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> It starts in the schools. Public school teachers train the children which news sources are "authoritative". They basically don't have a choice but to teach t

> It starts in the schools. Public school teachers train the children which news sources are "authoritative". They basically don't have a choice but to teach them this if they don't want to grade a bunch of papers about how the UK royal family actually comprises lizard people from the Hollow Earth, or the Earth is in fact flat, or that the holocaust or moon landing were faked, or any number of more mundane bits of bullshit. Yes there's more to source evaluation, but a first pass of "is this contrary-to-common-knowledge truth-bomb coming from a source generally regarded as credible?" actually is a reasonable and helpful first step.

elzbardico 5y ago
Because, of course, anything that differs from the mainstream narrative necessarily needs to be outrageous nutty conspiracy stuff.
- Consultant32452 5y ago
  The training is effective.
- handrous 5y ago
  Yes, because that's totally what I wrote. Anyway. No, but if you actually go teach a class of real children in this world of ours, today in the year 2021 when none of them have ever seen a card catalog and may literally not know how to use books ("what's an index?") and you're not unreasonable so you let them use the web because, realistically, that's what they're mostly going to use to find stuff out the rest of their lives, and they have not been taught to be wary of non-mainstream sources, I guarantee you'll get an avalanche of bullshit to read every single time you assign a research paper. 99 times out of 100 they won't find a deep-hidden truth The Man doesn't want you to know, but instead a bunch of crap. The skills to tease out the difference eludes a high percentage of adults. An 9-year-old writing their first research paper has no hope. It'd be cool if it were possible to transmit all our knowledge and abilities into kids instantly, but it takes time, both because of how learning works and how children develop over a period of years. This is an entirely reasonable first step, without which proceeding is hardly possible except maybe with a very few exceptional kids, but schools are tasked with teaching everyone. And, go figure, it's possible to do this and then later hand the kids Chomsky and Klein and cover propaganda and government and corporate lies and media complicity in same.

elzbardico 5y ago

Because, of course, anything that differs from the mainstream narrative necessarily needs to be outrageous nutty conspiracy stuff.

Consultant32452 5y ago
The training is effective.
handrous 5y ago
Yes, because that's totally what I wrote. Anyway. No, but if you actually go teach a class of real children in this world of ours, today in the year 2021 when none of them have ever seen a card catalog and may literally not know how to use books ("what's an index?") and you're not unreasonable so you let them use the web because, realistically, that's what they're mostly going to use to find stuff out the rest of their lives, and they have not been taught to be wary of non-mainstream sources, I guarantee you'll get an avalanche of bullshit to read every single time you assign a research paper. 99 times out of 100 they won't find a deep-hidden truth The Man doesn't want you to know, but instead a bunch of crap. The skills to tease out the difference eludes a high percentage of adults. An 9-year-old writing their first research paper has no hope. It'd be cool if it were possible to transmit all our knowledge and abilities into kids instantly, but it takes time, both because of how learning works and how children develop over a period of years. This is an entirely reasonable first step, without which proceeding is hardly possible except maybe with a very few exceptional kids, but schools are tasked with teaching everyone. And, go figure, it's possible to do this and then later hand the kids Chomsky and Klein and cover propaganda and government and corporate lies and media complicity in same.