>this is a good and powerful thing.
... until they have a gross misunderstanding of an issue relevant to public policy and spread that misunderstanding to others.
There is no "good ignorance".
... until they have a gross misunderstanding of an issue relevant to public policy and spread that misunderstanding to others.
There is no "good ignorance".
This can't be stated enough; (the following is anecdotal) the amount of blatantly incorrect information being spread through the use of what I dub 'feel good infographics' across the internet is astonishing. The viewer looks at something, feels good about what they've read and then shares it because it passed their own personal sentiment analysis.
It's kind of frightening because it sets the stage for all sorts of astroturfing and conditioning to spread; if anything we should look at the Boston Bomber/Reddit incident as evidence of this feel good propaganda. People were so eager to attach to the notion that they had 'caught the bastard' only for the truth to come out later that they had completely fingered the wrong guy.
The problem arises when people share untrue information out of the notion that they're spreading science. Comprehension is indeed expensive and scarce, which means recognizing the borders of your own knowledge and the start of your own ignorance is extremely important. Pseudoscientific drivel has no place anywhere.
Whereas the facebook page does nothing like this at all - it's just funny pictures with a theme. It doesn't encourage any way of thinking or promote figuring out the world.
As much as I'd like it to be true, looking at a bunch of .gifs about quantum mechanics and astrophysics plastered with white majuscules does little for one's understanding of science. In other words, IFLS is to the scientific community as r/atheism is to the religious-sceptics community (not the best analogy...).