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Nearly all entities in products and politics astroturf heavily. In the end it is a massive critical thinking lesson and adds much needed skepticism to the popul
by drawkbox 7y ago
Nearly all entities in products and politics astroturf heavily. In the end it is a massive critical thinking lesson and adds much needed skepticism to the populace.
The truth is the internet is teaching the biggest lesson ever in critical thinking and getting your information from many sources across spectrums, individuals, companies, countries, divides and more.
Let's hope that people see it as a lesson and not somewhere they can bask in their confirmation bias all day, or make decisions based on fear, in those cases the populace is easy to manipulate.
- westoque 7y ago> Let's hope that people see it as a lesson and not somewhere they can bask in their confirmation bias all day While I agree that internet does teach critical thinking, it's also the the most dangerous. If you watch a video of Alex Jones on YouTube for example, I bet the recommendation engine would feed you similar items and would ultimately feed your confirmation bias. The machine learning is optimized for engagement and not necessarily to give you other views/perspectives.
- lacampbell 7y agoThe truth is the internet is teaching the biggest lesson ever in critical thinking and getting your information from many sources across spectrums, individuals, companies, countries, divides and more. I just did a quick check: 5% of the top 100 submissions on hacker news right now are from one information source - The New York Times. Hacker news does have some technical content as well, so the percentage would be higher if we only count political submissions.
- buyx 7y agoIt’s great to talk about lessons in critical thinking for sophisticated first-world countries, but in third-world, poorly educated countries, people with poor literacy are being exposed to a firehose of propaganda. The critical thinking lessons you mention are likely to come at the price of a massive loss of human life.
- iamaelephant 7y agoWhereas in developed intelligent countries you're all immune to this effect. Pretty cool.
- buyx 7y agoThe difference is that developed countries usually have functioning police and intelligence agencies that can keep a lid on mob violence.