12-10-2016, 10:05 AM
(12-09-2016, 03:45 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: It's an excellent point, and I agree that the diagnosis is easier than the cure. In an allegedly "free" society like ours, it's hard to legislate against fake news, which rumor has it is being considered.
Yes, but we have an educational system. Why aren't we teaching kids that truth is precious and that falsehood is harmful?
In a community in which anyone can play the role of a journalist but nobody needs assume the old responsibility of fact checking, then we need to do our own fact-checking. When we get news from a source, we need to find the provenance of the news. For example, your cousin on Facebook is obviously not a journalist unless you know otherwise. Facebook is not a news source and does not pretend to be. It is possible to get news through Facebook, but you might want to know whether the original source is trustworthy. And, yes, you must fact-check if the journalists and editors are too lazy or dishonest to do so.
Quote:I am used to have some "answers" for things, as I see them, and in this case I am at a loss. One thing we can say, is that policies are created based on what people choose to believe, and policies have consequences. Whether the people understand, accept and face up to the consequences of such things as climate science denial, or gun policy, or trickle-down, borrow-and-spend economics, remains to be seen. But we cannot escape the consequences of our decisions.
Most of us are somewhat insulated from the harshest realities of the world. When things go bad -- really bad -- we will turn upon those culpable. I expect the Trump Administration to demand great sacrifices from the little man on behalf of economic elites whom we are to trust to do good things for us by indulging their unrestrained selfishness. When we find that falsehoods and extremism really hurt us, we will turn on falsehoods and extremism.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.