The discussion so far is pretty sad to me. I read the Los Angeles Times every morning as a kid, probably about an hour to two each morning. I'm not going to say

The discussion so far is pretty sad to me. I read the Los Angeles Times every morning as a kid, probably about an hour to two each morning. I'm not going to say it was or is some kind of perfect, infallible information source, but it's amazing how cynical the Internet has become. Apparently, they're nothing more than government propaganda, unelected "arbiters of truth." Like centuries-old institutions with professional standards, associated academic disciplines, fact-checking departments, editorial boards, are exactly the equal of any person with a phone and a knack for standing out in the attention economy. It's recalling a comment from the thread about "the past isn't true" about post-modernism. Yes, no information source is 100% reliable. Every institution is imperfect. All of them have had or currently have people in them who commit fraud, have biases. Incentive structures are often poor. The fact that no information source is completely reliable all of the time does not mean that all information sources are exactly equal. The textbook industry is in many ways a scam, but that does not mean you're going to get an equally good education getting your information from an algorithmic video feed created as a dopamine machine to publish work with absolutely no even token attempt at quality control. I get that categories are imperfect. There is no "line" between education and entertainment. They're fuzzy and they overlap. But they are nonetheless different things, and understanding this is a key part of existing in the contemporary world without throwing your hands up and giving into complete nihilism and epistemic despair.