As I continue to peruse google links for the extent of attention to my youngest brother, Pastor Mike Stahl (after his National Atheists' Registry proposal) I am amused by the degree to which resident net-heads are victims of their own over-think. (Ironically, it was Pastor Mike himself, in a blog about 8 months ago, who made reference to atheists as congenital "over-thinkers"). In this case it concerns whether his blog - and specifically his National Registry proposal - was a "Poe" or for real.
Now, for those who are blissfully unaware, according to the word gurus at Wikipedia :
"Poe's Law was originally formulated by Nathan Poe in August 2005.[2] The law emerged at the Creation & Evolution forum on the website Christianforums.com.[3] Like most such places, it had seen a large number of creationist parody postings and these parody posts were usually followed by at least one user starting a flame war (a series of angry and offensive personal attacks) thinking it was a real post. Nathan Poe summarized this pattern in his original formulation of the law:
Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is utterly impossible to parody a Creationist in such a way that someone won't mistake it for the genuine article. "
And subsequently (ibid.):
"However, the usage of the law has grown, and now the term "Poe" is almost synonymous with any parody on the internet. "
Well, maybe...except if you're his for real (blood) brother who has expended something like 2 gigs debating this guy and trying to instill some rational sense into him! And also beheld the gigs HE has put up on any number of fundamentalist topics near and dear to his heart.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but no "Poe" devotes or expends THAT much energy! In other words, make no frickin' mistake that all Pastor Mike's blog positions are honestly and sincerely held and not remotely "parodies". (As I've often kidded him, he wouldn't recognize parody or irony if either came up to him and bit him on the butt.)
So why this pre-occupation with insinuations and speculations that this or that blog is a "Poe" when the answer ought to be patently obvious to anyone with a grain of common sense?
I trace this back to the "Facebook" effect, and the counterfactual nature of web reality itself which is now infecting millions of brains, mainly those of the young -say between 17- 29- putting them through multiple hysteresis loops toward an ultimate dumb down. It's not pretty to see, which is why I avoid most blogs - unless some unique event is triggered (such as my brother's proposed registry and the reactive outcry) that bids me to visit them out of curiosity.
Much of this brain degeneration has already been dealt with by author Mark Bauerlein in his The Dumbest Generation. In his book he depressingly documents how the under-30 crowd are foregoing knowledge-based maturity to wallow in a self-confected, solipsistic, social mirror world of their own egos and selves. The fallout includes their not even meeting basic standards of knowledge for employment, far less earning a degree that actually means anything.
One dire consequence as regards higher level analysis and thinking (of which the "Poe" syndrome is an imitator): A delimited reality is confected via over-exposure which deliberately excludes the harsh outside world, and confines the personalized reality to chirpy “how r ya’s”, or gossip, mainly in deformed English which Bauerlein ranks just above the reading level of pre-school children’s books (determined by the median frequency of rare or difficult words per 1000 – with print newspapers at the top with 68.3 and pre-school books at 16.3)
The entire mental superstructure was revealed in the words of one 16 year old girl quoted (p. 137-38) when asked by a journalist if she wasn’t worried that she was denied a broader picture. Her illuminating retort: “I’m not trying to get a broader picture, I’m trying to get what I want”.
Out of the mouths of “babes”! But are we really helping to engender a generation of über-dumpkopfs? Maybe, maybe not. At the very least the Twitter-Facebook obsession (compulsion?) may be contributing to the emergence of a generation of pseudo-intellectual Babbits governed by their own opinions, supported by very little factual basis. (See for example how many are totally invested in the "Poe" paradigm despite objective reality screaming at them: Wake the fuck up, bozo!) How can they assimilate a factual basis when the language to describe much of what is happening in the world’s most critical domains exceeds the language difficulty level to which they’re accustomed?
Just take what’s happening in the world of global finance with seminal events in Greece, Spain. the UK, Portugal and now the U.S. (last month) with the down graded bond rating. Do these net-wits even know what a bond rating is? Do they understand the full repercussions? Hell, do they understand the difference between a demand poor economic environment and a supply-poor one? Can they describe the basis of the Pareto distribution?
Who knows?
Are most electronic media addicts even aware that a Greek-style austerity crash might see them pawning their laptops at the nearest pawn shop just to buy a few Mickey D burgers and fries! How many of the Twitter-Facebook generation are aware of any of this? How many even think it’s relevant to their lives? (Well, maybe they will when their college loans are affected, new conditions applied, e.g. higher interest rates, or college tuition, room and board etc. are increased 50% or more).
Or wait! Maybe they think all the Standard & Poor's kerfuffle was just one big POE!
Any person can basically access an electronic medium if they apply even minimal effort, that includes cell phones, TV, video games and twitter. Any person can also employ those media to blab nonsense, gossip or indulge in aimless chatter. But what defines the adult mind is whether it can tackle a serious print work such as Being and Nothingness, The Origin of Species, The Origins of the Federal Reserve System, or ‘Relativity’ – the popular rendering of special and general relativity by Albert Einstein. Thus, the barrier to adult intellectual capacity is breached once one proves he or she can handle the latter.
And, IF one can handle the latter, then he is most likely going to be mentally able to discriminate a genuine manifestation of a Poe, from the real (non-parodied) McCoy.
As for Pastor Mike, let's get real for once and not let a faux skepticism cloud what is abundantly obvious...or should be!
Now, for those who are blissfully unaware, according to the word gurus at Wikipedia :
"Poe's Law was originally formulated by Nathan Poe in August 2005.[2] The law emerged at the Creation & Evolution forum on the website Christianforums.com.[3] Like most such places, it had seen a large number of creationist parody postings and these parody posts were usually followed by at least one user starting a flame war (a series of angry and offensive personal attacks) thinking it was a real post. Nathan Poe summarized this pattern in his original formulation of the law:
Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is utterly impossible to parody a Creationist in such a way that someone won't mistake it for the genuine article. "
And subsequently (ibid.):
"However, the usage of the law has grown, and now the term "Poe" is almost synonymous with any parody on the internet. "
Well, maybe...except if you're his for real (blood) brother who has expended something like 2 gigs debating this guy and trying to instill some rational sense into him! And also beheld the gigs HE has put up on any number of fundamentalist topics near and dear to his heart.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but no "Poe" devotes or expends THAT much energy! In other words, make no frickin' mistake that all Pastor Mike's blog positions are honestly and sincerely held and not remotely "parodies". (As I've often kidded him, he wouldn't recognize parody or irony if either came up to him and bit him on the butt.)
So why this pre-occupation with insinuations and speculations that this or that blog is a "Poe" when the answer ought to be patently obvious to anyone with a grain of common sense?
I trace this back to the "Facebook" effect, and the counterfactual nature of web reality itself which is now infecting millions of brains, mainly those of the young -say between 17- 29- putting them through multiple hysteresis loops toward an ultimate dumb down. It's not pretty to see, which is why I avoid most blogs - unless some unique event is triggered (such as my brother's proposed registry and the reactive outcry) that bids me to visit them out of curiosity.
Much of this brain degeneration has already been dealt with by author Mark Bauerlein in his The Dumbest Generation. In his book he depressingly documents how the under-30 crowd are foregoing knowledge-based maturity to wallow in a self-confected, solipsistic, social mirror world of their own egos and selves. The fallout includes their not even meeting basic standards of knowledge for employment, far less earning a degree that actually means anything.
One dire consequence as regards higher level analysis and thinking (of which the "Poe" syndrome is an imitator): A delimited reality is confected via over-exposure which deliberately excludes the harsh outside world, and confines the personalized reality to chirpy “how r ya’s”, or gossip, mainly in deformed English which Bauerlein ranks just above the reading level of pre-school children’s books (determined by the median frequency of rare or difficult words per 1000 – with print newspapers at the top with 68.3 and pre-school books at 16.3)
The entire mental superstructure was revealed in the words of one 16 year old girl quoted (p. 137-38) when asked by a journalist if she wasn’t worried that she was denied a broader picture. Her illuminating retort: “I’m not trying to get a broader picture, I’m trying to get what I want”.
Out of the mouths of “babes”! But are we really helping to engender a generation of über-dumpkopfs? Maybe, maybe not. At the very least the Twitter-Facebook obsession (compulsion?) may be contributing to the emergence of a generation of pseudo-intellectual Babbits governed by their own opinions, supported by very little factual basis. (See for example how many are totally invested in the "Poe" paradigm despite objective reality screaming at them: Wake the fuck up, bozo!) How can they assimilate a factual basis when the language to describe much of what is happening in the world’s most critical domains exceeds the language difficulty level to which they’re accustomed?
Just take what’s happening in the world of global finance with seminal events in Greece, Spain. the UK, Portugal and now the U.S. (last month) with the down graded bond rating. Do these net-wits even know what a bond rating is? Do they understand the full repercussions? Hell, do they understand the difference between a demand poor economic environment and a supply-poor one? Can they describe the basis of the Pareto distribution?
Who knows?
Are most electronic media addicts even aware that a Greek-style austerity crash might see them pawning their laptops at the nearest pawn shop just to buy a few Mickey D burgers and fries! How many of the Twitter-Facebook generation are aware of any of this? How many even think it’s relevant to their lives? (Well, maybe they will when their college loans are affected, new conditions applied, e.g. higher interest rates, or college tuition, room and board etc. are increased 50% or more).
Or wait! Maybe they think all the Standard & Poor's kerfuffle was just one big POE!
Any person can basically access an electronic medium if they apply even minimal effort, that includes cell phones, TV, video games and twitter. Any person can also employ those media to blab nonsense, gossip or indulge in aimless chatter. But what defines the adult mind is whether it can tackle a serious print work such as Being and Nothingness, The Origin of Species, The Origins of the Federal Reserve System, or ‘Relativity’ – the popular rendering of special and general relativity by Albert Einstein. Thus, the barrier to adult intellectual capacity is breached once one proves he or she can handle the latter.
And, IF one can handle the latter, then he is most likely going to be mentally able to discriminate a genuine manifestation of a Poe, from the real (non-parodied) McCoy.
As for Pastor Mike, let's get real for once and not let a faux skepticism cloud what is abundantly obvious...or should be!
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