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Spreading true (well, at least less wrong) information is a noble goal. Unfortunately, I'm not sure we're not seeing such information availability providing av

Spreading true (well, at least less wrong) information is a noble goal. Unfortunately, I'm not sure we're not seeing such information availability providing avenues towards a smarter, more progressive planet. Instead, the internet seems to be helping people create cocoons of ignorance and "evidence" to support even the most specious claims - such as the world being flat. Knowledge does not seem to be enough. Wisdom and the ability to sift through knowledge with some degree of appropriate skepticism need to spread at least as fast as the knowledge if we are to get a smarter planet.

profalseidol 10y ago
Do you think that having workers/employees overwork, sometimes mindlessly; worrying about their jobs or otherwise go hungry - is a factor in the problem you described?
- rubberstamp 10y ago
  It definitely is. Plenty of evidence all around.
geuis 10y ago
I suspect this is just a phase. I don't have any hard stats at the moment to back it up, so it's just a feeling. Internet culture is still very young. At least in the US based on the election last week, the majority of people 18-25 voted progressive in most states. These are people who have never known the world without internet access. I guess that the people who voted the other way are folks who have transitioned into internet-required lifestyles later in life and had their young adult lifestyles set in the 80's and early 90s and earlier. This makes them less digital natives and more like immigrants (ironically). Again, none of these are universally true of course and this is all just personal opinion. I believe that in general, younger people have become better at filtering out bullshit because they've had access to much more information than older folks did growing up. I was born in 1980 and while I'm technically outside the millennial cutoff, I still identify with that group more than any other. While we didn't have a computer in the house until the early 90's, I was always exposed to computers and the internet from a super early age. Most of my viewing habits are gaming and making on YouTube, some streaming, etc. Still haven't really gotten the value from Snapchat personally, but I think that's more of a function of not having much need to use it. Overall I am hopeful things are getting better as boomers age out and die off and the younger folks are coming into their own.
- wott 10y ago
  > none of these are universally true of course Er... yes, I basically deeply disagree with all of your points :-)
- Consultant32452 10y ago
  Nah, those 18-25 year olds are ignorant idiots too. And when they get older they'll start voting conservative just like their parents generation. One anecdote about how ignorant they are... on three separate occasions I had a conversation with a Hillary supporter about her having destroyed subpoenaed evidence. Each of those three cited a factcheck.org article that stated in its third paragraph that she had in fact destroyed the evidence after the subpoena. They don't even read their own citations... I didn't vote for Trump, so it's not like I was supporting him, but damn Hillary voters were so ignorant of her history. They were so mad that Trump didn't want to welcome more Syrian refugees. How many of them knew Hillary literally created the Syrian refugee crisis in a failed attempt at a coup? Not a single one I talked to.
  - EthanHeilman 10y ago
    >How many of them knew Hillary literally created the Syrian refugee crisis in a failed attempt at a coup? Not a single one I talked to. There is no evidence that Clinton backed or supported a coup in Syria. The US did support elements of a popular uprising in Syria during the Arab spring, and then provided and continues to provide military support to Anti-Assad factions after Assad viciously cracked down on the uprising. A coup d'etat is a very different beast. The refugee crisis is a result of Assad and Anti-Assad factions acting to change the demographics of Syria via ethnic cleansing. It is unclear, but seems unlikely to me, that the refugee crisis would be lower if the Anti-Assad factions had gotten less support from the US. The refugee crisis would have just happened over a shorter period of time. To avoid increased US involvement Assad regulated his behavior somewhat (see Chemical Weapons controversy). It seems likely to me that the US by providing limited support to Anti-Assad factions acted to limit/control military support given by gulf nations to the more extreme Anti-Assad elements. Such support would likely have made the more radical elements of the civil war much more powerful and likely increased the flow of refugees. US involvement in the Syrian Civil War did in certain circumstances limit the refugee crisis and has allowed refugees to return home. For example the US/YPG defense of Sinjar Mountain in N. Iraq allowed refugees to escape genocide, then with the recapture of Sinjar, allowed refugees to return home. Another example would be halting of the Islamic State's campaign in N. Syria, which if continued would have generated hundreds of thousands of refugees. Not only was the Islamic State's advance halted, but it has been rolled back significantly with large numbers of refugees returning home. This would not have been possible without US support to the factions (YPG/SDF) fighting the Islamic State. We can debate the exact nature of US responsibility for the refugee crisis, but (1). any direct responsibility for foreign policy at this level is with the President not the Secretary of State, (2). there was no coup d'etat attempted or otherwise in Syria.
BobCat 10y ago
> such as the world being flat. This doesn't harm anyone. People follow and believe in all kinds of unreal things - The Pope tweets, Dalai Lama has a website... at least there's not going to be Flat Earth terrorism.
andrewksl 10y ago
You're right: Knowledge shouldn't be the end goal, but I think you're overstating the effect of fringe communities on the internet. Consider that for many people on Earth, getting access to the internet takes them from the knowledge shared amongst the members of their community to the collective knowledge of world. That's quite a leap, and I'd argue that having to read flat-earther nonsense once in a while is a price well worth the benefit
- hackuser 10y ago
  > I think you're overstating the effect of fringe communities on the internet. Some believe that fringe information was a major factor in the U.S. Presidential election. A leader of a fringe community is the chief political advisor to the most powerful person in the world-elect.
  - adnzzzzZ 10y ago
    Breitbart is far from a fringe community. Just because you didn't see it growing dramatically over the past few years it doesn't mean they have a small audience.
    - imw 10y ago
      Just because they're numerous doesn't mean they're not a lunatic fringe.
      - inimino 10y ago
        Lunatic, perhaps, but "fringe" actually does imply numeric inferiority.
        lostboys67 10y ago
        no in politics it means on the extreme end of a spectrum eg the KKK or the equivalent on the left who where calling for the workers of the world to help our Baathist sisters and bothers crush the uprising.
adventured 10y ago
> Unfortunately, I'm not sure we're not seeing such information availability providing avenues towards a smarter, more progressive planet. The long-term view, spanning decades or hundreds of years, overwhelmingly argues in favor of information availability leading to progress. That progress doesn't happen all at once, gains are not always evenly distributed, it's gradual and eventual. All great leaps of human progress have directly coincided with immense increases in information availability. I'd be very skeptical that that is a coincidence. Ignorance is gradually boxed into smaller and smaller enclaves when confronted with unfettered access to information. The only way to truly retard that progression is through violence and that is always temporary. What other explanation is there for seven billion people having such a drastically higher median when it comes to knowledge, versus what the median was 500 or 5,000 years ago? 500 years ago, the median on the planet was extraordinarily ignorant compared to today. You can see ignorance collapse rapidly when confronted with information. Countries as varied as China, Vietnam, Romania, Colombia, Brazil, etc. have been or actively are incredible demonstrations of it in action the past few decades. Cuba will demonstrate it once again over the next ~20 years. China's last 30 years may be the single largest / greatest leap in history, going from a median that was hyper ignorant and impoverished agrarian to quickly closing the gap with the global median. That China leap directly coincided with a vast increase in knowledge availability for the median (even if state censorship is still present, the education level available to their median has skyrocketed).
cookiecaper 10y ago
I agree with you -- but I want to point out another way that widespread internet access is insufficient. We need to update our laws to allow true information democratization. Right now, under dominant legal systems, information is far too easy for companies to box off and "own", even when they don't own it (extensive discussion about this earlier today on the thread about Google locking out people who resold their Pixel devices). Yes, it's true that underground utilities and services can be produced that skirt legal responsibility for a good while, but without the legal ability to come into the sunlight and flourish, such things will always remain incomplete, spotty, and hard to come by, always denied a full resource allocation and full publicity profile. We need to update copyright to something that's sane for the digital age, something that doesn't pretend like a RAM representation that exists for microseconds represents millions of dollars in damages. We need to update patent law to something that protects small innovators without becoming a club that can bludgeon competitors who are playing fair. We need to repeal and replace the Soviet-era CFAA and its copycats, which still govern most network access and allow tech monopolists to take your data, and thus your life (calendars, emails, photos, phone numbers...), hostage. The true potential of a free internet remains unseen, stifled by greedy monopolists hiding behind their hypocritical rhetoric about freedom and openness while they prosecute and harass anyone that tries to ensure you can keep control of your most personal records.
- kakarot 10y ago
  Ok... where do we start?
  - vedranm 10y ago
    I highly recommend reading Rich Falkvinge at [1]; he talks a lot about how copyright has to change for the modern day world. [1] https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/ https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/
Mikeb85 10y ago
The flat earth thing is a joke, no? I mean it's gotten pretty elaborate, but it seems as though they're always dropping sarcastic hints here and there...
- M4v3R 10y ago
  No, unfortunately it is not a joke. There are people sincerely believing that the earth is flat (some also believe it is hollow and we live inside it) and actively trying to convince others to believe the same. Search for "flat earth" on YouTube and you will see hundreds of videos by many different authors, sometimes with tens of thousands of views. They try to come up with arguments for pretty much any proof you will toss at them, like saying that things disappearing over the horizon are due to perspective or "light bending".
  - Mikeb85 10y ago
    Hmm, I always thought the elaborate and ridiculous explanations were merely an embellishment of the joke. Kind of like the Church of the FSM. That's a lot of mental gymnastics, it's easier to believe the world is round and whatnot.
yxhuvud 10y ago
Don't worry - give it a few generations and the people in charge will have accumulated enough experience to handle the access to knowledge.
- Anasufovic 10y ago
  Mainstream social media is pretty much curated at this point.
  - lallysingh 10y ago
    Mostly by your selections in the media. And the good stuff isn't getting filtered out, just lost in the noise of the bad stuff.
shams93 10y ago
Fake news targets people based on popularity if you look at the popular vote Hillary was actually more popular and thus the biggest fake news target. They're going to destroy Trump next it's not about politics it's about traffic and money , he's setting himself up perfectly to get torn to shreds if he can't deliver on practical issues like jobs and health care costs, if he brings in single payer he won't be so vulnerable but if he reverses his economic promises and goes for scapegoating vulnerable people the fake news will amplify his hypocrisy. Most likely he's planning in using scapegoating to have to cover for throwing his followers under a bus in order to please Wall Street.
- dao- 10y ago
  > Most likely he's planning in using scapegoating to have to cover for throwing his followers under a bus in order to please Wall Street. With Steve Bannon he has the best man on board to do exactly that /without even alienating his followers/, at least the loyal ones. We might see a propaganda alliance between the White House and far-right media, so it's not at all clear to me that Trump will be destroyed by fake news.
aaron695 10y ago
> Instead, the internet seems to be helping people create cocoons of ignorance and "evidence" to support even the most specious claims - such as the world being flat. I've yet to see any evidence that it overall makes the world a worse place. People give examples like immigration but leave out things like gay marriage acceptance which would have been unheard of pre-internet. Drug reform seems to be improving. > Knowledge does not seem to be enough. Correct, access to knowledge is useless, but the internet is more. It's access to incredible AI machines and software, like Googles search engine. The ability for Uber to work. For free phone calls.
- didibus 10y ago
  I actually lean on your side, I think free easy access to knowledge is awesome and is for the best, but to put a counter example, there was a Hackernews not too loNguyen about how the top result for election on Google was to a false news side. So I do think we'll have issues controlling that false information doesn't spread faster and wider on the Internet then true info.
- dao- 10y ago
  > > Instead, the internet seems to be helping people create cocoons of ignorance and "evidence" to support even the most specious claims - such as the world being flat. > I've yet to see any evidence that it overall makes the world a worse place. Donald Trump, potentially. We'll see. > People give examples like immigration They don't know what they're talking about. Migration isn't even a particularly modern phenomenon.
nogbit 10y ago
And I assume you or someone you know should be in charge of what is considered smart and progressive wisdom? No thanks, history has shown us that is the wrong direction, set it all free (as in freedom, not beer...unless you want/can) and let the public decide.
dv_dt 10y ago
I suspect that if not for the internet, one wouldn't even know the cocoons existed.
cloudsloth 10y ago
I share your skepticism of the (inherent) potential of the internet. It's not a popular belief and I haven't seen a good solution... But in the mean time I watch as everyone heralds the dawn of the information age, awaiting the death of ignorance and bigotry... and I suspect we will find ourselves in a dark place in ten years wishing we had realized how much work we should have done because this gigantic confounding tool is just a tool and like all tools is not a neutral force. A tool's effects in history are those that its use/existence tends to promote. I'm not sure discussions of a free and equal internet approach something that will be a net good. I think there's ample evidence that the internet is really most similar to TV.
bigboris 10y ago
Agreed. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12972219 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12972219
dilemma 10y ago
If home internet was fast enough to power a turnkey server with software to provide similar capability to what we get from Google and Facebook today then, yes, it would free information.

profalseidol 10y ago

Do you think that having workers/employees overwork, sometimes mindlessly; worrying about their jobs or otherwise go hungry - is a factor in the problem you described?

rubberstamp 10y ago
It definitely is. Plenty of evidence all around.

geuis 10y ago

I suspect this is just a phase. I don't have any hard stats at the moment to back it up, so it's just a feeling. Internet culture is still very young. At least in the US based on the election last week, the majority of people 18-25 voted progressive in most states. These are people who have never known the world without internet access. I guess that the people who voted the other way are folks who have transitioned into internet-required lifestyles later in life and had their young adult lifestyles set in the 80's and early 90s and earlier. This makes them less digital natives and more like immigrants (ironically). Again, none of these are universally true of course and this is all just personal opinion. I believe that in general, younger people have become better at filtering out bullshit because they've had access to much more information than older folks did growing up. I was born in 1980 and while I'm technically outside the millennial cutoff, I still identify with that group more than any other. While we didn't have a computer in the house until the early 90's, I was always exposed to computers and the internet from a super early age. Most of my viewing habits are gaming and making on YouTube, some streaming, etc. Still haven't really gotten the value from Snapchat personally, but I think that's more of a function of not having much need to use it. Overall I am hopeful things are getting better as boomers age out and die off and the younger folks are coming into their own.

wott 10y ago
> none of these are universally true of course Er... yes, I basically deeply disagree with all of your points :-)
Consultant32452 10y ago
Nah, those 18-25 year olds are ignorant idiots too. And when they get older they'll start voting conservative just like their parents generation. One anecdote about how ignorant they are... on three separate occasions I had a conversation with a Hillary supporter about her having destroyed subpoenaed evidence. Each of those three cited a factcheck.org article that stated in its third paragraph that she had in fact destroyed the evidence after the subpoena. They don't even read their own citations... I didn't vote for Trump, so it's not like I was supporting him, but damn Hillary voters were so ignorant of her history. They were so mad that Trump didn't want to welcome more Syrian refugees. How many of them knew Hillary literally created the Syrian refugee crisis in a failed attempt at a coup? Not a single one I talked to.
- EthanHeilman 10y ago
  >How many of them knew Hillary literally created the Syrian refugee crisis in a failed attempt at a coup? Not a single one I talked to. There is no evidence that Clinton backed or supported a coup in Syria. The US did support elements of a popular uprising in Syria during the Arab spring, and then provided and continues to provide military support to Anti-Assad factions after Assad viciously cracked down on the uprising. A coup d'etat is a very different beast. The refugee crisis is a result of Assad and Anti-Assad factions acting to change the demographics of Syria via ethnic cleansing. It is unclear, but seems unlikely to me, that the refugee crisis would be lower if the Anti-Assad factions had gotten less support from the US. The refugee crisis would have just happened over a shorter period of time. To avoid increased US involvement Assad regulated his behavior somewhat (see Chemical Weapons controversy). It seems likely to me that the US by providing limited support to Anti-Assad factions acted to limit/control military support given by gulf nations to the more extreme Anti-Assad elements. Such support would likely have made the more radical elements of the civil war much more powerful and likely increased the flow of refugees. US involvement in the Syrian Civil War did in certain circumstances limit the refugee crisis and has allowed refugees to return home. For example the US/YPG defense of Sinjar Mountain in N. Iraq allowed refugees to escape genocide, then with the recapture of Sinjar, allowed refugees to return home. Another example would be halting of the Islamic State's campaign in N. Syria, which if continued would have generated hundreds of thousands of refugees. Not only was the Islamic State's advance halted, but it has been rolled back significantly with large numbers of refugees returning home. This would not have been possible without US support to the factions (YPG/SDF) fighting the Islamic State. We can debate the exact nature of US responsibility for the refugee crisis, but (1). any direct responsibility for foreign policy at this level is with the President not the Secretary of State, (2). there was no coup d'etat attempted or otherwise in Syria.

BobCat 10y ago

> such as the world being flat. This doesn't harm anyone. People follow and believe in all kinds of unreal things - The Pope tweets, Dalai Lama has a website... at least there's not going to be Flat Earth terrorism.

andrewksl 10y ago

You're right: Knowledge shouldn't be the end goal, but I think you're overstating the effect of fringe communities on the internet. Consider that for many people on Earth, getting access to the internet takes them from the knowledge shared amongst the members of their community to the collective knowledge of world. That's quite a leap, and I'd argue that having to read flat-earther nonsense once in a while is a price well worth the benefit

hackuser 10y ago
> I think you're overstating the effect of fringe communities on the internet. Some believe that fringe information was a major factor in the U.S. Presidential election. A leader of a fringe community is the chief political advisor to the most powerful person in the world-elect.
- adnzzzzZ 10y ago
  Breitbart is far from a fringe community. Just because you didn't see it growing dramatically over the past few years it doesn't mean they have a small audience.
  - imw 10y ago
    Just because they're numerous doesn't mean they're not a lunatic fringe.
    - inimino 10y ago
      Lunatic, perhaps, but "fringe" actually does imply numeric inferiority.
      - lostboys67 10y ago
        no in politics it means on the extreme end of a spectrum eg the KKK or the equivalent on the left who where calling for the workers of the world to help our Baathist sisters and bothers crush the uprising.

adventured 10y ago

> Unfortunately, I'm not sure we're not seeing such information availability providing avenues towards a smarter, more progressive planet. The long-term view, spanning decades or hundreds of years, overwhelmingly argues in favor of information availability leading to progress. That progress doesn't happen all at once, gains are not always evenly distributed, it's gradual and eventual. All great leaps of human progress have directly coincided with immense increases in information availability. I'd be very skeptical that that is a coincidence. Ignorance is gradually boxed into smaller and smaller enclaves when confronted with unfettered access to information. The only way to truly retard that progression is through violence and that is always temporary. What other explanation is there for seven billion people having such a drastically higher median when it comes to knowledge, versus what the median was 500 or 5,000 years ago? 500 years ago, the median on the planet was extraordinarily ignorant compared to today. You can see ignorance collapse rapidly when confronted with information. Countries as varied as China, Vietnam, Romania, Colombia, Brazil, etc. have been or actively are incredible demonstrations of it in action the past few decades. Cuba will demonstrate it once again over the next ~20 years. China's last 30 years may be the single largest / greatest leap in history, going from a median that was hyper ignorant and impoverished agrarian to quickly closing the gap with the global median. That China leap directly coincided with a vast increase in knowledge availability for the median (even if state censorship is still present, the education level available to their median has skyrocketed).

cookiecaper 10y ago

I agree with you -- but I want to point out another way that widespread internet access is insufficient. We need to update our laws to allow true information democratization. Right now, under dominant legal systems, information is far too easy for companies to box off and "own", even when they don't own it (extensive discussion about this earlier today on the thread about Google locking out people who resold their Pixel devices). Yes, it's true that underground utilities and services can be produced that skirt legal responsibility for a good while, but without the legal ability to come into the sunlight and flourish, such things will always remain incomplete, spotty, and hard to come by, always denied a full resource allocation and full publicity profile. We need to update copyright to something that's sane for the digital age, something that doesn't pretend like a RAM representation that exists for microseconds represents millions of dollars in damages. We need to update patent law to something that protects small innovators without becoming a club that can bludgeon competitors who are playing fair. We need to repeal and replace the Soviet-era CFAA and its copycats, which still govern most network access and allow tech monopolists to take your data, and thus your life (calendars, emails, photos, phone numbers...), hostage. The true potential of a free internet remains unseen, stifled by greedy monopolists hiding behind their hypocritical rhetoric about freedom and openness while they prosecute and harass anyone that tries to ensure you can keep control of your most personal records.

kakarot 10y ago
Ok... where do we start?
- vedranm 10y ago
  I highly recommend reading Rich Falkvinge at [1]; he talks a lot about how copyright has to change for the modern day world. [1] https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/ https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/

Mikeb85 10y ago

The flat earth thing is a joke, no? I mean it's gotten pretty elaborate, but it seems as though they're always dropping sarcastic hints here and there...

M4v3R 10y ago
No, unfortunately it is not a joke. There are people sincerely believing that the earth is flat (some also believe it is hollow and we live inside it) and actively trying to convince others to believe the same. Search for "flat earth" on YouTube and you will see hundreds of videos by many different authors, sometimes with tens of thousands of views. They try to come up with arguments for pretty much any proof you will toss at them, like saying that things disappearing over the horizon are due to perspective or "light bending".
- Mikeb85 10y ago
  Hmm, I always thought the elaborate and ridiculous explanations were merely an embellishment of the joke. Kind of like the Church of the FSM. That's a lot of mental gymnastics, it's easier to believe the world is round and whatnot.

yxhuvud 10y ago

Don't worry - give it a few generations and the people in charge will have accumulated enough experience to handle the access to knowledge.

Anasufovic 10y ago
Mainstream social media is pretty much curated at this point.
- lallysingh 10y ago
  Mostly by your selections in the media. And the good stuff isn't getting filtered out, just lost in the noise of the bad stuff.

shams93 10y ago

Fake news targets people based on popularity if you look at the popular vote Hillary was actually more popular and thus the biggest fake news target. They're going to destroy Trump next it's not about politics it's about traffic and money , he's setting himself up perfectly to get torn to shreds if he can't deliver on practical issues like jobs and health care costs, if he brings in single payer he won't be so vulnerable but if he reverses his economic promises and goes for scapegoating vulnerable people the fake news will amplify his hypocrisy. Most likely he's planning in using scapegoating to have to cover for throwing his followers under a bus in order to please Wall Street.

dao- 10y ago
> Most likely he's planning in using scapegoating to have to cover for throwing his followers under a bus in order to please Wall Street. With Steve Bannon he has the best man on board to do exactly that /without even alienating his followers/, at least the loyal ones. We might see a propaganda alliance between the White House and far-right media, so it's not at all clear to me that Trump will be destroyed by fake news.

aaron695 10y ago

> Instead, the internet seems to be helping people create cocoons of ignorance and "evidence" to support even the most specious claims - such as the world being flat. I've yet to see any evidence that it overall makes the world a worse place. People give examples like immigration but leave out things like gay marriage acceptance which would have been unheard of pre-internet. Drug reform seems to be improving. > Knowledge does not seem to be enough. Correct, access to knowledge is useless, but the internet is more. It's access to incredible AI machines and software, like Googles search engine. The ability for Uber to work. For free phone calls.

didibus 10y ago
I actually lean on your side, I think free easy access to knowledge is awesome and is for the best, but to put a counter example, there was a Hackernews not too loNguyen about how the top result for election on Google was to a false news side. So I do think we'll have issues controlling that false information doesn't spread faster and wider on the Internet then true info.
dao- 10y ago
> > Instead, the internet seems to be helping people create cocoons of ignorance and "evidence" to support even the most specious claims - such as the world being flat. > I've yet to see any evidence that it overall makes the world a worse place. Donald Trump, potentially. We'll see. > People give examples like immigration They don't know what they're talking about. Migration isn't even a particularly modern phenomenon.

nogbit 10y ago

And I assume you or someone you know should be in charge of what is considered smart and progressive wisdom? No thanks, history has shown us that is the wrong direction, set it all free (as in freedom, not beer...unless you want/can) and let the public decide.

dv_dt 10y ago

I suspect that if not for the internet, one wouldn't even know the cocoons existed.

cloudsloth 10y ago

I share your skepticism of the (inherent) potential of the internet. It's not a popular belief and I haven't seen a good solution... But in the mean time I watch as everyone heralds the dawn of the information age, awaiting the death of ignorance and bigotry... and I suspect we will find ourselves in a dark place in ten years wishing we had realized how much work we should have done because this gigantic confounding tool is just a tool and like all tools is not a neutral force. A tool's effects in history are those that its use/existence tends to promote. I'm not sure discussions of a free and equal internet approach something that will be a net good. I think there's ample evidence that the internet is really most similar to TV.

bigboris 10y ago

Agreed. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12972219 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12972219

dilemma 10y ago

If home internet was fast enough to power a turnkey server with software to provide similar capability to what we get from Google and Facebook today then, yes, it would free information.