So I've never believed in God. It didn't make any sense to me. But lots and lots of people I knew did. And they all wanted me to believe. For a long time, I was of the mind "maybe, but I'm just missing it." I've moved past that into "God doesn't exist."
Intolerant Atheists are a different breed from intolerant theists. I accept that other people believe in God, even though I think the reasoning makes no sense at all. I don't try to change them. I don't call them stupid. While I essentially agree when atheists say it's believing in a fairly tale and mass delusion, I don't think that style of confrontation is beneficial to anybody.
Now some people think that being religious actually causes harm, so they have a more justifiable reason for wanting people to actively denounce their beliefs. I know that I found it incredibly annoying when I was being pressured to get saved and accept Christ as my savior and all that. I don't want to be that guy that is behaving the exact same way.
I wish I could see what the world would look like if religion didn't (and possible never did) exist. Not some idealist movie maker thing. But I wish there was I way I could see the reality of it.
Monday, December 26, 2011
Thursday, December 8, 2011
Fox News Rant
If somebody says "Fox News Channel regularly lies and intentionally misconstrues statements of Non Republican officials," the common response is "MSNBC and The Daily Show do the same, but our side is too good to bother pointing them out, like the childish Democrats."
Okay, so they don't deny that Fox News Channel actually does those things. That's good.
But how realistic is it that when engaged in political warfare, that among all the dirt slinging, and name calling, and opposition bashing that happens, that one side would decide that they're above actually correcting misinformation from the other side, and calling them out on their errors.
I offer this: the reason there aren't tons of stories about how non-fox news channels intentionally mislead their viewers is because they don't intentionally mislead their viewers.
Another possible response to the above statement is "But those are just opinion shows and therefore are irrelevant."
For that I have an analogy. Suppose I'm a popular opinion TV show host on a news channel. I tell my viewers that everybody should stop eating McDonald's hamburgers because it's wrong since they use human baby meat. Now, the opinion that it's wrong to eat McDonald's hamburgers is fine. But reason is being shown as a fact, but it's actually a falsehood. When everybody on my show agrees with me, or I don't allow the people that offer an alternative perspective to speak for more than a minute without interrupting them, doesn't that matter? When the news company I work for encourages me to make such statements, shouldn't that be a problem? When some says "Actually, they use beef," and I respond with "that's not true" repeatedly, shouldn't I have some sort of responsibility to my viewership to actually be aware of the truth?
Opinions are fine, but many opinions are either about facts (That car is ugly because it's purple and purple is ugly), or built upon a foundation of fact (Fewer people watch television commercials, so a change in how television is broadcast is a good idea). Now if the car is orange, my opinion makes no sense and has no validity. Same thing if more people are watching commercials than before. If people are making their opinions about ideas that aren't true, then they're arguing about nonreality. but they are portraying the nonreality as real, and hoping you don't know.
If I say James is a terrible employee because he always shows up late, never completes his work on time, and distracts his coworkers from their job, you'd probably be inclined to agree. Except if James has only showed up late once, consistently is ahead of his deadlines, and actually actively helps his coworkers do their job better, you'd have a more difficult time agreeing he's a terrible employee. I might still think he's a terrible employee, and that's valid. But my reasons aren't. If you had to choose whether or not James stayed employed, wouldn't you want the most correct information you could get?
If I say studies show that viewers of Fox News are consistently more misinformed about current issues, I might get such responses as "Those studies could say anything. Did you read them yourself, or just what somebody told you they said?" That's generally a blatant disregard for the standards of several news outlets that comment on the study. Producing the actual study generally causes a shift in topic. Another often heard response is "It's all a big left-wing attack on Fox News, because we're the only opposition to them."
I don't think international skepticism and criticism of Fox News is a a grand, left-wing conspiracy to discredit them. I think most of the people can recognize what is happening when they see it, and some percentage of people actually call them out on it. But Fox has somehow gained the trust of it's viewers, and people believe who they trust more than they'll believe anybody else. Especially when the people they trust are all constantly repeating the same few messages, one of which is "Everybody else is trying to keep us from showing you the truth." When those people say things like "If you think I'm wrong let me know, here's my contact information." It seems to add a lot of credibility to the speaker, except that speaker tends to never show you any sort of responses they may get, which the viewer would assume to mean there were no errors is his statements. Of course it could also mean he just didn't show you what he received.
There is so much information showing how Fox News lies, distorts, and misconstrues things (all in one direction). Systematically ignoring study after study, example after example, is a testament to the hold that channel has on the people that watch it passionately. If I saw half a dozen studies that said the news program I watch is highly correlated to being misinformed, I wouldn't be comfortable with that.
Saturday, December 3, 2011
Education
Education reminds me of fast food. At least in the way we treat it. The people that create fast food are demonized for the unhealthy things the serve, and the obesity problem in America. There is a substantial voice saying they need to serve healthy food on the menu. But when they do that, nobody buys it. That gave us exactly what we asked for, but it wasn't what we REALLY wanted. We want the greasy cheap, unhealthy burgers because it tastes good. We don't want to eat healthy. We wish we wanted to eat healthy. It is a convenient excuse to say I have to eat out because I'm busy, and they don't serve healthy food. When there's no excuse left, we still eat junk. Because junk tastes good. We aren't willing to put our health above our instant desire for what tastes pretty darn good.
When it comes to schools, there is no shortage of problems. There are a lot of things that could be done better. but I think the biggest problem is as a society, we don't behave in a way that expresses education as important. We might say it. We might even believe it. But our consistent actions say otherwise. Sometimes we don't even understand that we aren't supporting education. Often times, we support good grades. That is nowhere near close to being the same thing as education. When kids get bad grades they might get in trouble. If a kid gets good grades and learns nothing, everything is okay. That is a problem.
We worry about behavior problems in school. We worry about whether or not students are showing up to class. We worry about test grades. We worry about the social influence of classmates. If there was an overwhelmingly singular focus on actually learning, a lot of that would go away. It wouldn't be so socially acceptable to treat school as a joke. If the vast majority of the teachers, faculty, students, parents, and everybody else actually expected you to LEARN, then showing up would be a given. You don't show up, you get behind, you just made things tougher for yourself.
When it's socially unacceptable to be dumb, people would put more effort into becoming educated. Culture influences an amazing amount of behavior. People will try to fit in to where they are most of the time. In other countries, education is so valued that even the crappiest jobs are filled with people with degrees. If you want a decent job, you need a degree. Everybody wants a decent job, so everybody gets a degree. All the decent jobs get filled, but you didn't get one, and you need to earn a living. Now you're a janitor with a bachelor's degree. It may seem like a waste of time to get a degree if you're a janitor, but if you ever want to be something better, then you can. In a society like that, what hope do you have if you don't have a degree?
I've watched documentaries that are talking up the benefits of charter schools, and when they show the incredibly successful ones, there is a dominant theme. Passion and commitment from everybody involved. While critics are quick to point out than on average charter schools don't perform better than regular public schools, I'm not talking about average. There's a positive feedback in the best charter schools. The teachers do incredible amounts of work to make sure that every single child is learning, doing whatever it takes. The faculty supports them. The parents expect their children to learn, and they speak the same positive message at home. Everybody around the child is saying you can and will learn. The biggest positive about a charter school is that parents made a choice to send the kids there. That means they already have put in extra effort into attempting to get a decent education from their child. It's possible the charter school isn't a good one, but chances are, the school the child was taken out of wasn't a good one, either, and they are doing what they can to do something better.
School is a joke. The only people that look at grades are colleges. All that matters is passing. No job you have is going to ask you what your GPA was. The problem with that line of thinking is that education is more important that just something needed for a job. It helps with life. Decisions are made from available information. The more information you have, the better decisions you can make. Education means acquiring information and being able to interpret it. When you learn you are practicing the process of taking information and making it useful and hopefully relevant. No job will ask you what your GPA is, but when your resume is filled with typos, is poorly formatted, is on green paper, and is 3 pages long, it's clear that you didn't learn how to write a resume, and also didn't learn to look up how to write a resume.
Your job might not ask you what you got in your classes, but when you can't do your job, it won't be long before you don't have it any more. One of the biggest complaints employers have about employees is lack of basic skills to do the job. Jobs are forced to do remedial training because their employees can't do the basics.
More important than job performance is understanding what is happening around you. Critical thinking allows you to intelligently evaluate information that you encounter. It's not being taught. It's talked about a lot, and everybody says it's important, but like the initial analogy, behavior shows otherwise. In the first 2 years of college students gain very little ability to think critically. I had a personal experience with a teacher where I was questioning the validity my teacher's statement. Asking for some sort of proof that what he said had any sort of resemblance to reality showed that he could only resort to fallacy after fallacy with an eventual threat to have me removed from class under the premise of disrespect.
It seems like Americans are starting to stand up for big changes lately. The little guys stopped cards from issuing needless fees on bank cards. We also stopped Sopa. Fights like these are continuous. Maybe it's possible that demanding education in our schools will be another thing we'll learn is worth having. Not grades, but learning. And not talk, but action, and commitment by the masses. Eh. Probably not. There are too many people with too much to gain in the short term by keeping us dumb and easily influenced *cough* fox *cough*.
When it comes to schools, there is no shortage of problems. There are a lot of things that could be done better. but I think the biggest problem is as a society, we don't behave in a way that expresses education as important. We might say it. We might even believe it. But our consistent actions say otherwise. Sometimes we don't even understand that we aren't supporting education. Often times, we support good grades. That is nowhere near close to being the same thing as education. When kids get bad grades they might get in trouble. If a kid gets good grades and learns nothing, everything is okay. That is a problem.
We worry about behavior problems in school. We worry about whether or not students are showing up to class. We worry about test grades. We worry about the social influence of classmates. If there was an overwhelmingly singular focus on actually learning, a lot of that would go away. It wouldn't be so socially acceptable to treat school as a joke. If the vast majority of the teachers, faculty, students, parents, and everybody else actually expected you to LEARN, then showing up would be a given. You don't show up, you get behind, you just made things tougher for yourself.
When it's socially unacceptable to be dumb, people would put more effort into becoming educated. Culture influences an amazing amount of behavior. People will try to fit in to where they are most of the time. In other countries, education is so valued that even the crappiest jobs are filled with people with degrees. If you want a decent job, you need a degree. Everybody wants a decent job, so everybody gets a degree. All the decent jobs get filled, but you didn't get one, and you need to earn a living. Now you're a janitor with a bachelor's degree. It may seem like a waste of time to get a degree if you're a janitor, but if you ever want to be something better, then you can. In a society like that, what hope do you have if you don't have a degree?
I've watched documentaries that are talking up the benefits of charter schools, and when they show the incredibly successful ones, there is a dominant theme. Passion and commitment from everybody involved. While critics are quick to point out than on average charter schools don't perform better than regular public schools, I'm not talking about average. There's a positive feedback in the best charter schools. The teachers do incredible amounts of work to make sure that every single child is learning, doing whatever it takes. The faculty supports them. The parents expect their children to learn, and they speak the same positive message at home. Everybody around the child is saying you can and will learn. The biggest positive about a charter school is that parents made a choice to send the kids there. That means they already have put in extra effort into attempting to get a decent education from their child. It's possible the charter school isn't a good one, but chances are, the school the child was taken out of wasn't a good one, either, and they are doing what they can to do something better.
School is a joke. The only people that look at grades are colleges. All that matters is passing. No job you have is going to ask you what your GPA was. The problem with that line of thinking is that education is more important that just something needed for a job. It helps with life. Decisions are made from available information. The more information you have, the better decisions you can make. Education means acquiring information and being able to interpret it. When you learn you are practicing the process of taking information and making it useful and hopefully relevant. No job will ask you what your GPA is, but when your resume is filled with typos, is poorly formatted, is on green paper, and is 3 pages long, it's clear that you didn't learn how to write a resume, and also didn't learn to look up how to write a resume.
Your job might not ask you what you got in your classes, but when you can't do your job, it won't be long before you don't have it any more. One of the biggest complaints employers have about employees is lack of basic skills to do the job. Jobs are forced to do remedial training because their employees can't do the basics.
More important than job performance is understanding what is happening around you. Critical thinking allows you to intelligently evaluate information that you encounter. It's not being taught. It's talked about a lot, and everybody says it's important, but like the initial analogy, behavior shows otherwise. In the first 2 years of college students gain very little ability to think critically. I had a personal experience with a teacher where I was questioning the validity my teacher's statement. Asking for some sort of proof that what he said had any sort of resemblance to reality showed that he could only resort to fallacy after fallacy with an eventual threat to have me removed from class under the premise of disrespect.
It seems like Americans are starting to stand up for big changes lately. The little guys stopped cards from issuing needless fees on bank cards. We also stopped Sopa. Fights like these are continuous. Maybe it's possible that demanding education in our schools will be another thing we'll learn is worth having. Not grades, but learning. And not talk, but action, and commitment by the masses. Eh. Probably not. There are too many people with too much to gain in the short term by keeping us dumb and easily influenced *cough* fox *cough*.
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