[jacquesm]

There will come a time when we will disconnect the international and intercontinental internet connections until we've figured out how to keep democracy functioning in a connected world.

It may get to the point where activities such as these will be classed right along with acts of war, I have no idea what the solution is but clearly the downsides of our early days attempt at creating a 'hive mind' are starting to weigh pretty heavily.

[avs733]

Critical thinking. Teach critical thinking and information literacy. Teach students how to make an argument. Stop trying to teach people 'facts' as an equivalent to teaching understanding.

Work to reduce the number of people (i.e., conservatives) who seek an purely objective world view that makes them comfortable and is actually reinforced by facts that disprove their beliefs.

I, as a STEM educator, blame a lot of all of this on the reification of STEM education and the devaluing of liberal arts and humanities.

[jacquesm]

> (i.e., conservatives)

That's a bit of a short-cut there, it's not just conservatives that do this.

Also, keep in mind that the web (not the internet) was created with a completely different goal in mind, to connect organizations and individuals in a relatively friendly setting.

The potential for hostile applications wasn't even on the radar back then and if it had been I'm pretty sure some of the foundation stones would have been laid differently.

So now you get this weird mix of open societies connected in a very open fashion to outright dictatorships with the additional asymmetries of English being a pre-requisite for trade all over the world and thus a ready and cheap to deploy workforce aided by bots to sow dissention and to drive a wedge between folks in the remainder of the world.

What is sad - and that's why I picked out that fragment - is that once the ball is rolling we will then happily take over beating on that wedge.

[avs733]

agreed, and to an extent apologies for the cheapshot, but there is an underlying and important point.

Conservative ideology (holding 'traditional' values and being resistant to change) is ideologically rooted in a non-critical conflation of societal normativity and one's own subjective reality with a shared objective reality. It doesn't mean they uniquely suffer from this problem but it does make them much more susceptible to it. It also makes them, as a group, less prepared to counter it.

Its the same reason the Nazi's were so much more effective than Occupy wall street. In the later, internal dialogues and disagreement is tolerated and even valued to a much larger extent. In the former, its seen as lacking in purity and results in compliance, departure, or expulsion.

[jacquesm]

> ts the same reason the Nazi's were so much more effective than Occupy wall street. In the later, internal dialogues and disagreement is tolerated and even valued to a much larger extent. In the former, its seen as lacking in purity and results in compliance, departure, or expulsion.

There's a link to 'nice people finish last' in there somewhere.

[avs733]

There is a reason I avoided the value judgement and stuck specifically to the culture of shared cognition.

[krapp]

Democracy depends on connection, and the free exchange of ideas among an intelligent and informed populace, even in the presence of falsehood and rumor.

The problem here is not democracy being unable to weather the internet, any more than television, newspapers or radio, but of society trading healthy skepticism for cynicism, encouraging disengagement from the political process and failing to raise the electorate democracy needs.

[jacquesm]

> Democracy depends on connection, and the free exchange of ideas among an intelligent and informed populace, even in the presence of falsehood and rumor.

That works as long as there are ways to ascertain what is rumor and falsehood and what is fact. As soon as that is impossible the S/N ratio drops to the point where you have a net negative making it much harder to engage in critical thinking. That's why the bot army operators don't really care which side of a particular argument they are taking, all they care about is - just like any other ad network, ironically - engagement so that there are less braincycles left over to think about the stuff that really matters.

> The problem here is not democracy being unable to weather the internet, any more than television, newspapers or radio

Television, newspapers or radio as a rule were not - RT excepted - usually under the control of ideological or actual enemies. And when they were - such as Radio Free Europe - the powers that be tried what they could to control the message. So now we are starting to see what happens when there is no way to control the message at all and individuals can be targeted with messages that are tailor made to excite and enrage them about subjects they care deeply about.

> but of society trading healthy skepticism for cynicism, encouraging disengagement from the political process and failing to raise the electorate democracy needs.

I'd love to live in that place but I haven't found it yet. For the most part people are not at all happy to have to expend time to get educated about subjects they care about, they prefer to have their opinion pre-chewed and in short to repeat soundbites, preferably short enough to be made into bumper stickers.

[dionian]

> That works as long as there are ways to ascertain what is rumor and falsehood and what is fact.

Are you saying that is that the job of the State?

[jacquesm]

No, but neither is it the job of the state to facilitate those that wish to destabilize it. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

This thread has been flagged to death now so I don't think there will be much more discussion. Pity.

[dionian]

indeed

[hodl]

Not sure how you can disconnect the internet. Basically would involve disconnecting all comms. Lest someone uses a modem. Then what about long distance RF?

[jacquesm]

China is a pretty good example of what can be done just short of disconnecting, and as annoying as that is they are doing this because they are well aware of what could happen if they allowed free communications.

They're on the wrong side of the line as far as I'm concerned but in the end the goals are roughly the same: prevent outside influences from destabilizing the country to the point where the whole thing might collapse.

Open societies are probably (I hope) less vulnerable to this sort of thing than closed ones but it would be a huge mistake to think that we are immune to it.