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It seems overly simplistic to say that our current ills are due to lack of skepticism or critical thinking and obeying authority figures. In fact the Internet

It seems overly simplistic to say that our current ills are due to lack of skepticism or critical thinking and obeying authority figures. In fact the Internet has torn down existing authorities and given people the ability to create new communities as well as new authorities. For example, climate skepticism explicitly posits that traditional authorities (scientists, the news, etc.) are wrong and seeks validation in creating new authorities and sources of truth. You might claim that these people are lacking in critical thinking, but any act of skepticism, no matter how ill-founded, is in itself an attempt at critical thinking. Same thing with anti-vaxxers -- nowadays anyone with a crazy theory can find an online community that validates their beliefs. The internet has also majorly eroded trust in our existing institutions based on elite opinion and one-way media, while not creating replacements for those institutions. At the end of the day, one important role of institutions is to 1) make a decision and 2) get everyone to go along with it, even if the decision itself isn't perfect. The Internet has provided the tools for everyone easily criticize and pick apart any decision, without providing a viable alternative means to come to consensus. TL;DR you think the problem is institutions and authority, while I think the real problem is that the Internet is helping break them without putting them back together again.

jon_richards 10y ago
Isn't that the strategy of propaganda? "Nothing is true and everything is possible"
- smallnamespace 10y ago
  It's not propagandists that are making people conclude that nothing is true, it's people putting themselves into echo chambers, aided and abetted by the Internet. 30 years ago if you had some crackpot theory, good luck finding anyone around you who agreed and would validate your beliefs. You'd watch and read normal news like everyone else and that was your source of information. Nowadays you can come up with some strange idea, look it up on Google, and then find a bunch of other people who will tell you that you're right, the media's full of liars, and the scientists are all in it too. Of course, this happened historically too before the Internet, but the difference is that in the past movements usually only happened in cities and college campuses and the like, because people had to talk face to face. Nowadays, everyone with a smart phone and some free time can self-radicalize. Eventually society will notice this trend and people will adjust to it, but until that happens you're going to see a more fractious society with more people who won't believe anything anyone else says (at least about particular topics).
  - imartin2k 10y ago
    Regarding critical thinking, I found this quite an interesting line of thought: https://points.datasociety.net/did-media-literacy-backfire-7418c084d88d https://points.datasociety.net/did-media-literacy-backfire-7... Basically, it might be the taught habit of critical thinking which actually makes people give up on the values which have been beneficial to modern civilization.
FullMtlAlcoholc 10y ago
> TL;DR you think the problem is institutions and authority, Actually, I explicitly stated that I think the problem is humanity itself. Institutions and authority are one of the few things that keeps behaving well. Whether you are in the urban sprawl of Detroit and the luxurious gated community of Bel Air, if electricity and water are out for more than 2 weeks and there's no authority around (police, security, etc), things are going to get very ugly.

jon_richards 10y ago

Isn't that the strategy of propaganda? "Nothing is true and everything is possible"

smallnamespace 10y ago
It's not propagandists that are making people conclude that nothing is true, it's people putting themselves into echo chambers, aided and abetted by the Internet. 30 years ago if you had some crackpot theory, good luck finding anyone around you who agreed and would validate your beliefs. You'd watch and read normal news like everyone else and that was your source of information. Nowadays you can come up with some strange idea, look it up on Google, and then find a bunch of other people who will tell you that you're right, the media's full of liars, and the scientists are all in it too. Of course, this happened historically too before the Internet, but the difference is that in the past movements usually only happened in cities and college campuses and the like, because people had to talk face to face. Nowadays, everyone with a smart phone and some free time can self-radicalize. Eventually society will notice this trend and people will adjust to it, but until that happens you're going to see a more fractious society with more people who won't believe anything anyone else says (at least about particular topics).
- imartin2k 10y ago
  Regarding critical thinking, I found this quite an interesting line of thought: https://points.datasociety.net/did-media-literacy-backfire-7418c084d88d https://points.datasociety.net/did-media-literacy-backfire-7... Basically, it might be the taught habit of critical thinking which actually makes people give up on the values which have been beneficial to modern civilization.

FullMtlAlcoholc 10y ago

> TL;DR you think the problem is institutions and authority, Actually, I explicitly stated that I think the problem is humanity itself. Institutions and authority are one of the few things that keeps behaving well. Whether you are in the urban sprawl of Detroit and the luxurious gated community of Bel Air, if electricity and water are out for more than 2 weeks and there's no authority around (police, security, etc), things are going to get very ugly.