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this post was submitted on 02 Aug 2024
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Why is the general public so vulnerable to disinformation when it's so easy to look things up?
Why look something up when you already know the answer? So long as you make the average person confident enough in their own ability to discern the truth - which isn't hard, given most people's desire to feel smart - you can get them to accept an enormous amount of misinformation at face value.
I think you're right, just a small point because you seem to be conflating misinformation and disinformation. It doesn't matter here because your answer works for both, but they are not the same thing:
Disinformation: the person spreading it knows it's not true, is spread for a specific purpose
Misinformation: the person spreading it thinks it's true, is spread because people honestly believe it
Disinformation becomes misinformation as it spreads if successful, as the people hearing it believe it and repeat it.
Oh, good to know! I hadn't made that distinction in my mind, but it makes perfect sense. Thanks for setting me straight!
Mainly because people in general aren't into looking things up, and in the modern era of the Web of Lies it's not always obvious to everyone what is factual information.
Humans are NOT inherently rational creatures, we have to LEARN and PRACTICE how to be rational and curb our instincts in order for it to be effective. This takes discipline and self-examination.
FEW people live a self-examined life, vanishingly few.
Most people are rather content to go on believing what they've always believed and what their families raise them to believe, and are very unpleasant when what they believe is exposed as bullshit.
We’re meant to live in groups of like 50 or something, and trusting elders made sense because their survival was tied to the survival of everyone in the group.
Now we’re in groups of millions and still believing what people of authority have to say because “why would they lead us astray? Surely their survival depends on our ability to thrive, too? Right? Guys?”
$7.25/hr, kids, 2-3 jobs, no healthcare, FB reshares are convincing