Ignorance Paladin: Have Statistical Facts, Will Travel

[C C]

For A Fact-Based Worldview

EXCERPT: Hans Rosling [...] fights with statistics against myths [...] and tries to counterbalance media focussing on war, conflicts and chaos....

The Ignorance Project

EXCERPT: . . . Statistical facts don’t come to people naturally. Quite the opposite. Most people understand the world by generalizing personal experiences which are very biased. In the media the “news-worthy” events exaggerate the unusual and put the focus on swift changes. Slow and steady changes in major trends don’t get much attention. Unintentionally, people end-up carrying around a sack of outdated facts that you got in school (including knowledge that often was outdated when acquired in school). With the Ignorance Project we identify the specific global statistical trends that have not reached a broad public audience. We ask people questions about major trends and patterns....

[Magical Realist]

Most people understand the world by generalizing personal experiences which are very biased.

This points up the fact that experience, as given in its human form, is basically a specific if not anomalous occurrence of the universe from one first person pov, We don't experience the universe in its generalized ideal form, as laid out by the laws of physics and probability, because we are such a small part of it, like an ant's experience of the jungle. Even on the broad scale, of a first person awareness of a specific environment multiplied 7 billion times, does not sum into a generalized purely statistical experience of reality. A billion centricities do not add up to one center. Reality is intrinsically perspectival, personal, and eccentric. It is not one omniscient overview happening as if from outside of it. It is billions of individual fragments and pieces coalescing into one ever changing kaleidoscope or fractal. Taken in its entirety, we are not even sure if the universe as it is experienced from a human pov isn't in fact an anomalous exception to the rule instead of the rule. Maybe consciousness is an example of an improbable outcome becoming temporarily mainstream enough to consider itself the measure of all reality. Maybe the universe happening transcendentally in inscrutable darkness IS the rule. Then the universe happening as shown and on display to one disembodied observer, the defining archetype behind science, would be a delusional myopia imposed by our anthropocentric pov.

[Yazata]

One reason why I'm starting to dislike 'intellectuals' is their habit of dismissing everyone else as 'ignorant' and telling everyone that everything they believe is false. The academic world seems to be dominated these days by revisionists. Apparently everything that the general public believes about the world has been shown by the professors to be false.

Unintentionally, people end-up carrying around a sack of outdated facts that you got in school (including knowledge that often was outdated when acquired in school).

So we aren't even supposed to believe our teachers and professors?

With the Ignorance Project we identify the specific global statistical trends that have not reached a broad public audience.

But we are supposed to believe the 'Ignorance Project'? And it's statistics that supposedly makes these people superior to everyone else? I don't believe it. (Which doubtlessly makes me a 'know-nothing' and a 'denier'.)

Of course, if the general public is as ignorant as they believe we are, then democracy is a misguided dream and instead of ruling ourselves we should ideally submit to being ruled by an academic oligarchy of superior people who aren't ignorant as we supposedly are. (These people, presumably.)