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> Liars gonna lie Agreed. As they always have since humans or our ancestors first stood to gain from deception. You'll never stop it. But I think the soluti
by alexilliamson 9y ago
> Liars gonna lie
Agreed. As they always have since humans or our ancestors first stood to gain from deception. You'll never stop it.
But I think the solution may still come from market forces. Not as in tech companies inventing showy systems for flagging and muting fake news. But I think people are slowly becoming smarter news consumers, more skeptical about what they take as fact. Who hasn’t become smarter about filtering out BS in the last two years?
The problem for Trump and Fox with all their “fake news” tirades is that you can’t partially open people’s minds to skepticism. Once they begin questioning one news source, they begin developing general critical reasoning ability. Tribalism may keep them defending their bad news source for some time, but as they continue to tear apart other sources, they will become increasingly unable to turn a blind eye to their own. In the long run, Fox making accusations of fake news will cannibalize their own fake news. Whether that happens in the next 8 years or on a longer horizon? Who knows…
- s2g 9y ago> I think people are slowly becoming smarter news consumers, more skeptical about what they take as fact They really, really, really aren't. Look at the polls. > Once they begin questioning one news source, they begin developing general critical reasoning ability They don't question news sources. They write off anything that doesn't contribute to their happy little world (or very unhappy little world, whichever).
- csydas 9y ago> Once they begin questioning one news source, they begin developing general critical reasoning ability. I think this is being very generous to the idea of skepticism. Skepticism is a very difficult thing to learn properly, and more or less being a skeptic of modern media seems to be more heavily related to dismissing any information which contradicts you own paradigm of the world in favor of a more simplistic model that works for you. Dismissing all media except for "the one true source" is really no better than exposing yourself to all of it and believing it blindly. It's just substituting one absolute truth for another. I honestly don't think that what Fox does will cannibalize their own bad reporting; it will only strengthen it, because unless one is actively seeking to question the truths they hold dear, they will never really take the time to validate what they already "know". It's a very humbling thing to accept that what you know may be based on bad information, and to live in a constant fantasy since it's more convenient. I hope we will grow past this, but right now we're still working on learning to sort the vast amount of information we're exposed to daily.
- AgentME 9y agoI don't think Fox News is awakening people to skepticism; I think Fox News is convincing many people that only Fox News can be trusted.