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Whoever said it was right. One of the dumbest public figures of our time was elected president as a direct result of the reach and amplification provided by the

Whoever said it was right. One of the dumbest public figures of our time was elected president as a direct result of the reach and amplification provided by the internet. Qanon was purely a creation of the internet. Now go take a look at how many people believe one, many or all of the various Qanon alternative facts.

jraph 3y ago
Those are convincing arguments that internet has (major) downsides and bad consequences. The scale of surveillance it enables is another one. They don't prove that it makes people dumber. You have to quantify and qualify people and to define "dumb". Maybe people are not actually dumber because of the internet, but the internet is very good at spreading ideas, including incredibly dumb ones, especially (because of how human beings work) those likely to cause feeling of outrage. Maybe people are not dumber, just too defenseless against the scale of bullshit they are faced with because of the internet. Maybe internet is an incredibly good tool, but strongly requires good learning / training of critical thinking and there's not enough of this yet.
staunton 3y ago
People used to believe a lot of crazy conspiracies and superstitions throughout history. The reason why we're so appalled at Qanon is that "it should be so easy for them to correct their superstitions, given the tools we have". It's hard to argue that nowadays people believe more crazy stuff than before the internet was invented. (It's very easy, of course, to claim this, as many like to do.)
- xanderlewis 3y ago
  Yes. It seems that the proportion of people for whom 50% of their beliefs constitute unfounded, unjustified nonsense is actually far lower than it was before the internet. One of the main things that has changed, though, is how quickly ideas (including bonkers ones) spread. So whereas we used to see a significantly new bonkers idea only every few centuries, we seemingly now see several a week.

jraph 3y ago

Those are convincing arguments that internet has (major) downsides and bad consequences. The scale of surveillance it enables is another one. They don't prove that it makes people dumber. You have to quantify and qualify people and to define "dumb". Maybe people are not actually dumber because of the internet, but the internet is very good at spreading ideas, including incredibly dumb ones, especially (because of how human beings work) those likely to cause feeling of outrage. Maybe people are not dumber, just too defenseless against the scale of bullshit they are faced with because of the internet. Maybe internet is an incredibly good tool, but strongly requires good learning / training of critical thinking and there's not enough of this yet.

staunton 3y ago

People used to believe a lot of crazy conspiracies and superstitions throughout history. The reason why we're so appalled at Qanon is that "it should be so easy for them to correct their superstitions, given the tools we have". It's hard to argue that nowadays people believe more crazy stuff than before the internet was invented. (It's very easy, of course, to claim this, as many like to do.)

xanderlewis 3y ago
Yes. It seems that the proportion of people for whom 50% of their beliefs constitute unfounded, unjustified nonsense is actually far lower than it was before the internet. One of the main things that has changed, though, is how quickly ideas (including bonkers ones) spread. So whereas we used to see a significantly new bonkers idea only every few centuries, we seemingly now see several a week.