What DON’T you believe?

I was talking about our US dictator, he is too stupid and semile to hide it like all his predecessors.


Biden Establishes a Ministry of Truth

The Disinformation Governance Board already looks like a partisan instrument.



President Joe Biden speaks at the White House, April 27.
Photo: Susan Walsh/Associated Press

The Department of Homeland Security has announced the formation of the Disinformation Governance Board—charged, according to Politico, with “countering misinformation related to homeland security, focused specifically on irregular migration and Russia.” In a twist too implausible for fiction, the abbreviation is DGB, one letter off from KGB.

The stated goal of combating mis- and disinformation is framed to seem unobjectionable. Who objects to truth and pines for falsehood? DGB experts will guide the way, separating the informational wheat from the disinformational chaff. But there’s one small problem with empowering “truth experts”: Experts are people.

People respond to incentives. Therefore experts respond to incentives. Graham Medley, a British expert involved in the U.K. policy response to Covid, illustrated the point in recent testimony before Parliament. “The worst thing for me,” he said, “would be for the government to say, ‘Why didn’t you tell us it could be that bad?’ Inevitably, we were always going to have a worst case which is above reality.”

Put yourself in his shoes. If you predict doom and nothing much happens, it was because of your wise warning. If you don’t predict doom and reality is worse than you predicted, you will be blamed and shamed. The incentives are clear. Truth experts at the DGB will proclaim grave threats around every turn even when any “threats” are minor to nonexistent.

By creating the DGB, the U.S. government is creating a crisis monitor with the dial permanently set to “existential threat.” No one inside the board will have the incentive—or the courage—to dial it down.

The dangers of the DGB will be amplified if it becomes the tool of partisan political actors. And it already has. Executive director Nina Jankowicz, who once described Hunter Biden’s laptop as “a Trump campaign product,” has written that America’s “information landscape” includes “declining trust in the media, fed by the Trump administration’s relentless attacks on the fourth estate.” She has said: “Unless we mitigate our own political polarization, our own internal issues, we will continue to be an easy target for any malign actor—Russian or Iranian, foreign or domestic—to manipulate.”

Yes, you read that right. We must all fall in line because of the many grave threats—domestic as well as foreign—out there. Incorrect political opinions become a national-security threat. The DGB already looks frighteningly similar to the KGB.

Mr. Koppl is a professor of finance at Syracuse University and author of “Expert Failure.” Ms. Devereaux is a professor of economics at Wichita State University.


Review & Outlook: The Administration's new Disinformation Governance Board is likely to promote more public mistrust. Images: AFP/Express/Getty Images/AP Composite: Mark Kelly
Appeared in the May 2, 2022, print edition.
wall street journal

 

Demand exceeded supply, and that is mostly the Covid rebound, and the war.

Which is kinda obvious..

 

The Right is killing democracy.

Frankly, Biden isn't doing enough to save it.

You need better lies.

 

Joe Biden is killing Democracy and the left is too stupid to know it.

 

And yet your and your pals are constantly wrong, ironic.

 

Dont ever kid yourselves, the banks run this country and its guv.
the only time we get democracy is when we vote for our new dictators.
None of you ever voted on any constitutional amendment and never will.
Neither in your state and definitely not the fed.
Your right to exercise your religion was stolen by all but 2 states of the union, and scrotumus maximus wont touch it.
This is a republic one day after democracy day, where your kleptocratic lawyers vote for what they want, and stab you in the back.
Provided they didnt steal the election from you, (its getting easier for them each time.)
Now we do have a democratic 'Parliament'......just like the UK, aint that special!

 

I don't believe that beliefs can be consciously chosen, i.e., engendered.

 

I don't believe I'm as good looking and smart as they say I am.

 

1) Your OP, doesn't at all match the choices in your poll-- were they just meant, in fun?

What don’t you believe?
I don’t believe in miracles
I don’t believe in ghosts
I don’t believe in you
I don’t believe that is Trump’s real hair
I don’t believe a word of it
I don’t believe in believing
I don’t believe you made this poll



2) Your poll's wording, therefore (since the OP adds no explanation for these choices), could be clearer. For example, when people say that they "don't believe" in something, they typically mean that they disbelieve in it-- but that is not what the words "I don't believe in," actually mean. There are 3 basic propositions: you can believe in something (miracles, ghosts, etc.), disbelieve in it, or not have an actual belief, one way, or another. If you are, thusly, agnostic on the question of ghosts, then you do not believe in them, but nor do you disbelieve in them, either. Your poll would lump the disbelievers and the undecideds/no opinions, together.



3) What don't you believe "about the philosophy of the tribe you identify with?"

Let me guess: you don't identify with any tribe?




EDIT: I don't believe I actually wrote this post

 

Communists were contemporary with Hitler (and the first sent to concentration camps) and Trump isn't in power anymore, so no current dictator here.

 

I don’t believe that anything exists except God. Nothing and no one is separate from God, and any perceived separation is an illusion to provide contrast for experiences.

 

The poll was nonsense.

 

How so? I suspect you don’t know what it means to be a Stoic.

 

So, I am God.

 

Interesting. So, do you kind of see death as something where that illusion dissipates (for those still operating under that illusion, I mean).

 

But does god believe that you exist?

I am part of god. The asswhole maybe.

 

You might be selling yourself short, DRI. You're probably more the perineum. I guess the ultimate truth depends on how ticklish you are.

 

Yes, we all are. The only thing that exists is god.

 

I think there is a big difference between Stoicism and stoicism. Like the actual philosophy going back to the Greeks is one thing, but the way we more colloquially use the word (while it has overlap) is something else. The latter is literally dangerous and is part of why men live shorter lives than women. Small-s stoicism is all about suppressing your emotions and being self-sufficient to the point that it can hurt you. Big-S Stoicism talks about suppressing passions (hurtful emotions, "passions" in Greek literally referring to pain) and the self-sufficiency is centered on your values/virtues/purpose. That's my take, anyway.

 

Yes, pretty much. Our separateness from God is an illusion, so that God/creation/existence/universe/whatever you want to call it can experience itself. God is love. Anything that is not love is an illusion that gives contrast to what god is.

 

Do you think there are means to experience this, to break that illusion, during our lifetimes?

 

I suppose we can know intellectually, through life lessons, experiences, meditation, etc.. I've heard that drugs like ayahuasca can help break the veil temporarily, and near death experiences can bring great revelations to those that are allowed to see beyond. I suppose NDE's are our higher self's way of saying "hey buddy, you are straying off the life lessons that you were meant to learn, here is a wake-up call."

 

I was just curious if there was a difference between knowing intellectually and actually experiencing it in some way, but you touched on a lot of the stuff I was kind of thinking of in that regard. I'll be experimenting with one of these things next week (attention mods: in a legal manner). Meditation has definitely given me some feelings of "oneness" in the past.

 

I would be interested in hearing about your experience after you do it!

 

I may start a separate "experiences of oneness" (may need to find a better title) type threads. It seems to come up in many religions and many philosophical traditions.