I liked the references to JS Mill anyway.
But I wonder about this. When you have a TV 'circus,' you don't necessarily have truth seeking. It's something more like entertainment and/or promotion, which can work in many ways, perhaps elevating that which should not be elevated.
In any live 'debate' (or even the sanitized kinds we have between political candidates), 95% depends on showmanship, not content.
Attorneys excel at high stakes showmanship with a limited time horizon, pulling on heartstrings more than reason, and argument by gotcha. It's hard to argue about things involving numbers generally, and especially statistics, in such settings. And with people who have insufficient knowledge to understand
how these things work. Correct explanations, when they can be given, may take time not available, and audio video aids...perhaps even years of production like a science video, not to mention literature searching, simulation, and actual experimental research.
Scientists prefer lower visibility settings, such as reviewing other authors, or one-on-one meetings with considerable duration and continuity.
This follows in both cases from the nature of the truth issues at stake and how they are resolved. In law an institutionally unbiased determination of guilt is sought, the guilty party can be expected to try to hide that (hence the use of gotcha--catching liars--who might then be suspected of lying about other things). In science, an understanding of the fundamental nature of things is sought and no one has complete answers or knowledge.
Perhaps truth seeking ought to be continued on many levels, but mostly in writing where anyone can quickly see what has been said or take the time to formulate the best response without penalty for taking such time, or admitting lack of knowledge or uncertainty.
Finkelstein even mentions this speed issue, but only between fast speaking (like Hasan) and slow speaking (like Chomsky). In reality, all speaking is a form of showmanship. Truth seeking is better done when there is no penalty for pausing and seeking the best answer, not just one that comes from the top of the head.
In addition, any kind of 'debate' on TV is not won by presenting a good reasoned argument to an audience which hears the entire debate. It's 'won' in the endless aftermath, the endless re-reporting in which the better crafted (often after the fact) sound bites win. The ones that have just the right connections to power (and therefore are reported more) and resonances with the present mythologies of audiences they are presented to.
All of this is of course compounded by bad faith. But of course our legal and political systems operate in this very real, where bad faith on all sides can be virtually presumed, but is never acknowledged, and often stressed only where rejoinder is impossible. (Thus, corporate media loves to criticize government operations, but rarely corporate operations, many of whom are sponsors.)
It's no better in our supposedly representational bodies of legislative debate. Those are best understood not as truth seeking but power-aligning. Arguments backed by the most power and money are the ones that win, regardless of any connection to the truth in the arguments made about them. We're accustomed to this kind of puffery in every settings...words are just tools of the trade of some con job. (Speaking of which, I often wonder whether just that--words--was the beginning of the end of the human species.)
Given all this, it's a wonder we have a civilization that has persisted this long. Our debate and politics are utterly broken, and all the more so on TV and Social Media. I don't see much hope for the future.
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I also don't much like Finkelstein's endlessly poking us with his critique of Woke. Sure, I too think it's ridiculous when there is a lot of time and attention given to pronouns, requiring everyone to identify with their chosen pronouns for example. But the war on personal privacy now going on in Red States is pretty close to all on fascism. People have rights to decide how to use their bodies. And much of the anti-Woke in practice is about eliminating just that, what the Warren Court established as a Right to Privacy as in "leave us alone."
And I think the attacks on Peter Hotez are reprehensible, by people I sometimes respect like Glenn Greenwald and Dan Cohen. Most of these attacks virtually presume an untruth, that vaccines are fundamentally bad medicine, rather than what they are, a matter of greater and lesser risks. In the innumerate world of TV and Social Media debate, risks are buried below assumptions and allegations.
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Just learned of Brandini's Law: the amount of energy necessary to refute BS is an order of magnitude greater than to produce it.
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