Hacker News Reader

Comment by kibleopard | Hacker News Reader

Agreed for sure, but even the younger generations seem susceptible to believing whatever they read on Twitter, etc. There have been countless times I’ve seen people share info as de facto truth when they simply glanced at a headline Twitter pushed them without bothering to read deeper.

View on HN

My hope is that it all seems like a joke to the youngsters, and they don't take any of it seriously. In other words, they know its a lie but share it anyway because it's funny to do so and a lie has a group momentum that can crush you if you stand in its way, so why bother? Look at gay marriage - the lie that it's akin to beastiality, or the lie that it will ruin straight marriate, these are lies that are actually quite funny as satire. But to treat them as sincere beliefs, and argue with them, is not worth the inevitable trouble and negativity.

Young minds know how to deal with the polluted informational space and learn to get value out of it one way or another.

The informational gems that we need to hold up with high regard are examples of sincere discussion and debate between those who disagree with each other and yet have a genuine goal to hear and be heard by the counter-party, a deep reluctance to deploy rhetorical tricks, and a willingness to support controversial views if they are supported by uncontroversial fact.

everyone supports things they don’t necessarily believe is ‘truth’. it’s why political discussions are often tiresome and distracting. they posit that one side believes a falsehood (like the election was stolen, masks will save the world, or qanon anything) and then argues about that incessantly, rather than understanding the underlying emotions and motivations and then having conversations based on those understandings.

for instance people insist the election was stolen, not because they literally know it to be true, but rather because the outcome, that democrats control national politics, is somehow unacceptable. a productive discussion would start here, with why that’s unacceptable, not quibbling over whether the election was actually stolen or not (it wasn’t).

My sense is that there are a lot of people who literally believe the election was stolen. I don’t know how we could tell if people believe what they are saying.

then you may want to talk to those people more intimately rather than simply accepting projected puffery. part of the deception is baiting you into an unwinnable (because you’re beyond reason at that point) non-sequitur rather than exposing their soft underbelly of emotional vulnerability. the vast majority of people are neither evil geniuses nor naive morons, but people trying to get by and getting a fair shake at that.

also, those false projections are 99.9% of the content on twitter, facebook, etc.

The secret is they don't believe in anything.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com