3 ms·

It seems like "fact checking" in the snopes sense is just another vector for propaganda. The truth of what happened in the past is only knowable as fact by thos

• forgotmypw17 6y ago
  The problem itself is not new: you can only trust what you have seen with your own eyes. And, to a lesser extent, you can trust something a trusted party has seen with their own eyes. However, the cost of lying on a large scale has dropped to almost nothing. While the cost of truth verification has remained about the same. (One could argue that with lockdown, it has actually increased.) There is a ray of hope, however, and it's called web of trust. If I can trace my trusted parties to their trusted parties, to their trusted parties, and so on, all the way to the original information source, I'm able to ascertain, with strong mathematical certainty, that the original source of information is reasonably trustworthy. That is, of course, if I assigned my trust correctly, and so on. On the other hand, if the original source cannot be traced, then their information is worthless. The challenge now, for us hackers like no one else, is to build this web-of-trust information system. When it's done, it will usher in a new age of clarity and light, truly a new Age of Enlightenment, and our old way will seem as old and archaic as unsanitary surgery and X-ray shoe fitters. The good news is that all of the technology, mathematical proofs, etc., has already been done. We can build this resilient, trustworthy information system today, with today's technology. Actually, we could have built it 20 years ago. And I think it is inevitable that it will be built.