One thing that can be noted from the various camps in the Philippines’ sad “political debate” is that the starting point of assertions is always one’s political or personal loyalties. As such, the goal of most participants in this “debate” is to re-enforce beliefs rather than engage in an intellectually-honest search for the truth.
Facebook has, of late, been under fire for applying an algorithm that prioritises content by inferring what users want to see from the behaviour they exhibit while logged onto the site (or its suite of apps). According to its critics, it magnifies the effect of confirmation bias and multiplies the effect of herd behaviour which then contributes to the spread of “fake news”.
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In reality, Facebook is not the only tool intellectually-dishonest users use to cocoon themselves in an echo chamber of like-minded cronies. Every social media site allows users to “mute” and “block” other users whose content they prefer not to see or hear. This is perfectly sensible when one is dealing with “trolls” and “bots” as well as rude and offensive people. However, these are also features certain “influencers” use to block and mute people who respond with valid or well-articulated points. What these “influencers” don’t realise is that by muting arguments counter to their beliefs and, in the process, progressively surrounding themselves with people who agree with them, they are also mimicking the behaviour of the very Facebook algorithm they criticise.
Discussing amongst like-minded pals is easy and gratifying. But true intellectual challenge lies in engaging people who disagree and pose compelling counter-arguments to one’s theses. In short, people who are lazy thinkers find comfort in the embrace of communities of like-minded folk. True intellectuals seek the challenge of testing their ideas in hostile territory.
There is much more to be learned from people who disagree with you than from people who agree with you. When you find that a discussion is too congenial and all participants in a forum are acting like cheerleaders rather than exhibiting a balance of healthy skepticism to what you say, the more intelligent response to such a situation is discomfort in comfort. A life spent cloistered in a comfort zone is a life spent allowing one’s faculties to progressively be blunted by lack of challenge and one’s character dulled by a lack of routine reality checks.
benign0 is the Webmaster of GetRealPhilippines.com.
I have visited many countries and the dear old Philippines is the bottom of list when it comes to intellectualism and learning. I don’t see anything changing even with your great savior President
You’re not making any sense. To humor you, those words are what a left-leaning liberal would say. How much more are the people who voted for some like Donald Trump?
And yet most, if not all, of these countries rely on the Filipino mentality and intellectualism to do their work for them. Incredible!
Those countries are already prosperous long before the presence of “pinoy workers.” =_=
Pinoys don’t have magic blood.
> I don’t see anything changing even with your great savior President
Oh, you must feel really intellectual right now. Kudos
Web Blogsites are the best forum/venue, that came with the Information Technology. Everybody has the chance to write his/her opinion. Whether the opinion is with sense or nonsense. It will depend on the WebMaster to edit it, or delete it, if it does not fit to his liking.
Unfortunately, the mainstream media has lost its credibility, already. Most of the writers of the mainstream media, has prostituted themselves, to be propaganda mouth pieces of politicians’ political agendas.
Those activist who are defending “Press Freedom”. don’t understand what they are fighting for.
The mainstream media in the Philippines, is a captive entity of the Feudal Oligarchs, who themselves are mostly our political leaders.
Now, most of Filipinos can now understand, disinformation, political propaganda, Fake News, or politician’s political agenda news.
This is global mind problem not an Philippines problem. Examples, recently it was revealed in America that the same person that attacked President Trump with a fake dossier is the same person that attacked President Obama about being a Muslim. The usual person decide to believe or not believe the information according to each person’s political belief overall. The problem is that very few people wanted to see real evidence or facts and social media and people spread the lies faster than the truth.
We’re all tired of ignorance held up as inspiration, where vicious anti-intellectualism is considered a positive trait, and where uninformed opinion is displayed as fact.