This argument is not at all a new one, and I think dates back to the dawn of modern media, the idea that "if only the public knew the horrors something more wou

This argument is not at all a new one, and I think dates back to the dawn of modern media, the idea that "if only the public knew the horrors something more would be done". Frankly I'm really skeptical. Humans have known intimately the horrors of far more death and violence throughout the majority of our history, and still do in much of the world. It's only very recently that some areas have happily managed to make it to the point where "the vast majority of us have never seen actual carnage". And looking back through millennia of history, I don't see any particular sign that knowing it made it particularly less likely. On the contrary, mass exposure to any stimulus physiologically and psychologically tends to have an inuring effect. Outrage and shock are (and to maintain a healthy state of mind need to be) transient in nature. If it's just steady state it's not special it becomes the new normal. As with many things there's probably a spectrum not binary, and there are legitimate debates around to what extent people get disconnected from physical reality basics. I can perfectly well believe getting too abstracted is bad, but at the same time getting too close seems to clearly be not good either, resulting in higher stress or flat out PTSD and then cynicism/nihilism on top if no progress can be made because the situation simply isn't reactive to individual outrage. In general I'd say the biggest hardest aspects of politics and geopolitics are that way precisely because they're incredibly complex with large numbers of powerful competing very entrenched interests and arguments, good arguments on multiple sides even, it's not something where the public being upset for awhile necessarily means it just all gets cleanly resolved. And even if public outrage and shock does manage to spark some political movement, that absolutely may or may not be a positive thing. Plenty of horrors in history have been committed in response to "DO SOMETHING!!!" -- Edit to add: Despite having commented and upvoted, I do agree with others that while in principle there are interesting intellectual and more specifically technological discussions to be had here, this prompt in particular is not a productive one and doesn't look to be producing something good for HN. A lot of the same well worn circles, ignoring complexity, adding a helping of mutual flagrant disrespect and condescension that turns people off, done in at least one case while also actively decrying people being too "politically encamped" without a shred of irony. So here I am having commented, upvoted, and then flagged. Doh :(