It's interesting to have a conversation with people over politics these days, sometimes it's like people don't live in the same reality anymore. It's probably not far from the truth.
To a first approximation, nothing is verified, people see a number on social media as a proxy for accuracy. Even if it's completely wrong, it doesn't matter because you're among friends.
Memes let insane ideas spread like a virus, the only criterion is whether they can survive against other memes. Grounding in reality is an idea's death sentence, because of the bullshit asymmetry principle.
And now the tools are there for anyone to generate bullshit at a scale commensurate to their wallet.
I shudder to think what this means for elections. At least I appreciate that the article attaches some numbers to it.
To a first approximation, nothing is verified, people see a number on social media as a proxy for accuracy. Even if it's completely wrong, it doesn't matter because you're among friends.
Memes let insane ideas spread like a virus, the only criterion is whether they can survive against other memes. Grounding in reality is an idea's death sentence, because of the bullshit asymmetry principle.
And now the tools are there for anyone to generate bullshit at a scale commensurate to their wallet.
I shudder to think what this means for elections. At least I appreciate that the article attaches some numbers to it.