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Comment by torginus | Hacker News Reader

Yes. Do not forget that we literally live in the Matrix, getting all the information of import through tiny screens, the sources and validity of which we can only speculate on.

All of the validity of the info we have is verified by heuristics we have, like groupthink, listening to 'experts' and trying to match up the info with our internal knowledge and worldview.

I feel like our current system of information allows us to develop models that are quite distant from base reality, evidenced by the multitudes of realities existing in people's heads, leading some to question if 'truth' is a thing that can be discovered.

I think as people become more and more Internet-addicted, an increasing amount of our worldviews come through that little screen, instead of real-life experiences.

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I like your comment.

The world is becoming information saturated and poorly structured by design, ever notice how these story blockers are such a big part of the propaganda machine, whereby you have to use elaborate workarounds to just read a simple news story thats pulled from another source?

Saturating culture with too much data is a great tool of breaking reality, breaking truth.

But they cant break truth for long, it always finds a way. And truth is a powerful vector, much more than propaganda without a base in truth, because human experience is powerful, unquantifiable, and can take someone from the gutter to a place of massive wealth or influence, in an instant. That is the power of human experience, the power of truth.

Doesnt make it easy though, to live in this world of so many lies, supercharged by bots. Nature outside of our technology is much simpler in its truth.

I think it’s extremely positive that most of our information comes from the Internet, because before that we only got information from our local peers who are often extremely wrong or problematic and their opinions. All I have to do is look at organized religion, and the negative impact that it’s had on the world, to appreciate that the Internet has, in general, a higher standard of evidence and poor opinions are more likely to be challenged

Some people get relevant information not only from little screens but interactions with other human beings or physical reality.

Unless you happen to move in extremely well-informed circles, most of the information about what's going on in the world is coming to you through those little screens (or from people who got it from said screens)

True for larger issues, which makes moving in such circles so valuable and the perspective of people only looking at small screens potentially so distorted there.

However, for smaller issues and local community issues "special access" isn't really much of a thing.

Yeah, but then those smaller issues aren't usually contested. Humans are good at getting the directly and immediately relevant things right, where being wrong is experienced clearly and painfully. We have time-honed heuristics letting us scale this to small societies. Above that, things break down.

Not really: go to any meeting on building a new local road and see very different views on the local reality. The ability to understand and navigate those isn't too different to what is needed on bigger issues.

For me, the accuracy of my predictions about world events and personal outcomes leads me to believe that my reality model is fairly accurate.

I do notice many don't seem to revisit their predictions for reflection though. Perhaps this happens more subconsciously.

I'm wrong regularly ofc.

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