Re: WEB INTELLIGENCE # 2 - jULY 23, 2003 (fwd)

Yes, Alan, sources do vary by their reliability.

But this problem is a sociological one.
We are living in what I call an "open totalitarian society."
Our culture suffers from self-censorship far more effective than the 
heavy-handed censorship of closed totalitarian societies, where the masses 
at least knew what was going on. Our culture is stone-blind to its 
censorship problem. It's too busy shouting about freedom to notice the 
heavy chains.
Our corporatist structures enjoy incredibly effective and virtually 
invisible "voluntary" controls over thought and expression, via their media 
cartel, building on generations of patriotic brainwashing instilled in 
citizens from an early age.

In this context, there is a huge problem with the respectable and reliable 
sources.
They remain reliable by taking no chances.
Therefore, if one is interested in learning anything outside the 
comfortable scope that the respectable ones dare to touch, one enters into 
a sort of very wild intellectual landscape.
Some topics are so taboo that one virtually cannot find any half-ways 
"respectable" source willing to touch them in public.
For instance, you can hardly find Dr. Israel Shahak's work anywhere but on 
"hate sites." Not because he advocated hate, but because Shahak was a true 
iconoclast, and establishment "thinkers" won't touch him with a 10-foot 
pole. They're deathly afraid to. 90% of folks won't go near him, whether 
all or any of his ideas were right or not.

So we have another dimension here besides reliability, and that is courage.
In this pampered environment, the only people who aren't scared to say what 
they think are those who are angry and have nothing to lose. And they are 
not considered respectable or reliable.

In the best of times, the reliability of sources is only a sort of 
probabilistic filter. It can give no certainty about what is true. In the 
final analysis, one has to learn to think, clearly, without falling for all 
those fallacies.
Clear thinking and open debate is what the defenders of orthodoxy fight 
against tooth and nail. That is why their arguments make such heavy use of 
derision and the whole grab bag of psychological tricks. It's intimidation.

Unfortunately, in worse times, on things like 911 (call me a conspiracy 
theorist if you like, but i am convinced by the evidence that this was not 
carried out by cavemen) you can not rely on the reliable sources for 
independent information in the slightest. Because it takes courage, which 
they have not one iota of.
Only after the cat is out of the bag, they will scramble over each other to 
be first to postulate publicly about it.
Which means, unfortunately, that we can not rely on the "reliable sources" 
to save us, from the tyranny being prepared for us if the truth about the 
neocons never gets out. Or from the tyranny we already have, for that 
matter. It put them where they are, after all.

QED: Think for yourself - because nobody is always reliable!


At 15:55 23.7.03 -0500, you wrote:
> the reliability of a source can be a legitimate part
> of the discussion. While one cannot completely discount the veracity of a
> statement based on the speaker/writer, one certainly can, and ought to,
> raise the question that the evidence is tainted. Raising a question is not
> the same as dogmatically asserting its falsehood. The source is a legitimate
> point of discussion.
>
> Furthermore, even if a statement from a tainted source is true, it is
> generally a good idea to find that same statement from another source. For
> example, if I say to my students during a lecture: "You should exercise
> more, because according to Hitler, exercise promotes good health"........one
> might suggest that perhaps I should quote someone else who made that point
> rather than appear in any way to be acknowledging Hitler.
it's not stuff like exercising more that we lack good sources for
your example would be a way of advertising for hitler by wrapping him in 
the colors of a widely accepted idea