this post was submitted on 03 Nov 2024
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Showerthoughts
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The internet, like every other man-made thing, is a tool. And therefore its usage is determined by how people wield it. e.g. much of the anti-vaccine disinformation has been traced back to Russian troll farms - this is a known fact. The movement might have predated that, or it might not, but either way it undeniably received a massive boosting, especially in its formative stages, by such outside agitation.
At the same time the internet also provides tools to debunk such anti-"knowledge". Though like so many other things, it falls into an arms race where the disinformation can move quickly ahead to cover new ground, while getting properly factual information out to people takes more time, especially if refusing to use tools like rage-baiting that increases a message's ability to spread quickly.
Sadly, we just don't seem to have an immune system to attack sources of disinformation - at least not one that could ensure that all or even most people who can and will vote have what they need to be properly equipped to handle the continual onslaughts. Which makes me very much fear for the structure of democracy itself in our current age.
We are growing one.
Immunity comes from exposure, either to the infection, or to a vaccine.
Boomers see something on the internet they agree with, it's gospel truth, because it proves them right!
Younger generations are slightly more skeptical, and it gets better with time (filter bubbles notwithstanding, and as an artifact of people still wanting to believe).
We will get there.
Well, not everyone, the Russians and Chinese are just plain perma-fucked.
And in a couple of months, the USA could switch sides and outright join Russian aggression - or at least significantly scale back the current level of opposition - at which point the Ukranians too, plus ofc Taiwan, maybe Japan, and anyone else that China sets their sights on. Plus with the USA backing those Axis powers, the sky's the limit really.
Meanwhile companies like FaceBook or Reddit don't really seem to care, only chasing profits, and Twitter has flat-out joined the fight on the other side, by cancelling itself into becoming X.
These are dangerous tools that we are playing with - far more so than guns - b/c knowledge is power, after all.
I agree, but the only way humans grow is through experience, we just have to fight as hard as we can through this transition.
Once the boomers are finally out of our misery it might be a fair fight again.
bold of you to presume that American democracy will last that long
the kids have their own issues, including not knowing or being able to do much of anything, which is not entirely all or even mostly their own fault
I know and agree.
But we only adapt immunity from exposure, you can't force it, we never could.
Nobody respected the nuclear bomb until Hiroshima, that's an unfortunate tragedy, and we already forgot the horrors of war.
Humanity will have to teach itself again, lessons learned in blood can only ever be taught in the same language.
Oh I see - I was making assumptions about what you said and I apologize for that. You aren't saying "eVerY tHiNG iS goInG to BE FiNe", but rather, the USA could end, and yet... humanity will go on. (that might still be debatable as well...)
Yes, your thoughts exactly mirror my own: the only way is to move forward, and what will be will be - hopefully we can minimize the pain, and things WILL change regardless, and yet we still go on, having learned all the more from the doing.
Yeah, no, everything won't be fine.
We learned so much from WW2, and now the greatest generation are dead we've mostly forgotten those lessons.
Which means we'll have to learn them again :(
On top of that though, the world is literally different today than it was then. Some things changed EVERYTHING - agriculture, fire, medicine, even just knowing to wash our hands, etc. The advent of vaccines may have arguably altered our world in beautiful, wonderful, and potentially terrible ways - allowing children to have an extremely high chance to reach 80 years of age, as opposed to an enormous chance (way more than half) of dying prior to 5 years old.
And the information era radically altered our world. Except it also birthed the post-information, or perhaps we should call it the disinformation era. When companies such as Google were playing nice, we had free access to ALL of the information in the entire world. Whereas now... we don't, but as soon as they can figure it out, they'll have us sign up with a subscription to be able to "know things". What came before was always temporary, but we lied to ourselves telling one another or at least acting as if it would last forever.
My proof: https://hexbear.net/post/3820065. I know it's hexbear, but click it anyway. Hint: it's dis-information - active retelling of the story so as to ignore the facts and substitute their own presentation of their own... "alternative facts".
And for someone who isn't smart enough to know the difference, how can they tell the difference? WE heard the horrific screams of the police officer as they were brutally murdered. We know of the other ones who died, including one who later committed suicide. We have empathy for their families. We saw the hearings. We heard the testimony, of the officers. We have seen the people involved admit their actions, and some apologized.
Or, you know, iT wAs PEacEfUlL, "it was hilarious and looked like tailgating gone wrong after too much booze", or as one commenter said "I hope it happens again" (11 upvotes as of now).
So... WILL we learn the lessons that we would need to in order to survive? I am not so certain myself. But maybe! Either way, we indeed will HAVE to, if there is to be any hope of the survival of our current way of life IMHO.
Confirmation bias is one of those special features of the human mind, that don’t always help. It’s like a mental shortcut that can be useful, but the modern world isn’t the kind of place where the mind of hunter gatherer is at its best.
Yeah, but that's the point of education, teaching you that your intuition isn't always right, and that's OK.
Whats devastating is when you combine religion, which says 'either I'm the chosen of God and therefore if he loves me I'm perfect and can never do wrong' with modern complexity.
I know so many people who think being wrong about anything is the end of the world, so they double and quadruple down and can never learn, they get violently defensive if you suggest they're wrong about the smallest thing.
College is about repeated exposure to being wrong, and growing from it.