There’s an easy way to reconcile them… The opinions are “articles should be backed up to prevent information manipulation, a threat to democracy” and “they should be able to hide their mistakes so they don’t get made fun of”
You reconcile them by not letting them stealth edit, and you stand up for them when they made an honest mistake and are being blasted for it
Because at the core of every religion is a tiny grain of truth. It’s 50% intentionally fabricated nonsense, 45% poetic license and the personal interpretation of someone long dead, and maybe 5% of it is truly profound and universal
If you look at religions, they have a lot of commonalities. There is an inhuman, unknowable creator, or source. Then there’s some number of superhuman beings who serve or reject the creator, and may interact with humans. They don’t interact with the creator directly though - they’re also not human, but have some exaggerated human qualities
The abyss, the primal chaos, Ginnungagap for the Norse… It’s the nothing that spawned and makes up everything. It’s ever present, but you know it by acting in harmony with it, and destroy yourself by acting against it.
Then there’s the pantheons, servants, great spirits, naga or what have you - they’re assertions for how to live in harmony with it, some kind of greater being that is partially right and partially wrong. They’re value systems, and they make mistakes in most myths, showing the flaws. Sometimes they created the world from the abyss/chaos, sometimes they created humans, sometimes they just stumbled upon us. Or sometimes aliens that created us as a slave race, depending on how you want to see it.
And then there’s the reason for it - in one way or another, it’s to become something greater through our time alive. Often to become strong or pure enough to be able to join the deities, or to be able to exist in the void without burning to nothing.
You do it through engaging in life - mindfully doing anything will teach you truths about the universe, and through various forms of introspective meditation (or prayer) to bring yourself more in harmony with your version of the truth.
That’s all more like spirituality, but then you spend generations adding in some cautionary tales - we do live in a society after all, these are like bedtime stories that mix our history with the values our society prizes.
Often heroes grow spiritually they make distilled rules to guide the society to improve… Generally they’re pretty reasonable (in the context of the original period)
But then sometimes a more temporary spiritual leader decides they don’t like something - clearly it’s unnatural and unaligned with the truth of existence because they really hate it… So obviously it’s the will of the creator, and it gets tacked on to the guiding code.
And several hundred years later, once the religion has gained institutional power in a much larger and more hierarchical society, assholes just add in whatever is convenient. The core message is forgotten, there’s endless stuff tacked on teaching morals or history that can be reinterpreted… Or maybe society just changed, and you have to drop some rules or lose the flock
Tldr: there’s a core message of how to grow spiritually as a person, and a glimpse of something true about the nature of reality (in a very metaphorical, poetic kind of way). The promise of a reason and a goal speaks to everyone… But then they keep going, and bury the original message by teaching all sorts of other junk, often misinterpreted for an agenda centuries ago, in the same tone. Often misinterpreted today for an agenda.
(Side note, all ancient stories are super poetic and metaphorical, even historical ones… They’re probably just more fun and more easily remembered when they’re repeated around the fire for the next generation)
There’s degrees to be sure though - ticktock is the absolute worst, because it has a lot of content and a good algorithm… Plus, short form video is the easiest to get lost in
Oh, I’m not talking about asking for forgiveness… What I’m saying is that you can straight up make enormous profit in tanking a company, and it’s not even illegal. You just have to do it right
What money train? Sure, he’s famous now, reasonably understands ai, and has a reputation around it…
He doesn’t actually have the ability to advance AI tech. He’s a figurehead chosen to represent engineers and handle the logistics for people who do have the ability to advance this miracle technology
What’s his money train? Joining the circuit of short time CEOs?
The same reason why in the US we have people attacking trans people (even when they’ve literally never seen one in person) and why our monopoly laws have gone from “chop them up for the common good” to “you better stop it or we might levy a symbolic fine”
The political window has been shifted so far right that the left’s position is “we need to be nicer to the people in Gaza, but really carefully since they’ll subjugate us if they have the chance”
It’s not an accident, it’s a small group of people with a lot of money who are investing it in hijacking discourse for their own power.
If you get on tv and start pitching socialism, you’re instantly dismissed as a radical. You can’t even have the conversation - people don’t understand what that means and will instinctively recite nonsensical talking points, because they’ve been fed those for so long it would take an intensive college course to unlearn enough that they can have the actual conversation of “would this work better”. The vast majority has internalized the idea that “raw dog capitalism is the only feasible system”
It’s the same with Israel. They’ve been fed propoganda so long that you can’t have the conversation - they’ve internalized the idea that Gaza is a bunch of animals who want to kill them, and the furthest left thing you can pitch to them is “well, maybe we should improve their situation economically, but we have to be careful not to let our foot on their neck slip off too fast”
Fun fact - there’s a lot of overlap with the groups doing this in the US and the ones doing it in Israel. By that I mean literally the same groups are funding both propaganda efforts, like the heritage foundation
To put that in perspective, let’s say I drink water contaminated with chemicals for decades. Then, “suddenly”, me and half the people i know are sick with cancer and various side effects decades later…
That’s how environmental toxins work. They accumulate throughout the water cycle and through the food web, and if its less than acute (short term) in effect it statistically hurts a population, such as lowering reproduction or creating birth defects that lower the fitness. Then, once concentrations pass LD thresholds (lethal dose, meaning LD50 will kill half of the individuals of a species on average, LD10 would kill 1 in 10) you start getting mass die offs
Every water table, all of the soil, every living being is riddled with non-naturally occurring substances. Even though we released more damaging toxins in the 80s, the rate of pollution doesn’t matter - the concentration in various parts of the ecosystem is what matters, and that’s a slow process
Yeah, it doesn’t do that though, does it? Beta max was better than VHS, hd-dvd was better than blue ray, SD card slots and audio ports are better than not having them.
Hell, look at gaming. The free market makes shit games, because it turns out monetizing the crap out of a crappy product then doing it again is what the free market prefers over quality
Interestingly enough, I spent a summer interning in France. I got homesick and was craving peanut butter, looked for it at the store, learned the word - they had no idea what I was talking about. Showed them it written down and a picture and everything
My host family told me you could find it in the international isle, but looked at me weird… They said they only ate it as a high calorie snack when they went skiing
My point is, even though I’m constantly disappointed by even “fancy” wine and cheese a decade later, a spoon full of peanut butter is a fantastic way to shut down hunger pangs for a few hours.
Honestly, it’s better without bread or toast - that’s just empty carbs anyways. I started getting coconut flakes to sprinkle on top… It’s an easy way to class it up without adding calories or effort… It’s basically a no-bake protein cookie at that point