What you’re talking about boils down to who to trust. Unfortunately, governments are notorious for abusing such trust. I can’t fault anyone who questions the way things are, and why- assuming of course that they are receptive to answers other than “it’s a government conspiracy to control us.” Not that that’s never true, but it’s certainly not always true.
It’s not just governments that these people distrust, it’s anything they don’t understand. That includes science. Science does not have a political agenda.
Unfortunately, governments are notorious for abusing such trust.
Source? Because that assumes that this is the normality. Which is interesting as a statement, although of course it massively depends on your local government, but not everyone lives in Syria or so.
This always gets carted out, and yet then people always have to point at the same dozen or so big things in hundreds of years of gov history, and never mention the possibly billions of non-abused trust moments in the same space of time.
Edward Snowden immediately springs to mind… You can add in most of the law enforcement agencies in every country with the presence of the internet and cell phones. How many eyes are we up to now?
I think healthy skepticism when it comes to the government is good. Especially if people want transparency. Holding them accountable for abuses is even better, but has been less than ideal in practice over the years.
Unfortunately, people tend to skip healthy skepticism and dive right into conspiracy driven paranoid delusions, and lack of government accountability does feed into that mindset. Combine that with Maga propaganda, fox News, and other extremist media and we’ve got a shit show.
What you’re talking about boils down to who to trust. Unfortunately, governments are notorious for abusing such trust. I can’t fault anyone who questions the way things are, and why- assuming of course that they are receptive to answers other than “it’s a government conspiracy to control us.” Not that that’s never true, but it’s certainly not always true.
It’s not just governments that these people distrust, it’s anything they don’t understand. That includes science. Science does not have a political agenda.
Science does not, but science gets funding from people with political agendas, so it’s not immune.
Source? Because that assumes that this is the normality. Which is interesting as a statement, although of course it massively depends on your local government, but not everyone lives in Syria or so.
This always gets carted out, and yet then people always have to point at the same dozen or so big things in hundreds of years of gov history, and never mention the possibly billions of non-abused trust moments in the same space of time.
History…
Edward Snowden immediately springs to mind… You can add in most of the law enforcement agencies in every country with the presence of the internet and cell phones. How many eyes are we up to now?
That’s not what the question was about? I mean sure, if you stop after that exact word and immediately hit “reply”.
I think healthy skepticism when it comes to the government is good. Especially if people want transparency. Holding them accountable for abuses is even better, but has been less than ideal in practice over the years.
Unfortunately, people tend to skip healthy skepticism and dive right into conspiracy driven paranoid delusions, and lack of government accountability does feed into that mindset. Combine that with Maga propaganda, fox News, and other extremist media and we’ve got a shit show.