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Ha, was just thinking the exact same thing. You can "prove" just about anything to yourself with the Internet. Determining the reliability and relevance of sources and constantly checking the validity of your research is a Herculean, thankless task.

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Rob Manuel

@robmanuel

Mar 4, 2019

The internet is the biggest confirmation bias machine ever invented. Whatever you neurotically fear, search and you'll find it, and keep searching and you'll come to believe it's the root of everything that's wrong.

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It's always been like that. Traditional news is a giant mill for cycling out propaganda, intelligence narratives & thinly-veiled corporate copy. Lotsa (most?) prominent scientists are traded assets. The internet is just democratizing deception (and self-deception) further.

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Sure, it's a scale/speed thing. The only way out is anchor sources of reliable information - trustworthy organisations or people. Which explains the concerted effort politically to undermine the very concept of trust. It's horrible to see it playing out in real time.

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No, I don't think we agree. I'm suggesting the entire idea of reliability, in the context of people, is suspect. Information is not impartial. It favors some interpretations over others. This incentivizes deception, and no org is trustworthy. Subversion is remarkably easy.

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Look at all the supposedly neutral international treaties and organizations present today. Can you find any that aren't controlled by some external actor, or group thereof? And to think, this is just the visible tip.

10:18 AM · Mar 4, 2019Twitter Web Client

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Sure, ultimately that's inevitable, but when it comes to trying to honestly form a personal understanding of what's actually going on in the world, what can the individual do but reach for a source of information that they trust?

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Maybe the visibility of the inherent unreliability of all information is ultimately a good thing, but it's not realistic for most people to research every piece of information that plays a part in their forming an opinion. Actively undermining the concept of trust is very dark.