[1] https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4920827-60-minutes-tru...
Now, instead, we're simply getting rid of any attempt to decide what is factual, and instead let demagogues decide for us what is fact and what is not, without any evidence at all. Since evidence is now superfluous, why waste government money by providing it?
Facts are never really decided, things can always change if we learn something new or just consider what we know from a different angle.
The problem here is that anyone in charge can decide what they believe is fact and make very real, very impactful changes that they force on everyone else.
Sure, such is the nature of power. Thus has it always been.
What's novel is not that people in charge can broadcast their favored view of facts, but that anyone can broadcast their favored view of facts, which has to led to the current demoralization crisis: in the presence of conflicting authorities, no one believes any facts anymore.
Of course, some of the "facts" being broadcast are not, in fact, facts. The problem is that the flood of misinformation is so large, the force of echo chambers so strong, and the cynicism of consumers so great, that it is infeasible to produce persuasive evidence sufficient to make the truth more appealing than lies.
Some blame, if not a majority, belongs on whoever actually hears those views and facts though. Knowing someone's intent is extremely hard, it really shouldn't matter whether they intend to mislead or believe what they are saying. Just because someone shares what they may honestly believe to be a fact doesn't mean we have to take it as fact.
We lack critical thinking and somehow landed in a spot where we're highly skeptical of anyone in charge but completely believe what a random person writes online. It honestly doesn't matter what facts are being shared or whether they are accurate, without critical thinking and the ability to discern for ourselves how could this ever play out well?
I don't think that casting blame on individuals here is productive. I agree, lack of critical thinking skills is a major factor. Who is responsible for ensuring that a plurality of the population of a democracy learn critical thinking? We've gotten by without critical thinking for so long because we mostly don't need it: when you get all your news from Walter Cronkite, what good could come of further analysis?
So it's not an individual failure, but a societal one. Susceptibility to misinformation is like a plague, or a meteor strike, or some other natural catastrophe that we just haven't prepared for. Maybe we'll find a solution; maybe we won't, and the future of humanity belongs to those with the boldness to lie most effectively.
Society didn't force Walter Cronkite on us. People chose to listen to him and a small number of other trusted sources, and they began choosing to take what was said by those sources at face value. I'm not even saying that was a bad thing or wrong, at the time news did seem to be reported in better faith.
We choose our sources though, and we choose how deeply to consider what they say. I don't see how this could have started as a societal issue rather than individual choice first.
But yet people believe these things, and will believe a source that supports them. What's obvious to you is not obvious to others.
really? I'd say it's clearly a matter of education. Critical thinking and media analysis just isn't part of American public schooling. If anything, people are taught to believe authority figures.
Regardless of how it "started", blaming the individual isn't helpful, because that suggests there's nothing to be done. "Well," you say, "folks made a bad decision, c'est la vie." Instead, we should be looking for solutions to media illiteracy, and that solution is certainly social in nature.
I very much shy away from control, and that generally means trusting the individual to generally do what is best or at a minimum accept that the result of that will at least be more resilient than the result of a collectivist or top-down approach. Both have risks for sure and there are absolutely times where individualism are a bad idea in my opinion, this just doesn't meet that bar for me.
The nominee, Robert F Kennedy Jr, has been very outspoken in his opinions, some of which are:
Wi-Fi causes cancer and "leaky brain"
Chemicals in the water supply could turn children transgender
Antidepressants are to blame for school shootings
AIDS is not be caused by HIV
the Covid is designed to target white and black people but not Ashkenazi Jews
Them denying nature's truth doesn't allieve them from nature's forces.
Almost nothing on the RFO appointment is rooted in facts.
No, RFKJr will be approved because he was nominated by Donald Trump and Donald Trump has a total control of the Republican Party. That's all there is to it.
But yes, a lot of policy for R's will ba passed. We'll see how much insanity they Will tolerate when it comes to Trump destroying the economy. Rich people kinda need that.
If group or societal solutions are the only viable option we might as well cut to the chase and go full socialist. I don't mean that derogatorily, if collectivism is the only solution when individual choices inevitably lead to bad outcomes why bother trying individual at all?
The challenge with individuals making choices that ultimately move in us a better direction is fear. That is really embracing uncertainty and trusting the average person to do what they think is best or "right." Its my opinion that we should absolutely embrace that uncertainty and trust people, but that doesn't land well for most people today.
A group or collectivist solution sounds much safer. As long as we have a good plan and trustworthy people in charge, we just need to empower them to do what they know we need. That can run into just as many, and just as dangerous, end points as an individualist model.
Both are risky. Both can work, and both can go horribly wrong. I just prefer the one where I get to trust myself and everyone around me to think for themselves and do what they think is best. I also personally prefer the bad result of reaping what we sow rather than it going wrong because the well intended leader was wrong or the ill intended leader was right (I.e. got what the evil end they wanted).
Go watch some flat earther videos on YouTube. Lots of people are very committed to a particular conclusion and have developed elaborate processes for disregarding evidence that would persuade a rational person.
The US political system right now is built on believing easily disprovable lies. Unfortunately, their bad choices affect everyone.
No I do not:
>They are not a reasonable audience to debate with logos at that point.
but if people insist on arguing, that's your approach.
I just don't debate on Youtube. The people who matter aren't there anyway. Those people have to go through a slower process but one that doesn't care about the feelings of youtube comments complaining about Hilary emails (iroinc, isn't it?)
The people who matter are the ones who vote.
But sure, if anyone feels they can change minds in 2 years before midterm, go for it. That is not where I am useful.
Of course, you're right that I'm not an American, it may be that I'm missing something that would have been clear to me. Not meaning to pretend to know it all, just hoping that an outside perspective (from a place where, from my POV, it works better even if far from perfect) might be helpful
I've got two data points to offer!
For one, some research from last year showed that
> Over three rounds of back-and-forth interaction, [a tuned version of GPT-4 Turbo], also known as DebunkBot, was able to significantly reduce individuals’ beliefs in the particular theory the believer articulated, as well as lessen their conspiratorial mindset more generally — a result that proved durable for at least two months.
https://mitsloan.mit.edu/ideas-made-to-matter/mit-study-ai-c...
It's not like the chatbot gave them a beating or something, so it must be appeals to reason and evidence that did something? At least, that's my takeaway
Second data point is an anecdote. I somehow ended up on this flat earther youtube video where they had gotten their viewers to fund them an expedition to the south pole (wtf is a south pole if the earth is flat? Where did they fly out to? Idk, they seemed to have an alternative hypothesis in case the earth really was flat, such that this "experiment" mattered) to, and I shit you not, observe that the sun does not set during summer. Why they didn't just ask someone living beyond the (ant)arctic circle, I don't know, but so they're stood there watching the sun, waiting for it to set. It didn't, and after another glance at a wristwatch that it really is midnight, they now said they believed that the earth is in fact round because their alternative hypothesis had been disproven
Whether many of the viewers on youtube believed it, I have no idea. Also conspicuously missing from the video was any sort of remark hinting at "gee, what everyone outside of our little community said turned out to be right, I wonder if maybe this could mean that there isn't some big conspiracy going on", so perhaps they'll go on to believe the next useless thing now and it was all for naught? I'm not deep enough into conspiracy theory, but it does seem to me that: if you get them to work it all out (whatever that means for them) to a point where there is an experiment you can sensibly do, or evidence they can obtain or so, they'll actually be swayed if given that evidence. Or at least some of them are. (Or maybe these are just really good actors and getting a free holiday to the most exclusive continent by becoming famous was their long con all along, who's to say, but I'm inclined to apply occam's and hanlon's razors.)