4 ms·

Does anyone believe we have gained more with this "democratisation" of publishing than we are losing to conspiracy theories, hoaxes, and populism? Because unti

Does anyone believe we have gained more with this "democratisation" of publishing than we are losing to conspiracy theories, hoaxes, and populism? Because until ca. ten to twenty years ago, the "establishment" acted as de facto gatekeepers for the public discourse. And while that does strike me as a bad idea in principle, I really couldn't argue that they didn't do a far better job than today's cacophony. Sort of like presidential nominees: smoke-filled backrooms certainly are not perfect venues for decision-making. But they nominated Eisenhower and Roosevelt, while we can't find anyone better than you-know-who?

creaghpatr 8y ago
Which conspiracy theories, hoaxes, and populist ideas would you ban from being accessed by US civilians if you had the moral or legal power?
- IAmEveryone 8y ago
  I wouldn't ban anything. What we need is a bit of trust in some institutions. There is a rather obvious difference in quality going from, say, The New England Journal of Medicine to http://thespians-against-government-mind-control.hoax http://thespians-against-government-mind-control.hoax. It is impossible for you to independently verify even a tiny fraction of what you read/hear on a daily basis. Therefore, you need proxies that can be trusted. These proxies can be evaluated by their performance over time, and there should be many, and they should compete for your trust. This is exactly how everybody is already operating, almost all the time: when your spouse asks to borrow your car, you will probably give it to them. Because they have a track record of giving it back, and a long-term interest that outweighs any momentary impulse to just sell it and go on vacation. If a stranger on the street asks the same, you will be more sceptical.
  - spaginal 8y ago
    That’s a utopian view though. Institutions that were trustworthy became untrustworthy over time because of their own current actions. Who is in charge of establishing truthiness? Quis custodiet ipsos custodes. Who watches the watchmen. The only logical and rational way to disseminate information in a free society is you put it all out there and let people make up their own damn minds. I know it doesn’t appeal to the control freak side that is scarily manifesting itself everywhere lately, but if our schools were more focused on education instead of politics, logic instead of propaganda, we wouldn’t need to control narratives, we could just entrust people to make their own decisions.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
xamuel 8y ago
>Does anyone believe we have gained more with this "democratisation" of publishing than we are losing to conspiracy theories, hoaxes, and populism? I do. At least now we have grass-roots conspiracy theories, hoaxes, and populism. In the past, we had top-down conspiracy theories, hoaxes, and populism. ...Top-down conspiracy theories like "Communist Hollywood infiltration". ...Top-down hoaxes like the Gulf of Tonkin. ...Top-down populism, aka, industrial-grade astroturfing. I'll take clowns on youtube over that any day!
allemagne 8y ago
>Does anyone believe we have gained more with this "democratisation" of publishing than we are losing to conspiracy theories, hoaxes, and populism? It's too early to say as of right now. However, I think the eventual answer will be "yes". Skepticism and the scientific method may be just one competing idea while hoaxes, conspiracies, and populism will take a billion different (mutually exclusive) forms. But with access to more information than ever before, people all over the world are likely to independently come to roughly the same conclusions about important questions based on actual critical thinking, and it's much harder to "convert" somebody from positions supported by science and/or clear reasoning (i.e. how many reputable scientists backslide into climate change denial?). It will help that hoaxes and populism usually only have success in the short-term and tend to shoot their own ideology in the foot, whereas remaining loyal to reality comes with inherent real-world benefits. With the interconnected world in its current, chaotic state I do find it hard to really imagine that even skeptically-minded people will be able to defend themselves from bad ideas that "go viral." Humans seem better at convincing each other of bullshit than ever before. However, the robustness and effectiveness of the scientific method and at least a slight tendency for the best ideas to win out over time is unquestionable to my mind, so this conclusion seems clear. Maybe the missing ingredient is popularizing some kind of common, simple (but not necessarily perfect) epistemological framework for smelling out bullshit on the internet. Maybe one is already taking a very early form, who knows. The real question I think is whether we will live long enough to see all this play out in our lifetimes. As long as we are able to conquer our current short-term existential crises and survive mostly intact into the long-run, then I think there's significant reasons to be optimistic about our future.

creaghpatr 8y ago

Which conspiracy theories, hoaxes, and populist ideas would you ban from being accessed by US civilians if you had the moral or legal power?

IAmEveryone 8y ago
I wouldn't ban anything. What we need is a bit of trust in some institutions. There is a rather obvious difference in quality going from, say, The New England Journal of Medicine to http://thespians-against-government-mind-control.hoax http://thespians-against-government-mind-control.hoax. It is impossible for you to independently verify even a tiny fraction of what you read/hear on a daily basis. Therefore, you need proxies that can be trusted. These proxies can be evaluated by their performance over time, and there should be many, and they should compete for your trust. This is exactly how everybody is already operating, almost all the time: when your spouse asks to borrow your car, you will probably give it to them. Because they have a track record of giving it back, and a long-term interest that outweighs any momentary impulse to just sell it and go on vacation. If a stranger on the street asks the same, you will be more sceptical.
- spaginal 8y ago
  That’s a utopian view though. Institutions that were trustworthy became untrustworthy over time because of their own current actions. Who is in charge of establishing truthiness? Quis custodiet ipsos custodes. Who watches the watchmen. The only logical and rational way to disseminate information in a free society is you put it all out there and let people make up their own damn minds. I know it doesn’t appeal to the control freak side that is scarily manifesting itself everywhere lately, but if our schools were more focused on education instead of politics, logic instead of propaganda, we wouldn’t need to control narratives, we could just entrust people to make their own decisions.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

xamuel 8y ago

>Does anyone believe we have gained more with this "democratisation" of publishing than we are losing to conspiracy theories, hoaxes, and populism? I do. At least now we have grass-roots conspiracy theories, hoaxes, and populism. In the past, we had top-down conspiracy theories, hoaxes, and populism. ...Top-down conspiracy theories like "Communist Hollywood infiltration". ...Top-down hoaxes like the Gulf of Tonkin. ...Top-down populism, aka, industrial-grade astroturfing. I'll take clowns on youtube over that any day!

allemagne 8y ago

>Does anyone believe we have gained more with this "democratisation" of publishing than we are losing to conspiracy theories, hoaxes, and populism? It's too early to say as of right now. However, I think the eventual answer will be "yes". Skepticism and the scientific method may be just one competing idea while hoaxes, conspiracies, and populism will take a billion different (mutually exclusive) forms. But with access to more information than ever before, people all over the world are likely to independently come to roughly the same conclusions about important questions based on actual critical thinking, and it's much harder to "convert" somebody from positions supported by science and/or clear reasoning (i.e. how many reputable scientists backslide into climate change denial?). It will help that hoaxes and populism usually only have success in the short-term and tend to shoot their own ideology in the foot, whereas remaining loyal to reality comes with inherent real-world benefits. With the interconnected world in its current, chaotic state I do find it hard to really imagine that even skeptically-minded people will be able to defend themselves from bad ideas that "go viral." Humans seem better at convincing each other of bullshit than ever before. However, the robustness and effectiveness of the scientific method and at least a slight tendency for the best ideas to win out over time is unquestionable to my mind, so this conclusion seems clear. Maybe the missing ingredient is popularizing some kind of common, simple (but not necessarily perfect) epistemological framework for smelling out bullshit on the internet. Maybe one is already taking a very early form, who knows. The real question I think is whether we will live long enough to see all this play out in our lifetimes. As long as we are able to conquer our current short-term existential crises and survive mostly intact into the long-run, then I think there's significant reasons to be optimistic about our future.