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by shoes_for_thee 1971 days ago
I don't think the issue is whether or not people are more or less rational now than in previous era. The issue, from my view, is that people are just as irrational as they've always been, but the consensus facts of reality are suddenly up for debate.

There's a new marketplace of facts supplementing the marketplace of ideas and the combined effect is catastrophic.

When I refer to post-truth or transpostmodernism or whatever, I'm not talking about people who have arrived at different conclusions based on the same facts -- I'm talking about people who have based their conclusions on opposing, contradictory facts.

1 comments

> the combined effect is catastrophic.

Where is the catastrophe? What I see is people arguing online. You can point to real world events but I’ll ask next what makes them out of the ordinary and of greater size or import than other years, and it’ll be hard to say they are. But the din online suggests they are. What should we expect when communication tech becomes cheaper and more widespread?

I don’t see any catastrophe though. More speech is a good thing, power to the people and all that.