I have been attempting to understand the problem of epistemological relativism. What leads people to believe that belief supercedes evidence? I believe I have it boiled down, corporate controlled media. The whole thing about nations and corporations is that they rely on "top down" control. Where does the control come from? Consider the statistic known as Shannon's entropy, a measure of the communication potentials of an information system, where maximum is found when equal probability information codification into symbols or representatives occurs, an ergodic rendering of the information source. When certain concerns that have a stake in the preservation of endemic anarchy, control media availability and content, Shannon's entropy is low. Some communications are disallowed assuring noncompliance with attempting to maximize one's sustainable information flow or ergodicity.
The major source of misinformation in the world today is corporate controlled media. As media commonly exists one can rank the degree of untrustworthiness. Television tops the bill, with few controlling many. Radio requires less big money and has more "truth" to be found but again, is not finely dividing the information source enough amongst a larger population of potential channels to make truth common place. Written media seems to hold the greatest potential. Many can write and with the advent of the internet, the sources of written material have sky-rocketed. From my observations I suspect that truth is more common place on the internet and on our library shelves than on radio and especially TV.
Much of the presentation on television communicates a world view where death and suffering is common place and acceptable as a form of entertainment. People become fascinated with the horror and more willing to let the real suffering in the world exist. They become desensitized to atrocities.
There is exceptional TV but it is commonly not seen. Decent documentaries are often buried in night time slots or not aired at all in many locations. The coming of video downloads and streaming over the internet has come to help alleviate this problem. I now see that it is possible to get a direct satellite set up with many channels without having to pay a subscription fee. I've messed with satellite TV before, setting up a couple of the large residential dishes way back when and perusing the programs available via a school project. I see that a local surplus electronics store is offering sets of dish and receiver for less than $200 that are claimed to give you "thousands of international channels." I might just pick one up. Any one here do it and what do you think of the experience?
