Watts with that you ask? Everyone knows how statistical denial has become, why it almost shrieks for auditing stuff you can put up on a blackboard, and Eli's friend, Simon Donner, over at Maribo has taken up the realist's burden. Simon has constructed the skeptical media coverage index, showing indeed, that when skepticism transmuted to denialism, the media lost interest. Subject to some random variation, of course.
However, Eli had a few additional thoughts
US elections increase denialism. No doubt about it.
If one does a linear regression, one finds "Skeptical" media coverage should reach reach 0 by about 2022.
ReplyDeleteI'm skeptical.
Eh, nice. (if anyone still wonders, the graph is GISS upside down.)
ReplyDeleteI'm kind of the opposite belief. The western democracies are on a long unstoppable slide towards idiocy, because of the media lacking capability or will to report the truth.
The middle ages are near.
Simon Donner's point is good anyway. Maybe I am reading too much into short time events...
When Jack nicholson said, "You can't handle the truth", he had the American public in mind.
ReplyDeleteThe media give the public what they want, 24/7 (ie, garbage) because that's all they can handle.
Would that the middle ages were near. The high middle ages were the time when rationalism ruled and clerics laid out the basis for modern science -- I'm talking about people like Albertus Magnus, Nicolas Oresme and Roger Bacon. When most people disparage the middle ages they're usually thinking of the dark ages (feudalism) or the Renaissance (witch trials).
ReplyDelete