Mammoth-Mud-9609 t1_ja7or8h wrote
America seems to be heading backwards towards this ignorant era again.
foo-jitsoo t1_ja7s4pn wrote
“I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness...
The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance.”
​
Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World, 1996
Mammoth-Mud-9609 t1_ja7uw9n wrote
PBS is the best thing in America.
KingfisherDays t1_ja8corq wrote
Incredibly prescient by Sagan
spiritplumber t1_ja8p96q wrote
Sagan is arguably the only scientist to get a song by Nightwish (although they also cooperated with Richard Dawkins).
LeapIntoInaction t1_ja7pw1u wrote
What makes you think that ignorant hicks ever went away?
[deleted] t1_ja7zv2j wrote
[removed]
james_otter t1_ja80wwx wrote
Wouldn’t be surprising to see a revival in 2025
Kakujya_ t1_ja87iny wrote
Well intelligence isnt very hip these days for some reason despite most everyone being hard up rn.
413mopar t1_ja7vcei wrote
Well , the world will leave them behind. Oh well.
Mammoth-Mud-9609 t1_ja7xz07 wrote
Leaving behind an unsupervised child with a large box of fireworks and some matches is never a good idea.
413mopar t1_ja88n48 wrote
Ah , you have met them also i see.
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