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The problem with ignorance in the internet age is you can now find sources that confirm your wrong headed ideas, entire ecosystems even. When I was young, lone

The problem with ignorance in the internet age is you can now find sources that confirm your wrong headed ideas, entire ecosystems even. When I was young, lonely and isolated, the internet was a godsend: it connected me to like minded individuals and expanded my horizons. It exposed me to a world of ideas about science, technology, history, politics, music, etc. at a time when everyone around me was mentally stagnant. That same power to connect can lead people down a dark or dangerous path. Approach the internet with an uncritical mind and you could emerge as a flat-earther, anti-vaccer, or worse. I've tried to explain to a friend why vaccinations are a good idea, and I get a bunch of crap about how modern medicine doesn't work for her, and how she took a homeopathic vaccine, went to India, and didn't get ill. I once knew someone who bought an expensive electronic detoxification device. The idea was you held on to the handles and it sent purifying waves through your body, killing any parasites. She insisted on showing off her stool after the process was complete. She said she could see the little "bugs" that had been in her system. Then we discovered that she had forgotten to put in the batteries. I knew someone else who wanted to invest in a $50,000 machine that made similarly dubious claims. The idea was to make the money back by selling treatments. Thankfully her daughter talked her out of it. Gullibility is a dangerous thing, especially at the intersection of personal health and second party financial incentive.

astrodust 10y ago
It's not just gullibility, it's being taken in by the siren song of some compelling hypothesis and then being slow-boiled by these increasingly ridiculous "facts" that are used to sustain that trance. Normal, grounded people don't wake up one morning and go "I get it, the Jews and Soros are conspiring to suppress the truth about the Flat Earth", they get there by baby steps, each one veering more and more into the illogical. Maybe it was when they were unemployed or in medical trouble and stressed out beyond their ability to cope, then wanted explanations, however implausible, that gave them at least an idea of what was wrong with their world. From there it took root and by degrees they slip into this other world of nonsense and batshittery. Crystal therapy and detox can lead to healing rituals can lead to cults can lead to suddenly selling everything and donating it all to some fraudulent healer. Like you observe, I think we're all in need of a best friend, family member, or spouse who can say "You've got a problem, this has to stop now." The problem with the internet is it delivers. If you want to know more about quantum physics or molecular biology or cancer research you can dig and dig and keep on digging, you will never run out of material. Likewise if you're looking for harmful material, it will unquestioningly keep going all the way. If Google started to detect the pattern of someone slipping into madness and did what they could to start to refute things, to sprinkle in some helpful counter-points with their diet of pure nonsense, maybe we can save people who'd otherwise be lost.
- quirkafleeg 10y ago
  > If Google started to detect the pattern of someone slipping into madness and did what they could to start to refute things, to sprinkle in some helpful counter-points with their diet of pure nonsense, maybe we can save people who'd otherwise be lost. To which the response is who are Google to influence how or what people think? It's easy to make up pure-nonsense examples that nobody believes - like Soros suppressing the truth about the flat Earth - and say believers should be saved. What if someone questions the official version of 9/11? What if they believe/d the NSA taps internet, social networks and world leaders? What if they think an omnipotent sky fairy watches over us all and blesses America? Google's "did you mean" is irritating enough when applied to assumed typos; its purpose should be to give people what they're looking for, not tell people what they should be looking for instead.
  - winfred 10y ago
    >To which the response is who are Google to influence how or what people think? But they are already doing just that. I watched a few Youtube videos related to Quantum Mechanics and my recommended queue was flooded with videos full of pseudo scientific nonsense. It took me considerable effort in having these weird videos no longer recommended to me. I think we can just be honest about what caused it, it's a lack of intelligence in the sorting algorithm, that currently isn't able to distinguish between true and false statements. I understand there are areas where this line is vague, but if I watch a few videos about astronomical events, why am I getting recommendations about aliens visiting earth?
    - astrodust 10y ago
      You watch one "free energy" video for chuckles and all of a sudden YouTube keeps surfacing more and more of these things, there's an infinite supply of them apparently. It just won't stop.
  - astrodust 10y ago
    > To which the response is who are Google to influence how or what people think? Give people a long leash, but when they're way off to the end of the bell-curve of normality throw them a life-line. > It's easy to make up pure-nonsense examples that nobody believes... That's actually an example of things people do believe. If you engage with some of those wild outliers you can learn a lot, quickly. Some of them are trolling, but many of them have extremely firm convictions. Maybe it's Sandy Hook. Maybe it's chemtrails. It's usually a bunch of stuff, all tangled together.
H4CK3RM4N 10y ago
The most terrifying part of the flat earth movement is that most people don't have the basic knowledge necessary to argue against them.
- 77pt77 10y ago
  It won't matter because flat earthers don't have the basic knowledge to understand arguments. It's like I usually say > You can't fix crazy and you can't fix stupid.
mirimir 10y ago
Wow, homeopathy. It's a carryover from alchemy. So you identify a poison, which causes some effect. You titrate the dose-response. Then you argue that some miniscule amount, orders of magnitude below an effective dose, relieves that poison's effect. That's from alchemy. And then people who believe you feel better, given how strong the placebo effect can be.
77pt77 10y ago
> She insisted on showing off her stool after the process was complete. She said she could see the little "bugs" that had been in her system. Then we discovered that she had forgotten to put in the batteries. There's so much wrong with this... Reminds me of the audiophile that was very happy with his top of the line amplifier that he custom built. It was clearly much better than the previous one. Turns out he had forgotten to turn it on and was using the old one.
kordless 10y ago
> That same power to connect can lead people down a dark or dangerous path. Approach the internet with an uncritical mind and you could emerge as a flat-earther, anti-vaccer, or worse. Maybe. Or, perhaps it's the tendency of irrationality to beg more irrationality today, when a large number of vectors exists in which the irrationality can spread. If someone said something irrational and blaming 30 years ago, a few people might hear it and think, "huh, that's a weird thought". Most would probably not repeat the thought to anyone later because most people don't want to be viewed as irrational or weird by others. Maybe a few people might, because they were already irrational, but the chances were low that enough would repeat it to where it could spread. 30 years later, two things have happened to increase the likelihood of a "viral irrationality" to root and grow at increasing rates: 1. lots of people on the Internet and 2. lots of irrational things being said on the Internet. I would classify most of the irrationality on the Internet as others speaking for others thoughts or feelings. Check out Alex Jones just pulling shit out of his ass for example, under the guise of "news", but really just being a performance artist. He's "entertaining" people by pretending to be trustworthy, and keeping it going by making anyone listen to him question the "real" news (of which is he is not a member) to keep the schtick going. I look at it more like a weird NP problem, where increasing amounts of time are needed to unravel the logic being presented as it spreads further into the aggregate, given it's self-referential in nature to answer leading questions with more irrationality. The blame game people play might be likened to two traveling salesmen trying to solve each other's problems of shortest path while also traveling paths that avoid or overlap each other. Given certain paths, the salesman may find themselves in a loop, blaming each other for being stuck, but unable to stop doing the calculations to get themselves out of the pickle. Check out the concept of a double bind. It's relevant to this discussion.
russellprose 9y ago
In his book, "Amusing Ourselves to Death," Neil Postman suggests that the age of the printing press coincided with the age of reason. The Internet is perhaps the invention that most closely parallels the invention of the printing press. But, unfortunately the Internet appears to be working paradoxically to the development of knowledge. Is the age of the internet the harbinger of an age of disinformation, alternative facts, and ignorance? Is it possible that the Internet could cause our cognitive devolution as a species? https://jimdroberts.wordpress.com/2017/04/23/the-information-communication-technology-paradox-or-why-the-internet-is-for-idiots/?iframe=true&theme_preview=true https://jimdroberts.wordpress.com/2017/04/23/the-information...
russellprose 9y ago
In his book, "Amusing Ourselves to Death," Neil Postman suggests that the age of the printing press coincided with the age of reason. The Internet is perhaps the invention that most closely parallels the invention of the printing press. But, unfortunately the Internet appears to be working paradoxically to the development of knowledge. Is the age of the internet the harbinger of an age of disinformation, alternative facts, and ignorance? Is it possible that the Internet could cause our cognitive devolution as a species? https://jimdroberts.wordpress.com/2017/04/23/the-information-communication-technology-paradox-or-why-the-internet-is-for-idiots/?iframe=true&theme_preview=true https://jimdroberts.wordpress.com/2017/04/23/the-information...

astrodust 10y ago

It's not just gullibility, it's being taken in by the siren song of some compelling hypothesis and then being slow-boiled by these increasingly ridiculous "facts" that are used to sustain that trance. Normal, grounded people don't wake up one morning and go "I get it, the Jews and Soros are conspiring to suppress the truth about the Flat Earth", they get there by baby steps, each one veering more and more into the illogical. Maybe it was when they were unemployed or in medical trouble and stressed out beyond their ability to cope, then wanted explanations, however implausible, that gave them at least an idea of what was wrong with their world. From there it took root and by degrees they slip into this other world of nonsense and batshittery. Crystal therapy and detox can lead to healing rituals can lead to cults can lead to suddenly selling everything and donating it all to some fraudulent healer. Like you observe, I think we're all in need of a best friend, family member, or spouse who can say "You've got a problem, this has to stop now." The problem with the internet is it delivers. If you want to know more about quantum physics or molecular biology or cancer research you can dig and dig and keep on digging, you will never run out of material. Likewise if you're looking for harmful material, it will unquestioningly keep going all the way. If Google started to detect the pattern of someone slipping into madness and did what they could to start to refute things, to sprinkle in some helpful counter-points with their diet of pure nonsense, maybe we can save people who'd otherwise be lost.

quirkafleeg 10y ago
> If Google started to detect the pattern of someone slipping into madness and did what they could to start to refute things, to sprinkle in some helpful counter-points with their diet of pure nonsense, maybe we can save people who'd otherwise be lost. To which the response is who are Google to influence how or what people think? It's easy to make up pure-nonsense examples that nobody believes - like Soros suppressing the truth about the flat Earth - and say believers should be saved. What if someone questions the official version of 9/11? What if they believe/d the NSA taps internet, social networks and world leaders? What if they think an omnipotent sky fairy watches over us all and blesses America? Google's "did you mean" is irritating enough when applied to assumed typos; its purpose should be to give people what they're looking for, not tell people what they should be looking for instead.
- winfred 10y ago
  >To which the response is who are Google to influence how or what people think? But they are already doing just that. I watched a few Youtube videos related to Quantum Mechanics and my recommended queue was flooded with videos full of pseudo scientific nonsense. It took me considerable effort in having these weird videos no longer recommended to me. I think we can just be honest about what caused it, it's a lack of intelligence in the sorting algorithm, that currently isn't able to distinguish between true and false statements. I understand there are areas where this line is vague, but if I watch a few videos about astronomical events, why am I getting recommendations about aliens visiting earth?
  - astrodust 10y ago
    You watch one "free energy" video for chuckles and all of a sudden YouTube keeps surfacing more and more of these things, there's an infinite supply of them apparently. It just won't stop.
- astrodust 10y ago
  > To which the response is who are Google to influence how or what people think? Give people a long leash, but when they're way off to the end of the bell-curve of normality throw them a life-line. > It's easy to make up pure-nonsense examples that nobody believes... That's actually an example of things people do believe. If you engage with some of those wild outliers you can learn a lot, quickly. Some of them are trolling, but many of them have extremely firm convictions. Maybe it's Sandy Hook. Maybe it's chemtrails. It's usually a bunch of stuff, all tangled together.

H4CK3RM4N 10y ago

The most terrifying part of the flat earth movement is that most people don't have the basic knowledge necessary to argue against them.

77pt77 10y ago
It won't matter because flat earthers don't have the basic knowledge to understand arguments. It's like I usually say > You can't fix crazy and you can't fix stupid.

mirimir 10y ago

Wow, homeopathy. It's a carryover from alchemy. So you identify a poison, which causes some effect. You titrate the dose-response. Then you argue that some miniscule amount, orders of magnitude below an effective dose, relieves that poison's effect. That's from alchemy. And then people who believe you feel better, given how strong the placebo effect can be.

77pt77 10y ago

> She insisted on showing off her stool after the process was complete. She said she could see the little "bugs" that had been in her system. Then we discovered that she had forgotten to put in the batteries. There's so much wrong with this... Reminds me of the audiophile that was very happy with his top of the line amplifier that he custom built. It was clearly much better than the previous one. Turns out he had forgotten to turn it on and was using the old one.

kordless 10y ago

> That same power to connect can lead people down a dark or dangerous path. Approach the internet with an uncritical mind and you could emerge as a flat-earther, anti-vaccer, or worse. Maybe. Or, perhaps it's the tendency of irrationality to beg more irrationality today, when a large number of vectors exists in which the irrationality can spread. If someone said something irrational and blaming 30 years ago, a few people might hear it and think, "huh, that's a weird thought". Most would probably not repeat the thought to anyone later because most people don't want to be viewed as irrational or weird by others. Maybe a few people might, because they were already irrational, but the chances were low that enough would repeat it to where it could spread. 30 years later, two things have happened to increase the likelihood of a "viral irrationality" to root and grow at increasing rates: 1. lots of people on the Internet and 2. lots of irrational things being said on the Internet. I would classify most of the irrationality on the Internet as others speaking for others thoughts or feelings. Check out Alex Jones just pulling shit out of his ass for example, under the guise of "news", but really just being a performance artist. He's "entertaining" people by pretending to be trustworthy, and keeping it going by making anyone listen to him question the "real" news (of which is he is not a member) to keep the schtick going. I look at it more like a weird NP problem, where increasing amounts of time are needed to unravel the logic being presented as it spreads further into the aggregate, given it's self-referential in nature to answer leading questions with more irrationality. The blame game people play might be likened to two traveling salesmen trying to solve each other's problems of shortest path while also traveling paths that avoid or overlap each other. Given certain paths, the salesman may find themselves in a loop, blaming each other for being stuck, but unable to stop doing the calculations to get themselves out of the pickle. Check out the concept of a double bind. It's relevant to this discussion.

russellprose 9y ago

In his book, "Amusing Ourselves to Death," Neil Postman suggests that the age of the printing press coincided with the age of reason. The Internet is perhaps the invention that most closely parallels the invention of the printing press. But, unfortunately the Internet appears to be working paradoxically to the development of knowledge. Is the age of the internet the harbinger of an age of disinformation, alternative facts, and ignorance? Is it possible that the Internet could cause our cognitive devolution as a species? https://jimdroberts.wordpress.com/2017/04/23/the-information-communication-technology-paradox-or-why-the-internet-is-for-idiots/?iframe=true&theme_preview=true https://jimdroberts.wordpress.com/2017/04/23/the-information...

russellprose 9y ago