“Science is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking. 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 key 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 America 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. As I write, the number-one videocassette rental in America is the movie Dumb and Dumber. “Beavis and Butthead” remain popular (and influential) with young TV viewers. The plain lesson is that study and learning—not just of science, but of anything—are avoidable, even undesirable.” ― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, 1995
“celebration of ignorance, that other people are bamboozled and tricked into living in non-reality”
“celebrating that others have been manipulated by professionals at Cambridge Analytica since March 2013 to be in alternate-realities”
“celebrating that Russia won using the Menace of Unreality since year 2013 so people in conversations can celebrate the ignorance of people who don’t understand that a nation-state used active measures on media systems and won their hearts and minds”
“celebration of ignorance that other people can be called stupid, that people celebrate on social machines by calling others dumb, celebrating ignorance by avoiding rescuing people from Kremlin alternate-reality warfare for over a decade”
“celebration of ignorance, celebrating how stupid other people are on social machines, messaging day after day that it is hilarious and funny that others are dumb and stupid, offering no education on egoism and morality and celebrating ignorance that other people have”
“celebration of ignorance that other people are inside cults of memes and messages and celebrating that they don’t comprehend the mental mechanics of cult behaviors and cult systems”