Tag Archives: Media

Two Ways of Knowing

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A Christian friend told me recently that there are two ways of knowing: science and faith. I don’t agree with him of course and, while I expressed my scepticism, I didn’t argue. It seemed unlikely he would change his mind.

Faith and science have different, incompatible concepts of reality. The first – and faith was first historically – is that there is an invisible realm beyond this one, populated by powerful beings who influence and manipulate the humans who live here below. This reality, though invisible and largely undetectable, is actually more real than the one we see around us. Glimpses have been had of it, however, by those finely attuned to it, in dreams, visions and messages delivered during heightened emotional states. These visionaries – prophets – then pass on to others what the beings of the hidden realm expect of them. Life is then to be lived according to the instructions so conveyed, which usually consist of attempts to appease these gods by doing their bidding. In return for this obsequience, you’re allowed to believe you will live on after death

The other epistemology – actually the only true epistemology in this instance – is empirical, knowledge-based science. A later arrival, historically speaking, than the gods of the invisible realm. The scientific method is the best tool we have for sifting knowledge from superstition and emotion. These, particularly the latter, often impede us in our pursuit of knowledge, which is why science strives to eliminate them from its investigations, taking an objective approach to evidence. Unfortunately, the findings of science are occasionally contradictory (can a man become a woman or not?) and very often misinterpreted by non-scientists. Politicians and the media frequently over-simplify science’s findings and interpret them in ways that suit their own agendas.

Then there are those who masquerade as scientists but are not. During the pandemic, the UK was locked down for almost two years on the basis of computer predictions of what might happen if certain conditions prevailed. These predictions were taken as a scientific conclusion when in fact they were hypotheses, which by their very nature, could not be tested. Needless to say, they turned out to be drastically wrong. Computer projections are not, in themselves, science.

Science, through its practical offspring, medicine and technology, has undoubtedly been a boon to humankind, in a way religion never has. It has also sometimes been a curse too, inflicting us with, amongst other things, an arsenal of ever deadlier weapons, the means of destroying the environment and Covid itself. Science is a tool and like any tool can be wielded both constructively and destructively.

So, perhaps the gods will save us from our own folly after all. If only they and their invisible realm existed. Alas (or thankfully) they don’t; there is zero evidence for them, and visions, dreams and wishful thinking as reliable means of knowing about them. We’re on our own. Science is the best hope we’ve got, our only sure-fire way of knowing. If only politicians and the media understood it more than they seem to.

On my Mind

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After a lifetime of voting in national and local elections I think it unlikely I will ever vote again. I am disillusioned with politicians of all stripes and at every level. Their decisions over the last few years have been disastrous and certainly not for the betterment of the British people. After so many broken promises I can’t find it in myself to believe in them any more.

Leaders and politicians take us into war but it is always ordinary people, quietly going about their everyday lives, who suffer. Religion lies at the heart of the conflict in the Middle East, motivating terrorist acts of unimaginable brutality. A god at war with himself, with innocents paying the price.

The human capacity for overreaction does not solve problems. Every unusual event is now classified as a crisis to which we respond irrationally and without resolution. In the UK during the 21st century, we (or rather politicians and leaders) have failed to address or resolve:

The so-called millennium bug (came to nothing after unnecessary panic and the waste of millions of pounds);

Foot and mouth disease (millions of healthy animals slaughtered, many lives ruined);

Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction (never located and never used; non-existent. The irrational insistence by western powers that they did exist led to war and the destabilisation of the world);

Covid pandemic (lockdowns did not protect the vulnerable and elderly but successfully crashed the economy, from which the UK has still to recover);

Net-zero (electric cars, heat pumps and Ulez zones will not save the planet, yet they and similar measures will impoverish millions. We do not have the technology to halt, let alone reverse, climate change; it is hubris to think we will);

Illegal immigration (the UK and other European nations cannot cope with the strain on our infrastructure. Meanwhile the tax payer funds the accommodation of people who are here illegally, the system fails to process legal asylum seekers and politicians dither).

The narrative of the day, be it trans/gender issues, racial identity or climate change must not be challenged. Get with the agenda or be abused and cancelled. Whatever happened to free speech? I’m concerned about the attempts to control our thinking here in the UK.

Alarmist media that spend more time espousing their own opinions and endlessly speculating than reporting facts.

AI: More artificial than intelligent, AI is a disaster so far. Imagine Alexa handling the complexities of your business transactions or your banking and data security: ‘I don’t know the answer to that. Please try asking a different question (I.e. one that has no bearing on what you need to know but which fits my algorithmic agenda.)’ Does the human intelligence foisting AI on us bother to test the interface of AI and real, frustrated people?

Does bureaucracy exist only for its own self-perpetuation?. It certainly seems so.

 

 

Why I’m not watching the News any more

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I’ve reached the point where I can’t watch or read mainstream news reports. I’ve had difficulty with them throughout the pandemic with their incessant reporting of Covid cases and deaths completely devoid of context (how many cases were serious enough to cause hospitalisations? How many deaths were ‘of’ Covid rather than ‘with’ it? How many of the deaths were excess deaths; how many people die in any given period normally?) Ignoring context, the media became intent on fostering anxiety and panic. Their reporting was not independent; in the UK at least they parroted uncritically and relentlessly the government’s position. This, in turn, was shaped by the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) and in particular the predictions of computer modeller Neil Ferguson. Ferguson, regularly interviewed on BBC news programmes, was, as he now admits, wrong on every occasion. Very wrong. The pandemic was nowhere near as drastic as he repeatedly said it was going to be (I’m not disputing how serious it was. It was not, however, anywhere as near as bad as he kept predicting it would be). Yet the government and the media continued to rely on his predictions as if they were fact.

All of which is the reason I reduced my watching, listening and reading of the news to a minimum. Headlines only. Early in the summer of this year, the UK government felt the need to restore some normality to society, it asked the mainstream media to reduce its reporting of Covid statistics. All media outlets immediately complied. Conservatives can never say again that the BBC in particular is biased against them; it has done their bidding throughout the pandemic.

This is not, however, the reason I am abandoning the news, giving up even on headlines. I am tired of predictions, conjecture, speculation, forecasts and extrapolation. None of these is news. They are attempts to see the future, something that we are incapable of doing. Of course we need to be aware of potential consequences of decisions or actions, our own, governments’ and society’s. But reporting those possible consequences as fact, as outcomes that are inevitable, fait accompli, like Neil Ferguson’s hopeless predictions, is not what news reporting should be about. Its job is to tell us what has happened, how, where and possibly why (analysis). That it extends itself well beyond this by determining for us what a particular development means ‘for the future’ or ‘’in the long term’ is nothing more than supposition. It also, dangerously, leads to some self-fulfilling prophecy, such as we’ve seen in the reporting of recent supply chain difficulties. That these were restricted to specific areas was not reported but the possibility that these difficulties could, possibly, maybe, result in food shortages was. Result? Panic buying and food shortages in some areas. The same happened with supposed fuel shortages. Christmas is now in danger according to the UK media.

With Covid largely off the agenda, the news media find themselves in need of something else with which to fill schedules; some alternative source of doom and gloom. The mainstream (in the UK, at least) has opted for climate change, replete with forecasts of catastrophe, destruction and extinction. Of course it’s possible that if we do not act collectively to reduce the human contribution to climate change, that these outcomes will come to pass. It’s possible but it isn’t certain to be the case. Who remembers the media reporting that by this point in the 21st century we would be living in an ice age because of climate change? (This speculation is still about and has traction in some quarters).The news is that climate change is happening. That’s it. What we might do about it is for some other source that doesn’t claim to be delivering news.

I am tired of the narrative of the day, be it #MeToo, Brexit, BLM, Covid, climate change. Tired of its promotion by the media, of the prediction and conjecture that goes along with it, but only while it attracts sufficient viewers or readers. When something more ‘newsworthy’, sensational and alarmist comes along, what was once narrative of the day is dropped. There’s a new bandwagon to jump on! This time though, I’m doing the dropping first.