>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 ea

>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.