I wanted to go back to the idea of evidence and to the importance of considering and weighing the evidence before coming to a conclusion. Now I have attached a thunderf00t video about a real life example of the kind of damage belief without evidence can do but its not essential to the topic (for those who dont care for thunderf00t). The idea here is in relation to things like Pascals wager or to the argument that even if religion isnt true it is still useful for maintaining a cohesive, moral society. In the information age in particular we have a tendency to jump to conclusions and the idea of vetting sources is falling by the way-side (I hear some schools even allow wikipedia as a source now).. Time and again we hear cries in the dark to step back, weigh the evidence and think (ie the Newsrooms discussion of false accusations after Boston) but these are largely ignored. The rallying cry is Act, if were wrong we can apologize later. So my question with this is two-part. What is the cause and what can be done? I believe that this has come with the rise of the information age and the feeling weve all been given that we know things, that we have special access to information and can figure things out on our own. This idea of the stalwart web user solving mysteries and crimes has led us to forget that much of the information available is only partial or just plain wrong. Combine this with the anti-science backlash of religions fighting to maintain power and control in an increasingly secular world and we get an atmosphere where people want to KNOW but no one wants to FIND OUT I think the solution would require a major cultural shift. A pushback (again Ill pump up the Newsroom for its efforts) in media and broadcasting to emphasize neutrality, even in emotionally challenging situations and an emphasis on not just following but vetting, analyzing and weighing the quality of the evidence before coming to a conclusion. Heres the video for examples of conclusions without evidence and the harms they do to everyone involved: https://youtube/watch?v=gIygmneQJCA
Posted on: Fri, 19 Dec 2014 14:18:00 +0000
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