<quote>
The Epistemic Paradox
Our present epistemic systems are undergoing kind of the same shock that the online community underwent when transitioning from BBSs and Usenet to the commercial web to social media.
We were used to a very high content-to-BS ratio because it took a certain amount of intelligence and intense domain-interest for people to be there in the first place -- and we've now transitioned to a situation where many people are there more or less accidentally and (the worst part), because of a high percentage of the population being present, there is now substantial power to be had by influencing the discussions that take place.
Science is much the same. For a long time, it was this small thing operating off to the side; only elites could afford to indulge in it, and their discoveries affected very few -- so the truth value could remain high because there was relatively little to be gained by distortion. People's lives were largely governed by things that had been around long enough that the culture had evolved to deal with them more or less reasonably, so they didn't need advice from domain experts to provide accurate information -- and where expertise was needed, it flowed from parent to child and from master to apprentice as part of a cultural process that everyone understood.
Obviously that's not the case anymore. The culture can't keep up.
This is sort of a reiteration of the last paragraph of my previous comment:
"the actual problem is (1) the increasing complexity of our society, requiring ever more knowledge to discern truth from anti-truth, and (2) anti-information being actively injected into the system by those who seek to manipulate public opinion."
But I wanted to highlight what I think is happening when people decry the death of expertise as this article does: it's sort of a form of retro-voodoo: 'in order to have the reliable information we once had, we need to restore the old forms'. Bring back BBSes and usenet, and we'll have civil internet dialogue again. Trust experts, and we'll have valid science again.
It doesn't work that way. The external conditions have changed, the bandwidth needs are higher and the noise-rejection needs are greater. The old systems are failing under the increased information demand (which we can't just wish away, nor would we want to) -- and so we need new processes that are better able to deal with that heavier load.
</quote>
https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/5wg0hp/when_ep...
The sentiment is similar to what earlier media theorists have noted: Shoshana Zuboff's eponymous three laws, Elizabeth Eisenstein on the social impact of the printing press, Noam Chomsky and Ed Hermann in Manufacturing Consent, Marshall McLuhan, Hannah Arendt, the Frankfurt School, George Seldes, Walter Lippmann, Edward Bernays, back to Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, and before.
Opposition to this notion tends to run to one of two, or often both, contradictory arguments:
1) What does this matter, it's just an Internet discussion. (e.g., https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23183381)
2). Free speech is supreme, all censorship is bad. (e.g., https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23177185)
(Both examples from this very HN thread.)
The problem is, you cannot have it both ways: either free speech is paramount, because it changes things in the real world, or allspeech is meaningless because it has no effect. Once you move off either pole, you're in a land where 1) speech matters and 2) careless, indifferent, or malicious speech has deleterious consequences.
Even John Start Mill, in "On Liberty", directly addresses this: "the dictum that truth always triumphs over persecution, is one of those pleasant falsehoods which men repeat after one another till they pass into commonplaces, but which all experience refutes...."
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23068118
You cannot build a large-scale, significant communications system without moderation any more than you can create a large-scale city without sanitation and public health systems, or a global rapid transportation network without commensurate epidemiological detection, management, and controls.
In all, the lack leads to the same consequence: a cesspit of disease, infection, and death.
This is why the nintth and ultimate mechanism of technology is hygiene factors.
(See in part; https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/5rnjg0/state_o...)