4 ms·

Folklore, rumors, and gossip are all as old as spoken language. Just a few hundred years ago, educated people still thought there were witches and magical monst

• ipython 6y ago
  I think that the dramatically increased speed and volume cannot be so simply dismissed, however. That’s like saying “what’s the big deal with jet planes? We’ve had boats and wagons since forever”. Fact checking in particular is less effective since there is such an incentive to push out high volumes of information as quickly as possible. I take the example of writing a book for publication versus a tweet or blog post. The former requires a vetting process before it even starts, takes months if not years to complete, involves several phases of copy editing and technical review from multiple people, and finally there’s a published book at the end. The latter could be a single person banging on a phone keypad for a few minutes, or it could be a team who have extensively sourced over the course of months to produce a well thought out piece. The trouble is- you as a reader have no idea which is which! I think that we have too much information. It overloads our brains, and so we fall back on our more primitive instincts to cope. That ends up with us simply confirming pre existing biases and giving in to fear and anger. It’s like the thesis in the book “paradox of choice” but applied to information rather than brands of jeans or mayonnaise.