When we as humans speak or communicate with one another, typically that communication is happening on a number of levels and may aim at a number of goals ( Read more... )

Re-posting some of my posts from when I first started on LiveJournal 20 years ago. I'll have more thoughts on this material in another post.OLD AND NEW MEDIA ( Read more... )

The basic cognitive question: How do I know what I know ( Read more... )

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Conspiracies exist. To believe otherwise is irrational. A claim regarding a particular conspiracy may be plausible or otherwise according to the available facts and evidence; but the whole business of dismissing "conspiracy theories" as inherently ridiculous, serves only to protect conspirators from scrutiny.

Latest iteration of my ongoing attempts to make sense of the world.

Look in the mirror.
This is really the most important thing when analyzing a source for credibility or bias: knowing your own beliefs and your own possible biases. It's always tempting to accept something uncritically because it fits what we think we already know.

Premises / ( Read more... )

I'm not a regular follower of NPR, but here's a piece of great reporting (uh, assuming it's not invented!) about the man behind the fake news. As some of us have suspected, the motivations are a mix of ideological and monetary.

"The whole idea from the start was to build a site that could kind of infiltrate the echo chambers of the alt-right, ( Read more... )