How the Internet did away with UFOs, alien abductions, etc.:
. . . Wild rumors and dubious pieces of evidence are quick to circulate, but quickly debunked. The Internet gives liars and rumor mongers a colossal space in which to bamboozle dolts of every stripe – but it also provides a forum for wise men from all across the world to speak the truth. Over the long run, the truth tends to win. This fact is lost on critics of the blogosphere, who can only see the exaggerated claims and gossip. These critics often fail to notice that, on the ‘net, the truth follows closely behind the lies. . . .
The blogosphere is massively better in quality than the average quality of its parts. You cannot say that telephones are pointless nonsense merely by pointing out that many and perhaps most mere individual telephone conversations are pointless nonsense, and many and perhaps most telephones woefully underexploited. And you cannot derive the crapness of the blogosphere merely from the fact that most blogs, and many blog postings even on good blogs, are crap.
Read the whole thing here. Thanks to Arts & Letters Daily for the link.
Believers in extraterrestrial tourists may be flakes and dolts, but believers in another nonexistent species — the virtuous terrorist — are truly contemptible. Kurt Vonnegut, widely hailed as the Coolest Novelist Ever, is one of them.
Excerpt:
Vonnegut, 83, has been a strong opponent of Mr Bush and the US-led war in Iraq, but until now has stopped short of defending terrorism.
But in discussing his views with The Weekend Australian, Vonnegut said it was “sweet and honourable” to die for what you believe in, and rejected the idea that terrorists were motivated by twisted religious beliefs.
“They are dying for their own self-respect,” he said. “It’s a terrible thing to deprive someone of their self-respect. It’s like your culture is nothing, your race is nothing, you’re nothing.”
Asked if he thought of terrorists as soldiers, Vonnegut, a decorated World War II veteran, said: “I regard them as very brave people, yes.”
His adoring fans in the PC media may pretend that his self-outing has not happened, so I hope the Net community debunks the rot he is spouting as succesfully as it did for the UFOlogists.
Eh? I think they’re reading too much into it. UFOs carry on being reported, the subculture of UFOlogists lives on. Here’s a modern example.
I think what burned the topic out was the X-Files. Glance at a conspiracy theory, and it could seem plausible. Watch MIBs, black helicopters, implants, government collusion etc played out on screen over and over, and the mounting impossibility becomes enough to destroy “suspension of disbelief”. Like yeast, the X-Files drowned in its own byproduct, and it dragged down popular UFO culture in its wake. So I see it.
I never realised that people have stopped believing conspiracy theories since the internet was invented. Fancy that.
And some people believe in ‘transhumanised’ private sector astronauts, or that ‘race is only a social construct’. Gosh, the onward march of WWW-powered rationality must be irresistible.
“The truth is out there and is now much more quickly found.”
Except sometimes, perhaps. Pedantic or not, the internet merely allows more communication not necessarily more speedily discovered truth, although that will also happen. Getting the right facts (or more usually in the case of blogs, the right explanation of something to correspond to some a-priori premise) still requires a bit of quality effort. For this reason I think that, although the internet (and blogs in particular) may enable us to produce more light than we could previously, it also enables us to produce a hell of a lot more heat too. Certain subjects of course produce so much heat that few intrepid light-seeking individuals dare go anywhere near them!
No innovation is without drawbacks. People now spend time tapping away on the internet that they might previously have devoted to direct contact with other human beings. It is another device for fabricating alienation. Like mobile phones and iPods, it ministers to the apparent desire of everyone to make-believe they are anywhere other than where they actually are at any given moment.
mike’s right: More communication means more confusion.
Dumkopf has a point hidden under the snide: even Samizdata is not free from strange obsessions and circular arguments.
But mainly Brian, you just haven’t been looking at the right sites. One of the things that the interwibblywotsit allows is for subcultures to exist without treading on each others toes. It isn’t that the UFOnuts have discovered rationality, it is that they have much more exciting “coverups” to expose these days. Example.
Over the long run, the truth tends to win.
Says who? Is it really “truth” that is formed, or rather, an acceptable or believable consensus? I mean, it just seems a little presumptuous to assume that (A) you know “the Truth” and (B) we’ve reached it.
I would agree with the presumption that the more open and free communication is, the less likely people are to be deceived. That’s a totally different thing than saying that as a result of that, “the Truth” is found.
While I agree that the readily accessible Internet is a catalyst for social change comparable to the printing press or television, I am afraid I haven’t found any evidence that the general level of rationality has somehow improved because of it.
Frauds, lunatics, and mystics of any and all persuasions have and will use the net to promulgate their particular scams, just as they have used every other means of communication in the past.
Before anybody gets too caught up in the wonders of the WWW, let’s remember that the two biggest deals are internet porn and gambling. Human nature doesn’t change, and it bends any new innovations into whatever shape is needed to serve its age old obsessions.
It is another form of entertainment every bit as much, if not more, than it is an intellectual agent of change.
[Human nature does not change it simply bends innovations into whatever shape is needed to serve its age old obsessions.]
Is a memorable way of putting it, but thankfully, not quite true.
Technological [and more broadly ‘cultural’] innovations in the last 100,000 years have profoundly changed what it is to be human.
The invention of language arguably created the human.
The Internet (although not in the same league as the invention of language) also facilitates information exchange in ways that changes minds.
Call me an old fashioned liberal but I believe that increased access to forums of debate and sources of knowledge is a good thing- personally I find the Internet truly wonderful.
I’m not sure how you got from what I said to where you went with it, Chris, but then, I’m sure it makes some kind of sense to you.
However, I didn’t say the web was not “wonderful”, I just pointed out it is not the saviour of mankind.
There is a fundamental difference between basic nature and intellectual or cultural development.
Read, or re-read, “Lord of the Flies”. Perhaps it will help you distinguish between the cake and the icing.
The internet doesn’t change human nature per se, but, like the rest of our cultural trappings, it does filter it.
People with higher degrees of sensation-seeking will use the internet in pursuit of more exciting things than will others. Etc.
What makes the internet different is that, while it may amplify some things, it doesn’t really muffle anything. Unlike government; unlike MSM; unlike face-to-face social groups and social events (oh, and unlike mainland China of course).
As to whether it is the ‘saviour of mankind’… maybe it’s too soon to know!
I was simply focusing on the claim
[Human nature does not change it simply bends innovations into whatever shape is needed to serve its age old obsessions.]
and questioning its truth.
I think technology, in its broadest sense, including the Internet, DOES change human nature.
There are limits of course, very real limits, but I think the above claim is too conservative.
How, or how much, the Internet will change us, is unknown, my guess is quite a lot.
Truth perpetually debunks falsehood.
This is why we now have spaceships and they are not navigating through ‘Luminiferous aether'(Link).
The internet vastly increases the volume and velocity of information exchange.
Therefore, while the speed of propagation of falsehood has increased, the speed of propagation of truth has been equally multiplied. Therefore, the debunking occurs at a faster rate.
If we consider the net gain in true knowledge to be the remainder of truth minus falsehood, acquisition of true knowledge is greatly accelerated by the internet.
In short, the body of knowledge is perpetually being salted with reality. This benefits truth at the expense of falsehood. The internet speeds the process.
Or, to quote Sophocles
“Truth perpetually debunks falsehood…” … and often remains occluded or ignored. Hence the existence of daft, self-reaffirming cults mentioned earlier.
The aggregate of truth may be increased, but its’ overall distribution may well remain the same as it ever was, if not increase.
“but its’ overall distribution may well remain the same as it ever was, if not increase.”
I mean its’ overall distribution may remain constant or that it may become increasingly skewed in favour of falsehood.
(Link)Antigravitational experiments
Antigravitation is the motion of aether, or gravitational field matter.
Under certain conditions, a wheel driven by a motor can form a gravitational field matter vortex, producing antigravitation, of which the mechanical, thermal, electromagnetic, magnetic, and optical consequences measured in the experiments guided by the theories are
1. the macroscopic quantum mechanical effect,
2. the changed temperature,
3. the changed frequency of the change in the voltage of the electromagnetic wave signals,
4. the enlarged magnetic field,
5. the change in the voltage value of the electromagnetic wave signals, and
6. the antigravitation induced refractive index change effect.
For more information, please see the Antigravitation Engine Site, the URL of which is as follows.
http://xczhx.c59.zgsj.com/indexEnglish.htm