Paradocracy

I’m watching  America’s Got Talent  when a 12-year-old girl arrives on stage. She says she’s a stand-up comedian, which usually means (at that age) that her parents are generally responsible for the content. So, as she begins the set, she starts making jokes about how funny it is that babysitters her age are trusted despite the fact that their primary qualification is that they used to be babies. She goes on to compare that to trusting people as doctors on the basis that they have been sick before. Up to this point, the comedy works. It is observational, accessible, and genuinely clever.  There is a natural rhythm to the logic, and the humor arises from genuine observation. It draws people in and allows them to laugh at the absurdities (as framed) of everyday life. This is the kind of comedy that succeeds without manipulation — it engages the audience, builds rapport, and rewards the listener with cleverness rather than coercion or divisive insults.  It turns out to ...

With the wealth of information at our fingertips in this age of information, technology, and artificial intelligence, it is compelling to believe that automation is on its way to fulfilling our every need; and, for those who are even more anti-social than the average (and that’s saying a lot in the modern age), they even view this progress as obviating the need for human interaction, that human interaction is now, or soon will be, antiquated, unnecessary, or replaceable. However, that is simply wishful thinking among the anti-social and misanthropic types who underestimate the intangibles of human wisdom and the necessity of human relationships. So far as flesh-and-blood human beings are to inhabit this planet, there are simply no substitutes for those intangibles. Wisdom comes through the transmission of values and culture, not from Google or ChatGPT, and personality is developed through real relationships and childrearing; each having a major bearing on personal, academic, and profes...

The following fiction captures much of the essence of the thinking person’s experience in the Internet/Information Age, and the extremes of contrast between an ‘informed’ netizen and an experienced leader in his field. The purpose of this story, although rather humorous, is to illustrate just how corrosive, distracting, and disruptive many people have become in the modern world as a consequence of having an excess of information where they lack dearly in earned wisdom.  The basis of this tale is real, as there are actually people in this world who run the argument featured in the story (and other arguments quite like it), who feel justified not only in maintaining this belief but in starting such arguments in an effort to gain attention, to insert themselves into conversation, and to elevate themselves by making other people feel or look stupid — even when the agitators themselves (the ones initiating the arguments) are the ones who are wrong or out of accordance with ‘the science’...