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Comment by sixQuarks | Hacker News Reader

The internet was supposed to create an educated society with information at your fingertips, instead we got fake news and echo chambers spreading extreme thinking

We have huge groups of actively ignorant people supporting the growth of climate change, anti-vaccination, and a host of other dangerous actions.

Now those fighting Ebola outbreaks are getting attacked.

I hope I’m wrong, but it looks like rationality is fast disappearing from this world. It’s only a matter of time before we destroy ourselves.

I realize this type of gloom and doom stuff has always been predicted throughout history, it just seems “this time is different” for real with the intersection of technology and ignorance reaching levels we’ve never seen.

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Rationality never existed. Humans are fundamentally irrational actors, and the 'news' has always been about tribalism and fear-mongering. You are unknowingly falling victim to the age-old condition called "going-to-hell-in-a-handbasket-ism," where once you reach a certain age and level of experience with the world, you realize the world isn't how you want it to be and never will be; you become disillusioned; and you begin telling people that "this generation/the world is going to hell in a handbasket."

Every generation does this. It doesn't mean that actually, the world is a fine place. It just means that your rose-colored glasses are coming off.

Yes, this is definitely the other perspective I consider, however I’ve never been one to disparage “new generations”

Honestly, as I've grown older, the more I've come to realize that "rationality" is such an energy intensive skill to cultivate and its payoff so long-term that humans have always been like this and that what we witness in modern times is just a clearer picture of that fact due to the scale of our populations and speed of information transfer.

Rationality is energy intensive and difficult to cultivate and is usually a socially learned or reinforced skill (similar to the fact that long-term research is usually only funded by public tax dollars and not corporations).

So I don't think now is any different, it's just at a different scale and behooves those of us who have had the privilege to cultivate the skill to not gloom and doom and to instead show the way up the ladder (if possible, not all people want to cultivate rationality).

It really sounds like you're reading too much news. News is fear mongering most of the time. Try taking a short break, you might be surprised how much better you feel!

Feeling better and taking care of yourself is, of course, really important.

However, measles outbreaks and hate-crimes aren't going to stop because one does not pay attention to the news.

But passively reading the news and feeling like crap aren't going to stop anything either.

It seems more would be done if local news, or even just having a conversation with a friend were the primary way of obtaining information.

I would venture a guess that you're more likely to pursue a cause if it directly affects your community or someone you know and love thinks it's important, than you are just by reading something on the internet.

They're also not going to stop if you _do_ pay attention to the news. The only difference is you'll still have some sanity left.

Measles outbreaks and hate crimes are very rare events that mostly shouldn't be in one's mind (with obvious exceptions if you are working on some related field).

Actually, for the most part, they do go away. In both cases, if you live in the USA, your probability of encountering either is vanishingly small, so if you don't have the news pumping up and amplifying these incredibly rare events, you can trundle along blissfully and deal with the local problems that actually impact you.

> The internet was supposed to create an educated society with information at your fingertips, instead we got fake news and echo chambers spreading extreme thinking

We're talking about Congo Kinshasa here, I mean, most of you here, who are not from the region have absolutely no idea about the state of that country. It's a mess.

Internet is the least of the locals worries, many of whom are on a daily survival mode because of the war, can't even read and are strongly influenced by all sort of superstitions.

I'm not sure what point you are trying to make. A lot of them living in remote places controlled by militias never had access to the internet at first place.

The people fighting Ebola responders are not actively ignorant. They are just militia and chaotic.

This is more to do with being unlucky where the outbreak occurred in a country without order in that part, than fake news affecting anything.

There are poor people living on top of trillions of dollars worth of natural resources.

A powerful entity conducting a controlled bio-attack to clear opposition to future mining operations is entirely plausable.

I would really love to know if this phenomenon is limited to Britain/Canada/USA and the rest of the world wonders if we have collectively gone insane, or if each demographic region is experiencing similar paranoia.

Stupid people live everywhere. It’s not a uniquely North American thing unfortunately.

They may face other issues and we just aren’t aware of it.

Hi from South America. Full-blown Marxism is small but not quite tiny here.

You're correct. There are some painful ways to right our course, but it's unlikely we'll implement them. - Take money out of politics and media, completely. - Responsible reproduction policies.

>it looks like rationality is fast disappearing from this world.

You'd like history, the masses of humans have always been like this.

The average IQ in the DPRC is 78. The population has grown from 12 million in 1950 to 87 million today.

You cannot evaluate the actions taking place in that country and then apply them to the rest of the world.

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