Let me go off on a slight tangent: Should all jokes be taken at face value? Communication is a complex business, and surely what's literal is largely irrelevant; what matters is what is communicated; i.e. what a recipient learns from whatever signals you transmit.
JR is deceptive not because every spoken word he says taken in isolation is false, but because the way he frames and presents various sources leads listeners to draw false conclusions. Taking everything he says at face value is no more valid that taking a joke at face value. TL;DR: - "just asking questions" is deceptive; that's not a valid way to learn nor inform. We could discuss in depth how it's deceptive, but that's not really the point - the point is that not all questions will be interpreted literally, so you need to do the same when judging how reasonable that communication is. You have to look holistically at the message listeners will hear.
> JR is deceptive not because everything he says taken in isolation is false
I understand at what you are getting at, words at face value don't mean much, context is everything. However, listening to JR I never get a feeling that I'm being intentionally deceived.
The falsehoods he believes seem to me to be a genuine lack of awareness on his parts, the fact that he changes opinions when confronted with the fact what he said was bullshit gives me trust that he is not out to deceive me.
If he's framing X doctor as best in the field because of Y achievements is because the average Joe would also believe that as well. And the fact that he has corrected some statements made by the past two controversial guests, regarding Covid, is the reason why I trust he's not deceiving with some agenda. Unlike with most mainstream media where I am always trying to figure out the underlying agenda of every statement made from the hosts.
I have no idea if JR is intentionally deceptive, or merely deluded. I think that kind of stuff is often something of a grey area anyhow; I mean part of being able to convince people of things is to be able to come up with a narrative that sounds convincing to yourself. It's perfectly plausible to me, at least, that he's convinced himself of things that aren't reasonable, that he may at one point have doubted, but now thinks are at least plausible because he's so embedded himself and his persona in the notion that alternative explanations must be reasonable. In any case, whether confused, delusional, honestly misinformed, intentionally exaggerating, intentionally misleading - or some combination thereof - he can still be deceiving his listeners.
As to an agenda: he has clear monetary and reputational motives for coming up with controversial guests and perspectives. People _like_ acquiring followers, and he's even being paid to do so. There's no need for anything as crude as an outright payment by some snake-oil salesperson to cause a conflict of interest, fame and fortune are quite he incentives by themselves - and here too, people can convince themselves they're onto something (and do so entirely honestly!) when they get this kind of positive feedback - even if it's nonsense.
If you believe that Joe's motives are any more pure than those of mainstream-media hosts, you're wearing rose-tinted glasses. Also, he is a mainstream media host. He's just a deceptive one, that's all. If anything, most mainstream media hosts have _fewer_ incentives to lie; after all, they tend not to simultaneously be media owners nor to rake in quite as much cash as he does, though surely there are exceptions. Also, the mere fact that other media tends to involve a much greater back-office makes it slightly harder to go off the deep end - your colleagues may sometimes say things to burst your (potentially honest) self-deceptive bubble.
It should be up to the listeners to judge the content of JR. Not someone with a blue pencil (or was it a red pencil). There is no possible justification in a free society to censor someone just because someone might be mislead by them. It is patronizing to think that we know better and so should decide for the rest what is available or not.
1. I'm curious: why do you believe every individual human should be forced to/be free to (same thing here!) judge each piece of content for themselves? Why is it morally right to let millions of people be deceived, when you know they'll be deceived?
2. On a rather related front: what do you think is the key differentiating factor that explains why humans (homo sapiens) have so devastatingly outstripped all ecological competitors?
My personal answer to question 2 explains why I have my doubts about all too rigidly accepting your moral thesis here. I mean, I accept and support the idea that honest debate can help surface tricky truths - and that in that context debate must be free, but not that all speech should be promoted unconditionally. That's harmful, and the only reason we're even talking about that is because as a society we've come to see the first amendment not merely as a tool to constrain an overly powerful, potentially abusive government, but as an axiom of patriotic identity. The first amendment is not perfect, and even if it were, it should not be applied blindly to every situation, nor should it replace all other social norms about honesty and truth.
Let me turn that onto yourself. Why do you believe that you are right? And why do you think you (or whoever) gets to decide what is correct or not for the remaining millions? No one is forcing anyone to anything (after all only who wants tunes in to JRE) although I think it is very healthy to have an enquiring mind and to have the habit of questioning and judging everything of importance you come by.
Hence my question 2. If you can answer that honestly, and in good faith, at least my personal answer to this follows, and hopefully, eventually, why Rogan's approach is fundamentally invalid; why just asking questions is deceptive.
But even if your perspective differs - I don't expect everyone to follow my lead, of couse - I don't think you're going to understand my reasoning without at least trying to understand and answer that question. In essence - your assertion that it's (implicitly unconditionally) "very healthy to have an enquiring mind" is backed by an assumption I do not share. I know that there are conditions here, and Rogan isn't satisfying those. And the heart of that disagreement is behind question 2.
So if we censor information and don't let people like Joe Rogan ask questions then the human species will be a better species instead of some kind of an ecological disaster?
Also, you don't think that having an enquiring mind is good? How do you justify that? And what is the assumption I made that you don't share?
Maybe Spotify, as the owner and publisher of the content that they paid a lot of money for, realise that THEY are misleading you and they aren’t comfortable with that / feel that you deserve better / would rather that you stay alive so that you continue to send them money [delete as appropriate]
When I signed up for Spotify I did sign up for their moral values but for the service they provide. It is up to them to do whatever they like with their platform and it is up to me to voice my opinion and vote with my feet when I am no longer happy with their service.
Could you please give us some specific examples of Joe Rogan being deceptive with direct quotes in context? I've only ever listened to a few episodes but I'm always suspicious of vague allegations with no evidence.
If you want professional fact-checking, he's high profile enough you can google it. E.g. this is recent: https://www.bbc.com/news/60199614 and includes some amusing quackery. However, the real problem here isn't just the outright claims he makes, it's that he platforms dangerous cook's like Malone and presents their debunked, non-scientific nonsense as reasonable.
Name a single MSM person or outlet and I'll give you ten stories that were objectively speaking misinformation that led to far more severe consequences than anything Joe Rogan has done. Which one do you want? The "Russian bounty" story? The "Ivermectin ODs keep shot people waiting outside" story? How about the "WMD" thing? Go ahead, let's see how Joe Rogan's latest monkey story compares to that.
TL;DR: People enjoy Joe Rogan because he's having simple conversations without pretending to have all the answers. Meanwhile the entire MSM, from Rachel Maddow to James Clapper has deliberately lied to their audience to push for wars and escalations. If you want to start cancelling, start there.
This applies to almost any media outlet in the world, even your comment here. For example here you framed JR as the only person doing framing to push his agenda.
Right, so for all media you need to consider their message holistically, not parse statements in some legalistic fashion that no real listener would interpret them in. And some messages survive that test, and others don't. Given the absurd covid nonsense JR has said himself and platformed (which is much more impactful), I don't trust his judgement. And of course, there are outlets that specialize in doing this kind of review, and while they tend to take things a little to literally IMNSHO, that only serves to _underrepresent_ how problematic outlets like Joe Rogan are, and he doesn't rank highly as it is.
TLDR: That a message has context is an inescapable fact of life; but using context to deceive isn't.
JR is deceptive not because every spoken word he says taken in isolation is false, but because the way he frames and presents various sources leads listeners to draw false conclusions. Taking everything he says at face value is no more valid that taking a joke at face value. TL;DR: - "just asking questions" is deceptive; that's not a valid way to learn nor inform. We could discuss in depth how it's deceptive, but that's not really the point - the point is that not all questions will be interpreted literally, so you need to do the same when judging how reasonable that communication is. You have to look holistically at the message listeners will hear.