Recently I was handed an essay that was very critical of a well known politican and it sounded very extreme in places. But I wondered how much of it was true.

So, I was thinking, we should do this thing where one of us would post an article or essay and instead of debating whether we AGREE with it, we should look for the facts behind the piece and present our findings and then debate on the overall truthfulness of the piece.

Obviously debates on wrong and right will crop up so we'll just have to work to keep them at a minimum. Anybody interested in this???

What difference does it make what facts we find? There is no reality, there are only the agendas of the various media conglomerates. They create facts to uphold their goals, and there's no way we can ever find out otherwise. Given that, we simply must form opinions based on our moral system and filter facts for those opinions; trying to find the truth is pointless in these days of media unreality.

Didn't you see the Matrix? :P

it could work!!!

Let's say you have an extreme Liberal side and an extreme Conservative side...you research both sides and look for commonalities. I think it would be fair to say that where they agree, you are close to the truth.

Pretty much, you're looking for the whole picture. Like...the article can be about a man who pushed a woman on the subway. But if you did research you would find that he pushed her because she was about to be stabbed...or something. That's awfully lame. But you get the idea ;)

In reality, the whole incident never happened, but the high-ups at Viacom decided that this story would lead to fewer people riding the subways and raise sales of cars, thus helping ford which owns a third of their stock! Whereas AOL Time-warner, which produces many romantic comedies wanted to cause increased attendance at their movies so put a more romantic spin on it by saying he was saving her life.

I mean, really, I know all you people here only through your text. I have no actual proof that you even exist! I'm convinced you're really media conglomerate chatbots existing to drive me to buy more things. The only reason I keep talking with you is that I'm really bored. :D

Is this the topic???

A continuation of Ek's sad philosophy thread??? :hmm2:

I'm disappointed :(

Well, if you want to do something else, post the danged article or essay or whatever, so that we can demonstrated that by the power of the Internet you can find evidence for any possible interpretation of it :P