So Let’s Hear It For The Echo Chamber Unless We Disagree…
Definition of echo chamber
: a room with sound-reflecting walls used for producing hollow or echoing sound effects – often used figuratively
Now, I could be nasty here… However, I’m used to putting up with teenagers who are sometimes rather nasty to teachers and I’ve learned that fighting fire with fire just leads to a bigger fire. It’s usually best to fight fire with something else such as water or some form of chemical retardant… And no, not drugs…
Anyway, there was a comment about something I’d written where I was accused of being a “Covid zealot” in an “echo chamber”. Like I said, I could have been nasty and gone down the literal path and asked him what he means by echo chamber and then pointed out that he was using it in the sense that most people use it… probably because that’s how all the people he normally reads use it and he has no idea of the etymology which I’ve added at the start of all this and…
But – like I said – I’m used to teenagers and I have a firm belief that everyone can learn… even me but I’m old and just like the saying says, “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks…”
Oh wait, I’m not a dog.
Anyway…
I reflected on his comment and thought about the whole echo chamber thing. It’s interesting that it’s usually only applied to people perceived to be left of centre by people who are so far away from the centre that they argue Hitler was a socialist. Or so out of touch with the mainstream media that they don’t realise that Labor are so far left that The Greens find it difficult to work with them because The Greens are so extreme that they…
Anyway… I didn’t mean to start the whole Green/Labor war here because this is an echo chamber and how could anyone vote for the one that someone will tell me they’d rather vote for Clive The Palmer than the other one….
I mean, when was the last time you heard someone refer to the Catholic Church as an echo chamber? Or any other Christian church that hasn’t been defined as a cult?
Every morning, I read “The Financial Review”. This, of course, is not an echo chamber because we have a variety of different opinions of the best way to make money… some of it involves letting the poor die, while others argue that the poor can still be put to work in some meaningful way once robots have taken their jobs….
I could go on…
Actually, I will.
If you looked at any of the front pages of the Murdoch Mead-jar on Monday you’ll notice that they all had something in common… No, I don’t mean the day and date… Geez…
It was all about the chance of turning this whole global warming green thing into gold… I may have misread it because I only ever read the headline unless I can get to the paper first while I sip my soy latte…
(That’s meant to be irony. I never drink soy because I support our dairy farmers in spite of being a lefty who reads the Finn and sips lattes and votes for a different party every time just to keep them guessing. I actually considered voting for the Liberals when Abbott was challenging Gillard then Rudd, just so I could say, “Well, I voted for Tony Abbott and I’m disappointed and I won’t be voting for him again!” …Yes, I know that we don’t ACTUALLY vote for our Prime Minister. Do you think I’m in some stupid echo chamber?)
Now, I’m pretty sure I could snatch the paper from the cold, dead hands of the idiots reading it in my local coffee shop but I’d like to go back because I’m not Tony Abbott who can come and go as he pleases… (Not libellous, so don’t even suggest it, REMOVED FOR LEGAL REASONS!)
In the end, I don’t mind echo chambers as long as they don’t hurt the ears. I’m confident the someone will disagree and tell me I’m wrong and explain why and that’s the way it should be. And I have the freedom to decide whether I take that on board and reassess things in the light of new information… Or whether I can just say, you idiot, you’re living in an echo chamber… which is an oxymoron, if you think about it…
Or even if you don’t, an oxymoron is an oxymoron whether you think about it or not…
In the end, I encourage everyone to disagree with me but there’s two things I think are very important:
- I don’t like stupidity
- There’s no reason to be mean unless you’re in an echo chamber that argues the best way to change the world is by mocking others….
Oh fuck, I’m guilty on both counts.
Thank god, you’re not really guilty until a court decides so I can be presumed innocent.
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Return to home pageRossleigh, I too am intolerant of fools.
Such a pity that this country is full of them.
This is clever and so depressing. Seems psychologists know that you cannot argue with a bigot of any stripe so avoid anyone who is convinced. This poses problems as it becomes solipsistic relativism . It makes for example the delusions of my late husband as credible as the hospital ward.
Dystopian novelists have tackled aspects of this. Descartes / Malebranche and Hume have considered this among others.
I suppose intelligent people are less sure of themselves than fools are. That is why intellectuals are the first to be sent to gulags or shot.
All I can say is that you seem to have a world in your head as I do and that it is probable my senses show me a world filtered in a human way and that bees and lizards see the world differently.
Species linked echo chambers. No matter? But humans kill if they are aggressively inclined to force you to accept their madness instead.
By the way hitler was in some respects a socialist. Depends how you define abstractions.
Could we all start a political party and get voted in to power? I am certain there are more brains here on AIMN than in the entirety of Parliament House.
Josephus, Adolf was not in any reasonably defined way a socialist. He was, probably, a neurotic psychopath, with serious but partly controlled and suppressed schizophrenia. Posed pictures with dogs, children, a forced laugh, a social gesture, all deceive; he “needed” some acceptance and could “appear” to accept the masses as existing, though his appalling student paintings show not one human. Claiming to recognise/accept/”need” other humans is a curse in his many blemishes, impure hypocrisy, a flaw of what basis, genetic?? or environmental?? Perhaps his lost testicle might tell a story…his close associates knew all this, an SS and/or Gestapo file collection has never been recovered, and he progressed into a controlled insanity as an evergrowing enlargement of himself, a flawed magnification or distortion, doomed to die by self inflicted escapist cowardice. His flawed teeth, his physique, his puny posture, his behaviour, habits, mannerisms, social ignorance and pushy childishness define him, as an oaf, a misfit, a curse. He was an Adolfian, and hated that deep down.
Ha ha ha Rossleigh. Unfortunately, the world has a surplus of fools.
Separated, living on my own I have no issues with my echo chamber. 😁
Geez Rossleigh ….. I still have that article echoing around in my head just as the text echoed the banal utterings of the present Australian politicians ….. nonsense and no commonsense. [See… now you have me doing it!!]
It appears that you are considering forming a religious church/cult with a view to accepting government largess and taxation concessions from auxiliary commercial endeavours for the benefit of the congregation with the longer term objective of forming a new political party to guarantee government support for those same commercial endeavours.
A worthy calling ….. which the former Nazional$ leader John Anderson is pursuing to insure that his favourite picadillo, the financially inviable Northern Inland Railway, will haul CSG from the Pilliga gas-fields to the export ports to maintain high CO2 emissions overseas.
I wonder how many people I could get to join a party that I’ve been thinking about for some time: Who Cares About the Politics We’re Only in it for the Money Party.
Oh wait…rats, the LNP beat me to it years ago.
What’s the bet that Gina and Twiggy will be first in line making orgasmic noises and grasping motions when, and if, this scheme gets off the ground.
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/nsw/perrottet-backs-australia-s-biggest-hydrogen-plan-to-power-state-s-future-20211012-p58zdk.html
Sigh, further to my comment at 8.50 am: Guess who is “backing” DoPe’s hydrogen plan.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-10-13/andrew-forrest-backs-nsw-green-hydrogen-plan/100534458
Corruption R Us at work again yet again?
Hello hello, is that an echo I hear, yes it is, a cacophony of lying political advertising with empty promises promising shit.
“Currently, there is no legal requirement for the content of political advertising to be factually correct.”
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-10-13/fact-check-is-it-perfectly-legal-to-lie-in-a-political-ad-/100511796
It is of little wonder why we don’t trust politicians when they can lie with political advertising and it’s not a crime! FFS!
Ditto Keitha, certainly are! Wow the acoustics here are great.
Yes, good idea, Keitha. But who do we nominate?
I’ve lost count of the number of times someone has mentioned here it was their wish that Kaye Lee enter politics. I agree. She’d be a real tiger – someone in the mould of Helen Haines.
If the LNP and Labor (to a certain extent) had their way they would cheerfully crush any contenders for federal politics. Consider the recent member increase for any group that want to contest elections: up from 500 to 1,500 members to even be considered as a party. That’s just the start of the process because I’m betting more higher hurdles are lurking in the background..
GL, I also heard that the government wants to prohibit the names of new parties from having similar names to existing parties.
I think it had something to do over a new party called The New Liberals, whose intent, I believe, is to be true liberals.
It’s ridiculous that the Australian Liberal Party call themselves Liberal. They are anything but.
In other parts of the world they’d be known as Tories, Republicans, or whatever name identifies them as right-wing.
Who gave them that name anyway?
Well done, ossleighra, there are but few echoes there and one echo chambre when I read ‘green labor war’ as if there was some relevance to Labor and one lone loonie. It is hard not to lapse into stupidity and I agree with disliking oneself when it happens. So chin up, Rossleigh it will be alright in the morning.
Hear hear Michael KL
Indeed, wam. KL. And let’s add Rossleigh and Grumpy Geezer too. Parliament would be a hoot.
Might as well keep your snouts in the trough for as long as you can before you officially resign, eh, Gold Standard Glad and Porkilaro.
https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/if-you-re-going-to-go-go-retiring-mps-still-receiving-salaries-20211014-p5904y.html
If it was someone from Labor you would be screaming from the cliff tops for them to leave straight away.
Roswell,
They are liberal, liberal with handing out tax payers funds for pork barrelling, greasing the palms of the miners and corporations and maatteess, lining their own off shore pockets, etc. If you’re one of the 90% the only time they remember you is around election time and when they need to recover the costs of their corrupt practices.
Lunacy! Sheer lunacy!
https://www.news.com.au/travel/travel-updates/health-safety/nsw-home-and-hotel-quarantine-to-end-for-overseas-travel/news-story/5a7ee20469c2681bcc61207921b8c0b3
Ye dogs! Now Scummo has shut down DoPe’s idiot reopening plan.
https://www.news.com.au/travel/travel-updates/health-safety/nsw-home-and-hotel-quarantine-to-end-for-overseas-travel/news-story/5a7ee20469c2681bcc61207921b8c0b3
DoPe is screwing up badly and he’s only been “in charge” for 10 days.
Matter of principle…bullshit! It’s all about Porter trying to keep his hands on his cash.
https://www.smh.com.au/national/porter-pursuing-appeal-over-settled-defamation-case-on-a-matter-of-principle-20211015-p5909n.html