“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.” ― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, year 1995

  • RoundSparrow @ .ee@lemm.eeOPM
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    2 months ago

    Anything you read in after is fucking silly.

    An entire population bamboozled by Twitter owner, Elon Musk, who is being sponsored right now by Apple Computers you think is a “silly” topic. Egomania you got there, worship of technology.

    You’re writing a wall of text about nothing.

    I have an entire community dedicated to that “wall of text”, Carl Sagan. But you must mock and here to discourage people from taking the ideas seriously because you want to make baby pot-shots at the author because he took your favorite computer vendor to court or something.

    “One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.” ― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, year 1995

     

    You’re writing a wall of text about nothing.

    Ahh, it isn’t meme-speak 2025 “TLDR” for you. You like ELI5 AND TLDR speak? That’s why you replied against Carl Sagan saying Apple Computers is better teachers than Sagan?

    You’re writing a wall of text about nothing.

    Does it not fit on your Apple iPhone screen size? Your iPad too small? One-button mouse too complicated into “WALL OF TEXT” understanding?

    “Science is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking. I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time—when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness. The dumbing down of America is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30-second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), (Lemmy, Mastodon) lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance. As I write, the number-one videocassette rental in America is the movie Dumb and Dumber. “Beavis and Butthead” remain popular (and influential) with young TV viewers. The plain lesson is that study and learning—not just of science, but of anything—are avoidable, even undesirable.” ― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark