People also used to be confidently wrong all the time before the internet was ubiquitous, except then it was hard to quickly verify they were.

True, but a difference is that they could not spread their confidently wrong opinions globally, only locally, and that opinions were tied to their identity.

Take my mom for example. She's 80 years old and doesn't use the internet that much. She is confidently wrong about a lot of things she sees on TV or hears on the radio. A recent example is COVID misinformation.

The difference is that my mom can't easily influence millions of others because she doesn't have the reach, but also because people are unlikely to take the word of an 80-year old person without any medical credentials or training seriously. It's much easier to look "legitimate" when you are hiding behind an online persona. If my mom wrote a blog or posted on HN/reddit, she could certainly come off as a doctor, or even lie about being one, and many would believe her. Doing this locally, in person, is much harder and riskier.

> True, but a difference is that they could not spread their confidently wrong opinions globally, only locally, and that opinions were tied to their identity.

> If my mom wrote a blog or posted on HN/reddit, she could certainly come off as a doctor, or even lie about being one, and many would believe her.

I don't think your mom (likeable as she no doubt is) could get an audience of millions just by posting her opinion on HN/Reddit/Social media.

I think the situation is pretty much back to what it was: most of the population have a limited reach of influence. Some people have a much greater reach.

The difference is that the people with greater reach used to be trained journalists who held to a code of conduct and were given that reach by institutions. Now there is no such code of conduct, and the assignment of audience reach is more random, and totally uncontrolled by any institution.

Pre internet, people could not spread confidently wrong opions globally, but connected and well connected people could. Take a look at the wave after wave of popular, and misleading non fiction books printed last century, or the "scientific" food pyramid, or the testimony of nurse Nariya. On and on it goes, as it has, only now, anyone can play.

> True, but a difference is that they could not spread their confidently wrong opinions globally, only locally, and that opinions were tied to their identity.

The content producer - audience ratio was just different, a dumb line from a journalist would definitely have an outsized reach that go well beyond what the writer might have expected.

As you note, even today people with a global reach aren’t that many: I could be shouting a lot of thing on top of my soap box, I’d probably not be actually reaching more than a few dozen people, and we have enough content for the effect of a single person to be vastly diluted.

Many true things about COVID were labelled "misinformation" at one point or another.

The publishing gatekeepers of a few decades ago projected an image of confidence, but I'm not sure they were actually any more accurate than random youtube videos. The media establishment of today certainly doesn't seem to be.

That's a mislabeling. True facts were batched together with false conclusions, and should have rather been classified as disinformation since it was performed by people who knew better in many cases.

Given you are such an expert on viral disease, doesn't it make more sense for you to author a book, movie, ... to explain to your mum what she's wrong?

PS: I hope you're not one of these Wikipedia editors censoring physicists on Wikipedia because you "know" better?, or perhaps censoring virologists on Wikipedia because likewise.

PS 2: Some doctors were wrong about COVID. Some governments were very wrong. COVID lockdowns hurt the world economy worse the GFC.

This is true.

Long before the web, when I was a child, my father would chide me for my bold claims unsupported by facts with the phrase "Confident; but wrong."

Its good to remind myself this . Not once I thought I know something after watching a summary video. When I tried to explain the topic to somebody else I struggled. If you can’t explain you know nothing. Simple as that.

> If you can’t explain you know nothing.

Strongly agree. And I'll raise you: if you can't explain in simple, plain language that a 12-year-old could understand, then you are not enlightened.

I concede that some subjects are intrinsically complex; e.g. the cosmological history of the Universe. But a large part of the reason that topic is complex is because it's not settled; we haven't got to the bottom of it, so there are loads of unanswered questions. How can you explain cosmological inflation in language a 12-year-old could understand? Well, I can't explain it to myself, so I sure as hell can't explain it to a 12-year-old.

>If you can’t explain you know nothing. Simple as that.

This is still a pretty good bar, but if I just repeat what the video said, it seems like I'm explaining it, and then I can give the impression I do know something. I shouldn't get credibility for just repeating a video.

The US has devolved into somewhat of a reputation-driven expertise market, and there are plenty of ways to gain reputation without the expertise. There's still plenty of real experts, but I don't blame them if they want to focus on their work instead of fighting the endless tide of easily produced misinformation.

I agree. There's a healthy factor form entry cost. There's also an healthy inertia into asking more than short term investment from your mind.

Map is not territory and I say this after believing it far too long.

It's a big fallacy behind the information highway roots of internet.

And that's half of it.

I also believe it is a trend not to go over the head of consumers. Can be seen in older documentaries and political discussion. Perhaps this is just a result of everyone already feeling like a expert and should not be insulted by complex language etc.

I wonder if this is just an inevitable outcome of the majority of society being online. The beginnings of the internet are rooted in academia and hobbyists. Early adopters were experts in their respective fields with analytical minds. Now that everyone is online, perhaps the average user just better reflects the average member of society. In other words, maybe it's not the content of the internet, it's the users.

What is the most bizarre thing to me about the online zeitgeist is how so many people will allow comments of anonymous or pseudonymous strangers on places like Reddit or Twitter to shape their world view. Including journalists. An extreme or inaccurate view may start on social media and be normalised through repetition on social media and subsequent validation by main stream journalist.

In the case of Reddit in particular what is it that gets people to trust anonymous strangers? It is bizarre and seems like a mind virus. If an anonymous stranger tells you what you want to hear then you are apt to ingest it uncritically.

For example on social media there is a notion that nuclear brinksmanship with Russia over Crimea is acceptable.

> What is the most bizarre thing to me about the online zeitgeist is how so many people will allow comments of anonymous or pseudonymous strangers on places like Reddit or Twitter to shape their world view. Including journalists.

I totally second this, and have a recent concrete example where at the beginning of this year Sweden's (probably) most serious newspaper (what I'd consider a 'journal of record' whose articles should be a point of historical reference), published a long-form retrospective article comparing Sweden's handling of Covid with the way other countries had handled the epidemic, and included several internet 'myths' that had bandied-around on social media, citing them as facts, and even including one 'interview' with what purported to be an eyewitness of one event, which turned-out to be taken from a Facebook post.

I wrote and complained to the responsible editor with citations showing how and where the article was wrong, and a few very grudging emendations were made (effectively saying that even though the reports were still probably true, they couldn't be 'verified').

Totally horrified me that, in wanting something to fit their facts, journalists simply accepted fiction they read on Facebook and regurgitated it in their articles.

I used to hold them in greater regard than that.

> I wrote and complained to the responsible editor with citations showing how and where the article was wrong, and a few very grudging emendations were made (effectively saying that even though the reports were still probably true, they couldn't be 'verified').

That's interesting, because it possibly led to a sort of well-meaning destruction. Was the content surgically edited, or did it grow a warning that some of the info originally published was incorrect, or (more perniciously) both? Consider the affect this has on researchers trying to do studies on misinformation—they certainly want to be able to access the originals themselves.

> what is it that gets people to trust anonymous strangers? It is bizarre and seems like a mind virus. If an anonymous stranger tells you what you want to hear then you are apt to ingest it uncritically.

I guess it has something to do with lack of trust in Established Sources of Information—TV, newspapers, experts and other various figures of authority. The biases of the Established Sources has become more apparent over the years, to the point where scepticism, doubt, and even defensive cynicism are fairly common default attitudes when dealing with the information they provide.

The trust in anonymous strangers is, at least in part, the result of them not being Established Sources. It's not a lying politician, or a deceitful news anchor or journalist, it's just another well-meaning regular person like you. That alone makes you more receptive to their message. If their message happens to align with your existing beliefs, even better. Of course, it can get into cultish/conspiracy territory if any of those beliefs are directly opposed to the mainstream narrative.

Swap out HN for Reddit and your comment still stands. This place isn’t really all that different.

Lack of solid real world social networks. Religion used to be a solid defense but people are now less religious.

Id say it's gone the other way too. Expert opinion echo chambers are rampant on the internet preventing paradigm shifts in science.

Isn't "expert opinion" a fallacy?

If the expert is right it's hardly an "opinion"; it's more a fact. But we still talk in terms of "expert opinion" because there are other experts with, sometimes, diametrically opposite views. Do we get to hear all these experts? Not a chance.

The problem is our egos get in the way of real facts. Experts are humans and they are just as vulnerable to being wrong as the rest of us. Its great that there are people who dedicate there lives to a discipline, but sometimes experts use there positions of being right to distort larger truths, especially in areas where we don't have all the facts, but think we do, and when careers are on the line, experts can ban together to protect themselves. Id rather find my own way to the truth, then to rely on an expert that may or may not have an interest in protecting themselves from career breaking situations.

Expert positions can create a false sense of security that we know all there is to know about a subject, and that is just as damaging to society as not knowing the truth.

>When it was more difficult to access and publish information, that imposed a much higher bar on what was being consumed.

And yet fringe theories, from quack medicine to religions, weren’t any less widespread than now. They were just fewer of them.

EDIT: Now I think about it, they were more prevalent than now. Look at homophobia - it got global, affected everyone, even non-Christian cultures like China, for centuries.

> religion ... homophobia

Do you really consider that knowledge?

> homophobia - it got global, affected everyone, even non-Christian cultures like China

Do you think that aversion of homosexuality starts and ends with Christianity?

Homophobia generally spread throughout the world with Christianity, carried by colonialism. Again, China is a good example. And fixing homophobia in western societies strongly corresponds to decreasing importance of religion.

It’s not limited to homophobia of course - pretty much every single Catholic claim about human sexuality is antiscientific bull - but I think homophobia is a good enough example of a harmful, false belief that got more popular than anything post-internet.

For one thing, you may be underselling the homophobia in Islam a bit. And there's Tacitus, who says that the Germans punished homosexuals. That's a bit before the Christians, and it comes from someone from a culture not opposed to the practice.

Second, I find it hard to believe that the Chinese were turned homophobic, and remained so, by a few Christians despite millenia of tolerance, when the vast majority of the country isn't even Christian. It smells like bad historicism.

I guess his take on germanic tribes might have been accurate. The first recorded "law" in the Nordics is monetarily punnishment for accusing someone of being homosexual. (Quoted from distant memory, don't take my word for it).

At the same time you see people (mainly young people) learning at a faster pace watching videos.

Not to be snarky, but I 100% need some kind of source for that claim. My experience in higher ed is the literal opposite of that.

I see mainly young people also struggle with reading comprehension skills so they might be learning faster (in their own pace) mostly because they can't read effectively.

[Citation Needed]

I haven't written a paper about this, this is an observation looking at kids and youngsters around me, mainly, economically speaking, middle class and also lower middle class. My sample is around 100.

I also see issues with reading comprehension but not video comprehension. I am not saying that things are better now, just saying that observations should be balanced. A person interested and with attitude towards a specific topic can navigate the learning path with more resources and less friction.

> They will then, in an absolutely confident tone, display their expertise by answering questions and stating their opinion as if it was a fact.

The irony of talking about this on HN, the home of Dunning-Kruger effect.

I used to agree, but I'm not sure I do anymore.

Yes, social media gives anyone a microphone; non-experts can speak on advanced topics with zero knowledge. But Gell-Mann Amnesia predates social media. The "reputable sources" of yesteryear were anything but.

Experts ignored the media and got their info from other experts. That hasn't changed. The masses were clueless or wrong about most things, that hasn't changed. People were gullible and believed anything they read, that hasn't changed.

To me, the real negative change from the Information Era isn't a decline in knowledge, it's the shift towards centralized socialization online.

People were robbed of their ability to form independent social groups and subcultures, or to differ significantly from the mainstream. There will never be anything like the hippies, punks, or emos ever again. Music used to be the major "gateway" towards political and social countercultures. Now? Music is ultra-commercialized. Online movements are much more easily molded by commercial interests and TPTB. "Counterculture political views" get promoted on Fortune 500 brands' Twitter accounts. Remember the BLM protests in 2020? Police killings increase slightly in 2021 compared to 2020, and are on track to remain stable this year; about the only lasting "legacy" of those protests was that a few grifters bought multi-million dollar houses with donation money. There is no counterculture that doesn't get coopted.

Counterintuitively, something else reinforces the status quo: social media algorithms' bias towards empty controversy. Could Gandhi's peace message succeed today? Martin Luther King? Would they even be audible?

Project yourself 10-20 years into the future, with ubiquitous availability of GPT-3-style AI; will any of what you read online even be from real people? The "open web" movement is missing the wider problem. All the effects I describe are fundamental and unavoidable consequences of the web connecting the world together; regardless of whether it's "open", or kept in corporate walled gardens.

Centralization leads to winner-take-all effects. When every road leads to Rome, it marginally increases prosperity in the periphery, while it overwhelmingly drives traffic and economic activity away from the periphery, towards Rome.[0] The same happens when you "connect all humans" together. Remember the story from a few days ago, about 90%+ of online content being created by 1-2% of people? Any counterculture needs to be insulated from mainstream influences in order to truly thrive; but social media dynamics (karma, "viralness") inherently directs content towards the lowest common denominator, i.e. the status quo. The web itself, for all the good it does, is the problem. What's the solution? Don't know.

[0]: https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/1184807240198426625 (for a screenshot of the quoted tweet: https://twitter.com/AidanHeronUK/status/1184856198648139777)

Remember how Commander Data would scan through a few million files during a 10-second montage, or how Keanu jacked in briefly, woke up and exclaimed "I know Kung Fu!"

Yeah, that's exactly how it works today.