@Kwakigra
@beehaw.orgI had quite the ontological shock when I was exposed to methods of investigation and information which was systematically collected and reviewed by people who I became familiar at University. My formerly conservative beliefs were shattered under the weight of the scrutiny which I was now able to apply to them, which caused extreme discomfort because many of the premises which I had planned my life around were not only false, but easily disprovable with the slightest examination. Since then I've tried not to be stubborn about the beliefs I hold and will criticize new information instead of dismissing it (although some information can be criticized so quickly it can be dismissed rapidly).
There hasn't been hard evidence presented for the new claims of extraterrestrials on Earth to my knowledge, nor have the claims been disproven (these specific claims can be disproven). I choose to withhold judgement on the phenomenon until a sufficient amount of evidence is provided (in my opinion, I suppose) or the claims are disproven, but I'm not going to dismiss the possibility that the claims are true off-hand.
That particular Kuhn work is one that I often come back to in snippets even though I haven't read it through yet. It definitely made me aware how much the era I'm living in informs what others and myself consider to be fact. Especially in studying History I find many decisions which people really made completely baffling in a contemporary context, but norms were fundamentally different according to that place and time.
My worldview is not fundamentally different than the Christian worldview you described. Although I have a strong preference for Empiricism, I understand that it's mostly a subjective preference of mine rather than the ultimate method of epistemology. According to empircal data, application of empirical reasoning has yielded the most consistent with reality conclusions which we have currently made. Every aspect of the previous sentence is loaded and some elements may not be strictly true, but it would require a different method of reasoning to determine that which may not even be compatible. This makes me sympathetic to scientific anarchy even though I have my personal bias towards empiricism above other methodologies. It does make me curious as to what truths I myself am incapable of appreciating due to my practical adherence to material reality and preference for evidence and scientific consensus.
Probably, but it wouldn't be as easy since each instance has different design, admission criteria, and access to other instances. A bot would have to be based on a given instance, so a botnest instance could be cordoned off. If it becomes a bigger issue, each instance may have their own way of dealing with it so the bot would have to be capable of not only negotiating the above obstacles but also how to get around a variety of different ant-bot measures.
While I know why the Texas government would want to make sure children are exposed to nothing but official state propaganda, hopefully an unintended consequence of this is to put a massive hole in the monopolistic mainstream social media userbase since the uncontrollable web including the fediverse would be the only alternative in these states.
This is very similar to the development I've experienced, thank you for sharing the process itself. Our brains naturally chunk information, so the use of schemas to understand abstract concepts I think is completely intuitive. As you pointed out though sometimes a schema can turn out to be an over-simplification which falsely indicates a topic is less complex than it truly is. It's interesting to look over all of the cognitive traps we're vulnerable to which we could never escape if we didn't admit to ourselves we could fall into them.
This quandary reminds me of an experiment on intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. A control group of toddlers were given paper and crayons and were advised to draw whatever they wanted, which of course they did. The other group was offered a reward if they drew a picture (candy I think). They found that the toddlers who were drawing only because they wanted to without any reward being involved drew significantly more drawings than the group of toddlers who were drawing to receive compensation for it.
There's something about commodifying the things you like to do that takes something away from them. Writing just on your own terms for a while without regard to an audience is not worthless because firstly it has meaning to you and secondly it can be part of a creative process which leads you to what you would want to publish in the future. Taking a break from writing and reading the work of others is similarly productive.
In our age of misinformation, how do you determine whether the new information is based in reality?
I strongly second the recommendation for the free online class Learning How to Learn. I've taken it twice, the second time as a refresher after a few years. It's light, well presented, easy, and really revolutionized my approach to learning new things.
The first thing I'll utilize these tools for is to finally teach me how to use Github so I can use the rest of these tools.