I've read a number of past posts from people in this thread and I know from experience that many of you are perfectly intelligent people whose viewpoints I respect, so please don't think I'm calling you stupid here. The fact is I'm frustrated by the dismissively destructive skim reading attitude, and that's what's going to come through below.
psood0nym, if we read everything that anyone ever suggested to us to read we'd be drowning in text and not able to read the things we'd like too.
Ok. Then don't try to discuss them. What would be the point of that? How is that engaging with a topic? That's going to book club for a Moby Dick discussion and opening with "Who does this arrogant jerk think he is telling me to call him Ishmael."
I'm not interested in reading a block of text that just looks like someones own opinion unless they provide a decents summary of points. People who write too much often do so because if they just got to the point no one would bother with their perspective.. they hide their pointless ramble behind a wall of words.
It's
Matthew White writing the cover story of Wired. It's a feature length long form journalism piece by an author who is sought after and paid a lot for his journalistic research, not some half baked logorrhea on the internet. That's your cue to make up your mind whether you're going in for the long haul.
A summary of points is exactly what allows people to think they know what something is about without learning anything and simply imagining something reinforces what they already think. You have to put it the effort to
learn from worthwhile writing (don't stop reading here and comment, read on, I'm not done with my point yet).
Though I do (to some extent) agree with your sentiments here, have you considered the possibility that most people in the world are so utterly indifferent toward and/or amused by this so-called '2012 phenomenon' that bothering to ingest an article of this scope about said topic, which article could, depending upon one's average reading speed, take upwards of fifteen minutes to complete, would be an incomparably pointless and silly waste of their time?
Despite the fact that I posted the article in here under its own title, the actual substance of the article has nothing to do with 2012 apocalyptic predictions,
something that should be obvious from the fact that it's a feature length piece in Wired, and would be obvious if one thoroughly read even the first few paragraphs or even actually skimmed it as -=SS=- claims. That's the point (one of them at least). Every one who's made comments about comments here would know that if they had done either before delighting in criticism. You need to use cues not in the text to tell you whether it's going to be worth your time or not, or make a leap of faith. That's what being literate is about. Sorry, I know how condescending this sounds, but seriously, this is the truth of it
I mean, look at the first sentence of the second paragraph, it foreshadows what it's really about: "
Religious zealots hardly have a monopoly on apocalyptic thinking." <--- This is why skimming doesn't tell you anything. Because you've done that and concluded the writing is about something it's obviously not! This is what I'm saying. It's a simple fact of how deriving knowledge from all forms of long form literature operates, sorry. You read the first four or five graphs of an article or the first 30 pages of a book!
The title is to attract attention, like near every book or article title in existence these days, and is used as a thematic framing device (this is how books and long form articles work to gain and maintain readers). What the article is, is, as stated, "a good summary of all the reasons why we're going to be perfectly OK." It's something to reference when there's any alarmist talk involving mass catastrophe whatsoever, with the 2012 apocalyptic doomsayers simply being the most glaringly obvious examples (doomsayers who frequent this forum, thus the article being a handy source for helping them learn counter perspectives without us having to try very hard because here's a summary in one place [my stated reason for posting this in post #1]).
What the article does is go through the last 50 years of alarmist predictions that have not remotely come to pass made, not by random nutters making claims that would be "a silly waste of time," but by the likes of Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, The World Health Organization, Scientific American, The International Energy Agency, US presidents, and others whose authority we need to rely on because we absolutely cannot independently research all risks that surround us (This isn't interesting? Then I guess I wasted your time. But I'd be very interested in knowing what is interesting). It goes through alarmists beliefs held by highly intelligent and informed people in positions of power to make its points. And so, if these sorts of people believed such things,
that's what makes these examples practical references for discussing the entire spectrum and history of alarmist claims, including the nuttier end of it. Even if you've read about some of these before, here's a bunch of them all in one place, historically organized. That still makes it worthwhile. Go ahead and link to a series of bullet points on the internet that does the same if you disagree.
