Monday, August 07, 2006
Create your own reality!
There's a TV screen in my elevator. Yes, it's impossible to get away from advertisements even in the 15 seconds (or three damn hours, depending on how many morons pack themselves into the elevator) that it takes for me to go from floor one to floor twelve every morning. Normal TV doesn't play on this screen; instead, it's just a set of sound-byte bastardized news clips. This news is brilliant; until now, I never knew it was possible for news to be less substantive than the mainstream media (which, of course, contains less real information than a dog's fart). It worries me that this is the only exposure to news that some people have in a day. Of course, most of this news surrounds celebrity gossip and scandal, but occasionally there's a headline regarding the number of American and/or Israeli soldiers that died the previous day.
Now, news of this quality wouldn't be complete without the watcher's input. For instance, when the Landis story broke, they put out an online poll to measure public opinion. Normally, opinion polls ask people for their opinion. A very apt one would be: "Should professional athletes be fired for using performance enhancing substances?" Instead, the question was: "Do you think Landis took performance enhancing drugs?"
Hold up. The question here is whether or not we believe in objective reality. Who cares what I think? Either the bastard did or he didn't cheat, but the opinion of the generally uneducated public really doesn't enter into it. More importantly, there's only one person qualified to answer that question, and that man is FLOYD LANDIS. He knows whether or not he did it; you, on the other hand, do not (though, two positive drug tests might lead you to prefer one conclusion over another).
The most amazing thing is that after the "A" sample came back, most people still believed Landis wasn't a liar and a cheater. At last check (7:00 AM Friday morning), 59% of people responded "No". I guess the question that people really were answering was: "What do you want reality to be?"
Now, news of this quality wouldn't be complete without the watcher's input. For instance, when the Landis story broke, they put out an online poll to measure public opinion. Normally, opinion polls ask people for their opinion. A very apt one would be: "Should professional athletes be fired for using performance enhancing substances?" Instead, the question was: "Do you think Landis took performance enhancing drugs?"
Hold up. The question here is whether or not we believe in objective reality. Who cares what I think? Either the bastard did or he didn't cheat, but the opinion of the generally uneducated public really doesn't enter into it. More importantly, there's only one person qualified to answer that question, and that man is FLOYD LANDIS. He knows whether or not he did it; you, on the other hand, do not (though, two positive drug tests might lead you to prefer one conclusion over another).
The most amazing thing is that after the "A" sample came back, most people still believed Landis wasn't a liar and a cheater. At last check (7:00 AM Friday morning), 59% of people responded "No". I guess the question that people really were answering was: "What do you want reality to be?"
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