No, you're self-comforting. Those people chose to listen to Fox and Bolt, chose to make them champions and voices, and chose to filter them in and filter all of that other highly reputable content out to arm themselves with justification for their pre-existing desire. They were seeking copy-paste quips, gotchas and cult bum slaps, not conducting research.David wrote:But here’s the problem: all of those academic journals and UN/WTO/EPA press releases combined had a fraction of the readership of Andrew Bolt or listenership of people like Alan Jones and John Laws (or, in America, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly and Tucker Carlson).
That's how the brain works for all but the borderline mentally retarded and vulnerable. 'Truth' and 'fact' are to be found elsewhere, mostly through counter-motive or convenient/accidental/random incentive alignment. The most robust space of thought is probably enlightened self-interest, mutual interest, and reciprocity (doing a lot of research in cognitive biology for an AI-related project).
They know about the Koch funding and know that funding creates bias. Know full well. They know Trump is talking outright lies and gibberish. they will admit it very directly under the right circumstances. It's got nothing at all whatsoever with not knowing the facts or the fragility of what these supposed idols are saying. And they will turn on any one of those people in a second, and trample on their carcasses, if useful idiots like Carlson don't say what they want to hear. They did it with Fox recently when it started questioning Trump, and dropped Glenn Beck like he was carrying a vial of anthrax when they realised he was damaging their cause by being too satirical.
It's a parochial commitment, not a naive misunderstanding. And ridiculously easy to demonstrate, including experimentally.
| 1902 | 1903 | 1910 | 1917 | 1919 | 1927 | 1928 | 1929 | 1930 | 1935 | 1936 | 1953 | 1958 | 1990 | 2010 | 2023 | 
On foot being hit by one can kill you. F=MxA.
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