Daniel Dennett Quotes
We used to think that secrecy was perhaps the greatest enemy of democracy, and as long as there was no suppression or censorship, people could be trusted to make the informed decisions that would preserve our free society, but we have learned in recent years that the techniques of misinformation and misdirection have become so refined that, even in an open society, a cleverly directed flood of misinformation can overwhelm the truth, even though the truth is out there, uncensored, quietly available to anyone who can find it.
Daniel Dennett, Philosopher, Breaking the Spell: Religion As A Natural Phenomenon, 2006
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
Arguably, in the intelligence world, most of the classified documents are not truthful because there are many different work products that are designed to obtain all points of view. There have been major areas were NONE of the documents on a subject were true as they were all based on faulty assumptions or ignoring critical information. None of the classified intelligence documents even hinted at the breakup of the Soviet Union for example. By number, most of the documents in the FBI secret files are raw intelligence reports and are full of unverified opinion—including biased and self-serving statements.
See {115604} for a similar sentiment from England.
The conclusion that almost all scientists who have studied the problem of climate change and global warming us that there is a substantial change ongoing. That conclusion is reached as the result of literally thousands of observations and studies about the many aspects of climate change. Like any other science, a number of studies have flaws and there are many who fear that government funds will be used to cope with climate change at a cost to the economy. They point to the flaws of individual studies or researchers and have spent millions of dollars to produce uncertainty into the mind of the pubic and politicians. Science, however, ALWAYS has uncertainty and flaws are ALWAYS discovered in established scientific principles. It does not mean that these larger theories and principles are wrong if several of the studies or points are wrong and are understood in a larger and more sophisticated context. Einstein’s Theory of Relativity could be foolishly be called wrong because Einstein did not take account of what would become Quantum Mechanics and there were some contradictions. None the less Relativity is still the most important physical discovery of all time and influences all thinking in physics even though he could not account for the very small physics of quarks, electrons and other atomic particles.
The Presidential Campaigns of 2008 and 2012 shocked many Americans for the blatant lies that opponents of President Obama wrote and broadcast and then some of the retaliatory lies that Obama defenders responded with. However, this quotation from a 19th century political historian shows us that blatant lying in American politics is not at all new.
Theodore Roosevelt was the Presidential nominee. See {634097} and {585962}--Samuel Johnson, for a 1758 version of this idea.
Daniel Clement Dennett III is an American philosopher, writer, and cognitive scientist whose research centers on the philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, and philosophy of biology, particularly as those fields relate to evolutionary biology and cognitive science.
