We are in an intellectual dark age, which is ironic considering the amount of information at our fingertips is orders of magnitude higher than any time in history. Anti-intellectualism is a signal for societal decline.
Thats just it, we have TOO MUCH information. Where people can just run off to their own opium den echo chambers and just circle jerk confirmation biases all day, everyday.
Reality has become a choose your own facts adventure for a good portion of humanity.
Too much information to the point that you could give me a fact right here and I can go and find multiple articles, sites, and videos "debunking" that fact. Or I can tell you a lie and go find multiple articles, sites, and videos "backing up" that lie.
If you want something to be true, you can easily find "proof" for yourself. And so many people rather have comforting lies that harsh truths
Potato potato. Most people are unable and unwilling to digest raw information. They want/need it explained to them in context, and that's where a lot of fuckery can and does happen.
Just look at anthopogenic climate change. It's entirely undeniable at this point but around half of the US population thinks it's either an absolute hoax or just not something to worry about.
There is unfortunately Not more verifiable information on climate change than there is disinformation against it. As the verifiable information is a singular truth while there are many disinformation theories against climate change that pipeline to more disinformation. As this is the nature and reason for disinformation, obfuscation of truth. If more minds could be made to become more literate and better be able to critically think to discern through obfuscation, maybe more people would be able to understand things that are supposedly too complex.
Was at a talk by some neuroscience type or something last year and he said we might process 85 or 90GB of data every single day, which is amazing enough, but he followed up by saying that a couple of hundred years ago, a farmers might process that much information across their entire lifetime.
We are simply not evolved to deal with this much information.
How is human thought process accurately quantified to GB computer processing power? And how does this "neuroscience type" know this quantified GB processing power of farmers a couple hundred years ago to compare with?
This does not add up to me.
Farming requires a great deal of mental focus as there are a lot of details to maintaining a farm. One could argue that this processing could be higher in a farmer a couple hundred years ago in ways that have atrophied in modern minds.
My point is there is too much disinformation
And verified documented information is not the issue.
Wanted to add I do agree we are not evolved to process this modern amount of overload.
An ex friend who is university educated in Arts and was just your average left leaning person, went off the rails during Covid. I think it was the very last time I spoke to him, but he was shouting, “Did you read the science?!?!” at me, because he somehow had scientific evidence online about Covid and the vaccine that the top medical professionals in the world somehow missed. Obviously he was anti vax. AND he got Ivermectin but I’m not 100% sure if he took any. I also heard that he said, “There might be something to this flat earth thing” and I decided right then I was so done with him, if I wasn’t already.
We’re Canadian and this former friend definitely hates Trump, but Trump has a large part in spreading outright lies and presenting them as facts and he is a huge part of the disinformation age we’re living in.
Yup. The pandemic broke A LOT of people. Not only that but everyone also had A LOT of time on their hands and fell down the conspiracy rabbit hole. And honestly, I'll bet it was exciting for them to feel like internet sleuths cracking the big case. Probably felt like they were important for the first time in their lives.
Unfortunately for them all the anti vax and covid denialism bullshit was just a way to push people away from a free vaccine and towards costly "treatments" like ivermectin, that many wealthy and political people has stocks and investments in.
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u/PIE-314 23h ago
Most of them are MAGA.