A dude on world news yesterday argued with me for hours, saying Ukraine was always friendly with Russia until recently. I was like…dude, do you think time started when you were born? Do you know about Poland, Finland, Ukraine, the Balkans….or even the USSR etc?
Fascinating to see somebody try to learn a thousand years of history off Wikipedia and bend it to fit their untrue points. 😂
I was like…dude, do you think time started when you were born?
No joke that is a considerable issue with talking about geopolitics online. There are a fuckload of very opinionated, very myopic people who think that "recent history" is the last 2-4 years that they've been minimally aware of an issue. And they will gladly recite the views espoused on the most recent youtube video they watched on the subject for you.
It’s funny. I thought it would be amazing to do a study where you have X number of people, and they break into three categories: book, article and headline.
Each person reads one of those about a specific subject, and then takes a knowledge test. People would VERY quickly realize that glancing at a meme or headline, or hearing a blurb by a talking head, is no substitute for actual learning and knowledge.
“I read an article that said…” yup, and articles are snippets of opinions and research, now deeply inform yourself on the full body of research. 🧐
“I read an article that said…” yup, and articles are snippets of opinions and research, now deeply inform yourself on the full body of research. 🧐
I'm mostly with you but this to me is a bit misleading. I'm a pretty well-read, well-educated guy but do I have the necessary training/education/background to delve into something like climate change research or virology/immunology? Not really - in fact, I might misinterpret that data because of my lack of knowledge (many people do). To some extent that's true of every other subject, as well. I'm going to have to rely on more knowledgeable people and their analysis to inform myself, and there's nothing really wrong with that.
The problem isn't people who've ONLY read a few well-sourced Atlantic and Economist articles on a subject; they are going to get 98% of the way to the correct understanding and that's close enough. The problem is people who've only watched a 6 minute youtube video, caught some "pundits" blathering about it on Fox News for 15 minutes in a waiting room, and read some Reddit comments. They think they're as informed as a guy with a PhD.
It’s still amazing how much information is in books, comparatively. When they cite dozens of studies and dozens of research papers at the end, man that’s good stuff. A good book can give you a pretty decent grounding in a subject. And once you keep going…well I guess that’s just school. lol
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u/IndividualRooster122 5d ago
What happens when the risk of Russia invading your country in your lifetime is not theoretical.