The problem with too much information

[Hawkeye10]

Yeah, it is an amazing thing that we now have, at our fingertips, the entire knowledge of the world. More information than we can possibly absorb. And the truth is all there, if it’s sought.

Then, the danger of all of that power being used malevolently.

You remind me of the Priests who said "Do not learn how to read, if you read the Bible you will have too much information, you will never be able to understand it....just keep doing what we tell you to do".

 

[NiftyNiblick]

Old people are more likely to support Trump, and young people were more likely to support Biden and Obama.

So I am not convinced yet that young people are the real rubes and idiots.

Neither young nor old people are monoliths.
In cracker states, there are altogether too many young people supporting Trump.

 

[Cypress]

Neither young nor old people are monoliths.
In cracker states, there are altogether too many young people supporting Trump.

Obviously there are young people supporting Trump, but statistically it is a virtual mathmatical fact that old people tended more often to support Donald Trumpf, George Dumbya Bush, Sarah Palin, while young voters tended more often to support Biden, Barack Obama, Al Gore.

 

[NiftyNiblick]

Obviously there are young people supporting Trump, but statistically it is a virtual mathmatical fact that old people tended more often to support Donald Trumpf, George Dumbya Bush, Sarah Palin, while young voters tended more often to support Biden, Barack Obama, Al Gore.

I admittedly don't know the stats.

I voted for Hubert Humphrey as a 22 year-old in 1968 (no 18 year-old vote in 1964).
I'm voting for Joe Biden as a 78 year-old in 2024 (assuming that I'm still around).
I voted for the Democratic nominee in every election in-between.

I guess that age hasn't been much of a factor for me.

 

[ZenMode]

Food for thought. When I was growing up, we got out news from a half hour nightly news show and the daily paper. It was doled out with comment, and with a partisan agenda. Those things were reserved for the editorial page. But those sources were actual journalism. Just the facts. And because of that, Americans had a common understanding of what was objectively true. Walter Cronkite told us that 2+2=4. And so did the other anchors, and the daily newspapers. When they said something was factual, you could count on the fact that they had applied journalistic standards in determining the veracity of what they reported. While those sources still exist, they are now being drowned out by sloppy, lazy, partisan news sources. People actually believe what they hear on Tik Tok, or facebook, or Newsmax, or OAN. Someone here suggested that his go to news portal was where the truth could be found, and yet they referred to the President of the United States as a pedophile. It's lazy confirmation bias, but that's where we are today. Do you know that Jason Aldean turned down a half a billion dollars to collaborate with Taylor Swift, because she's 'too woke'. Or that Jimmy Kimmel and Steven Colbert have been fired by ABC. The fact that Steven Colbert doesn't even work for ABC seems not to matter to the tens of thousands of people who commented praising ABC for their decision.

We live in a time where we feel entitled to be lazy and stupid. And the people who have most fallen into this trap are people who now want an authoritarian dictator to run the country, because it is easier for them. It's embarrassing. But this is where we have arrived. We no longer have a common reality, and there is no chance that we can ever come up with solutions, because so many people have invented problems that do not exist.


Discuss.

This topic is what the Netflix movie The Social Dilemma gets into. We are all apart of a real-time psychological experiment involving the internet, specifically social media, that we never agreed to and it is slowly dividing the country into far left and far right because too many people get sucked in to a separate, but equally dangerous, worlds of confirmation bias where they start to believe anything from any source, as long as it aligns with what they want to believe.

 

[Hume]

This topic is what the Netflix movie The Social Dilemma gets into. We are all apart of a real-time psychological experiment involving the internet, specifically social media, that we never agreed to and it is slowly dividing the country into far left and far right because too many people get sucked in to a separate, but equally dangerous, worlds of confirmation bias where they start to believe anything from any source, as long as it aligns with what they want to believe.

No, it is Trump dividing the nation. Nothing to do with social media.

 

[ThatOwlWoman]

I've read that old people are more susceptible to being duped by spoofs, memes, deceptions, and propaganda on social media.

While young people, who grew up with computers and the internet, are more sophisticated at being able to discriminate bullshit from reality on social media.

The average age of MAGA morons is, what, 76 years old?

I suspect that the opposite is true. We cynical elders are more likely to be suspicious of snake oil salesmen, particularly orange ones, at least if we are left-leaning. Libs tends to be better at critical thinking than RWers, IMO.

 

[Cypress]

I suspect that the opposite is true. We cynical elders are more likely to be suspicious of snake oil salesmen, particularly orange ones, at least if we are left-leaning. Libs tends to be better at critical thinking than RWers, IMO.

Your right, I think intelligent people of all ages can see through bullshit.

 

[evince]

I could give a long list of misinformation that liberals spout that they get from liberal sites but in reality what would that accomplish? It would simply turn into another partisan pissing match, like almost all discussions.

Misinformation isn’t new but yes, with the internet and now social media we have much easier access to it. And yes, many people live in their partisan echo chambers.

There’s no turning back the clock to where we had basically three channels and we all watched the same news and TV shows.

A majority of young people get their political info from TikTok. Not sure if that’s better or worse than the many who get it from MSNBC or Fox News. (there is no winner in either scenario).

And there it is folks

They love disinformation


It’s the only way they get people to vote Republican