DoubleThink™

In a true Orwellian fashion, the practice of DoubleThink™ is to hold a double standard on certain issues and to conveniently reject and re-introduce facts based on the flow of an argument.

Background

Novel Ninety Eighty-Four gives a description of the concept via a fictitious work titled “The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism”, which stated that “the essential act of the Party (Ingsoc) was to use conscious deception while retaining the firmness of purpose that goes with complete honesty.” The encouraging of this “doublethink”, thus, is necessary amongst the masses as, not only a distortion of the reality, but also a means to eliminate “standards of comparison”, and to cause a man to “believe that he is better off than his ancestors and that the average level of material comfort is constantly rising.”

DoubleThink™ in FUD

A side-by-side comparison, by Piestar, of two articles from itnewstoday.com demonstrates the deceptive nature of DoubleThink™ in the promotion of Linux operating systems:

http://piestar.net/2009/11/17/dishonest-untrustworthy-and-biased/

“It’s fairly obvious his 'review’ method largely consists of deciding on an outcome, then going on a search for facts that fit this outcome… So if Linux does it, two web browsers is great. If Microsoft bundles one, BLOAT!”

The above example shows simply one of the many usual ways to hand-craft a pro-Linux puff piece at the tech press. When you see something, as an opinion writer, that you can spin in both positive and negative ways, you always choose the way that suits your argument regardless of overall logical consistency across your opinion pieces. The same principle also work for opinion pieces concerning the same subjects – just think how Google was once the “godfather” of FOSS when it decided to use the Linux kernel in Android, and then how all of the sudden it became the “threat” of freedom when it started letting closed-source stuff to go on top of it. Remember – unlike Piestar or other rare cases, the receiving end of the tech press (or even just the press in general) in general is always in severe scarcity with the ability to retain information, and, when faced with news that is in direct contradiction to its own expectations, the majority of its members are usually willing to sacrifice factual accuracy and other so-called “real world” parameters for the sake of its own tastes and entertainment.

Ignorance is strength, people!