The Next Four Years

[gib]

Carleas said:

I am less surprised at the outcome of the election in the US than I was in 2016, but I am still baffled by what Trump’s supporters are thinking. ← That’s because we’re getting our information from completely different sources. → And I’m tempted to think that they basically aren’t thinking, ← And that’s how it becomes a prejudice. → as to the extent I’ve heard support for Trump it’s been based on misunderstandings and mistaken beliefs – about what the candidates stood for, what they planned to do, the state of the world and how it works, etc. ← Yes, according to the worldview your favorite media outlet paints of it. → But the principle of charity compels me to acknowledge that it might be I who is confused abut the world.

We’re all confused about the world. In fact, I like to say we’ve entered another dark age–not one characterized by a lack of information but by too much (conflicting) information–no one knows what to believe anymore.

In fact, I remember explaining to Peter Kropotkin one time my view that we’re all living on media-created “islands” without even knowing it:

Gib said:

Seriously, where did you [Kropotkin] hear this? I’m honestly interested. One of the most interesting phenomena that’s come out of these left/right battles of the last several years is how misinformation is spread, not only in general, but to target groups. I can enumerate a few occasions where I spoke to leftist to learn that they’ve been fed falsities that I didn’t even know were going around. And I know that many of the details of this protest, the ones that speak in favor of it, are only known by those who follow the news sources that dish them out. What I mean is, if you’re being fed right leaning information by your favorite internet algorithm, you’ll know things that no left leaning enthusiast will have even heard of, let alone disagree with, and if you’re being fed left leaning information… well, visa-versa. It’s interesting how it’s creating silos of media-built worlds for us to live in without even knowing we’re living in them. We all kinda assume that, right or wrong, believe it or not, approve of it or not, that whatever major events of the day are going on in the world, everyone who’s paying attention knows about it. But I’ve recent become disillusioned to this. Only our local group (or immediate internet network of peers) knows about what’s happening on the media-constructed islands we live on… and who knows what’s going on on other islands. We can no longer take for granted that the island we find ourselves on is the world.

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