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Old 11-25-2018, 12:42 PM
America America is offline
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Join Date: Nov 2010
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Ennewi [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]
I wouldn't want be satisfied with believing I was right 99% of the time. That itself creates a blindspot as does determining what is and isn't important. That is also where bias arises from. Maybe at a later stage in mankind's existence that kind of accuracy will be possible on average.

Social media itself is not the problem but how it's being (ab)used is presenting a problem of credibility and consensus. And yet, given enough time to develope, mainstream media and social media will probably merge with the viewer becoming a contributor by default. So both may just become the soft solution to the problem people and their biases are creating through each.

Audiences will go to whichever media outlet clangs the bell they want to hear, so they can salivate. Most of the time it only serves to reaffirm what they already believe, either side of a narrative that has been around long before the television and radio.

Social media on the other hand offers an outlet for beliefs once so obscure they were not influential on society as a whole. And that interactive propaganda is now coming out of every dark corner of society, connecting instantaneously worldwide. Case in point, flat earthers. And now that theory has become the news, legitimizing itself in a sense because enough people actually believe it to where they can shape our world (figuratively).

Before social media outliers, insane assholes, and revolutionaries had to meet out by the docks at night, in coffee houses, etc. The madness was largely self-contained while few great ideas still filtered through, especially when it came to art.

Also, as a counterpoint to your last example, the NYT just covered a similar incident and only mentioned global warming once, at the very bottom, because the person interviewed made the statement. That being said, warming trends in the climate and one continent having unseasonably cold weather are not incompatible with one another.

www.nytimes.com/aponline/2018/11/22/us/ap-us-dead-sea-turtles.html

www.nytimes.com/aponline/2018/11/22/us/ap-us-dead-sea-turtles.html