Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Virginia Rand on April 9, 2011 at 5:45pm

lol!

Yea, being in regular contact with people who have different beliefs to you seems to be a really good thing. Just hanging out with people who agree with you always seems to cause problems.

Permalink Reply by Mick Wright on April 9, 2011 at 5:48pm

Well, yeah, it's an echo chamber. Your own views get normalised, and without any balancing influence things just lean further and further one way as more and more things are taken for granted. More and more extreme views are normalised in their turn because they're fully accepted when no one disagrees. It's a spiral.

Permalink Reply by Virginia Rand on April 9, 2011 at 6:01pm

And the deeper you get, the harder it gets to claw your way out. I'm embarrassed by it now, but I spent some of my teenage years as a neoliberal and It took being quite traumatically confronted with the evidence to knock me out of it.

Permalink Reply by Mick Wright on April 10, 2011 at 6:03am

I'm pretty liberal myself, in the 'an it harm none, do as thou wilt' sort of way. But I'm pretty socialist too - I'd rather have my health care controlled by the government than a private corporation, since the former has to please voters and the latter only has to please shareholders.

Permalink Reply by Virginia Rand on April 10, 2011 at 7:11am

Yea, and it's not just the fact that they're more accountable to the general public. One thing a lot of people don't know is that it can be cheeper as well. For example, the English government spends less per capita than the US government, just because the fact that there is only one major buyer drives the price of medical treatment down. Usually I'm not in favour of artificially lowered prices, like subsudies for french farmers that take money directly and indirectly from farmers in poorer countries in the EU, but this is one place where I think it can be justified.

 

Hmm... bit of a rant there...

Permalink Reply by Mick Wright on April 10, 2011 at 7:22am

Aren't rants kinda-sorta useful in this context, though? I mean, I didn't know that about all this - I'm not very up on economics, being a giant geek in the more sci-fi sense - but it's interesting stuff nonetheless.

Permalink Reply by Virginia Rand on April 10, 2011 at 8:24am

Yea, my habit of ranting will probably be very usefull for making a podcast, but also being able to learn when I find out I'm wrong. I think that's probably the most important thing.

Permalink Reply by Mick Wright on April 10, 2011 at 11:27am

What would the crack be there, anyway? Maibag-answering format, audio blog thingy...what sort of things would it involve?

Permalink Reply by Virginia Rand on April 10, 2011 at 1:26pm

Not quite sure I understand you're first sentence, but I'd like to have a mix of mailbag content, comment on news and events, and descussion of general topics.

Permalink Reply by Mick Wright on April 10, 2011 at 2:03pm

'Ah, just regional slang that's a bit more regional than I thought it was. XD 'The crack' is basically what's going on. The situation. I'm only a little concerned that we might have trouble getting hold of topics at some point. Still, if we set up a thread on here for it, that'll function as a mailbag and let people bring sources and news they want discussed.

Permalink Reply by Virginia Rand on April 10, 2011 at 2:36pm

I don't think we'll have too much trouble finding topics. Just googling 'religious news' brings up so much interesting stuff. It just takes me a few minutes to get all wriled up and ready to rant.

 

The discussion post sounds like a great idea, and I think an e-mail address would be cool as well.

 

I've been thinking a bit about names for the podcast as well. What do you think of 'the learning atheist'? It was the best I could think of... (#*-*#)

Permalink Reply by Mick Wright on April 10, 2011 at 2:44pm

Yeah, brainstorming time. 'Doubting Voices'? 'Speaking Up'? 'Run That By Me Again' (It Can't Be As Stupid As It Sounded)?

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