4 Matching Annotations
  1. Jul 2023
    1. Paul Kingsnorth
      • quote -“If you can’t read or understand the ‘peer-reviewed science’ then you are open to being intimidated into fearful silence by those who can, or claim they can. And those people - drawn, as all green ‘thought leaders’ are, from the upper strata of society - will bring with them a worldview which treats the mass of humanity like so many cattle to be herded into the sustainable, zero-carbon pen.”

      • comment

        • The problem can be extrapolated into language itself
        • Any word is just an abstraction and oversimplifies a complex reality
        • if we generalize this argument, it leads to the general claim that
          • abstraction leads to harmful conclusions as well
  2. Nov 2021
    1. the metric oversimplification of scholarly achievement distracts academics and institutions

      metric oversimplification >> distractions

  3. Jul 2021
  4. Oct 2017
    1. My two fears are distortion and inaccuracy, or rather the kind of inaccuracy produced by too dogmatic a generality and too positivistic a localized focus

      These fears are reasonable considering how the majority of ancient civilizations relied on the oversimplification of certain ideas and the authoritarian style rule of absolute law. Their tendencies to wholeheartedly embrace the fabrication of reality with the overly simplistic good of God and evil of the Devil mentality led to many moral conflicts and confusion with other civilizations as well as their own and eventually resulted in their demise. Though the objective truth is not always the best thing to hear, I believe that it is much better to hear that than the simpler, happier reproduction.