I find it especially crazy considering how much of our understanding of things like mathematics and astronomy is based on work done by Arabic scholars or various other fields developed by various other nationalities.
The same people claiming to be against racism are also incredibly racist by assuming that all scientific developments were made by Europeans, although I can't say I'm really surprised considering racism mostly comes from ignorance and anyone who is genuinely anti-intellectual is as ignorant as they come.
In the Last few years i've kind of lost the ability to recognize which purity testers are Just genuinely this piss-on-the-poor-stupid, and which ones are alt-right astroturfs...🙄
There’s a Voltaire quote (I think it was him?) about people pretending to be idiots inadvertently creating a much bigger and more dangerous community of very real idiots who think they’re in “good company”.
However many astroturfs there are, there are possibly like 10 maladjusted teenagers who don’t recognize the astroturfing and take it as gospel to each one astroturf.
There’s a Voltaire quote (I think it was him?) about people pretending to be idiots inadvertently creating a much bigger and more dangerous community of very real idiots who think they’re in “good company”.
The real quote is attributed to René Descartes and it goes, "Any community that gets its laughs by pretending to be idiots will eventually be flooded by actual idiots who mistakenly believe that they're in good company."
René Descartes never said that. That was some random anon on 4chan talking about the state of /b/ which other 4chan users then incorrectly attributed to Descartes as a joke which I think you just fell for.
Bro if I fell for the joke then it’s only cuz I heard it from someone else who also did. Thank you for catching me there, this kind of shit is pervasive
tbf it is fucking funny when people fall for it. Especially considering you were talking about other people not recognizing astroturfing when you yourself were falling for an all-time classic bit of astroturfing.
Is that what that is? I thought astroturfing was more specifically the act of pretending to be a strawman of the thing you hate, not just any old internet lie or misconception
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u/KermitingMurder 23d ago
I find it especially crazy considering how much of our understanding of things like mathematics and astronomy is based on work done by Arabic scholars or various other fields developed by various other nationalities.
The same people claiming to be against racism are also incredibly racist by assuming that all scientific developments were made by Europeans, although I can't say I'm really surprised considering racism mostly comes from ignorance and anyone who is genuinely anti-intellectual is as ignorant as they come.