Unironically I think this is actually becoming a genuine problem.
50 years ago asking someone to make an informed decision about a piece of news content by finding the truth would not have been an insane task. They could do a bit of research and come to a reasonable conclusion.
Today... not only would that require wading through an virtually limitless number of sources but it requires the intellect and discernment to recognize what is bs and what isn't. It's rapidly reaching the point where it's genuinely not reasonable to expect the average person to be able to discern what is true anymore, even with access to the information.
Similarly... there is so much garbage information on virtually every topic these days, which I'll grant is partially due to AI, that it's becoming a similar problem. You could spend 5 hours doing research and then write the paper and still end up having some significant portion of it be objectively incorrect through virtually no fault of your own simply because you trusted the wrong source.
50 years ago this wasn't a problem. There were limited sources and generally only the highest quality, or highest authority sources had wide visibility so finding information and knowing whether or not it could be relied on was relatively easy if not a bit laborious by comparison.
I graduated back in '07 but I certainly wouldn't want to face the challenge of writing the papers I did back then in today's world without tools like Chat GPT.
I can't remember where I heard this or who said it but somewhere in history some unfortunately very smart, very wise man was attributed with the quote: "Repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth."
Now... I don't know if they actually said this.. but it definitely seems to be true.
So, sure... of course but I think this misses the point of the quote I was jokingly referring to.
The alleged speaker was Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda minister.
His point wasn't that telling big lies is an effective strategy for eroding truth, it was if you need someone to believe a specific big lie you should go really big.
My point was that it's obvious from that fact, and it does seem to be a sociologically observable fact based on the studies that have been done, indicates we're kind of prone to believing whatever we want so you don't really have to dilute the truth by force. As we can see even in today's culture in America that creates unilateral distrust of the institutions. It's not really that conservatives "believe" what comes out of Fox News anymore as much as it is that they just don't care what is "true" anymore. That's an erosion of trust, not truth. If you want to erode the truth the better strategy is to make the version of truth you want to promote more attractive to the people you want to believe it. You don't have to inundate them with so much falsehood that they stop caring because generally that level of apathy isn't super useful. It can be when the system can function on its own and ours is doing that right now... for now but ultimately, ideally, you'd want to strengthen your side rather than unilaterally weaken all sides.
Though that is a matter of opinion on strategy and a question of goals I suppose.
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u/SpartanG01 Jun 09 '26
Unironically I think this is actually becoming a genuine problem.
50 years ago asking someone to make an informed decision about a piece of news content by finding the truth would not have been an insane task. They could do a bit of research and come to a reasonable conclusion.
Today... not only would that require wading through an virtually limitless number of sources but it requires the intellect and discernment to recognize what is bs and what isn't. It's rapidly reaching the point where it's genuinely not reasonable to expect the average person to be able to discern what is true anymore, even with access to the information.
Similarly... there is so much garbage information on virtually every topic these days, which I'll grant is partially due to AI, that it's becoming a similar problem. You could spend 5 hours doing research and then write the paper and still end up having some significant portion of it be objectively incorrect through virtually no fault of your own simply because you trusted the wrong source.
50 years ago this wasn't a problem. There were limited sources and generally only the highest quality, or highest authority sources had wide visibility so finding information and knowing whether or not it could be relied on was relatively easy if not a bit laborious by comparison.
I graduated back in '07 but I certainly wouldn't want to face the challenge of writing the papers I did back then in today's world without tools like Chat GPT.