How accurate was the movie “The Founder” about Ray Kroc and the McDonald brothers?

“Up until the time we sold, there was no mention of Kroc being the founder. If we had heard about it, he would be back selling milkshake machines.”
~ Richard McDonald, The Wall Street Journal, 1991

How accurate was the movie “The Founder” about Ray Kroc and the McDonald brothers? That is a question someone asked at Quora, to which I offered a response.

There is criticism and disagreement, some of it quite strongly held, although mostly about minor details. An example is which person came up with using powder mix for milkshakes and when that happened. But the overall story about the business appears to be accurate. One of the few major points of contention is whether or not there ever was a royalty agreement based on a handshake, as the two sides told different versions. So, it partly depends on which side one considers more credible and trustworthy. Though some claims can be verified from documents, much of what the film is based on comes from various personal accounts.

Other debates are more philosophical, such as the meaning of being a founder. The McDonald brothers founded the business model and franchised it before Kroc partnered with them. They had gone so far as to have already sold franchise rights in Kroc’s hometown, which Kroc had to buy out. What Kroc founded was a real estate empire in owning the land upon which franchises were located, this having been the source of wealth behind McDonald’s becoming an international megacorporation.

See below for more info:

Is the McDonald’s Movie ‘The Founder’ True?
by Lena Finkel

So is the film true-to-life? Well, that’s debatable upon who you ask. Kroc and the McDonald brothers had, shall we say, disagreements about whose idea it was to franchise and use the now-infamous golden arches. Kroc also claims that after he officially took over the franchise, he ran the McDonalds brothers out of business at their original location (which they maintained per their agreement) by opening a brand new McDonald’s across the street — a fact which the McDonald brothers vehemently disagree with.

But the bare bones of the story seem to be accurate. As for the details, it looks like the movie is following Kroc’s account of the events, which makes sense since we’re guessing The Founder had to get certain permissions from the fast food restaurant in order to use his name, etc.

How Accurate is ‘The Founder’? The True Facts About McDonald’s Will Surprise You
by Kayleigh Hughes

[P]retty much everything biographical about Kroc is true. […]

Other details in the film aren’t quite accurate, though. For example, though the film indicates that Kroc himself came up with the idea of franchising McDonald’s, in fact the McDonald’s brothers had already begun franchising the restaurant before they met Kroc. Money reports that they had about six locations by 1954. And while the film suggests Kroc also gave the brothers the idea of the iconic “golden arches,” Business Insider notes that the brothers had architect Stanley Clark Meston design them in 1952. […]

One thing that had to be accurate in The Founder, though, was any representation of McDonald’s, including branding, iconography, and restaurant designs. That’s because, as the New York Times explains, the makers of The Founder were allowed to use McDonald’s iconography as long as it was accurate and did not misrepresent the company. So, production designer Michael Corenblith was meticulous about the set design, using “old photographs, blueprints and other archival material” as well as “under the radar” visits to older McDonald’s restaurants to get exact measurements. The final representations, including two full-sized working McDonald’s restaurants maintained “absolute high fidelity.”

You can rest assured that The Founder is a film whose crazy story is in fact pretty darn accurate.

New Movie ‘The Founder’ Explores Entrepreneurship’s Dark Side Through McDonald’s Origins
by Joan Oleck

The movie starts with the message, “Based on a true story.” How close to the real thing was this?

Very close. The one thing you should know is that every single movie that comes out today that is a true story, historical, is going to say “based on a true story,” for legal reasons. Because, for instance, I’ve got Michael Keaton playing Ray Kroc; I don’t have Ray Kroc playing Ray Kroc. And there are certain scenes where there was no stenographer in the room, so you’re making up dialogue. So, from the legal standpoint, they always say “based on a true story.”

[The Founder, though, was very close to what happened]. The most harrowing lines that come out of Kroc’s mouth are his actual lines: ‘If a competitor was drowning, stick a hose down his throat.’ ‘Business is war.’ ‘Dog eat dog, rat eat rat.’ Those are actual quotes.

The Founder Movie vs True Story of Real Ray Kroc, Dick McDonald
from History vs. Hollywood

Did Ray Kroc renege on his handshake deal to pay the McDonald brothers a percentage of the revenue from the franchises?

Yes. After the brothers refused to give Kroc the original restaurant, he supposedly cheated the brothers out of the 0.5 percent royalty agreement they had been getting, which would have been valued at $15 million a year by 1977 and as high as $305 million a year by 2012 (according to one estimate). In his book, Kroc wrote, “If they [the brothers] had played their cards right, that 0.5 percent would have made them unbelievably wealthy.” Relatives of Richard and Maurice McDonald say that Maurice (Mac) was so distraught that it attributed to his eventual death from heart failure a decade later. -Daily Mail Online

Did Ray Kroc really credit himself with being the founder of McDonald’s?

Yes. After the McDonald brothers sold the company to Ray Kroc in 1961 for $2.7 million, he began to take credit for its birth. “Suddenly, after we sold, my golly, he elevated himself to the founder,” said Richard McDonald in a 1991 interview (Sun Journal). Kroc reinforced his claim of being the founder in his 1977 biography, Grinding It Out: The Making of McDonald’s, in which he largely traces McDonald’s origins to his own first McDonald’s restaurant in Des Plaines, Illinois (it was actually the ninth restaurant overall). However, he does include Dick and Mac and their original restaurant in his book. Kroc didn’t open his Des Plaines restaurant until April 15, 1955, roughly seven years after the McDonald brothers opened the original San Bernardino location in 1948 (The New York Times).

‘The Founder’ and the Complicated True Story Behind the Founding of McDonald’s
by Kerry Close

The sale left Kroc bitterly angry with the McDonald brothers for keeping the original location. He opened a McDonald’s location across the street from the brothers’ original restaurant, forcing them to rename the original burger joint, which didn’t stay in business much longer.

“I ran ’em out of business,” he gleefully told TIME.

That was an angle with which Dick McDonald didn’t exactly agree: “Ray Kroc stated that he forced McDonald Bros, to remove the name McDonald’s from the unit we retained in San Bernardino, Calif. The facts are that we took the name off the building and removed the arches immediately upon the closing of the sale of our company to Kroc and associates in December 1961,” he stated in a letter to the editor that ran several weeks later. “Kroc must have been kidding when he told your reporter that we renamed our unit Mac’s Place. The name we used was The Big M. Ray was also being facetious when he told your reporter that he drove us out of business. My brother and I had retired two years previous to the sale, and were living in Santa Barbara, Calif. We had turned the operation of the San Bernardino unit over to a couple of longtime employees of ours who operated the drive-in for seven years. Ray Kroc was always a great prankster and probably couldn’t resist the temptation to needle me.”

Nevertheless, Kroc proclaimed himself McDonald’s founder. Indeed, the company honored him on its Founder’s Day (and wouldn’t include the McDonald brothers until 1991).

Kroc’s version of the story upset the McDonald brothers after the publication of his 1992 autobiography Grinding it Out: The Making of McDonald’s. In the book, he named the first franchise he opened—in Des Plaines, Ill.—as the first McDonald’s restaurant ever opened.

“Up until the time we sold, there was no mention of Kroc being the founder,” Dick McDonald told the Wall Street Journal in 1991. ”If we had heard about it, he would be back selling milkshake machines.”

Grandson of McDonald’s founder sees film on restaurant chain
by Ray Kelly

He said he was impressed with the film and the portrayals of Kroc (Michael Keaton) and Dick and “Mac” McDonald (Nick Offerman and John Carroll Lynch).

“They took a little creative license, but they stuck very close to the story,” French said. “(Offerman and Lynch) were spot on. They conveyed the charismatic New Englanders that they were.”

The real “Founder”
from CBS News

Jason McDonald French takes pride in what his grandfather created. He reflected on the nostalgic quality of the San Bernardino McDonald’s, and what it means to him: “It’s something that my grandfather over tireless years came up with.”

But there’s something the family rarely talked about: the handshake deal in which Ray Kroc promised the McDonald brothers a half-percent royalty on all future McDonalds proceeds.

The family says he never paid them a cent.

“I think it’s worth, yeah, $100 million a year,” said French. “Yeah, pretty crazy.”

“Is there bitterness about that in your family?”

“No, No. My grandfather was never bitter over it. Why would we be bitter over something that my grandfather wasn’t bitter over?”

“Well, there’s 100 million reasons you could be!” said Tracy.

“Yeah,” French smiled.

For French, seeing his family’s story told on the big screen is its own form of payback.

“We were overjoyed with the fact that the story’s being told the right way and that it’s being historically accurate,” he said. “They did create fast food. They started that from the beginning, and I don’t think they get enough credit for what they actually created.”

The Force of Truth

It sometimes feels like those of us who value truth and honesty are at a disadvantage in these times of mass misinformation and disinformation, willful ignorance and echo chambers. But the internet despite its failings has opened up dialogue in a way never before possible. The average person can access info that even the most educated elites didn’t know in the past.

On the world wide web, a person can live in a reality tunnel if they choose. But when they do so, they isolate themselves and so disempower their impact on the world. They end up silencing themselves, a just result in a too often unjust world.

I’ll give an example of this.

Just recently, I was debating someone in their book review and someone else joined them in their defense. So, I took them both on which wasn’t hard to do because I had the facts on my side. These people weren’t necessarily ignorant in the willful sense, at least not initially. They simply didn’t know the facts because no one had taught them the facts and it never occurred to them to look at alternative views.

They argued with me for several comments. But I ended the debate by offering direct quotes of the person in question. The review was on Amazon and so the reviewer couldn’t censor the debate. They couldn’t silence me directly without also silencing themselves. They removed their review which is their admitting they were wrong and knew it.

That has to hurt their sense of self esteem. They can never again enter a debate with confidence that they know what they are talking about. From now on, they will live in fear of debate because they fear the truth. They can now become a recluse who hides away in their preferred reality tunnel listening to their own views echo back to them. But in doing so they’ve accepted defeat. They’ve chosen to resign from debate and so have removed themselves from the battlefield of ideas.

This is the second time I’ve managed to get someone to remove their review simply by offering facts they couldn’t refute. I’m only one person. Imagine if every lover and seeker of truth were to do the same. It’s a win/win scenario, for me at least. If they remove the untruth, that decreases the misinfo/disinfo in the world. If they don’t remove the untruth, they are forced to leave my refutation of their untruth for all to see.

I’ve noticed this kind of power to influence in other ways as well. There are the right-wingers who will mindlessly repeat that America is not a democracy. I saw this regularly online for years. I pointed out the falsity of this every single time I saw it. Many other people did the same. Now, you rarely hear right-wingers say this anymore.

The force of truth is more powerful than we sometimes realize. This makes me happy.

 

Trinity In Mind: Story, Culture, Knowledge

Story. Culture. Knowledge.

These three are the Trinity of my mind, of my personal reality.

I always return to these, but not usually at the same time. They all connect, though.

Culture and knowledge are how we typically speak of story without realizing it. Story interests me the most, in some ways. It’s because story can so easily be dismissed as mere entertainment that it has so much power.

Knowledge and story are at the heart of culture. They give form and expression. Culture is an ephemeral thing by itself. It’s normally invisible, until we seek out our sense of identity. Maybe more than anything, culture encapsulates our reality tunnel.

Story and culture determine what we consider to be knowledge and how we go about looking for it. They frame our sense of truth and reality. As such, they mediate the complex relationship between belief and knowledge.

I love knowledge, or rather I love truth, more than anything. I always have. I don’t know why truth matters, but I just know it does, know in my heart more than in my mind. I want to know the truth of everything  just because I do. It’s not so much the knowledge itself, but the sense of knowing; or else, when lacking, the ache to know, the intuition of something to be known.

I’ve come to realize, however, that story gets at truth like nothing else. Truth can feel impotent at times.  Truth needs story in the way lungs need air. People are convinced by story, not truth. A story that expresses truth is a force to be reckoned with.

I’m less clear about culture. It’s such a strange thing. I don’t know that I care about culture in and of itself, but I’ve come to understand that culture is what makes it all happen on the collective level. We don’t have culture. We are culture. It’s the whole fish in water scenario. We live and breathe culture.

I feel like I can never fully explain why these three things are so compelling to my mind. I’m not sure why it is so difficult to speak about all of this. Story becomes mere entertainment or otherwise a personal interest. Culture is simplified to notions about race and nationality. Knowledge gets reduced to factoids and data points. The profound nature behind them gets lost.

I wish I could write about these in a way that conveyed the depth of my sense of them… but you either grok them or not, I suppose.

Bashing My Head Against a Brick Wall: Love of Truth or Masochism?

I’ve come to a point of frustration. Let me explain.

A conclusion I’ve flirted with for many years is that humans are fundamentally NOT rational (which isn’t necessarily to say humans are irrational; a better word is ‘arational’). Humans have some minimal capacity for rationality, but I suspect most of what is considered ‘rational’ is too often largely just rationalization. This is no grand insight per se. Still, I’ve resisted it. I want to believe that humans can be persuaded by facts. I want to believe that truth matters. However, I think it ultimately comes down to the fact that people don’t change much once set in their ways (which tends to happen early in life). As such, people don’t usually change their minds even when confronted with new facts and new ways of interpreting the facts. It’s just that people die and new generations come along (with new biases). The best hope one has of changing another’s mind is to meet them when they are a small child. After that point, there is little hope left for any further change.

Debating most people is about as worthwhile as bashing your head against a brick wall. Even worse, the people most interested in ‘debate’ tend to be the very people who are least interested in truth. It’s rather ironic. People tend to seek out debate because they want to ‘prove’ themselves right, not to explore possibilities, not to learn something new. There are exceptions, but they are few and far between. You might bash your skull to a bloody pulp before you find them.

And, no, I’m not excluding myself from my own criticisms. I know from my own experience how challenging it is to try to be ‘rational’ (objective, emotionally neutral, self-critical, aware of cognitive biases, being on guard for logical fallacies, genuinely trying to understand different viewpoints, being fair toward another’s argument, considering all the data instead of cherrypicking, and on and on). It’s hard enough for me to deal with all this within myself. It’s just too much to have to try to deal with it in other’s as well, especially when those others in most cases don’t want to (or don’t have the capacity to) deal with it in themselves. Spending so much time online, I end up interacting with many people who don’t bring out the best in me and who put me in a generally combative, irritable mood. And it’s my fault for being so easily effected. I’m the way I am. People are the way they are. There is nothing that can be done about that. In this post, I merely wish to explain my frustration.

– – –

I’ll give some examples.

I recently wrote about the differences between Southern and Northern cultures. There are two ways of treating these differences. The standard liberal view is that cultures are different with both ‘good’ and ‘bad’ aspects. The standard conservative view is that some cultures are inherently or fundamentally superior. The problem with the conservative view is that conservative states and societies don’t rank well on many factors most people consider worthy (education, health, economic equality, etc). The conservative will often dismiss this data outright or rationalize it away. And, of course, a lot of (most?) conservatives have little interest in conceding to the liberal view of openminded and tolerant multiculturalism. As a liberal, how do I win or how do I find a win/win middle ground of understanding? I often can’t.

When I was writing about the Southern/Northern culture issue, I also brought up the related issue of race and IQ because it’s a favorite discussion of conservatives. As a liberal, I have a bias toward believing in egalitarianism. It bothers me on a fundamental level that conservatives are always seeking to prove others (usually those different than them) are inferior. Nonetheless, I’m inclined to defer to science on these kinds of issues. Facts are more important than my beliefs and preferences. I take it seriously when conservatives reference studies suggesting a correlation between race (i.e., racial genetics) and IQ. Because I take facts so seriously, I’ve researched the subject extensively by looking at all the studies I could find along with meta-analysis of the studies. It’s true there are some studies that suggest a possible correlation between race and IQ. But what these conservatives don’t wish to acknowledge is that there are also many studies showing no correlation between race and IQ and also many studies correlating IQ to many other factors. Simply put, the data is complex and the research is inconclusive. There is no scientific consensus, as far as I can tell.

I find odd this conservative attitude. These conservatives will cite research that supports their preconceived conclusions while ignoring all the research that contradicts their views. They completely ignore the issue of scientific consensus. I’ve found conservatives quite suspicious of scientific consensus. Conservatives like science when it agrees with them, but they realize scientific authority is a two-edged sword. Once you accept scientific consensus, you eliminate your ability to cherrypick the data. As a comparable example, most conservatives utterly despise the fact that most scientists in all fields and vast majority (98% as I recall) climatology experts who are active researchers agree that the data supports the theory of anthropogenic global warming (AGW). It took decades for conservatives to accept global warming was even happening, but seemingly most still don’t accept that humans contribute to global warming. So, despite the strong scientific evidence and strong scientific consensus, conservatives are wary about science when it disagrees with their beliefs. They’ll ignore what most scientists conclude about AGW and instead they’ll find the small minority of studies and scientists who agree with them.

Accordingly, science is just there to be referred to when convenient and ignored when inconvenient. I don’t understand this attitude. I just don’t get it. If the majority of experts agree about something, I won’t be so presumptuous as to claim that I know better nor will I simply cherrypick the data that agrees with me. Why would I do this? What is to be gained by such anti-intellectual tactics?

One last example. I was looking at reviews of some books by Jim Wallis. One reviewer (in reference to God’s Politics if I remember correctly) mentioned the abortion issue. The person was criticizing the ‘moderate’ position that Wallis was proposing. As I understand it, Wallis is against abortions except when they are absolutely necessary (such as to save the mother’s life) and so is against banning abortions entirely. This position is ‘moderate’ in two ways. First, it strikes a balance between the practical and the moral and seeks a middle ground between two extremes (of pro-life and pro-choice). Second, it is the view held by most Americans and so is the ‘center’ of public opinion. The critical reviewer was promoting the common conservative view that abortions are bad and so compromising principles is to let liberals win. In a sense this is true because compromise is a liberal principle but not a conservative principle. Polls show that liberals support and conservative don’t support compromise. Even independents, although more supportive than conservatives, don’t have a majority that supports compromise. So, when Wallis is promoting a ‘moderate’ position he is by default promoting the ‘liberal’ position. Also, on many issues, most Americans hold positions that are ‘liberal’ (even though Americans don’t like to label themselves as ‘liberals’).

It just seems like liberals in America always lose even when they win. The liberal can have facts and public opinion on their side… and, yet, liberals are treated like an elitist minority to be dismissed and distrusted. It’s understandable that conservatives are wary about science considering most scientists identify as ‘liberals’.

– – –

All of this has made me increasingly pessimistic. I grew up among idealistic liberals which rubbed off on me a bit, but I’ve over time become cynical in response. What is the point in bringing up facts and analyzing the data? Those who agree with me probably already know what I know or are at least open to learning. And those who disagree with me probably won’t accept the facts no matter what.

My frustration isn’t entirely limited to those on the right. I often find a simplemindedness in the idealism and egalitarianism on the left. Even so, I rarely find the same radical anti-intellectualism on the left as I described above. Plenty of liberals don’t understand science and misrepresent scientific research, but they tend to do so out of an admiration (albeit a confused admiration). There are, for example, the New Age type liberals who want to turn science into a pseudo-religion about the beauty of nature and the wonder of the universe. It’s well intentioned even if naive. From my view, this liberal simplemindedness is mostly harmless. Liberals generally aren’t interested in trying to use science against some race or culture. This isn’t to say I don’t feel frustrated by the liberal New Age woo, but it doesn’t usually make me angry and it won’t make me lose all hope in humanity. Even if a liberal dismisses out of hand scientific studies suggesting a possible correlation between race and IQ, they do so because of worthy ideals of egalitarianism. Liberals want to make the world better for everyone, not just better for one group. Liberals are correct that many conservatives will use any scientific research, with or without scientific consensus, against those they perceive as ‘other’. Yes, we should be wary of ulterior motives when scientific research is being cited.

It’s hard for me to grapple with my frustration or to fully understand it. It’s my own personal issue (which relates to the depression I’ve experienced for a couple of decades), but it’s obviously not just about me. I’m a liberal in a society that is dominated by a conservative ruling elite. I see the polls showing most Americans agree with liberals like me on many issues, but none of that seems to matter. Those with the most power and those who are loudest aren’t generally the liberals. It’s rare for the majority public opinion to become visible such as with the protests in Wisconsin. The liberal majority is largely a silent majority. Most ‘liberals’ (whether or not they identify themselves as such) are ‘moderates’ and so they aren’t radicals who want force their opinion onto others. Anyway, polls showing what most Americans believe or support is quite likely irrelevant to most conservatives. Either they just know most Americans agree with them (no matter what the polls may show) or else the general masses isn’t to be trusted (any more than the intellectual elite).

I’m just frustrated. I have many non-fiction books that interest me and many posts I’d like to write if I had the time… but what is the point? Time is a precious commodity. I could be spending it on activities less frustrating. Yes, I enjoy learning new things, but the process of learning can be less than enjoyable at times because of those I run into while doing research online. I think I just have to accept that what interests me isn’t what interests most others, including in many cases most other liberals. I can get obsessive when my curiosity is piqued. It’s not unusual for me to spend weeks or months doing research and thinking about some subject before writing about it and it can take equal amount of time to gather my thoughts into the form of a post. After all that, very few people typically will ever read what I write. I largely do it for my own reasons and so this shouldn’t matter, but it does matter. It just makes me feel isolated. Truth matters to me in the same way God matters to a religious believer. Truth is my religion. There I said it. I know it sounds silly. I know most people don’t idealize truth in this way and to this extent. It’s because truth matters to me that I want to communicate my own understanding of truth. I want truth to matter to other people. I want to live in a society that values truth above all else. But that isn’t the world I live in.

Honestly, does truth matter? Why should it matter? Why should anyone care about truth?

My frustration makes me feel cynical, but I don’t want to be a cynic. Still, I do understand the attraction of ‘giving up’. As Thomas Ligotti once wrote, in response to superficial optimists (which can apply to all the superficialities of human society): “Once you understand that, you can spare yourself from suffering excessively at the hands of ‘normal people’, a pestilent confederation of upstanding creatures who in concert keep the conspiracy going by rehashing their patented banalities and watchwords.” I can’t begin to explain how much I sympathize with Liotti’s words, but he presents a conclusion of radical pessimism that goes far beyond even my own frustration. What I like about his advice is that bashing one’s head against a brick wall becomes unnecessary and avoidable once one realizes the brick wall for what it is. The brick wall ain’t going to move, not easily anyway. Even the best of us can only bash our heads against a brick wall for so long. I can’t say I’ve given up on my ideal of truth. I just need to let my fractured skull to mend a bit for the time being. Maybe I should read some fiction.

The Real Reagan: Stubborn Facts

This post is perfunctorial. I just wanted to gather a bunch of data in one place (videos first and links at the end), but I feel no motivation to analyze any of it or add my own commentary. So, take it or leave it. If you’re so interested, here is the real Ronald Reagan. As he once said, “Facts are stubborn things.”

http://readersupportednews.org/off-site-opinion-section/102-102/4859-ronald-reagan-enabler-of-atrocities

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2011/02/04/ST2011020403674.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/04/AR2011020403104.html

http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2011020501/reagan-ruins

http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2011020504/revisiting-reagan-nightmare

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2003/0301.green.html

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20030729-503544.html

http://www.npr.org/2011/02/04/133489113/Reagan-Legacy-Clouds-Tax-Record

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-02-01/the-republicans-reagan-amnesia/

http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/attytood/Reagan_to_Rush_Limbaugh_You_know_nothing_of_my_work.html

http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/attytood/When_America_worships_a_bronze_idol.html

http://articles.sfgate.com/2004-06-09/business/17430568_1_deficits-billion-defense-spending

http://newsjunkiepost.com/2011/02/06/the-disastrous-legacy-of-ronald-reagan-in-charts/

http://www.nhi.org/online/issues/135/reagan.html

http://www.democracynow.org/2004/6/11/reagan_and_the_homeless_epidemic_in

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0610-03.htm

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0610-01.htm

http://www.politicususa.com/en/conservatives-reagan

Checking the Facts

Debunkers of Fictions Sift the Net
By Brian Stelter

David and Barbara Mikkelson are among those trying to clean the cesspool. The unassuming California couple run Snopes, one of the most popular fact-checking destinations on the Web.

[…] Snopes is one of a small handful of sites in the fact-checking business. Brooks Jackson, the director of one of the others, the politically oriented FactCheck.org, believes news organizations should be doing more of it.

“The ‘news’ that is not fit to print gets through to people anyway these days, through 24-hour cable gasbags, partisan talk radio hosts and chain e-mails, blogs and Web sites such as WorldNetDaily or Daily Kos,” he said in an e-mail message. “What readers need now, we find, are honest referees who can help ordinary readers sort out fact from fiction.”

Even the White House now cites fact-checking sites: it has circulated links and explanations by PolitiFact.com, a project of The St. Petersburg Times that won a Pulitzer Prize last year for national reporting.

Media bias in the United States
(Wikipedia)

Organizations monitoring bias

Non-partisan

• FactCheck
• Facts on File
• Center for Media and Public Affairs

Liberal

• Media Matters for America
• Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting
• Center for Media and Democracy

Conservative

• Media Research Center
• Accuracy in Media

Liberal Facts vs Conservative Ideology

Let me start with this video.

The reason I posted that video is because it relates to an interview I heard last night on Diane Rehm (Rick Smith and Bruce Lourie: “Slow Death by Rubber Duck” – http://wamu.org/programs/dr/10/01/20.php#29308; sorry but WordPress won’t allow hyperlinking at the moment).  That interview was about hormone-disrupting chemicals in our food supply.  The major source of this is from plastic in packaging and containers.  I was already aware of this problem from an interview with Dr. Leonard Sax I heard Coast to Coast AM which I wrote about in a forum thread at Open Source Integral (Boys Adrift – http://opensourceintegral.ning.com/forum/topic/show?id=1615967%3ATopic%3A13481).  Here is the opening post that I wrote (I would indent or do something to the following but WordPress won’t allow me):

I heard an interview with Dr. Leonard Sax on the radio show Coast to Coast AM. He was discussing his book Boys Adrift. The book focuses on the development of boys, but does so in terms of considering both genders. His basic premise is that for various reasons normal development has been altered in the past generation or so.

The website about this book:
http://www.boysadrift.com/

Here is an excerpt from his book Why Gender Matters and an interview with him on the Today show:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6941270/

The primary problem he sees is the estrogen-like chemicals that leach out of clear plastic bottles. This causes boys to develop slower and not to develop normally, and it causes girls to develop faster. Young men now have majorly decreased levels of testosterone and sperm count than previous generations.

Another major problem is that the school system has tried to treat boys and girls equally in recent decades. Teachers don’t take into account that boys and girls develop differently, and the natural behavior of boys has become unacceptable in schools. To try to calm boys down more like girls, drugs such as ritalin have increasingly been given to boys. This is a twofold problem. Boys are stunted psychologically which is bad enough, but the drugs have long-term consequences on brain development. It causes a part of the brain that relates to motivation to not to fully develop.

So, this means that young men are becoming evermore effeminate and apathetic. Young women are more likely to go to college, get degrees, and get professional careers. Also, with the sexual dynamic messed up, sexual attraction has decreased and along with it so has marriage.

 – – –

 This is a rather sadly ironic situation.  The chemical soup we live in and ingest on a daily basis is creating a generation of youth with various physiological/psychological problems (asthma, obesity, autism, ADHD, and on and on).  What is our collective answer to these problems that society has caused?  To give the kids even more chemicals in the form of drugs that further alters their behavior and biological development.

Anyways, this is no grand insight in and of itself.  Any reasonably informed person already knows about this kind of thing (the question then being how many reasonably informed people exist in the general population).  I do feel critical about the lack of discussion and a lack of action about this kind of thing.  In the Diane Rehm interview, the author spoke about how closely the Bush administration worked with the chemical companies.  Basically, the role of government has been to first protect capitalistic interests and only secondly to protect the average person.

My further complaint is about political ideology.  Why does this kind of thing bother liberals more than conservatives?  A typical response by many conservatives is to defend the ideal of a free market based on an assumption that drug and chemical companies always have the general population’s best interest in mind… or they defend the doctors that prescribe the drugs to children based on the assumption that drug company bribes and propaganda doesn’t influence the behavior of doctors.  Another typical response of many conservatives is to attack parents for all of the problems their children experience or else attack the children for having problems.  What conservatives are reluctant to do is to objectively look at the science… which might be explained by the fact that only 6% of scientists are Republicans.

I still don’t understand.  I understand in theory why conservatives uphold ideology above all else, but I don’t understand it in a deeper way.  These problems are equally experienced by conservative children as liberal children.  Isn’t it common sense that conservatives should be equally worried about how pollution, additives, and drugs are causing their own children problems?

For another example, why would only a liberal write a book like The Culture of Make Believe by Derrick Jensen?  The facts he shares aren’t liberal.  Facts don’t have ideology, but why are liberals more interested in facts in the first place?  Why is the desire to stop pollution and oppression a liberal agenda?  Why do conservatives tend to blame individuals and the liberal elite while rationalizing away all problems involving corporations?  Why do conservatives value religion more than they do science? 

I’m truly perplexed.

Reality and Rationality: a discussion

Discussion thread post from INFJs Forums:

RANT: Reality has a Liberal bias…

Satya: I’m just worn out. I debate with social conservatives and traditionalists, and provide the strongest peer reviewed evidence I can to back up my assertions and I provide reasoned arguments supported by age old philosophical propositions but it is not enough. I’m told it is all “biased”. It doesn’t matter how perfectly objective and analytical the study is or how well it follows the scientific method, it is biased unless it supports their viewpoint. If is it particularly damning to their worldview, then it is “PC” the sweet and short way to dismiss everything as politically correct, and thus somehow not true. I have yet to find anyone who can explain to me the reasoning behind this, but it seems sufficient to them.

Has thinking become a value? When I was a child, I never would have thought that there would exist a group of people who are proud that they don’t think. In fact, not only are they proud that they don’t think, but they are proud that others can’t make them think. Now I’m not trying to stereotype here, but it seems whenever I push anyone from these particular right wing groups on the facts that they take a position that reasoning and logic are inferior to their religious faith and internal moral compass. How on earth can they reduce thinking to a value?

I’m notorious for being a smartass, and occasionally just an ass, but nothing I can ever say or do could ever demean a person as much as them tossing their own ability to think and reason for themselves.

The more I study human beings, the more I realize humans like to follow a script. Religious beliefs and political ideologies simply serve as a way for human beings to mindlessly serve as actors in this world, fulfilling roles that were written for them by directors who may have lost touch with reality themselves.

Everyday, I find myself challenging every label that I have felt ascribed to myself. INFJ, gay, liberal, social worker, etc. it all seems like the labels have become more important than the being. I am who I am, too complex to be narrowed down and pidgeon holed into some convenient category for others to stereotype in some misguided attempt to control or pass judgment. It’s not like I don’t do the same. But I’m tired of it. Maybe I just need to view the world holistically. That seems to be the only thing that people on opposite sides of the religious and political spectrum agree on. Love your neighbor.

Comments:

Sithious: Calling you biased ain’t exactly a valid argument, but you have to remember when most people are cornered they will resort to personal attacks and logical fallacies rather than logic and reasoning. People don’t like it that you’re attacking their ego, which you are by questioning their beliefs and ideas.

Most people don’t have the knowledge nor mental capacity to refute well constructed arguments. […]

Satya: Level of education and field of study is the only difference I have perceived within individuals that would lead them to challenge this aspect of human nature. Based on what I have seen, I estimate that maybe 10% of the general public has critical thinking ability, and of that 10% I estimate that only 1% of those make a concerted effort to shape their own metacognition by challenging their cognitive and emotional biases. The number of individuals who seem to have any degree of awareness of their own patterns of thinking is incredibly small. Even I have trouble considering myself a member of that group because I often give into my passion despite knowing it is a fruitless endeavor and usually the equivalant of ego masturbation.

Duty:

Originally Posted by Raccoon Love You have your own views and opinions and if others are not willing to compromise that does not give you the right to change their ways of thinking

So we don’t have the right to try to educate a racist? We should just accept their way of thinking?

Originally Posted by Raccoon Love Just because someone does not agree with you does not mean their wrong, we all have our different opinions and beliefs, and in reality truth is relative so there’s nothing absolute.

What makes people wrong is when they hold a belief that a) does not conform to reality. What makes people “unjustified” (or “thoughtless”) in their belief is when they don’t have enough evidence or knowledge to warrant believing it.

And as we’ve discussed in many many threads, there are things that are absolute: objectively true. If you say “there is nothing that is absolutely or objectively true” then you contradict yourself, because if that statement was true, it would be absolutely/universally/objectively true, and so contradict itself.

Because there is an objective truth, we try to find what facts fit into that truth. When someone holds a belief opposite of that, or in opposition to the most reliable and effective methods to determine objective truth, we say they are just plain wrong or thoughtless, respectively.

Knowing this, and combining it with a true desire to enlighten, educate, and help the minds of others develop, and it becomes a much more complicated issue then just, “You have no right to try to change others.” It almost becomes a duty to try.

I know where Satya is, I was just there not long ago. I still have much of that desire in me. The best solution I’ve found is to just abandon the thoughtless to their self-chosen fate, but be there for when they are ready. Surround yourself with those that are ready/have already traversed. That’s all you can really do.

Satya:

Originally Posted by myst How do you prove that truth is objective? With facts? How do you prove they’re true? More facts? And so on to infinity. Is it possible to prove truth is objective? If not, how do you know it is?

This is what pisses me off. People have no idea what the scientific method does. They think the purpose of science is to prove things, but the reality is that science exists as a constant quest to disprove whatever the evidence indicates is likely to be true.

You don’t prove anything! Anyone who says they can prove anything is a liar. You present evidence that indicates that something is more likely true than it isn’t. Science is about probability, about disproving, not proving. In science, the law of gravity can be disproved, but it can never be conclusively proven. The probability that the law of gravity is true is astronomically high due to the huge amount of evidence that supports it, but it could easily be disproved with the addition of new evidence against it. Physicists don’t strive to prove the theory of relativity, they strive to disprove it. Biologists don’t strive to prove the theory of evolution, they strive to disprove it. That is why such theories have such high certainty. People have been gathering evidence in the pursuit to dispove them for so long, and have failed to do so, so the probability that they are true remains very high. It doesn’t mean that the theory of relativity or the theory of evolution have been proven, only that they have yet to be disproved and so they remain viable theories.

When I provide evidence to disprove something you say, and you can’t provide an alternative explaination, then you have failed to uphold your theory. It has been invalidated. I’m not trying to prove that anything is objectively true, I’m simply disproving whatever subjective belief you hold to be true. I could never prove that God does not exist, but I can disprove your version of God by coming up with evidence or reasoning which invalidates your explaination.

Knowledge and Wisdom in the Information Age

The Glass Bead Game from the Red Star Cafe blog

I suddenly realized that in the language, or at any rate in the spirit of the Glass Bead Game, everything actually was all-meaningful, that every symbol and combination of symbol led not hither and yon, not to single examples, experiments, and proofs, but into the center, the mystery and innermost heart of the world, into primal knowledge. Every transition from major to minor in a sonata, every transformation of a myth or a religious cult, every classical or artistic formulation was, I realized in that flashing moment, if seen with truly a meditative mind, nothing but a direct route into the interior of the cosmic mystery, where in the alternation between inhaling and exhaling, between heaven and earth, between Yin and Yang holiness is forever being created.

Joseph Knecht, Master of The Glass Bead Game by Hermann Hesse

 – – –

It’s been a long time since I read this book by Hesse, but I remember enjoying it.  I read a lot of Hesse in highschool and was highly impressed at the time.  This quote reminds me of a passage from Philip K. Dick’s Exegesis.  PKD was describing a mystical interaction with divine information.  Every thought, every question, every possibility led to infinity.  There was no final conclusion.  To read the this PKD passage, see my blog post PKD on God as Infinity.

 – – –

The Glass Bead Game Redux from the Red Star Cafe blog

Readers of blogs like this are witnessing a shift of intellectual authority from the traditional “expert” to the broader public. This is nowhere more tellingly illustrated than by Wikipedia, which has roughly 300,000 volunteer contributors every month.

What makes the mobilization of “crowd wisdom” intellectually powerful is that the technology of the Web makes it so easy for even amateurs to access a growing fraction of the body of human knowledge. The value of traditional expert authority is itself being diluted by the new incentive structure created by information technology that militates against what is deep and nuanced in favour of what is fast and stripped-down.

The result is the growing disintermediation of experts and gatekeepers of virtually all kinds. The irony is that experts have been the source of most of the nuggets of knowledge that the crowd now draws upon – for example, news and political bloggers depend heavily on a relatively small number of sources of professional journalism, just as many Wikipedia articles assimilate prior scholarship. The system works because it is able to mine intellectual capital. This suggests that today’s cult of the amateur will ultimately be self-limiting and will require continuous fresh infusions of more traditional forms of expert knowledge.

 – – –

I would point out that the intelligence of the internet age isn’t merely parasitic, but rather is a levelling of the playing field.  Instead of being passive receivers, people now interact with their media.

Two examples.

First, news media follows closely twitter and the blogosphere to catch new trends and breaking news.  Reporters aren’t usually the first people to be on a scene and with cellphones firsthand reporting can potentially come from anyone.

Second, bloggers often are very dedicated researchers who aren’t limited by the financial obligations of working for a media company.  Many bloggers are highly educated and trained in various fields.  Even if they don’t have the title of expert, they may act in that capacity.  Bloggers often do original analysis and uncover new data, and mainstream reporters do sometimes cite bloggers.  Bloggers don’t often get much respectability, but neither did the early muckrakers who were the earliest investigative reporters.

By being outside of the mainstream, bloggers have a different perspective.  Sometimes bloggers are reporting on issues and events that get almost entirely ignored by the mainstream media.

The value of traditional expert authority isn’t being diluted, but it is being challenged.  I would, however, argue that this strengthens expert authority by holding it to an even higher standard.

Objective analysis shows that Wikipedia articles on science and history are as reliable as encyclopedias (I would argue that they may be more reliable in some ways as they’re constantly being updated).  Also, Wikipedia cites many external sources that often are directly linked and so one can judge for themselves rather than solely relying on an expert.  In the long run, Wikipedia will on average become more reliable than a traditional printed encyclopedia.  Furthermore, Wikipedia has stringent standards and so acts as a training ground for any person to learn how to determine the validity of information.

So, the web doesn’t result in “the growing disintermediation of experts and gatekeepers”.  Rather, it increases mediation and creates better methods of gatekeeping.  Traditional experts still play a part, but they no longer dominate the discussion.

The above blog linked to an article by Peter Nicholson.  The following blog is a response to that article.  The opinion of stated below resonates with my own sense of this emerging information age.

 – – –

Reducing Life to a Formula from the Ooops…I’m still here blog

What has led me to rant about this pet peeve of mine,  is Peter Nicholson’s, Globe and Mail article, “Information – rich and attention – poor” (09-09-12).  Blaming the digital age he declares,

“In becoming information rich, we have become attention poor… [E]conomics teaches that the counterpart of every new abundance is a new scarcity – in this case the scarcity of human time and attention.”

[…]There is nothing wrong with the abundance of information created by digital technology.  Yes, I realise some of it is slim, but that’s okay, because there are ways of accessing deeper knowledge as well.  I personally have not experienced an attention deficit as a result of the “knowledge abundance”.  What I have experienced is a thrill at being able to access so much information in such a short time.  I do not fear what Nicholson refers to as the “24-hour knowledge cycle”, the ability to access news 24/7.  I relish in it.

                    Nicholson writes about the changing market for knowledge.  He states:

“When the effective shelf life of a document (or any information product) shrinks, fewer resources will be invested in its creation.  This is because the period during which the product is likely to be read or referred to is too short to repay a large allocation of scarce time and skill in its production.  As a result the ‘market’ for depth is narrowing.”

When you look at what is happening in the publishing world you have to agree with the first part of his comment, that because a “news product” has a short life it’s not financially feasible to invest heavily in it.  However, I disagree with his conclusion, that the result is  that the market for depth is narrowing.  Hey,  I’m part of the market and I’m not narrowing, nor are my eleven year old students who’s thirst for knowledge is unquenchable.  The desire for “depth” is not diminished by the abundance of knowledge.  In fact, it is enriched by it.

Paranormal Commentary and Strange Videos

Some interesting things I came across.

 

Facts, Fraud and Fairytales.
John Rimmer

From MUFOB New Series 9.

If however we consider fiction, hoax, and real experience as different parts of a spectrum of experience, a new set of patterns begins to emerge.

 

Invizikids: Imaginary Childhood Friends.
Mike Hallowell

From Magonia 93, September 2006.

What fascinates me more than anything else is that, despite the universal prevalence of the NCC phenomenon, it has attracted very little attention. Studies available on the Internet are almost all governed by the “psychological” approach, that NCCs are the product of the mind of a lonely child. 

People are normally disturbed by the idea that their house may be haunted, and yet they accept without the slightest reticence the notion that their child may be talking to an invisible entity. Is this because they don’t believe that their child’s “imaginary” friend really exists, or because they sense that the phenomenon, whatever its nature, is essentially harmless?

They say that “an only child is a lonely child”. Maybe, just maybe, there aren’t so many lonely children around as we’ve hitherto imagined.

 

Civilization – Marco Brambilla

From the Daily Grail blog.

This is a beautiful and evocative montage – comprised of over 400 video clips it takes elevator passengers on a trip from hell to heaven. See how many movie clips you can spot, but don’t let it distract you from the overall beauty of the piece.

 

Trance Captured on Video

From the Neuroanthropology blog.

A great discussion on the Medical Anthropology listserve focused on good films for trance. I’ve provided the list below, complete with links to the films, extra notes in brackets, and some YouTube clips.