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We've made mass communication wildly more efficient without education or credulity making the same leap so it becomes possible to share a twisted and false version of reality to suit one's needs. Or hatred. My time on the Internet has been one of constantly remembering this[0] image from the old comic Nexus where he is forced to modify the repository of truth in order to stop violence. I'm guessing something similar will be required here and then we'll need to come to grips with the fact "reality" is a pretty local concept, or perhaps a concept whose diameter is proportional to one's education/ luck.

[0] https://imgur.com/a/3dhxt



It still astounds me that many people I know are unable to decouple the source of the information from 'Google'. It usually goes like this: someone I know will state some odd claim about some natural treatment for something, I will ask for a source and invariably get the answer 'Google'. I will then try to use the radio vs. radio station analogy and then ask for the source again, to be often told that they don't remember where the claim came from. Facebook seems to be the same: I will often be told about something someone 'read on Facebook' but they are often unable to say who posted the information.




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