The Cargo Cult of Twitter Journalism

I recently read, with great enjoyment, Richard Feynman's Cal Tech 1974 commencement speech.  For those familiar with Twitter Feynman is a physicist (no need to write about the details of what a physicist does as it has no bearing on Twitter).

The jest gist of this speech revolves around a "cargo cult."  From Wikipedia cargo culture "... encompasses a range of practices and occurs in the wake of contact with more technologically advanced societies. The name derives from the belief which began among Melanesians in the late 19th and early 20th century that various ritualistic acts such as the building of an airplane runway will result in the appearance of material wealth, particularly highly desirable Western goods (i.e., "cargo"), via Western airplanes."

Feynman equates today's ritualistic "science" practitioners with the Melanesians (see http://lwgat.blogspot.com/2012/05/us-scientific-medical-studies-1-in-20.html as an example).

Rather than fully understand what they are doing as they study science instead they merely act as if they were scientists; just as the Melanesians who built runway's expecting planes to arrive with food.

For a long time I have studied the phenomena of Twitter.

Twitter is effectively like communicating with the dumpster diving unfortunate via messages thrown passed through household trash receptacles.

No one actually receives the message as with a letter or even email.

Instead, like a female dog in heat, it's randomly broadcasting throughout the neighborhood.  And you never know what will turn up in response.

So really, then, Twitter if you think hard about it, is sort of like Feynman's "cargo cult of science" except it involves journalists.

From Feynman's speech: "It’s a kind of scientific integrity, a principle of scientific thought that corresponds to a kind of utter honesty—a kind of leaning over backwards.  For example, if you’re doing an experiment, you should report everything that you think might make it invalid—not only what you think is right about it: other causes that could possibly explain your results; and things you thought of that you’ve eliminated by some other experiment, and how they worked—to make sure the other fellow can tell they have been eliminated."

Except today with Twitter it's not just a lack of scientific integrity, but also journalistic integrity, or, perhaps, just basic human honesty and integrity, i.e., there is none.

There is no need for honest speech on Twitter.

No one really cares.

No one verifies anything.

No one has any facts.

No one uses deduction or induction or simple reasoning.

Raw emotion pours out like so much diarreha.

The twitterers simply scream like hungry chimpanzees rummaging through the dumpster of human ideas.

(BTW, I always find ways to post links to these articles to Twitter. I never actually read my Twitter  feed. Instead I merely cast pheromones to the wind.)

Sadly this sort of nonsense now extends to virtually everything you see "published" today, particularly on the internet.

For example there is this National Review article "If You Refuse to Condemn Predators because of Politics, You’re Disgusting (by Katherine Timpf)"

I am old enough to remember William F. Buckley and this sort of National Review content really doesn't seem to me to follow along with what I saw discussed on his television shows in the 1960's.  To wit:

The important thing, at least to me, about the Nation Review article is that it now reads (Buckley founded it) like a front page from the "Globe" or perhaps the "Enquirer" instead of an intellectual discussion of the ideas involved.

You find no real facts.  You see a discussion of a, er, well, about a discussion about tweets.

No (historical) evidence is provide either other than supposition nor is there rational reasoning (think "Feynman").

As to the article:

Everywhere and every day there are victims and their are perpetrators. Hopefully this is obvious.

The powerful exploit the powerless.

It's the reason we have laws here in the US.

These laws draw clear, bright lines around what is acceptable to society and what is not.

Hopefully this is obvious too.

And, at least in the past, we had a free press.  It was their job to elucidate areas in society where things were perhaps less clear.  To cause people to think about what was going on; not to spout rhetoric.

Not to fan the flames over the unknowable or unprovable.

Tweeting does not aid or help anyone - hell you don't even know who is actually tweeting or where they are physically located.

In the days of Mr. Buckley there was a certain hysteresis involved before you were allowed to write for a newspaper or broadcast on television.

Today no more.

(And yes, I am fully engaged in the consequences of the sort of behavior being written about.  I have seen witch hunts as well.  None of these belong in society today.  Yet, by it's very nature, Twitter glorifies them.)