Ask A Genius 552 – Non-Sense Engines
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2020/06/19
[Beginning of recorded material]
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: So, what is going on in America with Fox News? You had some thoughts.
Rick Rosner: I am just dib-sing the term “non-sense engine.” Right now, roughly a third of American adults support Trump to some extent, which means you support nonsense and bullshit to some extent. There’s the media constantly pumping bullshit into people’s brain and calling it truth.
You can’t fix people who believe ridiculous shit. Unless, you remove the source of ridiculous shit. So, in this country, we are trying to fix the cops. After we fix the cops, we got to fix the news. I have some ideas for doing it, for example, like requiring channels that claim to be running the news to have a sidebar that runs simultaneously that fact checks bullshit.
Although, for good fixes to happen, non-Republicans would have to get a very large majority. Even then, they would fuck it up. All I want to do here is dibs the term non-sense engine. It is an engine because it powers the ongoing political dysfunction that is facilitated by people believing stupid untrue shit.
Jacobsen: What about a “sense navigator” – how you find your way through the muck with an engine? What is your sensible astrolabe?
Rosner: Consensus facts instead of crazy bullshit conspiracy theories. The best science, unless somebody is sufficiently educated in science that they can handle the subtleties. For instance, there are a bunch of people in America who won’t wear masks because it will make you sick, because you breathe in carbon monoxide. It’s just stupid.
Jacobsen: [Laughing].
Rosner: Its disproven every day by medical professionals who wear them for 12, 13 hours a day all day several days a week. But if you are going to argue some masks are more effective than others, then you should be able to believe that shit if you have read the science on that.
I was listening to an expert on the pandemic and diseases, infectious diseases, saying that the latest evidence is that it is hard to catch Covid on surfaces. So, he stopped worrying about surfaces as it relates to Covid.
So, if somebody is scientifically informed and literate enough to have some alternative views, fine, but you can’t just believe straight up bullshit, I was thinking about how I am writing this book based on the future.
I was thinking one way to enforce the rule of truth, which is a little coercive, but, maybe, the entertainment and news industries form consortiums/consortia. Where you don’t get to have your face and your voice amplified by working in entertainment or news, unless, you agree to believe facts in pretty the way I’ve been talking about.
Where, it is fine to be a little bit informed, but the informed you are should be based on legitimate consensus knowledge. That coronavirus is a thing. There are millions in America who believe it is a Bill Gates conspiracy.
Maybe, if you have that belief, you don’t get acting jobs or writing jobs. If that is what it takes to get us back on track to combat nonsense/bullshit engines, then, maybe, that’s one. I only just thought about it, so there are probably some shitty aspects to it.
Also, I don’t know if anybody will have the balls to do it. People have argued for billionaires to buy Fox News. You could buy it for several tens of billions of dollars. So if you took 200 billionaires, and if they each pitched in a quarter billion, that’s $50 billion for a hostile take over of Fox to make it not Fox.
Maybe, the investors may make some money off it, because it is still a news organizations with profit in it.
[End of recorded material]
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright
© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
In-Sight Publishing 