Humans are already capable of “post-truth”. This is enabled by instant global communication and social media (not dismissing the massive benefits these can bring), and led by dictators who want fealty over independent rational thinking.
The limitations of slow news cycles and slow information transmission lends to slow careful thinking. Especially compared to social media.
The communication enabled by the internet is incredible, but this aspect of it is so frustrating. The cat is out of the bag, and I struggle to identify a solution.
The other day I saw a Facebook post of a national park announcing they'd be closed until further notice. Thousands of comments, 99% of which were divisive political banter assuming this was the result of a top-down order. A very easy-to-miss 1% of the comments were people explaining that the closure was due to a burst pipe or something to that effect. It's reminiscent of the "tragedy of the commons" concept. We are overusing our right to spew nonsense to the point that it's masking the truth.
How do we fix this? Guiding people away from the writings of random nobodies in favor of mainstream authorities doesn't feel entirely proper.
> Guiding people away from the writings of random nobodies in favor of mainstream authorities doesn't feel entirely proper.
Why not? I think the issue is the word "mainstream". If by mainstream, we mean pre-Internet authorities, such as leading newspapers, then I think that's inappropriate and an odd prejudice.
But we could use 'authorities' to improve the quality of social media - that is, create a category of social media that follows high standards. There's nothing about the medium that prevents it.
There's not much difference between a blog entry and scientific journal publication: The founders of the scientific method wrote letters and reports about what they found; they could just as well have posted it on their blogs, if they could.
At some point, a few decided they would follow certain standards --- You have to see it yourself. You need publicly verifiable evidence. You need a falsifiable claim. You need to prove that the observed phenomena can be generalized. You should start with a review of prior research following this standard. Etc. --- Journalists follow similar standards, as do courts.
There's no reason bloggers can't do the same, or some bloggers and social media posters, and then they could join the group of 'authorities'. Why not? For the ones who are serious and want to be taken seriously, why not? How could they settle for less for their own work product?
Redesign how social media works (and then hope that people are willing to adopt the new model). Yes, I know, technical solutions, social problems. But sometimes the design of the tool is the direct cause of the issue. In other cases a problem rooted in human behavior can be mitigated by carefully thought out tooling design. I think both of those things are happening with social media.
The limitations of slow news cycles and slow information transmission lends to slow careful thinking. Especially compared to social media.
No AI needed.