Or they're following a newsfeed algorithm that's determining their information-seeking proclivities for them. I honestly find that much more subtly disturbing and manipulatable than willful ignorance – people have ceded control over their information seeking behavior entirely.
I think it also possibly shows that in general we've not learned to be able to tune out or self filter the information overload that's thrown at us via the Internet.
Internet high five! I suspect they see information as power and as long as they gate keep it they seem to believe we'll keep coming back. All that behavior is doing for me is increasing my levels of distrust.
simple minds are attracted to simple "realizations" .. the Internet by definition has hundreds of dimensions of "splitting" .. someone call the Principal Component Analysis crew and give these journalists a time-out.
I think we're in for a slow painful transition until people (in aggregate) intuitively "get" exactly how invasive and unfriendly data-correlation can be when you expose yourself -- and your friends -- to when you share seemingly-innocuous facts with our welcomed-digital-overlords.
I think it’s because people are uncomfortable with the idea that information can be harmful to the masses who might not be able to process it ‘correctly.’
The wast majority of people out there have no mental capacity to imagine how data they post online and provide to various orgs could be and most likely eventually will be used against them. This is evidenced by the continuing proliferation of dumb comments along the lines of "I am boring", "I am doing nothing wrong", etc.
There is a tremendous cognitive bias in play here. The idea that because most people around you don't weaponize certain types of information means no one anywhere will ever weaponize that information, even if it is globally and indefinitely available.
"While the Internet beckons brightly, seductively flashing an icon of knowledge-as-power, this nonplace lures us to surrender our time on earth. A poor substitute it is, this virtual reality where frustration is legion and where–in the holy names of Education and Progress–important aspects of human interactions are relentlessly devalued."
We've been conducting this experiment for many years, and it should be painfully obvious by now that the public at large is incapable of rationality and reasonableness.
Twitter, YouTube, Facebook has brought the long tail of politics and stupidity to the mass audience.
Articles like this may seem obvious and redundant to you, me and other people that actively reach into the web for information. But there is a large...LARGE community of people that do not actively go looking for new information. They are fine or even scared to see what is beyond there bubble. So just like raising children. Constant reinforcement needs to happen to make things stick and let this information sink in. Eventually the light bulb flickers on for everyone.
And now, examples of this kind of "reasoning" are ending up scattered around the internet, where they'll likely get picked up as additional training material to "improve" the system... this could spiral downhill in some interesting ways.
And the crazy part is we are right. Our positions are well grounded in data and plain common sense. In ordinary times a common person would completely agree with us. None of our stuff would be subject to so much, well, incredibly awful responses.
Why so many people, even the smartest most grounded people I know, flipped a bit and ignored both common sense and easily accessible data is really beyond me. I truly don’t understand how so many people can ignore what their own eyes and brains tell them.
This whole thing is really something else. It’s gonna piss people off to say it but… this is really the first true mass hysteria of the internet age and while it sucks to be a skeptic it is truly both an amazing and frightening aspect of human behavior to witness.
It isn't just modern news, people tend to be intellectually lazy on any topic they are emotionally invested in.
Just look at the fallout from Harvard professor Roland Fryer publishing a study (after hiring a second set of grad students to review the data because he was himself surprised by the results).
People didn't react logically, with proportionate arguments, reasoning or counter data. They reacted emotionally, forcing him to get police protection, suffering calls for his resignation, and worse.
There's a Pacific Ocean between "they're stupid little humans" and "they can have free roam of the Internet and make their own decisions about content." Look how effectively antivaxxers, flat-earthers, and QAnon have infected the minds of adults, and now imagine the effects on a mind 5x as blank-slate/open to suggestion.
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