General philosophical ideas/philosophy discussion thread

glennmagusharvey

Making one of these since I have a thought that doesn't seem to merit its own whole thread.

Thoughts:
The world is imperfect.
Sometimes, we complain that it is imperfect.
Sometimes, we stress over the fact that it is imperfect.
Sometimes, we accept that it's imperfect and leave it.
Sometimes, we accept that it's imperfect, but try to improve it.

Stormtroper

Found this the other day in /r/solipsism:

Earthlight_Ray

The Big Lebowski was a very enjoyable movie.

Bluesy_Cowgirl

that's actually pretty funny

fourteenwings

My favorite news show (The Listening Post) uploaded a few videos that share a couple of theories on the news media:

• Noam Chomsky's Five Filters (The Advertising bit in this is really fun)
  
• Roland Barthe's Signs in the News
• Stuart Hall re: Race, gender and class
• Edward Said's Framing Devices/Othering
  
• And of course, Marshall McLuhan's "The Media is the Message
  

glennmagusharvey

That first video feels really conspiracy-theory-filled...

The third video makes a good point about how one should go beyond typical mass media to find news.  The caveat about this is that things like "gossip magazines", "music videos", etc., while they do contain information about our culture, they don't necessarily present that information at face value.  Of course, the same could be said of typical mass news media too.

In general, I'm skeptical of the idea that the news media are in some sort of conspiracy to try to feed the public information about something.  At least the third video argues that people are not passive information receivers, which gives it some points in my book.  But even there, that video has animation that, like the first video, frame the process with very dark colours and very mechanical flavoring -- conveyor belts for example.

In reality I'd say there is a "media elite" but they don't have anywhere near as much power as conspiracy theorists suggest they do -- and on top of that, the "news information as a commercial product" line of thinking means that it's actually advantageous for different outlets to one-up each other with scoops and other interesting information, which tends toward keeping the playing field very fluid and full of unexpected disruptions, which is quite the opposite of the notion of "manufactured consent" (though it also results in other problems, such as preferentially covering disasters, tragedies, scandals, and "things going wrong" in general).

Incidentally my favorite news source is the PBS News Hour, which I regard as the most professional and Actually Serious news source.  How do I know this?  Because I watched it as a kid and back then I found it horribly boring.   (Not to mention it has no advertising.  Sure, it still has sponsors, if you're into conspiratorial framing, but do note that it doesn't run much of any pro-train stories despite being funded by BNSF.)

Also it's a bit ironic that it's a major news broadcaster that put these videos on the internet. lol

I like the fourth video - good commentary on stereotypes of basically the rest of the world outside the (so-called) first-world countries.  I really like when stories that make a thing about being "not so different".

The fifth video makes some interesting points too -- such as how the form of media is not "neutral", though I'd cautionarily add that that doesn't mean it's biased in one or another direction on a one-dimensional scale, because understanding information and consuming media presentations have many, many dimensions.  Also, useful points to make, in saying that everything is "now" -- in how we've become a more impatient civilization -- and how there's no privacy anymore, not just because of the possibility of "hacking" into people's e-mail accounts, but also because of how the feeling of anonymity allows people to share a lot more information, albeit sometimes under different guises.  And when readers who aren't meant to see that information collide with that information -- e.g. older television watchers discovering the debauchery of internet teenagers -- strange things can happen.