step, sometime jumping to another stair (when a new paradigm gain traction, see quantum physics for instance). Global warming benefits from a huge consensus. The fact that 'some' scientific articles try to refute it is not in itself a sign that global warming is a hoax (many articles refuting global warming are actually emanating from doubtful organizations, and do not go very far with peer-review process). The fact that global warming is man-induced is slightly less consensual, but still has pretty strong support in the majority of scientific fields involved.<br /><br />Basing our personal knowledge purely on a level of trust is not a good idea. In fact it is a very dangerous idea, if trust itself is not based on rational, method based and systematic analysis. What is at stake is the manipulation of people by small groups of interest. Everytime knowledge is produced, the method should be questioned. This is what happens daily in the scientific community, and this is what should happen all the time in the media (reliability of source, cross-verification, etc.).<br /><br />What is much more worrying nowadays is that some political groups and some affiliated media are now saying that all things are equal, therefore completely ignoring what makes scientific knowledge more valuable than pure belief. It is done on purpose, to serve their own agenda. They are trying to put into people's mind that believing in what someone claims (a politician, a religion) is exactly the same as believing in scientifical knowledge, so that their word should have the same value as a scientific theory. The result? People will stop hearing the 'method' argument, saying that science is just another type of belief. I think you can imagine where this will lead eventually.Thomashttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12125423300358493294noreply@blogger.com