Oof. I've thought about using ChatGPT for this before. I'm skeptical on whether it's ethical, but AI-generated essays are...okay. Like, the writing itself is okay, but I could do better with some time. Plus, AI-generated essays don't really flow the same way a good writer does. And between the two, Claude does a better job at achieving flow than ChatGPT in my experience (over the last month).
To directly address the essay, nah: the masses aren't manipulated, at least by nefarious political actors. They manipulate themselves to be susceptible to weaponization. I mean, how else can a person rationalize being anti-vaccine and anti-mask as healthy during a pandemic? It's illogical, but that's the thing: it's not about thinking. They take what they feel as right and rationalize it second. Everybody does this, but intellectually honest people have some checks and balances, appeals to authorities on the matter being one of them. Those susceptible to weaponized stupidity have closed the distance between their feelings and understanding of reality. That is, their feelings are themselves an epistemology, a way of knowing the world.
So, science, with it's skepticism, is nonsense. It can't be that hard to know that the earth is round and flat and that the sun is only a few thousand miles above rather than 93 million miles away. It can't be that hard to know that only two genders exist. No more, and no less. It's obvious. And it's definitely obvious that freedom and liberty are concerned with the individual capacity to act. Limitations on whatever a person wants to do is evidently tyranny, by definition.
And many people believe these things (to the extent that they've thought about anything at all) before they're exposed to weaponized stupidity. That is, they're stupid before they're weaponized. It's only a matter of weaponizing that stupidity, not really crafting and molding it..
You're going to really play like people aren't programmed when this ignorance is blasted all over the airwaves 24/7? When most people who believe this bullshit speak and think in slogans they learn from Tucker Carlson or Sean Hannity? Bruh.
You’re going to really play like people aren’t programmed
Yeah, I'm going to play like people aren't mindless drones to be programmed, play like they have independent thoughts and feelings. Yes, I'm taking people seriously.
The shit on Fox News merely rehashes what they already believe. Fox News isn't trying to get new viewers. They have the highest viewership rates in the country lol. Their business model is keeping people tuned. And you don't do that by introducing new shit. There's a reason Hollywood can't stop with the superhero movies: they work to produce revenues. It's the same with Fox News.
If we follow your logic, you think it's a matter of simply stopping Tucker Carlson and Hannity from broadcasting their views. If that stops, then people will calm down. They'll be less weaponized. I don't think so.
I think someone else will step in to weaponize their stupidity. The Fox News audience that is invested in that world view wants to be stupid. They're asking and willing to be used. And as long as there is someone out there to weaponize them, to speak to their stupid ideas and their feelings completely removed from reality, and channel their stupidity into undoing modern civilization, then they're all for it.
If we follow your logic, Fox News is doing this because it's fun, and not because it gains power for the extreme right from which they draw funding.
You're a prime example of weaponized stupidity.
You said:
If we follow your logic, Fox News is doing this because it’s fun, and not because it gains power for the extreme right from which they draw funding.
I said:
There’s a reason Hollywood can’t stop with the superhero movies: they work to produce revenues. It’s the same with Fox News.
I'll decline to return the baseless, intellectually dishonest, demagogic insult, but I was explicit about my logic and what it meant.
