Monday, November 29, 2021

Episode 188: The Hyporeality Vortex

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Of course, not all we learn in commercial media can be trusted. It's always good to remember, though, how tenacious some efforts at mis- and disinformation become, swirling to form something described by the title of Episode 188: The Hyporeality Vortex.

In this episode, I read from: Jerry Mander's 1978 book, Four Arguments For the Elimination of Television; two Guardian articles by George Monbiot; Naomi Oreskes and Eric Conway's book The Merchants of Doubt:How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues From Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming; and Jane Mayer's book Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right.

I play: D. L. Myers intoning the Powell Movement Stinger; Burlington, Vermont Mayor Bernie Sanders, backed by KMFDM; and I close with Mistle Thrush.
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4 comments:

  1. Industrial DysfunctionDecember 1, 2021 at 11:58 AM

    Good to hear George Monbiot getting a name check. His broader thinking sometimes gets lost in his environmental writing but I find he tends to be a pretty decent systems think. That probably means he appeals to my biases.
    I'm looking forward to the coming show, I was wondering if your show is where I picked up the term agnotology from it looks like that is the direction we are heading in.

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    Replies
    1. Ad AttackerDecember 1, 2021 at 5:44 PM

      Hey, Dode,

      No, you just introduced that beautiful word to me (I had to look it up). I'm a bit shocked that Oreskes and Conway (IIRC) didn't use it in their book; after all, the second paragraph of the Wiki article focused on that book.

      I was leaning more toward epistemological humility, the constant personal reminder that we don't necessarily have all the information we might need. Agnotology seems very similar, but more specifically targeted at the import of incorrect assumptions specifically for the purposes of misdirection, usually to facilitate a political goal.

      I like it! If you can remember where you did find it, do drop a note here. I'd like to go there as well!

      Thanks!

      —Jim

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    2. Industrial DysfunctionDecember 2, 2021 at 11:30 AM

      with a little digging into mail it looks like this one came from chad c mulligan over at

      http://hipcrime.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/the-bottomless-production-of-bullshit.html

      Two connections back to kmo although I think I followed Chad home from The Arch druids place before I knew of any connection.

      Sort of related one book reader to another Stand on Zanzibar is very dated although still worth a read.

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    3. Ad AttackerDecember 3, 2021 at 2:04 PM

      Wow. March of 2014. Why don't I remember reading that? Oh, yeah. I started this show around then (the first episode was released on April Fool's Day, 2014). I don't remember much in the months leading up to that.

      (And a note about how stupidly literal I can be sometimes: When I read Chad's title, I thought "How stupid! Bullshit comes out of the bull's bottom! So how could it be 'bottomless'?!" And… then the penny dropped.)

      Thanks for the linkage research. I'll have to track down more sources for that wonderful word.

      Later!

      —Jim

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