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Alert

Fascinating and perturbing.

Mar 12, 2018 1:54AM PDT

Discussion is locked

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A lot like the storied gossip fence
Mar 12, 2018 5:23AM PDT

with speculative stories that get better with each telling and, eventually, are believed to be true. I'd venture to guess that some of our genuine history contains a lot of questionable information but that, since it's generations in the telling, we're more prone to accept and report it as fact.

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Yes, that does happen with history.
Mar 12, 2018 6:16AM PDT

One check on that is documentation. Finding a letter written by a President at the time. e.g. In the twitverse I suspect it's more like 'I read it in a tweet'. Not the same thing, except to the soundbite generation.

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Cool Thread Steve
Mar 12, 2018 6:23AM PDT

A little off maybe but , this reminds me of the story of Paul Bunyan and how his story grew year after year of story telling and how two men became one .

Post was last edited on March 12, 2018 6:24 AM PDT

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Well...I didn't start it
Mar 12, 2018 7:50AM PDT

but your Paul Bunyan mention certainly adds an interesting sideline to the difference between real history and lore. Lore, more often, is preferred reading. You may have seen TV shows with old men sitting on the front porch entertaining themselves with "That ain't nothin'" tales where each person tries the outdo the other with some exaggeration of a fishing or hunting event. Everyone of the participants knows it's all lies but the young kids hanging around the porch don't. That's how the story "grows", anyway. Folks back then didn't have TV and tech toys to entertain themselves so were left to their own devices. Porch and parlor music with story telling was popular and the Scots & Irish were masters of it. That culture was introduced here and spread largely through Appalachia when the country was much younger. Real history is boring. The fake stuff is much better. Happy

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Sorry drpruner
Mar 12, 2018 7:53AM PDT

Cool Thread Happy

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Perturbing is right
Mar 13, 2018 2:12PM PDT

Though it's not surprising. Since the dawn of "social media" - which perhaps started with cuneiform or even cave art (!) - some people have filtered what news they trust, which is natural. What scares me is that many have come to trust only those sources they receive from their so-called "circle" or tribe/clan/associates etc. Soooo they are quite averse to believing truth even when it is consensus approved and demonstrably not fiction or opinion but fact. Expertise in complex subjects is discounted as either a "conspiracy" or being led by hidden agendas. In my opinion the mistrust of science and expertise in such complex subjects such as climate change, global economics, heck, even medicine - witness people who refuse vaccines for their children despite all evidence to the contrary - is more than perturbing, it is disturbing. Experts can be wrong of course, but the idea that one's "gut feeling" is correct and should have equal "clout" compared to science or overwhelming consensus is downright dangerous. And that's my opinion, of course! :^)

Rick

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Not a new thing. What bothered me was the
Mar 13, 2018 2:17PM PDT

scale of the research and the medical aspect.

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Ok
Mar 13, 2018 3:39PM PDT

Hmmm, I'm guessing that does not mean that non-medical disinformation is somehow less alarming? It's hard to tell from just a text. Anyhow, I recently read a book by Tom Nichols - "The Death of Expertise" which if you have not already read is fascinating, IMO. Some counter-intuitive stuff in there that was surprising, to me anyway.

Rick

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Right. Scale: widespread.
Mar 13, 2018 8:46PM PDT

Medical aspect: Yellow Fever is a thing of the 19th century. Was a thing of ...