'It Is a Challenging Time for the Internet: We Must Not Let It Be Undermined' (internetsociety.org) 220
Andrew Sullivan, CEO and President of Internet Society, a decades old nonprofit organization which works on internet-related standards, education, access, and policy, writes: It is a challenging time for the Internet Society, because it is a challenging time for the Internet. For most of the Internet Society's history, the expansion and development of the Internet could be regarded as an obvious good. There were always those who simply opposed technological development. There were always those who wanted their own interests protected from the Internet. But Internet users historically benefited so much, so obviously, that skepticism about the value of the Internet itself was rare.
Things have changed. Every technology can be used for negative ends. The Internet still, plainly, brings gains in efficiency, convenience, and communications. Yet in the recent past, some of the negative uses have become apparent, which leads some people to ask whether the Internet is just too dangerous. This environment has produced a golden opportunity for those who always preferred a sanitized, tightly-controlled utility to the generative, empowering Internet. These forces claim that only national governments, treaties, laws, regulations, and monopolies can protect us from the problems we face. They do not want the extraordinary collaboration of the Internet. They think there is some mere political choice to be made between the Internet we have known on the one hand, and a tidy, regulated network on the other. If these forces are successful, we will all lose.
The Internet connects people because of its basic design. Each network that joins the Internet does its own thing, but together they are all richer and more reliable. A network of networks cannot be centrally controlled because it has no centre. This is not some accidental design choice we could alter: without this essential feature, we do not have the Internet at all. For that very reason, we -- all humanity -- must not let this technology be undermined. We must face, realistically, the challenges that the Internet produces for us all; but we must face them collaboratively and together. The Internet is for everyone, because only everyone can make the global network of networks.
Things have changed. Every technology can be used for negative ends. The Internet still, plainly, brings gains in efficiency, convenience, and communications. Yet in the recent past, some of the negative uses have become apparent, which leads some people to ask whether the Internet is just too dangerous. This environment has produced a golden opportunity for those who always preferred a sanitized, tightly-controlled utility to the generative, empowering Internet. These forces claim that only national governments, treaties, laws, regulations, and monopolies can protect us from the problems we face. They do not want the extraordinary collaboration of the Internet. They think there is some mere political choice to be made between the Internet we have known on the one hand, and a tidy, regulated network on the other. If these forces are successful, we will all lose.
The Internet connects people because of its basic design. Each network that joins the Internet does its own thing, but together they are all richer and more reliable. A network of networks cannot be centrally controlled because it has no centre. This is not some accidental design choice we could alter: without this essential feature, we do not have the Internet at all. For that very reason, we -- all humanity -- must not let this technology be undermined. We must face, realistically, the challenges that the Internet produces for us all; but we must face them collaboratively and together. The Internet is for everyone, because only everyone can make the global network of networks.
The false drives out the true (Score:5, Insightful)
The internet is the source of all knowledge, true and false. We'd once thought that by giving people access to both in the marketplace of ideas, with no gatekeepers, the "true" would drive out the false.
We're now realizing, however, that this may not be the case. The false can drive out the true, because it can be crafted to play to people's wants and needs and prejudices.
This is a problem. Does it have a solution?
Re:The false drives out the true (Score:4, Insightful)
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Oddly enough, the internet is where religion goes to die.
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Books have gatekeepers, the publishers. The cost of mass producing your own book and distributing it limits the reach of unsanctioned works.
There is still a lot of rubbish but the publishers and the fact that books aren't free makes them very different to web publishing.
Re:The false drives out the true (Score:4, Informative)
The internet is the source of all knowledge, true and false. We'd once thought that by giving people access to both in the marketplace of ideas, with no gatekeepers, the "true" would drive out the false.
We're now realizing, however, that this may not be the case. The false can drive out the true, because it can be crafted to play to people's wants and needs and prejudices.
This is a problem. Does it have a solution?
Ask Glenn Greenwald:
CNN, Credibly Accused of Lying to its Audience About a Key Claim in its Blockbuster Cohen Story, Refuses to Comment [theintercept.com]
CNN’s blockbuster July 26 story – that Michael Cohen intended to tell Special Counsel Robert Mueller that he was present when Donald Trump was told in advance about his son’s Trump Tower meeting with various Russians – includes a key statement about its sourcing that credible reporting now suggests was designed to have misled its audience. Yet CNN simply refuses to address the serious ethical and journalistic questions raised about its conduct.
The substance of the CNN story itself regarding Cohen – which made headline news all over all the world and which CNN hyped as a “bombshell” – has now been retracted by other news outlets that originally purported to “confirm” CNN’s story. That’s because the anonymous source for this confirmation, Cohen lawyer Lanny Davis, now admits that, in essence, his “confirmation” was false. As a result, both the Washington Post and the NY Post outed Davis as their anonymous source and then effectively retracted their stories “confirming” parts of CNN’s report.
Only one of two things can be true here, and either is extremely significant: (1) CNN deliberately lied to its audience about Davis refusing to comment on the story when, in fact, Davis was one of the anonymous sources on which the CNN report depended, and CNN claimed Davis refused to comment in order to hide Davis’ identity as one of their anonymous sources; or (2) Davis is lying now to BuzzFeed when he confessed to having been one of CNN’s sources for the story.
Reporting v. “Media Criticism”
Media outlets have invented a deceitful term to discredit and trivialize any reporting on their own wrongful conduct. Such reporting, they say, is nothing more than “media criticism,” in contrast to the “real reporting” they do. A New Yorker profile published yesterday that was designed to malign my own work on this story over the last two years – which has involved ample reporting on the conduct of media outlets in circulating false information – invoked this term of insult to dismiss such reporting as worthless.
This term is self-serving nonsense from media outlets, seeking to render their own behavior off-limits from journalistic scrutiny. Media outlets such as CNN and MSNBC are highly powerful corporate actors. Their behavior can generate immense consequences for society. When they engage in journalistically deceitful or unethical practices, or when they report consequential claims that end up being false as a result of their recklessness or bias, that produces highly harmful outcomes.
CNN - home of deliberately fake news.
How many of you who deride "Faux News" are going to even try holding CNN to any standard?
Guess what?
Until you do - until you're also willing to hammer CNN for actually running demonstrably fake news with questionable at-best sourcing - you are part of the problem.
Re:The false drives out the true (Score:4, Insightful)
How many of you who deride "Faux News" are going to even try holding CNN to any standard?
What about those of us who think CNN and Fox News are both badly flawed and in need of higher scrutiny and standards? Or were you honestly somehow hoping the strawmen would respond?
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The only conservative site you listed was National Review. Everything else has a leftist tilt, some more extreme than others. They used to be more moderate, but in the Trump they all veered left.
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Re:The false drives out the true (Score:5, Insightful)
The internet is the source of all knowledge, true and false. We'd once thought that by giving people access to both in the marketplace of ideas, with no gatekeepers, the "true" would drive out the false.
We're now realizing, however, that this may not be the case. The false can drive out the true, because it can be crafted to play to people's wants and needs and prejudices.
That's not an internet problem, it's a societal problem. Society is dysfunctional due to the rise of identity/group politics and "intersectionality"-driven/generated hatred that the Left has pushed for decades in order to divide the people and empower themselves. What is seen on the internet is merely a symptom of a sick society suffering the inevitable outcomes of Leftist ideology and political agendas, it's not a cause.
This is a problem. Does it have a solution?
Yes, the solution is simple...but far from easy. Get people to realize that almost everyone agrees on basic principles of liberty and civil rights, the differences are simply about how best to address issues we all agree need to be addressed, and that hating someone because they want to solve the same problems you do but in a different way does not make regular folks on the Right Nazis or those on the Left communist dictators. There's no peaceful end-game if people can't look past group-identity-driven hate.
Strat
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Calm down, snowflake, you're melting.
There is no straw man - see all the poutrage directed at Black Lives Matter protestors. It's never the right time or the right place for them to protest racism and police brutality. If you want to complain about the actual misuse of identity politics, take it to the right wing Democratic Party that uses it to distract from the fact that they are horrible on issues of class, and want to own minorit
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There is no straw man - see all the poutrage directed at Black Lives Matter protestors.
You mean the leftist hate group that was founded by leftists that idolized [townhall.com] a cop-killing, black supremacist that fled to Cuba? A group that drummed up a phony [nytimes.com] narrative that there was an epidemic of blacks being killed by police? A group more concerned about a tiny number of controversial police killings versus the vast majority of black-on-black murders?
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Well, that was a million megatons of racist dumbfuckery crammed into a five pound sack of anecdotes and confirmation bias.
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When all you've got is the tired and frayed "racist" card in response to referenced arguments...
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Your own non-partisan link admits bias in police use of force.
The New York Times is partisan. It clearly leans left. But even they admitted BLM is based on an incorrect narrative -- blacks were not more likely to be shot by cops. And that bias for force was less than 20%. Hardly an epidemic.
Meanwhile, the cops were able to bring Timothy McVeigh, the Aurora Theater shooter, and Dylan Roof in for trial alive after they committed mass murder.
Did it occur to you that maybe that were brought in alive because they didn't resist arrest?
The focus on shootings
The vast majority of police deaths are caused by shootings.
is your own desperate attempt to forgive the cops for killing people you manifestly don't care about for comparitively minor crimes, or no crime at all.
Does it bother you when a white person is unlawfully killed by police? Should we have mass protests, professional athletes kneeling
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Your referenced racism, you mean. No bigot in history has stood up and said, "hey, I'm a loser who hates people based on stupid bullshit I pulled out of my ass". They all have reasons for their opinions - yours is taking a fifty year old shooting and using nutpicking [urbandictionary.com] to delegitimize and entire movement. See reply to DNS [slashdot.org] for why this is BS that's only insulting your own intelligence.
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Your referenced racism, you mean.
No, your tired and frayed racist card has no meaning. I referenced statistics that shows the Black Lies Matter narrative is bullshit, including a study done by a black professor at Harvard and written up by the New York Times.
See reply to DNS for why this is BS that's only insulting your own intelligence.
It wear on my intelligence to argue with sympathizers of domestic terrorists from the Black Liberation Army [wikipedia.org].
The paper that shilled relentlessly for the Iraq war
Doesn't mean they're wrong about everything, including covering basic statistics.
It's a numerical fact that a black person is far more likely than a white person to be shot. That the majority of those killed by cops are white does nothing to change this fact.
It's also a numerical fact that a black is for more likely to be involved in a violent crime, whi
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It's not "playing the race card" when you're an actual racist. You're engaging in anecdotes, confirmation bias, and healthy portions of bullshit to demean a vast group of innocent minorities who have never done a thing to you.
Like every other bigot in the history of the universe.
To paraphrase NDT, the neat thing about facts is they don't give a shit if racists believe in them o
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It's not "playing the race card" when you're an actual racist.
So the black professor who authored the study was racist? Do you know how stupid you sound?
By your line of dumbfuckery, all Republicans, Trump supporters and a good number of Libertarians are all bloodthirsty fascists who need to be denounced and rejected. Because a few people have bought a t-shirt.
No, that's retarded. But if Trump went around and proclaimed his idolatry to Pinochet at every event you'd have a legitimate comparison.
It's also a numerical fact that a black is for more likely to be involved in a violent crime, which has fuck-all to do with police murdering people minding their own business or assigning the death penalty for petty BS like selling loosie cigarettes
If the majority of cases were about "people minding their own business" you'd have a point. But that's bullshit. People who commit more violent crime are proportionally more likely to be shot and killed by the police. The ones that make the national news are the most controversial.
Tamir Rice
An
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That's like asking to refute Elders of Zion or Mien Kamf.
Because Shakur is some kind of Borg queen at the center of a hive mind of BLM activists, speaking for all of them? This is as much dumbfuckery as asking Christians everywhere how they answer for Dylann Roof.
Dumb.
Fuck.
Er.
Eee.
The thousands of cops that have murdered
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You mean aside from everything, categorically? You know playing the stubborn jackass card [youtube.com] doesn't work in real life.
You can stop trying to make this delegitimization/deflection happen. It's not going to happen. I can tell you're so dense your head could take a direct hit from the Death Star and you wouldn't even notice, but lets use your argument with di
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"The left" isn't even a thing, any more than some kind of homogenous "the right" exists.
You actually illustrated one of the biggest problems: imaginary monsters under the bed. Entire networks pumping out fake news exist to convince you they are real.
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Quit shitting on Black, Transgender, etc. and they will just be Americans too.
Eight years after Americans elected a black President (twice), race relations between blacks and whites were at there lowest levels in decades. Was that because America became that much more racist in decades? No. There is no end to the grievance culture of identity politics.
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I see in another post of yours you believe black people have inherently lesser IQ
This is a statistical fact.
Racism didn't end with the Civil Rights Act
Redlining is a natural outcome when you apply statistics to predict loan repayment. Subprime lending practices, caused by banks being pushed to make "diversity" loans, resulted in the 2008 financial crisis.
Racism has both enslaved them, and worked to keep them from accumulating opportunity
Try watching [youtube.com] some Thomas Sowell. Anyways, there's been "affirmative" action for decades, which prioritized blacks. And blacks underperform in other countries that don't have the "historical racism" excuse.
But please, cry more about identity politics when we're just six months out from getting to hear you whine about the grand oppression of having to hear "happy holidays".
I've never complained about it once.
PS: It's okay to be white.
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Society is dysfunctional due to the rise of identity/group politics and "intersectionality"-driven/generated hatred that the Left has pushed for decades in order to divide the people and empower themselves. What is seen on the internet is merely a symptom of a sick society suffering the inevitable outcomes of Leftist ideology and political agendas, it's not a cause.
I would propose that what we have seen recently in the online sphere are just examples of normal human behavior, when certain outside influences are applied(see social networking).
Your opinion that "the Left" is to blame here is ridiculous.
There have been influences pushing agendas on both sides, and the Right has shown a far higher level of expertise in using social media to these ends.
And I see what you do here, which is what I refer to as backpedalling:
Get people to realize that almost everyone agrees on basic principles of liberty and civil rights, the differences are simply about how best to address issues we all agree need to be addressed, and that hating someone because they want to solve the same problems you do but in a different way does not make regular folks on the Right Nazis or those on the Left communist dictators. There's no peaceful end-game if people can't look past group-identity-driven hate.
So yes, we can assume that the majority of pe
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But by blabbering about "the Left" at the beginning of your post, you've lost all credibility.
So the Left has not embraced and pushed "intersectionality" and group-identity politics and agendas? Wow.
No, sorry, it's you who just lost all credibility by refusing to acknowledge reality.
Strat
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Of course they have. What you're failing to realize, is that the "right" is no better. They just have differing identities. The only option I see is to ignore both sides and vote for other people. By themselves, they might not do much, but if we get more of a mix in the pot we have a better chance of coming out somewhere in the middle.
Will the people I vote for win elections? Maybe not. That's not the point though. Left/Right, Democrat/Republican, it's all a false dichotomy. If people choose to realize that
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You keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means.
You can't "push" intersectionality because it's just a way of understanding the world, like a branch of physics. It doesn't propose or require any particular actions.
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You engage in whataboutism, use ad hominems of "ridiculous" and "lost all credibility" but never provide any reasoning for your accusations or cite examples. The Left has been energetically advancing the identity politics movement that's been plaguing our society for decades now.
Essentially, it relies on the theories of post-modernist thinkers who believe that individual identity is less significant than group identity. There is a weird inverted pyramid structure, whereby those who are felt to be the most
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I'm not making this up.
You are.
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However, what we're seeing today in the U.S. and other western democracies is clearly coming out of
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Facepalm for identifying the enemy as "the Left" / "Leftists"? Are we complicit with them by identifying them? Or are we complicit with them by having the abstract idea of an enemy, of a manipulating force?
Societal trends strongly indicate the presence of an adversary. If there is none, and society itself is just sick, I think previous poster's conclusion still stands:
Get people to realize that almost everyone agrees on basic principles of liberty and civil rights, the differences are simply about how be
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There are four possibilities here:
5. There are multiple adversaries, all competing to convince people of their own versions of the truth.
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The false can drive out the true, because it can be crafted to play to people's wants and needs and prejudices.
This is a problem. Does it have a solution?
I believe the actual problem here is people with oversized right amygdalas. The right amygdala is where fear is processed so people with these give too much weight to fear for high-order executive decisions. The result being humans that are easy to manipulate with the use of fear. Fox News has mastered this use of fear to hook nearly every prejudice and in return give viewers new ones prejudices.
It's a recessive trait, so a simple gene therapy could eliminate it in all new generations. It won't fix ever
Re:The false drives out the true (Score:4, Insightful)
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Biological determinism?
It's in fact not deterministic because it has been shown that how we react can be modified with a great deal of effort.
Down that path lies the third rail of discussions about IQ
This has nothing to do with intellect and everything to do with 25% of the population being cowards when threatened.
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It's in fact not deterministic because it has been shown that how we react can be modified with a great deal of effort.
Then why are you advocating a eugenics solutions to this "problem"?
This has nothing to do with intellect and everything to do with 25% of the population being cowards when threatened.
People of lower IQ tend to be more violent and commit more crime. If you're going to open the door that genetics play a significant role (not the "100% determinism" strawman) for one area, then you have to admit it for other areas too.
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Down that path lies the third rail of discussions about IQ - Douglas Murray tried that and got electrocuted.
You're probably thinking of Charles [wikipedia.org] Murray. Douglas Murray is strong on topics of Islam and immigration, but has stayed away from IQ questions.
It's a shame, because it really matters when it comes to things like immigration. If you're going to mass import people with lower IQs, at the same time society is moving towards more and more automation, with a less need for manual labor, then you're just setting up your country for disaster.
The United States is a perfect example -- blacks will always blame racism,
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The false can drive out the true, because it can be crafted to play to people's wants and needs and prejudices.
This is a problem. Does it have a solution?
No, there is no solution, and with more and more billions getting online, the voices of reason will be drowned out even more.
As you said, the prejudices, the easy hook that social networking uses to play on the baser instincts of human behavior, ensures that a solution won't be found.
The reality is, there is too much money invested in keeping people at each others throats for a solution to be found.
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It's a problem for people who want to control information. Nobody else gives a shit.
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"A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on."
So the solution is to destroy the world.
No, maybe just slowing down the speed of lieght.
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"cannot be centrally controlled" (Score:2)
A network of networks cannot be centrally controlled because it has no centre. This is not some accidental design choice we could alter
Irony is the "negative uses" in recent past are all due to _centralisation_, which is entirely the product of the commercialisation of the internet and not it's _design_ ... assuming "negative uses" is referring to targeted manipulation on facebook, but also widespread censorship particularly China, Egypt etc which is due to ISPs + government being able to pressure or outright control such entities.
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The design was that every node can route traffic so the (nuclear) removal of a node wouldn't destroy the network. We long abandoned this, today it's a commercial version with very little redundancy left.
And a centralized DNS system that is maybe the most critical SPOF on the entire network. And DNS is way more by now than "only" translation of names you can easily remember to numbers you hardly can.
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Do you honestly believe that the problems with social media manipulation wouldn't exist if one of the decentralized, distributed social media platforms had dominated instead? Sure, there's some targeted ads in there that might not exist in a decentralized system, and manipulation of viewership by the central authority, but a whole lot of the problem is state-funded trolls and people's own hatefulness, idiocy, and credulity being amplified by the echo-chamber effect from self-grouping by disconnecting from
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but a whole lot of the problem is state-funded trolls and people's own hatefulness, idiocy, and credulity being amplified by the echo-chamber effect from self-grouping by disconnecting from conflicting views.
Those are problems, centralised or not, but they are not new or significantly more problematic than the new phenomena that you casually brushed aside:
Sure, there's some targeted ads in there that might not exist in a decentralized system
The problem is those ads have been re-purposed, they are now used to sell political views in the most underhanded subliminal way possible... no echo chamber required, most users don't invest enough time for that sort of engagement anyway, most users consume, which is why it's so much more effective to buy up one peoples major personal portals to the web and di
Growing anti-intelectualism (Score:3, Insightful)
The biggest threat is the anti-intelectualism movement.
There is a growing population who just doesn't trust the experts. Either because their finding conflict with their belief structure (such as Evolution vs Creationism), or will find that it demands changes to their lives (Global Warming), or from people realizing what they learned in 8th grade science isn't actually fully true.
Conspiracy theories are now trying to discredit almost all science. Flat Earthers, Moon Landing Hoax. Expert in fields are being ignored for bar room half drunk talking points...
The internet seems to be spreading this movement by repeating and making these points more complex filling with half hearted examples to fill their minds with doubt.
Now the intellectuals are not innocent either, they will often have opinion in fields that they are not experts in. Like this Jellomizer guy who keeps on posting on Slashdot in areas that he hasn't any experience in, but is relying on summaries of expert opinions and not being able to really defend such viewpoints.
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Nope. Most people have never trusted the "experts".
And this is NEW? This has been going on forever. Well, for centuries, at least.
Conspiracy theories are now trying to discredit a
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Most people have never trusted the "experts".
Well, I guess it is how you define expert.
For the majority of human history, people completely trusted experts, unfailingly.
Since the advent of the Age of Reason - Industrial Revolution - Information Age, experts were glorified. Look at the scientific breakthroughs of the 19th century, then the 20th. Scientists were routinely held up as heroes in that earlier time, and to some extent this is still the case.
Re:Growing anti-intelectualism (Score:5, Insightful)
I trust experts. What I don't trust is politicians to select experts for me and then force me to act according to their preferences.
You're confusing expertise with intellectualism. An engineer, a doctors, and a plumber all are experts at something that actually matters. Chomsky, Habermas, and Sartre are intellectuals, but they have no expertise on anything that matters, like running the economy, treating cancer, or fixing a leak. Intellectuals make money by spreading ideas, not by actually solving problems.
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Could you be a little more vague? If you're referring to stuff like the "experts" who went on TV and lied us into a war in Iraq, sure. If you're talking about climate change, that's nonsense, as the USG is so into fossil fuel production that it will overthrow countries [theguardian.com] if they dare nationalize their own resources. [wikipedia.org]
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I see you haven't actually read any Sartre. I recommend Existentialism and Humanism as a starting point. The whole book is about solving problems in your life, when religion and science don't offer the answers.
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Astrology is about solving problems in your life, that doesn't mean astrologers are experts on solving problems in your life. Opium is about solving problems in your life, that doesn't mean it's a good solution. A gun to your head is about solving problems in your life, that doesn't mean it's a good solution. (The latter two seem, incidentally, quite compatible with existentialist philosophy.)
So, what expertise does Sartre have in counseling people to improve their lives? Where is the evidence that existen
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Existentialism is a way of thinking about and understanding problems, but you still have to come up with the solutions on your own.
An example from Existentialism and Humanism is a French man living with his elderly mother during WW2. He has a choice, he can remain with his mother and look after her, or he can go to the UK and join the French army to try to liberate his country.
Satre points out that there isn't really anything in Christian theology to help with this situation. Both options have merit, the fu
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In fact, there are actual experts who provide expert help, without dogma or fear: moral philosophers, psychologists, and counselors.
Your point about Sartre illustrates the typical problem with intellectuals: they appear erudite on subjects that they are actually not experts in, and they trick people i
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It was the experts who had the brilliant idea of the Iraq war. And the Syria war. And the Libya war. And the Yemen war. Shall I go on?
No, but your examples show that you need to read some history before you throw up such obvious and trite examples.
The American government has used all sorts of chicanery to get the US into wars since its inception.
There is nothing new about governments using propaganda and subterfuge to get citizens to follow them into questionable wars. and history is replete with examples of that behavior.
Your passion about these examples shows your naivete.
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Re:Growing anti-intelectualism (Score:4, Interesting)
I have a hypothesis for this.
We have a part in our brain, the Nucleus accumbens [wikipedia.org]. Our "reward center". Which gets tickled when we get something, when we accomplish something and yes, when we take drugs. But also when we discover something. Yes, really. Having a revelation gives you a high. Anyone who ever tried to debug something and found the bug after 2 hours of searching can vouch for this.
Now, discovering something in this time and age is kinda hard. This ain't the 1500s when finding out that two things drop at the same speed no matter the weight is any new revelation. And if you check the more recent Nobel prizes, you'll notice that they usually went to very large teams because making some really great discovery is really, really hard work, and takes really, really intelligent people a really, really long time and requires some really, really big effort from them.
Yes, really.
Now, of course people with... how to put it nicely ... limited resources in the metal department, they don't really get to have groundbreaking revelations too often. The trivial things are simply not something that would tickle the aforementioned Nucleus and the more complex things are, well, let's put it that way: The high only happens when the Nucleus thinks that you understand it. Not by just hearing it.
Conspiracies now fill that niche perfectly: They are simple and easy to grasp and they are a new discovery that changes their world view instantly and profoundly. This is exactly what makes the Nucleus accumbens go into berserk mode. And, to make things even better, there is still plenty of room for discovery, even if you are not exactly Nobel prize material, because nobody who is would bother with this bullshit. So you can invent a few new continents that "explain" away some of the things a flat earth simply cannot or you can find new "hidden" inventory numbers in moon photos.
Unfortunately, the Nucleus accumbens doesn't give a shit whether what you find out is true. All that matters is that you manage to believe it.
Getting someone to snap out of it is not trivial. Essentially, you're trying to tell a junkie to stop taking smack. You think he cares what reality is? All he cares about is the next "revelation", the next fix, the next high.
Re:Growing anti-intelectualism (Score:4, Insightful)
You mean conspiracies like 350 newspapers publishing the same editorial topic on the same day, without it being disclosed beforehand? That kind of conspiracy?
Look, the entire concept of "conspiracy theories are DUM" was created by the CIA in the 70s. No, that's not a conspiracy theory, and yes that really happened.
Minus points for mentioning the Nobel prizes, which once were noble but today are the objects of ridicule.
Re:Growing anti-intelectualism (Score:4, Insightful)
Do some conspiracy theories turn out to be right? Actually yes. 20 years ago something like "the government is tapping every conversation on the internet and recording it all" would have been chalked up as a conspiracy theory, only after Snowden showed us that it is that way we understood.
The problem is that even a stopped clock is right twice a day, but it takes a working clock to know when that time is. Conspiracy theories are worthless, what we need is relevant evidence.
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Do some conspiracy theories turn out to be right? Actually yes. 20 years ago something like "the government is tapping every conversation on the internet and recording it all" would have been chalked up as a conspiracy theory
Except that's proof of how easily indoctrinated we all are. When every generation who's been educated has known spying and power have gone together since time immemorial, only ignorant and illiterate people would gullibly believe everything they were fed during their education.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Unfortunately that doesn't mean that nothing is real and everything's different. Facts are still facts and reality is still reality.
Being skeptic and questioning what you're told is a good idea. But going "I am told A, so A must be false, so I believe B which contradicts A, no matter how harebrained and idiotic, but because it's not A it must be true" is even more insane than simply believing what you're told. Just because you don't like reality doesn't make it go away.
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The problem is that even a stopped clock is right twice a day, but it takes a working clock to know when that time is. Conspiracy theories are worthless, what we need is relevant evidence.
Part of the problem is that conspiracy theories are dismissed just because they are "conspiracy theories", despite of the evidence.
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Well, mostly they're dismissed because the "proof" cited for them is none and easily debunked if you have at least a minimum of education and bother to actually dig past the surface. It's a bit like debunking "proofs" for god. And it's also, funny enough, usually the same crowd that believes in either bullshit.
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Well, mostly they're dismissed because the "proof" cited for them is none and easily debunked if you have at least a minimum of education and bother to actually dig past the surface.
On the other hand, you've got the libshit media calling the killing of white farmers and the seizing of their lands a "conspiracy theory" just because Trump dared tweet about it. You even get stuff like this:
Newsweek, March [newsweek.com] 2018: "A White Farmer Is Killed Every Five Days in South Africa and Authorities Do Nothing about It, Activists Say"
Newsweek, August [newsweek.com] 2018: "White Nationalists Praise Donald Trump For Spreading White South African Farmers Conspiracy Theory"
Vox: [vox.com] "It's hard to overstate how unprecedented tha
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The number of people who actually follow the creed you bolded is increasing. Yes, for many people it doesn't really matter anymore whether something is true. Does it fit my narrative? Great, I believe it! Does it go against it? Boo, fake news.
Verifying something? Pff, what for, if news outlets can't be assed to do it, why should I?
What is doesn't matter anymore. What you want to is what's important.
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So much worse than ~200 TV stations forcing their anchors to read a "fake news" script [nytimes.com] on pain of being fired, without disclosing it beforehand, during, or even afterwards. That's not a conspiracy, because they all have the same corporate overlord!
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However, I think you point out the own flaw in your own reasoning about conspiracy theories now filling this void. You can just as easily
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But debugging software is hard. Coming up with harebrained ideas is easy. And it's the same fix. So why bother with the debugging?
Just like you can get a high from working out, still, most people would rather pop a funny looking pill, simply because it's easier and less 'work'.
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Well, technically, on weed, no matter what anyone says matters any longer, so technically you're right... but a bit like that aforementioned broken watch.
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Most Experts do have a track record of being right most of the time. It just isn't good media coverage.
Well those statisticians were right again about 90% of the polling results, doesn't make good coverage. But those 10% of the results they were off in, then we show how wrong they were.
And if you were to look at the data you could see the results were in their margin of error.
For the Trump vs Clinton Election. The general polls showed more people preferred Clinton over Trump, this was true, Clinton got mor
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Experts != shills from agricultural industry looking to sell you more cheap grain and stop using the dreaded "tropical oils" (i.e. ones not made in the USA, which is bad, mmmkay).
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You forget that interested parties will go out of their way to make things political so people like you will throw up your hands and say "that's political!" It happened with recognizing cigarettes as being a leading cause of cancer, it happened with "intelligent design" in schools, and it's happening with climate change.
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Thanks for an example of what I was talking about.
Destruction Has Commenced (Score:5, Insightful)
The destruction of the internet has commenced with the censorship of certain political views and other information deemed too dangerous to allow the unwashed masses to see. Some of these things are known as "hate speech" and then there are the supposed dangerous things like data files that can be used to build an "undetectable" plastic gun. None of these things should be censored either by the government or the private enterprises that are doing it. But it is being done, it will probably grow in commonality, and in 10 - 20 years there will likely be no real political discussion on the net, nor the sorts of things "dangerous" that you see now. There are detailed videos on Youtube for making TATP, triacetone triperoxide, the terrorist's favorite explosive. The stuff is so unstable that you don't want to look at it funny or it will blow up. We had a female EOD Army member that picked up a terrorist's device made of TATP, didn't know what it was, and accidentally dropped it. It blew off both her arms. Should the making of such a thing be banned? One would think maybe, but there are so many other ways to commit mayhem it seems futile. The very familiar gasoline can be made to blow up and it is universally available. Should something's ability to be dangerous allow it to be banned? Such banning will, as it always does, work to the advantage of the powerful and lead more easily to the sort of slavery and genocide that some groups commit mostly out of fear of the other. No one can control fear, it is there and we have to deal with it, and courage sometimes runs short, and then terrible things can happen. Should the oppressed have this information to fight back with? I think yes. So, I am against banning any information or opinion on the internet.
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From the article:
"Our history, linked to the early Internet, teaches us to work with a single mind toward that open, globally-connected, trusted, and secure future.
We will turn away from fear and narrow interests. We will not allow this tool of endless potential to be ruined, whether by vandal or greed. We will support and foster new technologies for all humans. We will promote the security and safety of all who connect."
paraphrasing: "trusted and secure for the security and safety of all who connect"
Obliga
It's exposing the powerful for who they are (Score:5, Insightful)
For most of human history, deception and secrecy have been foundations of power. Secrecy: If people don't know what's going on, they can't oppose you. Deception: lying is extraordinarily powerful if you can't speak back. These two concepts have been used by elites for millennia to keep and maintain their power over us, and they like it that way.
Now, the internet is threatening to upset the whole apple cart. People can view with their own eyes and make their own decisions. These decisions are frequently not in the interests of our ruling class, so they must not be allowed to be discussed. Since the tech giants were recently elevated to ruling class stature, they are expected to do their part along with the media, and keep the masses under control. We can't have a free and open internet, because that would mean that our ruling classes might have to change. Brexit and Trump were clear warnings of what will continue to happen in the future if we don't change the internet from a free and open platform into a curated, walled garden where only approved opinions may be discussed.
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case and point(s)
- most US white Christians do not believe global warming is man made
- Trump has an 85% approval rating among the right wing voters
So, really, it doesn't matter what "facts" you present to some groups. They are going to believe what they want regardless.
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I guess at some level I agree (it seems logical), but it's hard to prove since they are so secret. Some evidence would be informative.
AOL was the beginning of the end. (Score:1)
When AOL connected to the internet, the internet never recovered from the influx of stupidity, aka the Eternal September.
The only way to preserve sanity on the internet is to require some demonstration of basic competence, similar to how we require a license to fly an aircraft. We expect that you know what you are doing.
The internet we're getting is the one voted on by those AOL^h^h^hMyspace^h^h^h^h^h^h^hFacebook people who cared not a bit about the destruction they have wrought through their insistence on
home servers matter a lot (Score:1)
It became exceptionally apparent to me in 2012 (jesus years) that the empowering aspect of "network of networks" was toast. Specifically, Google, including its chief internet evangelist and so called 'father of the internet' Vint Cerf, failed to defend the importance of the ability for ordinary users to host servers at home under the protection of Network Neutrality. In addition an active duty (afaik) US 'Navy Information Warfare Officer' 'shouted down' my arguments with 'doublespeak' here on slashdot by
Check! (Score:2)
Wide spread censoring - Check
Limited access in rural areas - Check
Subscribers held captive by the communications cabals - Check
Tainted targeted search results-Check
Oversight organization headed by industry lobbyist - check
FCC actively stomping out competition and user rights - Check
Undermined? oops, too late.
Opposes undermining but parrots media narrative... (Score:3, Insightful)
...that is doing the undermining. Insert eyeroll emoji here:
You mean the fake news about Fake News. The deranged conspiracy theory that Putin knew years in advance that a failed game show host could be president, and set out to get him elected by spending a few thousand dollars on Twitter trolls in a $9 billion election.
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You mean the fake news about Fake News. The deranged conspiracy theory that Putin knew years in advance that a failed game show host could be president, and set out to get him elected by spending a few thousand dollars on Twitter trolls in a $9 billion election.
Yep, that's the one, a ridiculous conspiracy theory thrown out to discredit the criminal investigation into collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. You know, the one that Trump isn't even denying any more. He's switched from "it didn't happen" to "I didn't know about it" to "it wasn't illegal". I guess the next logical step is a Nixon style "It's not illegal if the president does it".
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FTFY. It's not people who learned a damned thing about Iraq claiming that that P
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Are you stupid? The entire purpose of the media narrative I'm criticizing is to excuse Hillary's loss to a failed game show host, and establishing censorship so the next Hillary will win.
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Russiagaters have precisely as much evidence to back up their ideas as the Birthers, Chem Trailers, Lunar Conspiracy Theorists and Flat-Earthers do for theirs. But at least those fuckwits weren't desperately trying to start WWIII.
Pro tip: assertions, accusations and pleas that have nothing to do with Russiagate are not evidence.
The problem is us. (Score:3)
I can't be arsed to find the source but a wiser person than me opined:
- Liberals believe people are intrinsically good, and that the environment around them makes them bad - whether that's society, the government, corporations, etc somehow they are pressured into doing the wrong thing when their basic nature is to do the "right" thing.
- Conservatives believe that people are intrinsically bad, and that people are prevented from exercising their base instincts & compelled to make better choices by society - whether that compulsion is fear, financial, social, or religious pressures, for example.
The fretting about "what the internet should have been" or that we somehow missed the Utopia we should have gotten relies exclusively on that former view, while that reality of the result more or less confirms the latter: that we're little more than deeply-tribal hairless apes, who when out from supervision, generally want to whack off, fling shit at anyone we can call "our enemies" and watch cat videos / "Ow my balls" 24/7.
Greater internet dickwad theory: it's really a thing, but if you think about it explains a lot of behaviors wherever humans gain some anonymity - not just the internet, but their cars, or as a citizen of a massive city.
https://knowyourmeme.com/photo... [knowyourmeme.com] (thank you Penny Arcade)
Libertarianism (Score:2)
Sounds like they're asking for Libertarianism - small amounts of government to maximize the potential of people rather than to ensure maximum safety. We pay private companies for the roads (ISPs) ,we're responsible for our own protection or hire someone to protect us.
Re:The far right is trying to take over the Intern (Score:4, Insightful)
Wow, that was a great satire of the ridiculous views of modern progressives!