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A comment on Common-Knowledge Attacks on Democracy. Parent comment

Re:Common-Knowledge Attacks on Democracy by gambler on Wednesday November 28, 2018 @03:54PM (#18555583)
A good and important counter-measure, but not the only one.

People also need better tools for analyzing and making sense of large quantities of information, especially as it evolves over time. Right now, all we have are search engines and excel spreadsheets, and it's clearly not enough.

It's amazing how prophetic Neil Postman's criticism of computers turned out to be:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqxgCoHv_aE

Essentially, he noted how computers gave people tools to produce and consume more information, but not the tools to discern, filter and analyze it more effectively. It's a profound and very important observation.

His Six Questions are also more relevant than ever.

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Re:Common-Knowledge Attacks on Democracy by orbital-decay on Wednesday November 28, 2018 @05:10PM (#18556158)
> Essentially, he noted how computers gave people tools to produce and consume more information, but not the tools to discern, filter and analyze it more effectively. It's a profound and very important observation.

Is it, really? There's a myriad of analytic tools for every imaginable domain, and even more domain-independent ones. You just need to be skilled enough to use them properly; not because the tools are bad, but because the analysis itself is hard, and even a seemingly simple problem usually needs abstract thinking and domain knowledge.

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Re:Common-Knowledge Attacks on Democracy by bmurphy1976 on Wednesday November 28, 2018 @06:02PM (#18556518)
The information is coming at you regardless of your expertise. Those who don't have the expertise are at a distinct disadvantage to those who do. The tools may be good in the technical sense, but in the do they help normal people out sense they often are not. I would call that a bad situation, one we need to find creative and effective ways to remedy.
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Re:Common-Knowledge Attacks on Democracy by orbital-decay on Wednesday November 28, 2018 @06:48PM (#18556800)
That's just... a fundamental limitation? I don't think there's a way for an unskilled ("normal") person to dissect and analyze the information outside of their understanding in a meaningful way, no matter how creative you get.
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Re:Common-Knowledge Attacks on Democracy by simonh on Thursday November 29, 2018 @06:13AM (#18559421)
I think that's the point. It's not anybody's fault and it's not that anyone is doing anything wrong, it's just a problem we need to take into account and try to mitigate.
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Re:Common-Knowledge Attacks on Democracy by gambler on Thursday November 29, 2018 @10:51AM (#18561031)
>That's just... a fundamental limitation? I don't think there's a way for an unskilled ("normal") person to dissect and analyze the information outside of their understanding in a meaningful way, no matter how creative you get.

This is discussed in depth in Augmenting Human Intellect:

http://dougengelbart.org/content/view/138/000/

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Re:Common-Knowledge Attacks on Democracy by dv_dt on Wednesday November 28, 2018 @05:00PM (#18556083)
If only our newspaper organizations took that on more often. I would love to read a media source that just took issues in the spotlight, and just added contextual data, scale comparisons, and analysis to the hot topics.
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Re:Common-Knowledge Attacks on Democracy by r00fus on Wednesday November 28, 2018 @06:17PM (#18556610)
For-profit ventures that are part of a media conglomerate or own entire media markets will never do that.

Increasing public funding for media and reinstating the media concentration prevention rules may result in actual investigative journalism as opposed to "reportage"

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Re:Common-Knowledge Attacks on Democracy by lisper on Wednesday November 28, 2018 @04:40PM (#18555924)
Wow, that is one of the best long talks I've ever seen. Do you know if there's a transcript out there somewhere?
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Re:Common-Knowledge Attacks on Democracy by mycall on Wednesday November 28, 2018 @09:27PM (#18557567)
http://www.paulos.net/teaching/hcc/papers/informing_ourselve...
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Re:Common-Knowledge Attacks on Democracy by lisper on Wednesday November 28, 2018 @10:04PM (#18557696)
Thank you!
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Re:Common-Knowledge Attacks on Democracy by jxramos on Wednesday November 28, 2018 @05:59PM (#18556494)
YouTube has a transcript feature for newer videos. I wonder if there’s a way to nudge them to process some old content.
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Re:Common-Knowledge Attacks on Democracy by excalibur on Wednesday November 28, 2018 @05:40PM (#18556362)
Not finding one. Any volunteers for Rule 35?
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Re:Common-Knowledge Attacks on Democracy by lisper on Wednesday November 28, 2018 @05:53PM (#18556450)
I would start here:

https://aws.amazon.com/transcribe/

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Re:Common-Knowledge Attacks on Democracy by starbeast on Wednesday November 28, 2018 @05:07PM (#18556135)
>People also need better tools for analyzing and making sense of large quantities of information, especially as it evolves over time. Right now, all we have are search engines and excel spreadsheets, and it's clearly not enough.

Interfaces don't seem to get designed, they just accumulate concretions.

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