More mistakes

Wednesday April 18, 2007 - 11:34PM EDT

Why should I be surprised that the news is awash in pictures and video from the crazy man's last word? Obviously this is what he wanted or else he wouldn't have sent it. But what use is it to the general public to have those images rammed down our throat. I believe in full disclosure of all information and in the age of Internet and advanced communication it is so easy to do that. So why is the news plastered with pictures? News outlets could simply have made the pics and videos available for download but to put that on TV seems gross. They are selling one man's propaganda to the masses. They are not really even doing that, if it is possible they are shortchanging the dude by picking bits and pieces out to serve their own purpose.  Simple clips here and there cannot offer insight into the inner workings of a mind. All these clips do is to further allow the people that display them to advance whatever view and agenda they have in relation to this story. I guess the idea of news being a passive factual medium is dead. Was it ever even alive?

I think the argument you'd hear from those displaying this is something about telling the truth and full disclosure maybe. But that is ridiculous in today's times. Information dispersal is not the sole domain on news broadcasts anymore.  When will the day come when raw information can be accessed without bias? The idea of information purity is so tough to achieve.

The other thing is copycat type stuff. This is an ongoing debate on whether display of such images leads to copycat behavior. This debate always seems so contentious because everyone has interests they want to protect so they take extremes of each side. Of any discussion that required moderation this is one of them. Humans are really bad at intuitively judging statistical information and linking it to reality.  A few  happenings of something will skew  our perspective and distort our reality of things. In my limited reading on psychology and brain function I think there is discussion on such behavior being related to old brain and new brain difference. The new brain I am refering to is the neocortex which is thought to handle high level logic. While the combined parts of the rest of the brain will handle more instinctual thinking. The functions of these two parts overlap in some places. So maybe our old brain makes decisions based on limited number or for lack of a better word thinking cycles while the new brain (neocortex) is much better at processing data and predicting outcome more accurately. This is not my personal view just something I've read about. I written about similar stuff before.  It is a discussion that is rarely taken up. Our perception of things and the reality of it. It is tough thing to analyze in humans. Most recently the last thing I read was something by the computer security expert Bruce Scheiner. About how the average person's instinctual perception of computer security can be worthless. That more logical thought is required to see the reality of computer security situations. Interesting stuff.