[nickgrosvenor]

You wonder how the world can sink into war and then you start to understand how it works when you study today's political climate.

It seems like a slow motion inevitability.

People's opinions are just so strong.

To make matters worse, seems like the smartphone revolution has provided quick communication channels that magnify the rhetoric.

Forget more information at your finger tips, smartphones and the internet provide easier means of finding like-minded people to raise pitchforks with.

[cmurf]

It's not the speed that's the problem, it's that they aren't as well vetted, nor are they diverse. It's easy to avoid uncomfortable facts and opinions. It is necessary to get variety in order to triangulate and assess.

[steego]

The Balkanization of news and opinions is a minor facet of the overall situation that's unfolding.

The biggest thing going on is opinion shapers and propagandists have been given powerful tools the 20th century PR men could have only dreamed about. Growth hacking, sentiment analysis, personal network analysis, and deep learning are all things that allow cunning people to do extraordinary things.

Messages can be tested and fine tuned to see which ideas resonate. Communication channels can be established directly to the recipient of your message by creating Facebook groups and the like.

People simply haven't developed this critical thinking skills to defend themselves from this new onslaught of opinion shaping tech whose efficacy is based on very timely data.

I imagine Boyd's Law of Iteration is going to be a huge factor in deciding who wins the new propaganda wars. https://blog.codinghorror.com/boyds-law-of-iteration/

Updated: Minor edits for clarity