I’m afraid, unfortunately, that it is precisely the idea that anyone could understand everything without much effort that makes people so susceptible to utter nonsense.
This also gives rise to the impression that so-called intellectual elites are nothing more than charlatans who want to pull the wool over the public’s eyes with their incomprehensible “intellectual secret language.” So people end up looking to idiots who, while having not the slightest clue about the subject, explain things in a way that anyone can follow—even without knowing anything about it themselves—or at least believe they understand all the “nonsense” those snobby scientists are spouting.
In my view, this effect—which definitely exists—also clearly reveals who is primarily responsible for it: namely, the operators of the major social media platforms, all of whom are billionaires that have a genuine interest in ensuring that the masses allow themselves to be duped.
If that were not the cause, this effect would have to occur particularly among the financial elite as well, and people would be asking en masse whether their vast power might be unjustified—yet this does not seem to be the case at all among the general public.
This in turn gives rise to the schizophrenic state whose effects we are witnessing today: People distrust science, but they do not question the goals pursued, for example, by climate change deniers, who by no means came up with their narratives on their own, but are well paid to spread them as widely as possible.
I fear that this problem could only be solved by significantly reducing the influence of billionaires on public opinion—but in our system, where they wield almost unrestricted power, this unfortunately seems virtually impossible.
completely tangential, but this is actually an interesting grammatical point. I’m guessing you’re German by your username; “stop to listen to idiots” would mean “aufhören, um Idioten zuzuhören.” “aufhören Idioten zuzuhören” would be “stop listening to idiots.” it’s interesting because “to [verb]” and “[verb]ing” are often interchangeable, but in this case they actually mean the opposite
I understood absolutely zero of the German, but for other non native English speakers who didn’t pick up on the issue here:
The usual phrase here would be “stop listening to idiots”. The sentence that was used, “stop to listen to idiots” means the contrary, that you’ll stop what you’re doing so that you can listen to what the idiot has to say.
For the non-Germans who want to know the source of the confusion: It’s basically the same sentence structure in German meaning something different than in English.
to has distinct meanings in “I want to listen to them” and “you should stop to listen to them”. In the first sentence, it’s effectively an article for the activity “listen to them”. In the second sentence, it implies an intent, which could be made explicit like “stop in order to listen to me”.
English uses the progressive (“stop listening”) to disambiguate with words like stop. German instead uses an additional preposition “um” for the intent meaning of to.
(In this case, the meaning difference between “interrupting something” and “stop for good” also has different words, “anhalten” and “aufhören”).
Word for word, “Aufhören zuzuhören” would mean “stop to listen”, but actually means “stop listening” while “stop to listen” would be correctly translated as “anhalten, um zuzuhören”.
I have a Spinnie-sense for when people are confused about our language, but whether you were curious was a lucky guess. Volltreffer (“Full hit”; bullseye), it seems.
I think they’re joking about the elitism part. People just need to stop to listen to idiots
I’m afraid, unfortunately, that it is precisely the idea that anyone could understand everything without much effort that makes people so susceptible to utter nonsense.
This also gives rise to the impression that so-called intellectual elites are nothing more than charlatans who want to pull the wool over the public’s eyes with their incomprehensible “intellectual secret language.” So people end up looking to idiots who, while having not the slightest clue about the subject, explain things in a way that anyone can follow—even without knowing anything about it themselves—or at least believe they understand all the “nonsense” those snobby scientists are spouting.
In my view, this effect—which definitely exists—also clearly reveals who is primarily responsible for it: namely, the operators of the major social media platforms, all of whom are billionaires that have a genuine interest in ensuring that the masses allow themselves to be duped.
If that were not the cause, this effect would have to occur particularly among the financial elite as well, and people would be asking en masse whether their vast power might be unjustified—yet this does not seem to be the case at all among the general public.
This in turn gives rise to the schizophrenic state whose effects we are witnessing today: People distrust science, but they do not question the goals pursued, for example, by climate change deniers, who by no means came up with their narratives on their own, but are well paid to spread them as widely as possible.
I fear that this problem could only be solved by significantly reducing the influence of billionaires on public opinion—but in our system, where they wield almost unrestricted power, this unfortunately seems virtually impossible.
completely tangential, but this is actually an interesting grammatical point. I’m guessing you’re German by your username; “stop to listen to idiots” would mean “aufhören, um Idioten zuzuhören.” “aufhören Idioten zuzuhören” would be “stop listening to idiots.” it’s interesting because “to [verb]” and “[verb]ing” are often interchangeable, but in this case they actually mean the opposite
Richtig, danke.
I understood absolutely zero of the German, but for other non native English speakers who didn’t pick up on the issue here:
The usual phrase here would be “stop listening to idiots”. The sentence that was used, “stop to listen to idiots” means the contrary, that you’ll stop what you’re doing so that you can listen to what the idiot has to say.
Which is a valid option, but an ill advised one.
For the non-Germans who want to know the source of the confusion: It’s basically the same sentence structure in German meaning something different than in English.
to has distinct meanings in “I want to listen to them” and “you should stop to listen to them”. In the first sentence, it’s effectively an article for the activity “listen to them”. In the second sentence, it implies an intent, which could be made explicit like “stop in order to listen to me”.
English uses the progressive (“stop listening”) to disambiguate with words like stop. German instead uses an additional preposition “um” for the intent meaning of to.
(In this case, the meaning difference between “interrupting something” and “stop for good” also has different words, “anhalten” and “aufhören”).
Word for word, “Aufhören zuzuhören” would mean “stop to listen”, but actually means “stop listening” while “stop to listen” would be correctly translated as “anhalten, um zuzuhören”.
🙋♂️ how’d you know we were here?!
I have a Spinnie-sense for when people are confused about our language, but whether you were curious was a lucky guess. Volltreffer (“Full hit”; bullseye), it seems.