Thread: Joe Rogan and rise of pseudo-expertise 1/x
As you may have seen, @Spotify's new hire has been telling young adult listeners not to get a COVID vaccination.
No one should take medical advice from an MMA commentator, but the sad reality is that many people will...
It's an unfortunate human tendency to take advice from someone with a confident tone of speaking, regardless of their actual knowledge.
But that tendency is made worse by the rise of infotainment fandoms.
It doesn't really matter if you're obsessed w/a fictional franchise...
Being obsessed w/Star Wars, Marvel, Star Trek, LOTR, etc. doesn't really affect your life too much.
It's a lot more serious to become a superfan of actual people. That has real implications because, um, they're real people...
But we're all finite people. None of us knows everything about many subjects, let alone all of them. The risk to the superfan is that they don't know what their heroes don't know...
The COVID experience should have taught us that science is about continual revision and hypothesis.
Unfortunately, many people have come away w/the faulty idea that science is just a bunch of opinions. Joe Rogan seems to be one.
But reality is not subject to opinion. It's still there whether you believe in it or not.
The rise of "alternative facts" conservatism has created an epistemic crisis in our politics. Millions of people truly believe that cutting taxes increases revenues...
The "alternative facts" perspective isn't unique to politics, however. It's been very strongly embedded in our pop-culture as well, thanks to people like Norman Vincent Peale as @CRightcast has shown very well: rightcast.substack.com
It exists elsewhere with "The Secret," etc.
There are some people who believe that dumb or terrible opinions would be exposed in a neutral "marketplace of ideas," but this is not true. Just look at how many people still believe that human evolution isn't true. It's the majority opinion in some countries...
Dumb opinions said confidently by very famous people are also particularly noxious because they have much more force.
Joe Rogan is a good entertainer, but he really doesn't know much about anything besides TV, standup, and things related to MMA. His fans don't see it that way...
That's true of so many other media blatherers like Ben Shapiro, Tim Poole, Steven Crowder, Jordan Peterson, Gwyneth Paltrow, Alex Jones. They don't know what they're talking about but their fans are too ignorant to know it...
Our modern technology of search engines, spreadsheets, and video effects allows almost anyone to look like they know wtf they're talking about--but only if you know even less then they do. It's a simulacrum of knowledge. It looks real but it isn't...
The best thing to learn in life is that you don't know shit. Unfortunately, having other people's knowledge at our fingertips has made us think that we have it, too.
In summary: Joe Rogan doesn't know shit and @Spotify needs to make him say that to protect public health.
Thanks for reading the thread. Please share if you enjoyed it. I've made the argument into an essay form if you want to see that version here: flux.community/matthew-sheffi…
I could have saved myself the time and just posted this Far Side cartoon.
Gary Larson made this point much better than I did:
One of the most significant content differences between right versus left political media is that right media often feature explicitly Christian religious content.
This is a fairly common phenomenon that is almost totally unknown to people who don't regularly consume rw media.
More explicitly religious content from right-wing media sites, this time from Daily Wire and Newsmax
I should note here that the Christian radio station company Salem Media, named for the legendary Biblical city, is the owner of most major conservative blog sites.
Apple seems to enjoy treating its customers like crap. First they make you shell out $300 for an iPad Pro keyboard (far more expensive than the Surface's).
Now, they've made it so that the new iPad Pro is incompatible with the old "Magic" keyboard. 😏 gizmodo.com/last-years-12-…
It's also absurd that for all the time & money Apple spent on the keyboard, they never bothered to give iOS a proper cursor. Instead of an arrow, you get a circular blob that doesn't show where the click goes.
Seriously? You paid $300 and you can't get an arrow mouse cursor?
In my opinion, the iPad is a total scam. You still can't multitask decently on it, the mouse sucks, the apps are dumbed-down, and it's way overpriced.
The only reason people buy them is bc Apple refuses to make MacOS touch-friendly, something they easily could do.
Normally I use Linux but since buying a Surface Pro 7, I've decided to stick around Windows for a bit more, especially after learning about a ton of super-useful keyboard shortcuts it now has. Here's a thread about some of them.
Push Windows key + Left or Right arrow and it will tile the active program to the left or right easily.
Windows + 1, 2, 3, 4... will automatically switch to whatever program is first, second, third, or fourth on your taskbar
Windows + P will easily switch your monitors
Windows + Tab lets you show all open programs and also add new virtual desktops
Windows + Control + Left/Right will switch to these other desktops
When you look at reviews of the Surface Pro, tech writers will usually grouse at Microsoft for not including a keyboard in the price but they never make the same complaint about the iPad Pro. Its not-included kbd is far more limited & much more expensive but you never hear that.
Any iPhone review should also deduct points from its numeric rating as well because of its non-standard Lightning connector, especially when Apple doesn't put them on laptops. Total lock-in trap.
Ellis is more open about her theocratic agenda than most right wing elites but she is far from alone in having one.
Most are more savvy in hiding their true intentions and only discussing them privately.
Unfortunately, because of this concealment, most people who disagree with fundamentalist Christianity aren't aware that many top Republicans have "Christianist" views that are philosophically not different from Islamism.
Check out the production on this clip. It's just as WTF as the manic words Peter Navarro is spewing. He literally looks like some sort of cross between WWE and Infowars.
The exaggerated hand jestures, the wide-angle standup shot with stars.
Peter Navarro in his stand up studio doing one of several over-the-top double-finger pointing gestures just exactly like a WWE monologue. This dude was one of Trump's top presidential advisers. Wow.
Yes exactly. The only thing Peter Navarro is missing is Mean Gene standing next to him holding the microphone