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Workers who fall for ‘corporate bullshit’ may be worse at their jobs, study finds
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 23 Mar 2026
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Fediverse vs Disinformation
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Pointing out, debunking, and spreading awareness about state- and company-sponsored astroturfing on Lemmy and elsewhere. This includes social media manipulation, propaganda, and disinformation campaigns, among others.
Propaganda and disinformation are a big problem on the internet, and the Fediverse is no exception.
What's the difference between misinformation and disinformation? The inadvertent spread of false information is misinformation. Disinformation is the intentional spread of falsehoods.
By equipping yourself with knowledge of current disinformation campaigns by state actors, corporations and their cheerleaders, you will be better able to identify, report and (hopefully) remove content matching known disinformation campaigns.
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Same as instance rules, plus:
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Related websites
- EU vs Disinfo
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- PolitiFact
- Snopes
- Media Bias / Fact Check
- PEN America
- Media Matters
- FAIR
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Additionally: it confuses intelligence with learning. Having a PhD is a sign of the later, not of the former.
A PhD is when you know everything about one specific rock on the beach, is how I put it. You know exactly where it is, all of its properties, and can go to it any time. Outside of that one rock, maybe a slightly above-average person, but nothing special.
Yup, pretty much. Someone who learnt all the bits and bobs of that rock; but that doesn't mean the person has strong cognitive capabilities, not even to solve tasks related to that rock.
Generally speaking a PhD requires producing original research. Which ass-tier PhDs are you referencing that only require learning?
The sort of PhD that lands you a job in "HR, accounting, marketing and finance", of course!
...okay, I'm being cheeky with the above. But serious now: 90% of research is learning. And the other 10% don't really require you to be specially intelligent, they require you to be specially stubborn and methodological.
I mean that's mostly true. Coming up with novel ideas and how to test them is a small (but critical) part of the job. Still I agree, you don't actually spend that much time on it.
PhD is really mostly a proxy for how rich or educated your parents were. And rich people always score higher on general intelligence because they are better educated due to money. Less than a 1/3 of PhD students are first-generation. Meaning 2/3 of them have parents who have advanced degrees.
I was a first gen PhD student. I was the only one in my cohort of 20 students who was. Everyone else had highly educated parents. I ended up quitting because the deck was so incredibly stacked against me, and my dream job/career was basically the lazy fall-back career of folks who had generations of education and money carrying them through life.
No it doesn't. You are confusing the ideal of a PhD with the reality.
Most PhDs are doing bland derivative safe stuff, to get their degree and get a job. Very few are doing anything legitimately original. And most of them won't get a job in their field anyway. We have way too many PhDs because they are the cheap labor for teaching in the university systems, that have over-enrolled for decades so they have to hire less faculty.
Most of my cohort in grad school did not belong there, at a mid-level state school. Only about 1/4 of us were serious about our studies. Yeah, at elite schools you will be doing original research for sure, at most low/mid level programs (and there are a lot) most PhDs are just people with good grades killing time tying to figure out what they want out of life, and a PhD is a good way to do that for 5-10 years. The time to graduate has been going up to over 6 years on average now.
Mmm you know that's a good point, I never even considered looking at mid or low tier programs when I was school shopping. Your point reminds me of Mike Israetel's embarrassing doctorate that he likes to use as a kudgle. I could have done his dissertation without the typos and I am educated in a completely different field.
There are also a growing number of PhDs where you are paying for the degree rather than being funded. They are jokes. A lot of dumb people see PhD as a vanity thing.