Saturday, June 30, 2018

the future as we (don't) know it

Stalybridge

The full moon rises behind burning moorland as a large wildfire sweeps across the moors between Dovestones and Buckton Vale in Stalybridge, Greater Manchester.
In our neck of the U.S. woods, the local newspaper is offering its usual safe-sex attempts to look into an unknowable future with a story about a heatwave [90's+ F/ 30's C] lumbering towards our neighborhood. Hunker and bunker, boys and girls! 

News is hard enough without pretending that the future is knowable. The present is not difficult enough in an internet age. Guesstimates have replaced facts as the lingua franca.  News outlets strain to be 'relevant' by becoming irrelevant... and, oh yeah, coincidentally cutting newsroom staff.

"Fake news," anyone?
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1 comment:

  1. Andy ShizenJune 30, 2018 at 12:14 PM

    Another Puzzling Post.


    Some of us take the weather on the 4th very seriously, I’ll have you know. Very important decisions need to be made:
    BBQ or Beach or Movie Theater.

    I have seen other posts by you in which you denigrate rational knowledge by stating that it does not meet with some idealized notion of certainty.

    What’s your point? A hatred of any science with probabilistic aspects? An unrequited love of of the impossible dream of certainty?

    As “they” say, “Embrace the unknowable.”

    ReplyDelete