3 ms·

The biggest problem from the last 10 years is the spread of "everyone's entitled to an opinion". It seems that objective truth no longer exists in the eyes of t

The biggest problem from the last 10 years is the spread of "everyone's entitled to an opinion". It seems that objective truth no longer exists in the eyes of the population. This is both a cause and a consequence of the defunding of journalism and the change of the profession from news to views.

claytongulick 7y ago
Erm... defunding journalism by who? Private funding is making the situation worse. Public funding is the instrument of authoritarian regimes- state sponsored media. I think the root cause is lack of objective, critical thinking skills, and the glorification of "how it makes you feel" being more important than "is this reasonable". I.e. emotion driving reason, rather than reason driving emotion.
- iso1631 7y ago
  By society. We don't want to fund people to separate fact from fiction, yet we lack the time and ability as a population to do it ourselves, so we latch onto outlets (especially celebrities) that seem to match our world view, and we treat what they say as gospel.
  - lukifer 7y ago
    I think the vast majority of humans are simply disinterested in objective truth, except to the extent it's actionable in our day-to-day lives; otherwise, our sense-making is driven largely by the utility of social signaling: https://meltingasphalt.com/crony-beliefs/ https://meltingasphalt.com/crony-beliefs/ See also: Donald Hoffman's experiments in truth-maximizing vs. fitness-maximizing: https://www.edge.org/response-detail/25450 https://www.edge.org/response-detail/25450
quotemstr 7y ago
Isn't everyone entitled to an opinion though? What you're hitting on, I think, is that the so-called "toxicity" of the internet is just broad disintermediation. Previously, a few people controlled the public narrative. Now, everyone does. Turns out most people don't very much like the worldview that the media elite pushes. Journalism is dying because it's become not only useless as a means of information dissemination --- new media is better at that --- but also because journalists have become contemptuous of the public. They have only themselves to blame.
antepodius 7y ago
That's not a novel phrase, and it's also at least partially a peace treaty between worldviews with fundamental differences.
- iso1631 7y ago
  And if it's an opinion on things like "should it be legal to have sex before marriage" or whatever that's fine The problem comes when you have 5 civil engineers saying a bridge is not safe, and 50 random members of the public saying it's safe. If we treat those opinions as equal, we end up with a bridge collapsing.

claytongulick 7y ago

Erm... defunding journalism by who? Private funding is making the situation worse. Public funding is the instrument of authoritarian regimes- state sponsored media. I think the root cause is lack of objective, critical thinking skills, and the glorification of "how it makes you feel" being more important than "is this reasonable". I.e. emotion driving reason, rather than reason driving emotion.

iso1631 7y ago
By society. We don't want to fund people to separate fact from fiction, yet we lack the time and ability as a population to do it ourselves, so we latch onto outlets (especially celebrities) that seem to match our world view, and we treat what they say as gospel.
- lukifer 7y ago
  I think the vast majority of humans are simply disinterested in objective truth, except to the extent it's actionable in our day-to-day lives; otherwise, our sense-making is driven largely by the utility of social signaling: https://meltingasphalt.com/crony-beliefs/ https://meltingasphalt.com/crony-beliefs/ See also: Donald Hoffman's experiments in truth-maximizing vs. fitness-maximizing: https://www.edge.org/response-detail/25450 https://www.edge.org/response-detail/25450

quotemstr 7y ago

Isn't everyone entitled to an opinion though? What you're hitting on, I think, is that the so-called "toxicity" of the internet is just broad disintermediation. Previously, a few people controlled the public narrative. Now, everyone does. Turns out most people don't very much like the worldview that the media elite pushes. Journalism is dying because it's become not only useless as a means of information dissemination --- new media is better at that --- but also because journalists have become contemptuous of the public. They have only themselves to blame.

antepodius 7y ago

That's not a novel phrase, and it's also at least partially a peace treaty between worldviews with fundamental differences.

iso1631 7y ago
And if it's an opinion on things like "should it be legal to have sex before marriage" or whatever that's fine The problem comes when you have 5 civil engineers saying a bridge is not safe, and 50 random members of the public saying it's safe. If we treat those opinions as equal, we end up with a bridge collapsing.