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EPA says it will eliminate its scientific research arm

(www.nytimes.com)
241 points anigbrowl | 6 comments | 18 Jul 25 23:00 UTC | HN request time: 0.645s | source | bottom
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jleyank ◴[19 Jul 25 00:00 UTC] No.44611189[source]▶
It's really depressing how the US system seems to have existed "on belief". Once somebody set out to damage or destroy it, away it went. Pretty much without a whimper.

As I recall, the system was set up with 3 branches of government in tension. Obviously, that was naive.

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ergonaught ◴[19 Jul 25 00:15 UTC] No.44611292[source]▶
All societies are consensus realities wholly dependent upon participation.

The system was fine but no one has yet constructed a system that can withstand weaponized mass stupidity. Even the ones created to combat corruption fail to account for this danger.

So.

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echelon ◴[19 Jul 25 05:46 UTC] No.44612892[source]▶
Weaponized social media. That's what wasn't predicted.
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1. wyldfire ◴[19 Jul 25 05:57 UTC] No.44612941[source]▶
Maybe the abnormal thing was the century or so we had of papers/radio/TV guided by ethics or professionalism or some delicate trustworthiness-equilibrium.

And now we have returned to a state where humanity is guided by inventive stories and manipulated by propaganda.

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2. pfannkuchen ◴[19 Jul 25 06:17 UTC] No.44613028[source]▶
This implies that the period with massively more centralized control of information had a truer consensus reality.

That seems… unlikely?

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3. neltnerb ◴[19 Jul 25 06:23 UTC] No.44613058[source]▶
At least they mostly felt the need to pick a single consensus reality to approximate. How well it represented common experience, well...
4. oblio ◴[19 Jul 25 07:18 UTC] No.44613293[source]▶
You know what the weirdest thing about that century is? The Soviets.

A sort of seemingly valid communal society seemed possible so all the other capitalism based ones had competition and as a result were trying to improve the life of citizens.

I'm starting to become more and more convinced that as real fear of Communism disappeared at the top, our systems are regressing to the mean.

5. beezlewax ◴[19 Jul 25 08:12 UTC] No.44613566[source]▶
It was better than the illusion of freedom of information a lot of people have now. In reality mass manipulation is happening on a global scale at unprecedented levels.
6. maxerickson ◴[19 Jul 25 16:52 UTC] No.44617119[source]▶
It wasn't that centralized (many many independent newspapers and such).

And then "information" is doing a lot of work when you start talking about social media.