Welcome to DU! The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards. Join the community: Create a free account Support DU (and get rid of ads!): Become a Star Member Latest Breaking News General Discussion The DU Lounge All Forums Issue Forums Culture Forums Alliance Forums Region Forums Support Forums Help & Search
 

fightforfreedom

(4,913 posts)
Sat Feb 5, 2022, 02:00 PM Feb 2022

Years ago I made a prediction. No one has ever been more wrong than I was.

I predicted the invention of the internet, along with the invention of search engines like google, would lead to the 2nd Age of Enlightenment. Instead it led to the 2nd Age of Superstition.

25 replies = new reply since forum marked as read
Highlight: NoneDon't highlight anything 5 newestHighlight 5 most recent replies
Years ago I made a prediction. No one has ever been more wrong than I was. (Original Post) fightforfreedom Feb 2022 OP
I did worse than that. Predicted that biology and diversity would end racism Walleye Feb 2022 #1
None of us are perfect. fightforfreedom Feb 2022 #3
😄 Walleye Feb 2022 #5
Yeah, most of my predictions have gone up in smoke PatSeg Feb 2022 #12
No Kidding...alot of serious doubts!!!!!!! NC DENVERPOPS Feb 2022 #19
Of course, I always leave myself open PatSeg Feb 2022 #24
Modern technology can't change human nature Kaleva Feb 2022 #2
I get that now. fightforfreedom Feb 2022 #4
History shows that to be true. Kaleva Feb 2022 #7
I think the printing press just made it easier COL Mustard Feb 2022 #13
In his book, Armies of the Night, Norman Mailer suggests that advanced technology will lead to tyran Buckeyeblue Feb 2022 #16
I beat you on being the wrongest Sur Zobra Feb 2022 #6
Data does not equal information, knowledge or wisdom dalton99a Feb 2022 #8
In the 70s I wrongly assumed moondust Feb 2022 #9
It's called Movement Conservatism. Reaction to FDR and New Deal. Tommymac Feb 2022 #10
Bookmarking liberalla Feb 2022 #15
I think this guy was wrongerer...... getagrip_already Feb 2022 #11
I predicted the election of Barak Obama tiredtoo Feb 2022 #14
You overestimated what would happen if all the sane people could communicate easily... PoliticAverse Feb 2022 #17
I wish that I had been wrong. I kept pointing out, whenever someone called the F'n, niyad Feb 2022 #18
Ted Kaczynski seen the internet as having a negative impact on society. KS Toronado Feb 2022 #20
I was more wrong. I said Starbucks would never survive. Lettuce Be Feb 2022 #21
It might have been okay without social nitwitting. lpbk2713 Feb 2022 #22
Unlike you canetoad Feb 2022 #23
It has been a net positive, FOS alone has been a definitive disrupter uponit7771 Feb 2022 #25

PatSeg

(47,430 posts)
12. Yeah, most of my predictions have gone up in smoke
Sat Feb 5, 2022, 04:22 PM
Feb 2022

the past few years. I'm having serious doubts about the future of humanity.

PatSeg

(47,430 posts)
24. Of course, I always leave myself open
Sat Feb 5, 2022, 09:05 PM
Feb 2022

to the possibility that things could get better, but my confidence in humankind overall is seriously diminished.

Kaleva

(36,298 posts)
2. Modern technology can't change human nature
Sat Feb 5, 2022, 02:06 PM
Feb 2022

The internet makes it easier for people to find info that supports their world view.

"Confirmation bias is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms or supports one's prior beliefs or values.[1] People display this bias when they select information that supports their views, ignoring contrary information, or when they interpret ambiguous evidence as supporting their existing attitudes. The effect is strongest for desired outcomes, for emotionally charged issues, and for deeply entrenched beliefs. Confirmation bias cannot be eliminated entirely, but it can be managed, for example, by education and training in critical thinking skills."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias

Kaleva

(36,298 posts)
7. History shows that to be true.
Sat Feb 5, 2022, 02:39 PM
Feb 2022

Despite the advances in technology, the printing press for example, humans haven't changed much since the beginning of recorded history.

COL Mustard

(5,897 posts)
13. I think the printing press just made it easier
Sat Feb 5, 2022, 04:27 PM
Feb 2022

To publish cat porn in the old days...or whatever they looked at!

Buckeyeblue

(5,499 posts)
16. In his book, Armies of the Night, Norman Mailer suggests that advanced technology will lead to tyran
Sat Feb 5, 2022, 04:39 PM
Feb 2022

I'm not sure he imagined it playing out like this. One would think humans would move away, not toward tyranny. But I think some people are ok with tyranny, as long as they think they will be at the top of the pecking order.

The entire MAGA movement hinges on white, uneducated, Christianish males rising up to claim what is rightfully theirs.

It turns out this is not just a political movement but also a business strategy. Look at the money mega churches and the gun industry has made off the backs of these people.

 

Sur Zobra

(3,428 posts)
6. I beat you on being the wrongest
Sat Feb 5, 2022, 02:34 PM
Feb 2022

I predicted that there was no way that Trump would win in 2016, and when he was elected, that the Republicans would rein him in and would never let him do anything crazy

You can give me the wrongest 🏆

moondust

(19,981 posts)
9. In the 70s I wrongly assumed
Sat Feb 5, 2022, 03:27 PM
Feb 2022

that the GOP would try to clean up their act after Nixon had to resign. Instead they immediately got worse with Reagan and eventually much worse with TFG.

Tommymac

(7,263 posts)
10. It's called Movement Conservatism. Reaction to FDR and New Deal.
Sat Feb 5, 2022, 04:00 PM
Feb 2022

Racists, angry white men, grifters, misogynists, and liars.

https://billmoyers.com/story/maga-movement-conservatism-era/

The End of a Political Era: Movement Conservatism Gets Real
BY HEATHER COX RICHARDSON | AUGUST 16, 2017

And yet, a political circus daily assaults Americans. We have a demonstrably unfit Republican president, a Republican Congress unable to pass the measure on which its members campaigned for eight years, a revolt from military leaders against a presidential policy conveyed by tweet, and now an admission by Republican stalwarts former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor and Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake that Republican rhetoric was never more than a means to gain power. These things are not unrelated. We are witnessing the end of a political era, the era in which movement conservatism dominated America. We are seeing the nasty, snarling death of a political movement hatched in the 1950s to overturn the New Deal, fed on racism and sexism, fattened on hatred and lies, and now torn apart by its own acolytes. [My Bold]


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Movement_conservatism
Movement conservatism
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Movement conservatism is an inside term describing conservatism in the United States and New Right. According to George H. Nash (2009) the movement comprises a coalition of five distinct impulses. From the mid-1930s to the 1960s, libertarians, traditionalists, and anti-communists made up this coalition, with the goal of fighting the liberals' New Deal. In the 1970s, two more impulses were added with the addition of neoconservatives and the religious right.

Popular base
Robert W. Welch Jr. founded the John Birch Society in 1958 as a secret grass-roots group to fight Communists, who Welch said controlled much of the American establishment, and whose agents included even Eisenhower himself. Welch used the dues to build an elaborate organizational infrastructure that enabled him to keep a very tight rein on the chapters.[11] Its main activity in the 1960s, says Rick Perlstein, "comprised monthly meetings to watch a film by Welch, followed by writing postcards or letters to government officials linking specific policies to the Communist menace".[12] After its quick rise in membership William F. Buckley, Jr. and National Review mobilized movement conservatives, including Goldwater himself, to denounce the John Birch Society as an extremist fringe element of the conservative movement.[13][14]

Ronald Reagan was a key figure in expanding the popularity of movement conservatism from intellectual circles into the popular mainstream, by emphasizing the dangers of an excessively large federal government. In October 1964, Reagan delivered a speech as part of his support for candidate Goldwater titled "A Time for Choosing". The speech represented the ideology of movement conservatism, arguing against big government bureaucracy and welfare while also denouncing foreign aid. The speech was widely applauded and gave Reagan a national audience. He was elected Governor of California in 1966 and 1970.[15][16]

In the wake of civil rights legislation passed in 1964 and 1968, many white southern Democrats began shifting to the Republican Party. This ended the exceptionalism of the "one-party South" in presidential elections and brought significant additional political power to the Republican Party, although these voters were not necessarily movement conservatives.[17] In 1994, for the first time the Republicans controlled the majority of the house seats from the South, and by 2014 had gained a virtual monopoly of state and national offices throughout most of the South.


getagrip_already

(14,750 posts)
11. I think this guy was wrongerer......
Sat Feb 5, 2022, 04:20 PM
Feb 2022

A winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics, Paul Krugman wrote in 1998, “The growth of the Internet will slow drastically, as the flaw in ‘Metcalfe’s law’—which states that the number of potential connections in a network is proportional to the square of the number of participants—becomes apparent: most people have nothing to say to each other! By 2005 or so, it will become clear that the Internet’s impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine’s.”

Well, now that this is cleared up....

tiredtoo

(2,949 posts)
14. I predicted the election of Barak Obama
Sat Feb 5, 2022, 04:35 PM
Feb 2022

Would end or greatly reduce racism in America. The people would see a person's skin color has no bearing on his/her abilities. Couldn't have been more wrong.

PoliticAverse

(26,366 posts)
17. You overestimated what would happen if all the sane people could communicate easily...
Sat Feb 5, 2022, 04:49 PM
Feb 2022

and underestimated what would happen if all the crazy people could.

"The Internet is like a giant room where all the crazy people meet." - Irene, caller on The Rush Limbaugh program.

niyad

(113,302 posts)
18. I wish that I had been wrong. I kept pointing out, whenever someone called the F'n,
Sat Feb 5, 2022, 04:50 PM
Feb 2022

murdering orange TRAITOR** a joke before the election, that that was a lot of the reaction to hitler in the 1930's, and look how that turned out.

KS Toronado

(17,235 posts)
20. Ted Kaczynski seen the internet as having a negative impact on society.
Sat Feb 5, 2022, 05:07 PM
Feb 2022

It has sure helped divide this country.

Lettuce Be

(2,336 posts)
21. I was more wrong. I said Starbucks would never survive.
Sat Feb 5, 2022, 07:25 PM
Feb 2022

Who wants to buy $4 coffee? Everyone apparently, LOL

canetoad

(17,157 posts)
23. Unlike you
Sat Feb 5, 2022, 07:54 PM
Feb 2022

After my first few month experiencing the early cyberspace, I knew that 'truth' would become a popular vote.

Latest Discussions»General Discussion»Years ago I made a predic...