(ALPHA) For quite awhile... decades really,
society, including media, has shied away,
no matter the reason,
from reasoned analysis ...
when presented with complex issues, or,
when presented with dogma (opinion)
paraded as fact without substantiation
or w/substantion easily shown to be false.
We seek to occupy the stage of reasoned analysis that lets the cards fall where they may.
Documented : keeping snapshot versions along the way of the analysis whereby one can see how it developed.
Analysis: People contributing reasoning/review of beliefs/arguments/opinions/hypotheses and facts.
Data w/o Dogma: Just the facts, and where the facts are not absolute, a reasoned interpretation whereby the perfect not allowed to be the enemy of the good.
Dogma w/ Data: Review of whether beliefs/arguments/opinions are supported by purported facts, and analysis of those purported facts.
Dogma w/o Data: Review of beliefs/arguments/opinions unsupported by any actual, or even purported, facts.
and a suspicion that an old saw/theory might hold true,
that the perfect cannot be held up as an enemy of the good,
(don't reject good answers because they are not perfect)
it seems there should be an interactive resource where
that suspicion can be evaluated, ideas are bandied about,
opinions(dogma) and facts are compared and contrasted
and reasoned analyses set out upon that interplay,
resulting in a reasoned, documented analysis for all to see.
Scientists (our heroes)
Isaac Asimov
“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.’
Isaac Asimov
“They won't listen. Do you know why? Because they have certain fixed notions about the past. Any change would be blasphemy in their eyes, even if it were the truth. They don't want the truth; they want their traditions.”
Richard Feynman
“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool.”
Richard Feynman
"I would rather have questions that can't be answered than answers that can't be questioned"
Carl Sagan
“We've arranged a global civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology. We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces.”
Carl Sagan
“Nevertheless, (Jefferson) believed that the habit of skepticism is an essential prerequisite for responsible citizenship. He argued that the cost of education is trivial compared to the cost of ignorance, of leaving government to the wolves. He taught that the country is safe only when the people rule.”
Carl Sagan
“I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time
-- when the United States is a service and information economy;
when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries;
when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few,
and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues;
when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably
question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting
our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between
what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing,
back into superstition and darkness...
The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content
in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less),
lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition,
but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance”
Cheboygan MI ... Cheboygan Tribune, Detroit Free Press.
Portsmouth, NH ... Portsmouth Herald, Boston Globe, Herald, Phoenix.
Bowling Green State U - Toledo Blade, Detroit Free Press, Cleveland Plain Dealer.
NYC - Times, Post, News, Newsday, Journal
...2009 Detroit Free Press stops daily delivery, attend 1st of several BCNIPhilly-Kleincamps... lots of handwringing about how internet journalists with no costs, sleeping in parents basements, will KILL monied journalism! no solutions offered. Have idea.
...subsequent, albeit infrequent, years.... more compaints, no solutions... many high profile data wonks from mainstream media ...Idea reaches pre-alpha but dies on vine.
...2024 --- ridiculous media spin in all directions, dusts off an enhances idea, FACTUAL OP-ED.
Wherever It Leads