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Comment by varispeed | Hacker News Reader

The problem is that people are conditioned to think that if something is published then most likely it is real. Maybe we need to overhaul our education system and teach people about manipulation techniques, how to spot manipulative language, how to cross reference interesting information, how to assess whether the source is trustworthy and so on. Then teach about existence of PR agencies who create fake accounts and play certain characters to create an opinion. Unfortunately governments who used to rely on their own propaganda may not like it.

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Sure, but why is the onus always on the individual for macro-level problems? Even the most mindful and/or intelligent person is susceptible to misinformation and propaganda.

>why is the onus always on the individual for macro-level problems

Because powerful people basically never relent their power willingly. E.g. Netanyahu, trump, putin, and the countless other fascists destroying the world for profit and more power. History shows us that power must be taken from those who would misuse it. We must be ever vigilant to not become those we despise in our efforts to end their reigns of terror lest we perpetuate the cycle.

Gigantic fail. People GIVE these individuals and institutions power. Stop giving them power, take personal responsibility.

Collective action is basically the only way Americans can force the three branches of government to do something they don't want to do. A lone actor is screwed; Billionaires excluded.

That is exactly the mentality that got us into this mess.

What's your solution then?

1. Go about your life and don't worry about the nonsense of the government.

2. Dont participate or contribute to the system as much as possible. ie Working at big unethical corp for a fat paycheck is not helping things.

There are other ways as well. but those came to mind

The problem is that in the countries with democratic systems, these can be easily exploited if you find a % of demographic that would accept handouts in exchange for votes and target them using Facebook etc. they'll happily vote to get free money.

That helps you teach to people who are currently under 18 years old. Then you just have to wait 50+ years before they replace everyone else. Like a lot of things, we need imperfect interim solutions because we can't wait forever for a perfect one.

And good luck changing every educational system in the world.

“ we need imperfect interim solutions”

This is probably how the whole world was made, interim solutions hacked together. I wonder what social system will have evolved by the time our descendants are no longer recognizably homo sapiens (or even biological)

Word "temporary" makes permanent solution easier to swallow :-)

I sure hope these lockdowns are actually temporary!

As far as I understand people have already looked into that idea. To quote [1]: “Another, longer-run, approach seeks to improve individual evaluation of the quality of information sources through education. There has been a proliferation of efforts to inject training of critical-information skills into primary and secondary schools (12). However, it is uncertain whether such ef- forts improve assessments of information credibility or if any such effects will persist over time. An emphasis on fake news might also have the unintended consequence of reducing the perceived credibility of real- news outlets. There is a great need for rigorous program evaluation of different educational interventions.” [1] The science of fake news - http://pike.psu.edu/classes/ucas/2018-summer/p/science-fake-...

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