Common Sense #312 Re-connections with James Burke

[skankhunt42]

Just starting it off, just downloaded, time to listen.

[C-Mag]

Just downloaded

[TheReal_ND]

I seem to recall enjoying James Burke last time they chatted. What was it "Fly on the wall of James Burke?"

[ssu]

Starting to listen.

Nice to see interest on the subject of CS shows.

[Ex-California]

I only got through the intro on my way home from swim practice.

I liked the old James Burke CS, but form the intro I'm really stoked that there's a Blitz HH on the way

[TheReal_ND]

Circa minute 19 Burke asserts we get the feeling that we have a vast array of information at our fingertips but this is simply untrue. There are too many clever filters to work through, without some legitimate effort, in order to find information that doesn't agree with the narrative that hosts such as Google and Bing are subversively upvoting as it were. Burke goes on to claim that people feel like we have less of a say now because of this anomaly where we get "so much information we feel impotent," while juxtaposedly social media makes us feel like we do have a say. This is also untrue. Social media makes wrong thinkers feel like they have no say but by going out of their way to get censored and cause wide spread agitation we understand that we are getting a lot of say despite their best efforts.

Circa minute 23 they are already treating human beings as an amorphous mass devoid of any context and now I'm in minute 26 and they are talking about sci-fi and small blonde girls. Jesus Christ dude.

[ssu]

Few comments on the CS#312

Nice that Dan is working on a Blitze edition HH show. Will be interesting. But one can see this that the CS show is a bit light weight as the focus is on the HH show.

James Burke's comment on the "Disneyfication" of nearly everything (politics, news) is quite fitting. The immediate coverage of events does indeed make things quite superficial. Long thought and and investigated articles or commentary appear only later.

Yet the idea that the 19th Century institutions are failing to respond to the new way of spreading information and ideas (nowdays referred as memes) might a bit too far. Or the idea that the new possibilities that social media gives could not be contained, used and abused By governments sounds a bit naive.

Governments and the elites in power can simply recruit the pacesetters and those bloggers etc. who are followed the most. Deploy people to get in their and promote their views and flame those that disagree. In fact, the whole thing can be turned upside down: the social media gives a far better chance of influencing people than before. A police state like the Soviet Union or East Germany simply collapsed in the enormous task of surveillance of an entire people when humans had to do the work, listen to phonecalls, read letters, but with communications in the electronic form, Computers can basically do what would have otherwise needed tens of thousands of people to do.

In fact you have to have truly good knowledge about things in order to pick up what are facts, what are facts told with a bias, what are opinions and what basically are falsehoods, fabricated facts, especially if a serious propaganda effort is launched by a country with the means to do it.

Burke thinks that in the West there cannot be authoritarian regime in the West. Well, perhaps not a 20th Century type fascism or totalitarianism, but I think authoritarianism can still persist. Russia is a perfect example of this, it doesn't guard every ordinary Russian like Soviet Union did, but once if you do something that goes against Kremlins agenda and try to influence the political sphere what it dominates, then you are for are ride. But otherwise, you have "the freedoms" of the West.

Dan does mention us. Here's the whole 25 seconds Dan uses on the closure of the Forum on the 1h 25min show.

"I do want to mention that we closed down our online forum the other day. Sad to see it go, very long time, more than 10 years. Some of the survivors have moved over to martinhash.com. Over to their forum. So If your looking for them, if feel you cannot find them, go to martinhash.com and they will be on his forums there. I'm glad that they found a Place to land. Thanks for a lot of good years and great conversations though guys. "

Somehow I have the feeling that Dan isn't going to read this forum.

[Xenophon]

Few comments on the CS#312

Nice that Dan is working on a Blitze edition HH show. Will be interesting. But one can see this that the CS show is a bit light weight as the focus is on the HH show.

James Burke's comment on the "Disneyfication" of nearly everything (politics, news) is quite fitting. The immediate coverage of events does indeed make things quite superficial. Long thought and and investigated articles or commentary appear only later.

Yet the idea that the 19th Century institutions are failing to respond to the new way of spreading information and ideas (nowdays referred as memes) might a bit too far. Or the idea that the new possibilities that social media gives could not be contained, used and abused By governments sounds a bit naive.

Governments and the elites in power can simply recruit the pacesetters and those bloggers etc. who are followed the most. Deploy people to get in their and promote their views and flame those that disagree. In fact, the whole thing can be turned upside down: the social media gives a far better chance of influencing people than before. A police state like the Soviet Union or East Germany simply collapsed in the enormous task of surveillance of an entire people when humans had to do the work, listen to phonecalls, read letters, but with communications in the electronic form, Computers can basically do what would have otherwise needed tens of thousands of people to do.

In fact you have to have truly good knowledge about things in order to pick up what are facts, what are facts told with a bias, what are opinions and what basically are falsehoods, fabricated facts, especially if a serious propaganda effort is launched by a country with the means to do it.

Burke thinks that in the West there cannot be authoritarian regime in the West. Well, perhaps not a 20th Century type fascism or totalitarianism, but I think authoritarianism can still persist. Russia is a perfect example of this, it doesn't guard every ordinary Russian like Soviet Union did, but once if you do something that goes against Kremlins agenda and try to influence the political sphere what it dominates, then you are for are ride. But otherwise, you have "the freedoms" of the West.

Dan does mention us. Here's the whole 25 seconds Dan uses on the closure of the Forum on the 1h 25min show.

"I do want to mention that we closed down our online forum the other day. Sad to see it go, very long time, more than 10 years. Some of the survivors have moved over to martinhash.com. Over to their forum. So If your looking for them, if feel you cannot find them, go to martinhash.com and they will be on his forums there. I'm glad that they found a Place to land. Thanks for a lot of good years and great conversations though guys. "

Somehow I have the feeling that Dan isn't going to read this forum.

Well, I think it was a good shout out, and it'll probably point new people to the forum. And Dan will probably lurk if he has time, but given his new priorities, I highly doubt he'll post. It was nice to know that Dan actually took time to mention us refugees. If he truly didn't care, he'd have kept silent. The reddit page and Facebook group are more visible than our little enclave, anyway.

So we should probably sweep up all the broken glass before the new guys get here...

[ssu]

So we should probably sweep up all the broken glass before the new guys get here...

Telling actually of our times. So Dan Carlin has followers that discuss the programs earlier at his forum, then on reddit, then on Facebook, then on Twitter. Am I unaware of other places? And people got scared/annoyed of the Trumpists. Pick your spot where to talk. Fits the picture.

Furthermore, of the show #312:

In the Common Sense show Dan accurately understands that there's a difference between Trump "Super-tweeting" and then actual policies. Interesting comments on Sessions, outside the box -bad. Dan trying to find the silver lining and doesn't find it.

Dan's outside-the-box-GOOD pick: Mattis.

Dan spend some time with Mattis in the CENTCOM meeting. I agree with Dan that Mattis' public image "Mad Dog" isn't true. Dan found Mattis well read, and had a sense of history and sense of limitations.

Anyway, Dan has good insights on the Trump cabinet picks.

[Fish_Happens]

Don't worry folks, we just have to live long enough to see those nanofabricators!!

Honestly I think Burke came off as a long-winded kook.