In the 2016 election, there was widespread concern about “fake news” and media bias. This talk explores the guidance Objectivist epistemology offers for being an objective consumer of the news. How do the requirements of integration and reduction help guide one's acceptance of the reports of others? How do we avoid uncritical reliance on the media without becoming skeptics of journalism as such? How do we avoid bias without abandoning concern for our values?
All six video lessons from Harry Binswanger’s 2016 course The Foundations of Knowledge are online, just in time for Objectivist Summer Conference 2017 in Pittsburgh June 10 – 15. That means attendees who are looking forward to his OCON 2017 course, Concepts and Propositions, will have an opportunity to view (or review) these context-setting lectures.
When I first heard about the “Field Guide to Anti-Muslim Extremists,” I had grave misgivings: the freighted title, by itself, rang in my ears like a siren. Turns out, the “Field Guide” was worse than I thought.
In this episode of The Yaron Brook Show, Elan Journo explores the value of reading (and re-reading) the works of Ayn Rand by showing how her philosophy applies to various real life concretes such as the Southern Poverty Law Center’s journalist field guide to “anti-Muslim extremism,” communism in Fidel Castro’s Cuba and Poland’s abortion laws.
If you picked up a melon that smells rotten, would you bite into it? Nor would I. When it comes to our media diet, the same thing applies: if a news story smells funky, that's a reason not to swallow it. But what does it take to sniff out unreliable news articles?
In this short clip from a longer presentation, two Ayn Rand Institute intellectuals explain how the term “Islamophobia” works to silence rational discussion, criticism of Islam and religion more generally.
