Being Informed is 95% Stupid

Charlie 

Check out this interview of Fark’s CEO, Drew Curtis.  Digest this wisdom:

Q: What advice would you give to someone who feels guilty if they’re not keeping up with the latest “news”?

A: Take two weeks off. Don’t watch any news, don’t read any news, don’t listen to any radio talk shows. Then tune back in. Did you miss anything? Nope. It’s the same old crap, different days. That’s what I’m talking about in my book — the media patterns that are used to fill space. It’s 95% or more of the content of any given news show.

 I’m very much looking forward to reading Drew’s new book Its Not News Its FARK: How Mass Media Tries to Pass Off Crap as News.  I might slightly amend the title, striking the phrase “tries to”–I’d say they’ve been incredibly successful convincing the public that present day reportage is in fact “NEWS”.  Celebrity worship–take celebrity to mean entertainers, as well as athletes, politicians, criminals, missing children, etc–is the religion of the day.  People derive their sense of place and their understanding of the workings of the world from what they garner from television and newspapers.  Alarmism abounds and apparently, chaos has stricken our world.  It is no surprise, then, that many of our fellows turn towards centralized bodies of purported repute for guidance and protection.  As Drew Curtis and others have thankfully discerned, most of what we see and hear is NOSIE, meaningless bits of information which bombard our senses and make it difficult to see beyond the chaos.  The workings of emergent order are hidden.  I LOVE Drew’s advice: stop watching the news for two weeks, you wont miss anything of actual import. 

Beware of Scientism

Charlie Fritschner 

 Re-reading Hayek’s “Intellectuals and Socialism” brings many fruits.  One passage struck me particularly, and I’d like to pass it along. 

 In particular, there can be little doubt that the manner in which during the last hundred years man has learned to organize the forces of nature has contributed a great deal toward the creation of the belief that a similar control of the forces of society would bring comparable improvements in human conditions. That, with the application of engineering techniques, the direction of all forms of human activity according to a single coherent plan should prove to be as successful in society as it has been in innumerable engineering tasks, is too plausible a conclusion not to seduce most of those who are elated by the achievement of the natural sciences. It must indeed be admitted both that it would require powerful arguments to counter the strong presumption in favor of such a conclusion and that these arguments have not yet been adequately stated. It is not sufficient to point out the defects of particular proposals based on this kind of reasoning. The argument will not lose its force until it has been conclusively shown why what has proved so eminently successful in producing advances in so many fields should have limits to its usefulness and become positively harmful if extended beyond these limits. This is a task which has not yet been satisfactorily performed and which will have to be achieved before this particular impulse toward socialism can be removed.

We must work at all times to avoid this dangerous scientism.  It not only pervades socialist thought, but neoclassical economics as well.  When we begin to rely on economic models, statistics, certified data, indisputable “facts” and ignore more rigorous, abstract contemplation, we capitalists engage Hayek’s fatal conceit: we begin to believe that we can “engineer” society as we wish.   Keynes, unfortunately, was best at this, and his logic pervades both politics and economics departments to this day. 

Remember the knowledge problem.  It is a daily process; it is difficult; it is humbling; but it is necessary.