The anti-intellectual creed that "our ignorance is as good as your knowledge" predates the internet, but goddamn, has the internet helped it grow into an ugly, bloody tangle of toxic thorns.
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Literal centuries of human civilisation worldwide has trained us to view the act of writing things down and making them publicly accessible - making them into RECORDS - as proof that those words have Value. Likewise, the oral tradition of storytelling is echoed in YouTube videos.
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I honestly don't believe that any of the people responsible for the current, deliberate spread of misinformation online and elsewhere realised the full extent of what they were destroying, when they decided to undermine centuries of cultural trust in what we consider True.
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The worst part is, there were always good, legitimate reasons to question various establishments and their gatekeeping! People are flawed! And this process of poking the establishment is how we progressed as a species!
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When we point out the failings of various establishments - racism! sexism! homophobia! ableism! bad methodologies! - as needing change, even when those failings were systematic and deliberate, we at least TRY to distinguish between the problems and what needs to be kept!
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FOR INSTANCE: medical racism is a very real problem! It impacts huge numbers of people! But even when disentangling this problem from core medical teachings and attitudes is liminal and complex, we do NOT say, "All of medicine is therefore Fake and Bad and must be IGNORED 4EVA."
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Except that now, suddenly, there ARE people doing this, because some random account on Facebook said that Vaccines Are An Evil Tool Of Big Pharma And You Can't Trust Doctors, Just Take These Herbal Tinctures To Cure Epilepsy Instead!
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So casually, as with a wave of the hand, the act of spreading lies has taught huge sections of the population that confirmation bias doesn't exist, because choosing your own opinions from a smorgasboard of ought-to-be-contradictory claims is the same as being informed.
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There are flat-Earthers who use GPS in their cars; anti-vaxxers who'll get shots for their pets, but not their children; anti-evolutionists who get flu shots each year because of course *viruses* can evolve; fascists who think 'fascist' means 'socialist liberal'.
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Honestly, truly? If we're going to progress as a society and keep this whole internet thing, we need to have actual penalties for lying online; for failure to do due diligence in disseminating information; for intent to misinform. Because right now, we're killing ourselves.
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The collective memory of humankind, our ability to pass on our ideas and discoveries, is the root of civilisation. So when we take the most ubiquitous, extraordinary means of disseminating those truths and use it to say that lies are their functional equal? We destroy ourselves.
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I'm just so tired, you guys. I feel like I could rant about this for a week and not fully articulate my fear of what happens if we uproot our entire cultural foundation of truth with nothing to replace it but shonky opinions. It's a long, dark Brexit of the soul.
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It is easier to destroy than create; we already knew that. So it only makes sense that tearing down our cultural trust in the very concepts of journalism, science, history, sociology - of REALITY - is so much easier than all the long centuries it took to build, fix, build again.
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We live in the Disinformation Age, and we have no roadmap for what to build in the ruins of the world we're in the cavalier process of destroying - because, like the Brexiteering UK government, too many responsible parties only want to have their fun NOW, not plan for later.
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I think we can fix things. I don't think we're past that point. But the process of getting there is so goddamn exhausting, so dispiriting. We're all slouching towards Bethlehem at this point. I only wish more people realised.
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