The problem isn't learning and sharing information. It's how we communicate that information. There exist scientific and scholarly ethics which most people tend to ignore.

A hypothesis is not a fact. An opinion is not a fact. When they are communicated as such, we are indeed part of the problem.

I haven't had a TV in over 5 years. It's life changing.

The problem is our relationship to information and the trust given to sources.

Our current approach (or the systems approach if you want) doesn't present opinion as an object that can be debated. It indoctrinates opinion into the person as something that if questioned is a direct attack against the person and its value system. This is a huge problem because the first opinion can be installed without conflict. But the second opinion presented is going to fight an uphill battle if it clashes with the first one. In many people this ends up being a form of write-once read-only system.

As for trust. General news sources are often no better than advertisement firms. They take a concept they know nothing about and try to make it sound interesting as they present it to someone who known nothing about it too.

Take something you know well yourself, read a news article about it and realize how much they get wrong and misrepresent it. Now read the next news article by the same author on a topic you know nothing about and ask yourself if that one is likely to get anything more right? The articles generally have the same quality as you yourself decided to churn out an article in 20 minutes on a subject you know nothing about.

If someone is getting paid to write articles, then they'll do it by formula in a way that misrepresents or destroys data value due to the end justifies the means mentality. This is true for advertisements, news articles and unfortunately much of scientific articles too because the author conflates their actual task of data production with the published face of the articles that summarizes and describes it.

Hell, even TV series is following similar formulations. Take a single topic, talk around it to take up a certain amount of space without doing anything useful. Rinse repeat. With a TV series you want to bolt on cliffhangers to lead people to the next one. With a news article online or wherever you want to add "also read this"-bait to get more clicks.

Almost nothing is about informing you or giving insights, everything is a thinly veiled commercially motivated attempt to keep your attention or shape your opinion.

I haven't had a TV in over ten years, watching one nowdays is like watching a never ending self-congratulatory commercial interspersed with time-wasting direct commandments to waste my money on utter garbage. That people can watch it for hours is mind-boggling.

Yeah for sure, I think we need to focus more on the basics of fact-checking and sourcing.

And sourcing includes ourselves, when we share opinions, they should be sourced as such i.e. "I think that...", "My thoughts are...", "According to ___".

This isn't directed at you - you did this in your post above. But it's a detail too often left out and overlooked in terms of importance.

"Canada smells like shit." is a very different statement from "I heard that Canada smells like shit."

I'm not saying that it's easy either, but there is sure room for improvement.

I feel you too, I think it's getting more challenging. There is a (dis)information overload on the internet these days.

My only suggestion is to step away at times. Close /r/conspiracy, close Facebook, step away completely from global current events. Do this regularly - it doesn't have to be long. Even for a day.

Not only does it remind us that our daily lives aren't as volatile as the daily headlines, but for me it clears the mind and makes it much easier to filter things upon return.

After starting to think that the sheeple are falling for mainstream media, I noticed the comments in major media outlet articles. Look at major outlets in the UK, US, France, Canada, Australia, Germany etc.

Look for an article about Syria, or Hillary, Clinton Foundation, or Putin on a MSM outlet's website, and you'll probably see at least one comment from someone trying to out the truth. In my case, every bloody top voted comment was calling out the so called journalist [!] and how much the article stunk of propaganda.

Indeed the comments are sometimes great. I think it varies greatly site to site though.

But there's much more to TV and mainstream news than simply believing it or not. Just watching it in the first place, even as a critic, has a negative effect on your mental health IMO. Even if it's on a subconscious level, I don't think it's possible to be completely immune to the fear-mongering, desensitization, promotion of destructive themes, etc.

Haha wow you were downvoted for this?

Perhaps by the so called journalist? Anyways I've noticed this too, I think many years ago it started as almost stupid satire and straight up meme-ification you started seeing truth's and "theories" put out in the internet in dumb memes and phrases but everywhere

Now you see more discussion and well... shit.

Throwing away one's TV-- along with all of one's downloaded television shows, and one's neflix account, and one's Amazon equivalent to netflix, and one's HBO go account, and all ties to the world of television generally, is the best thing anyone can do for their mental health.

I haven't given up my Netflix just yet, but canceled my cable TV service close to two years ago now. Now, when visiting family or friends whose minds are still held in the clutches of TV's Mental Programming and Conditioning Brainwash Services for the Empirical Agenda...and happened to see the networks ABC's World News Tonight with David Muir and his terror troll sidekick and known liar Brain Ross, it only brings on a gut wrenching sense of repulsion and disgust.

They are acting the news if that makes any sense to anyone. When they talk about Muslims and terror they act as if they are on a high state of alert, almost paranoid. The reporters out in the field affect their voice to sound almost as if in a state of panic.

and Brain Ross...just reads off the most ridiculous anti-Islamic Zionist BullShit propaganda every.fucking.time. It's nauseating.

Get rid of the TV and after a few weeks you will actually feel happier, more alert and clear minded. You will then become sensitive to the insanity that is the MSM and realize you were living in that manufactured reality.

Even Reddit How They Destroyed Reddit

It's depressing how addicted people are to mindless entertainment and instant gratification. People don't even know how to feel good anymore, and instead get addicted to the adrenaline rush of reading incendiary clickbait or ruminating on and forming an identity around suffering and being a victim.

Society has been whitewashed and sanitized of all genuine creativity. Our art is meaningless. Our music is void of feeling and almost wholly computer generated. People become famous for bullshit self serving reasons. We glorify psychopaths and extreme narcissists. Movies are vapid and unoriginal. The limits of our imagination have hit a strange ceiling. Scientific development as a whole has slowed to a crawl. People think we have it all figured out and hubris keeps minds from changing. Society is backsliding into another era of gross ignorance and the darkness of tyranny and mass exploitation.

We are hurdling into a nightmare reality. It's a new Babylon, a land of nonsense and confusion where many are screaming but nothing worth while is being spoken.

If there ever was such a time as the appearance of a cosmic celestial reality, now is a ripe time for a new manifestation.

Throw away your television, now.

Did it 17 years ago.

Your post is a bit like the pot calling the kettle black. Sorta playing devil's advocate but sorta not... Knowledge and ideas are powerful. Sounds like you have a few common topics here that you're not a fan of.

New, prolific media is here. It is one thing to take what you absorb with a grain of salt, and another entirely to just bury your head in the sand. In some ways, it is better to just keep an open yet skeptical mind than to limit yourself to your sources. The moment you begin to limit your sources strictly is the moment that bias becomes you. I do understand the point of the OP's rant, but it doesn't seek to pinpoint the why of what's going on. I believe that the hard truth about normal government operation has been rescripted as conspiracy theory and thus comedy while pro-human rights action has been relabeled as inappropriate power grabbing. Then to top it off, selfishness and entitlement programs have been sold to people as a means of achieving personal satisfaction, now relabeled 'the greater good'. Who decides the poverty level? Where does the line between not enough and too much lie? There is no right answer, but the media will be happy to tell you with absolute certainty.

i need it to play atari

Do you want to be put in a government watch list? Cause this is how you get put on a government watch list.

Right now I find it very helpful to click "hide" in any post mentioning Trump or Clinton.

But yes, mainstream TV is horrible, and I havnt even watched it in a decade. I happily gave it up in favor of the internet 20 years ago, and have gotten away from even hanging out with friends and watching.

Anyone who does is in for some serious brain washing! I am highly intelligent, so I mainly find it amusing to pick out the plots and likely strategies being used against the populace, but then get sick to my stomach when I realize that most have NO IDEA.

I mean, even my older brother leaves Fox news running 24/7 in his office, so he can get "the truth"

The world is a scary place when yoibrwalize how many brain washed people are around you.

How They Destroyed Reddit

A fan of Mr Robot?

I watch mostly history or archaeology shows on YouTube now, as well as Minecraft Let's Plays and cooking videos. Maybe still superficial, but it doesn't rot my brain like reality TV does. Let's face it, the only reason why anyone watches Kim Kardashian is because we all wish we could fuck her, but we never will, so for me that's just a form of pointless torture.

[deleted]

KK is a disgusting, idiotic attention whore.

Of course she is. I wasn't talking for one moment about her psychological or moral character as a human being. I was talking about ejaculating all over those perfectly manicured eyelashes. It is an urge that is just as morally or psychologically repulsive as Kim is herself.

I used to really look down on people who are supposedly superficial, but my last LSD trip in particular allowed me to really analyse my own thought processes, and I realised that in a lot of ways, I'm just as shallow and pretentious as everyone else. So sure, Kim might be completely revolting, but the reason why I'm not going to hate her for it any more, is because I now know that in several ways, I am too.

Don't throw away your TV. You should get a DVI to HDMI adapter, hook it up to your PC and watch YouTube or Netflix on it. It probably has a nice screen. Just stop paying for TV programming.

But what will I watch when I'm trying to ignore my family?

I'm back to watching the odd TV show now, like Game of Thrones when they were being released, Mr Robot just passed (something sinister about it) and Westworld looks to be the newest one. They are enjoyable and only an hour a week, but I agree that there is a lot of conditioning going on - the effects of it I would need to think about.

But, last year I had completely ceased all watching of TV. I was meditating every day and filling my time with 'mindful' practices and eliminating as much junk as possible from my life and barely used the internet. I certainly felt more lucid. One thing I remember in particular is trying to watch a TV show at this time (I think it was an episode of Games of Thrones again) and finding it a very tough, draining experience - just too much information and it takes you on too much of a emotional roller-coaster. It is like we become blunted and desensitized by a lot of this media. I didn't enjoy it all like I have recently and had to stop watching after 5 minutes. But now I don't meditate, I'm not nearly as enlightened or lucid in my thinking and I can watch it all no problem. I was happier back then and felt more alive and I'm disappointed to have lost the way.

They don't seem compatible. I mean you could learn more about nature and spirituality using a computer, but you aren't experiencing or practicing the real thing until you are away from it. Then again you can have a spiritual experience from watching nature documentaries, as I have in past experience so it's not black & white. In general though I do feel more disconnected from myself and nature the more time I spend connected to a computer, I noticed it got to the point where I rarely use my brain to work stuff out anymore - just eternal googling for answers and researching to the point of 'analysis paralysis', when in fact a lot of the time you can use your own brain and imagination to work things out. But that's just me .. everyone is different.. at the core most technologies aren't inherently bad or good - that result is determined by an individuals interaction with them.. and in terms of entertainment there are unhealthy and healthy forms.. I see a lot of kids visiting sites like worldstarhip-hop and getting completely desensitized and fucked up from looking at all that shit, then again there are great educational podcasts and fascinating documentaries out there which help you grow as a person.

Get a job.

Taking out the trash for mom and dad doesn't count. Your parents are sick of supporting you! Take a shower, shave, and put on your Sunday best... then hit the streets and start filling out applications at all the fast food joints in town. Someone will take you...maybe...

You wouldn't like it at my house, we have three TVs!

See, I told ya so.