People don’t want to be corrected, they want to be validated.
Admittedly they probably didn’t expect an enormous, sophisticated, and well-coordinated effort to promote ignorance and push so much misinformation so as to effectively muddy the waters of that information either though.
That’s basically the plot of brave new world.
where’s the soma?
well yeah but probably they should have expected it …
tbf the internet is also jam-packed with misinformation which doesn’t only counteract people learning the truth, but also makes them confident about their false views
Who knew stupidity was always the lies of man
Information has always been controlled, obscured, and distorted by capital, hegemony., etc. Not to mention nonstop brainwashing from birth.
For example… Where I live, kids still grow up worshiping flags, enslavers, enslaver pacts, capitalism, etc… And the state is increasingly denying them access to the internet/phones, alternative information, etc.
Thus assumes that the accessible information serves the truth
deleted by creator
Having access to information doesn’t help people who can’t read or don’t have the ability to comprehend what they’re reading.
it’s not just reading skills, it’s also ability to cross-correlate information to other information and perform consistency checks.
Nearly everything I’ve learned in my life is thanks to the internet but sure. I guess I get the point
You have to teach people to teach themselves though. Just because someone has access to a book doesn’t mean they’ll read it.
You can’t teach a fish to fly, and you can’t teach a republican to think critically.
I think we just have to accept that reading (critically) isn’t for everybody. There’s just people who prefer to talk out of their asses.
And we’ll have to find a way to live with that.
"You’re not just a regular moron, you were DESIGNED to be a moron. " - Portal 2
Probably the darkest truth - modern moronity is generally by design, not by misfortune.
“You can’t deny science when you have a radio made by science and see all the electronic”
Turns out, once radios are complex enough, you don’t see the electronic anymore
We lost something big with the transition to digital, and that’s DIY hardware built entirely from discrete components.
Nowadays, everything uses a microcontroller.
There was a sweet spot when computers were actually made out of transistors.
Nowadays, they’re all made by arcane magic.
And to follow up on that:
;D
Or completely glued together and you get a cease and desist when you start tinkering with it.
C&Ds make great firestarters.
Not the people’s fault, now we disinformation and the firehose of falsehoods 🙃
It was the lack of access to the right information. Most people won’t spend hours researching a topic. Most people don’t spend any time on seeking outbinformation. They only absorb whatever information they happen to come across. And liars are especially adept at being loud. So they’re the first, and often only, to be heard.
In a world without corruption, a ministry of truth would work wonders. In our world, I don’t know what would work.
Wrong. It is a lack of access to information. Good luck trying to find something useful on the modern Internet.
Yes, in the mid-late 90s Internet was making people cleverer. Because we didn’t have kids, influencers, politicians and activists on the Internet. It was a source of technical information managed by technical specialists. It was a good time. And you destroyed it.
Internet became bad when it got controlled by engagement seeking corporations.
More specifically, the internet failed because society decided to dedicate an entire generation of the world’s most brilliant minds to the problem of ad optimization. This directly led to the modern clickbait/ragebait disinformation problem.
If we had just taken those same engineers and said to solve any other problem, it would’ve been done ages ago.
I think the problem stems of the fact that google was convinced in 2000 that the internet needs to make money to keep being developed.
And that belief is primarily inspired by neoliberal belief that everything needs to make money.
However, information should be free. And so should the internet.
Wrong. Having been in group chats with people I know are real and have been debunked consistently since 2020, it doesn’t matter. 80% of people pick their reality based on feels, and 30% are straight up fascists.
In the mid 90s the internet was composed primarily of the 20% of the pop who are capable of reflection.
How did we determine the percentage based on feels?
Vibes based on my special interest in personalities/psychology as I’m on the other end of the scale and have been trying to figure out the feelers all my life.
Not discounting them either btw. But undoubtedly they have a blind spot for pish as how an argument makes them feel supersedes objectivity.
Debunking is fruitless. Even if you can prove something objectively as a lie and get them to admit it, it won’t change their wider ideology or make them question the source going forward. Can just be explained away and ignored.
People above average intelligence also overestimate the mentally capacity of the average person. They can’t evaluate information so what other choice do they have. Few weeks ago a friend tried to tell us smoking a vape was just smoking a battery. Not speaking figuratively. When pushed on this she said ‘look how small it is! you’re smoking the battery’. Explanations on how a battery heats the coil and vaporises the liquid were met with a blank stare. Can you imagine having that little understanding on how the world around you works? Blows my mind.
It’s feels all the way down.
but thoughts all the way up. ;-)
Vibes are acceptable if they’re not taking priority over real data.
In the 90s chat rooms/forums were a cesspool, just as they are today. But the web, while rough around the edges in terms of design/organization (hence the need for search engines) was great for information. Vast majority of websites had good intentions. That is not the case today.
Wrong. It is a lack of access to information. Good luck trying to find something useful on the modern Internet.
Yes, in the mid-late 90s Internet was making people cleverer. Because we didn’t have kids, influencers, politicians and activists on the Internet. It was a source of technical information managed by technical specialists. It was a good time. And you destroyed it.
this is a dumb take. the existence of wrong information doesn’t negate the existence of good information on the same medium. it’s like saying “i can’t improve my physical fitness because i can’t go to a gym,” while ignoring the possibility of bodyweight exercise at home. the access is there, people just don’t want to put in any work and want to blame something other than themselves.
so no, it’s not a lack of access to information that’s causing widespread stupidity. case in point: maga–how many of us have been outright shouting that trump is a conman, and here’s the literal proof–the information, which is good, is right there. and yet people still choose to death threaten dr. fauci because they “don’t like” the good information.
the existence of wrong information doesn’t negate the existence of good information on the same medium.
When there are no proper ways to sift through and structure that information, it kind of does, but your point overall is still not wrong, just this part I think misses part of the picture.
people just don’t want to put in any work and want to blame something other than themselves.
Yes, although I dare say that it is not as simple as saying “just do better” and “putting work in” - when there’s a massive amount of work and resources put into getting people de-facto addicted to primarily ad-driven engagement with mostly garbage information.
case in point: maga–how many of us have been outright shouting that trump is a conman, and here’s the literal proof–the information, which is good, is right there. and yet people still choose to death threaten dr. fauci because they “don’t like” the good information.
That, however, very much stands. The original vision really, really thought that truth and quality would win out in a “marketplace of ideas”. However, narcissistic appeasement and a combination of humiliating and then making people feel powerful by proxy wins out, especially considering there is no guiding consensus.
Availability to information is important, and that includes making it possible to sift through the mountains of nonsense, including teaching how to spot nonsense. But on top of that, it requires a solid foundation for society, and a consensus to direct what is true and what not (science, functioning professional journalism, etc.) Otherwise, when there is no consensus guiding towards (but not setting completely in stone) “truth”, it will always be whatever is emotionally convenient from individual to individual - and the dynamics of the system will favour information that both panders to narcissistic self-affirmation (not necessarily positive emotions), as well as beating you down in a way that you crave those from your ego being made fragile to begin with.
Yes, although I dare say that it is not as simple as saying “just do better” and “putting work in” - when there’s a massive amount of work and resources put into getting people de-facto addicted to primarily ad-driven engagement with mostly garbage information.
true, nothing can be that simple. it boils down to education imo, where people should be learning, beginning in childhood, how to make good decisions about what information can be considered plausible, and what is more likely to be agenda-driven propaganda. but as you said, we have to deal with a large and powerful group of puppetmasters who don’t want people questioning what they’re told and cutting the strings that make them work and toil day in and out because that could lead to people deciding to not produce X value while getting compensated with some ten thousandth of a percentage of X
Yeah, but it’s the equivalent of gyms opening a ficking McDonalds inside so you have to work out in the smell.
The thing is, while it might be good enough for some people to find information, people on average get distracted and scammed by the efforts to scam and distract people.
Propaganda works, that’s why they do it.
right, so if you want to argue propaganda, not access, is the cause of stupidity, that would be more valid than saying “people are stupid because they lack access to information.” the premise is wrong
I see you, ifunny watermark.
I grew up before the Internet was mainstream and I don’t remember this. We all had access to basically the same information and some of us still had worse or better ideas than our peers. Access was always only one part of the equation; beyond that, you need the information to be useful and accurate (big problem on the Internet), you need the desire to engage with that information, the ability to process and understand it correctly, the ability to discern when factual information is being cherry-picked or otherwise used in misleading ways …
If you trip over on any of those points or whatever else I’ve forgotten to mention, you come out the other end with bad information, access be damned.
this is why republicans fight tooth and nail to eliminate critical thinking from the curriculum–so much easier to control people when they believe what they’re told without question, instead of choosing a stance based on broad daylight evidence and facts. so now we have a wannabe con man in the white house surrounded by sheep cultist followers who would literally take all the bullets for him
The information was harder to access because it wasn’t available on demand. If you had a question about how something works in the evening it’s not as if you could go to the library to get the answer…
