Post-Truth or Policy Of Truth

Žalim narode, ali kao i ovaj klip sa hipsterskim vajkanjem oko "post-istine" (što je moderna tema) i nastavak, zanimljiv komentar biće na ingleškom. Ako ne razumete, potrudite se oko prevoda, tema jeste bitna i uticaće na mnogo toga u bliskoj budućnosti i barem na srednji rok.

Derek, I might agree with you on a higher level, and I "liked" your video because you chose to discuss about it (and I'm your fan), BUT for the purpose of this comment it's worth noting that — when it comes to this sort of topic — you're an idiot. And I'll tell you why, and what you can do about it. 

(Note: I won't comment on your politics, just argue against what you've said. That said, this will be a LONG comment.) 

The moment you assigned "searching for science videos / The Truth" to a virtue (the premise of your video), you stopped speaking in terms of objective truth. You've made a moral claim. That too with "CNN is more likely to be true than Breitbart", which is based on a hunch, a personal judgment (I'm refraining from saying 'bias' here), rather than something that can be accepted as "objectively true". 

You're also partaking in black-and-white thinking to believe that ideologues are the only ones that "reject the facts". You'd be hard-pressed to find a reasonable religious person today that is far more anti-science than a more politically leaning atheist, even if they aren't ideologues. Sometimes even PC Egalitarians would much rather waver away objective reality simply because it's "morally right to deny it" — even IF they claim to support science, rationality, skepticism and (in your words) "The Truth". After all, it's not always that a person's explicit claim matches with their implicit behavior, but there's always the rationalization — the "making excuses" — that tries to cover that dissonance. 

As much as we'd all like to be rational (or even claim to be rational), human beings aren't inherently rational, and that taints how we think and behave. Sometimes that's a blessing, sometimes that's a curse. But if anything, this at least introduces some diversity of thought, which can be hashed out in discussions. 

Forget the fact that even sciences are often fractured in staunch disagreements, the polarization (while severe, I agree) at least demonstrates people's willingness to disagree with you — to the point countless conservatives are willing to watch your entire video and leave criticism for you. One would expect that sort of engagement from modern Liberals and Progressives, since they claim to be pro-science, but unfortunately those latter two would rather block you for merely disagreeing (presumably after concluding you're racist or something). 

But you don't seem to be fine with that. By making "consuming TRUE news" as a virtue, and claiming that social media / search engines' algorithms ought to be tweaked in a way it filters out what's false, you've again made it into a moral question about what people SHOULD be consuming according to you. That too without any foresight of just how easy it would be to re-assign certain political beliefs as true and others as false, which may polarize the masses even further. Did I mention about various Facebook and Twitter censorship on partisan grounds? Especially since there's just no way to automate fact-checking things that can't even MANUALLY be recognized as objectively true or false? 

But let's say that won't happen, and the algorithm somehow magically does exactly what you want it to: 

You're making an argument for people to be "spoon-fed" what you believe to be rue. Even if everything you feed them IS true, it doesn't make them intelligent. Quite the opposite: It makes them intellectually lazy. No amount of rigorous logic mechanism will fix that. 

You're also making an argument for people agreeing with each other, rather than hash out their disagreements. What you're essentially asking for is intellectual homogeneity, where everyone is under a single bubble and nobody should complain. 

You're also asking for "Control" of information in what you regarded as "Free" Internet culture. That will have more negative outcomes than positive ones. 

I agree that, when you follow the money, you'll likely find Facebook and other platforms feeding you things you already agree with (probably based on what you "liked" and giving you more things like it), and that's a problem. But it's that algorithm itself that's the problem here. It creates bubbles where there shouldn't be. 

Fake News has been around since forever. As the Youtuber known as Sargon of Akkad says, "If there's one thing mainstream media is good at it's reporting facts — if it wants to. Perhaps the greatest sin of the mainstream media is lying by omission, and everyone is aware of this." So if you desire your audience to benefit intellectually, would you rather lazily feed them fun-facts as if they're children, or have them learn to rigorously research on their own by reading 5 to 6 newspapers from different sources to piece together facts and recognize misinformation? 

And since you rightly recognized that sometimes arguing with a person might entrench them deeper into their beliefs (The Backfire Effect), should it not then be in your best interest to TEACH people to analytically break away from being enslaved by their own such compulsions? Essentially building their personality? 

Tushant Mirchandani