[morkalork]

What was life like 150-200 years ago? Back then you had only the written word to go by for news of the outside world and it was just as easily manipulated. I think we've been living through a brief and unique period of truth-y-ness with a plethora of photographic and video evidence.

[throwuwu]

Agreed, we’ve been hoodwinked by photos and video and this is the wake up call we need for everyone to realize that seeing an image of something is in no way comparable to actually being there. We’re about to enter a much more skeptical world and that’s a good thing.

[jmondi]

A healthy amount of skepticism is good. You can easily take your skepticism too far and turn into a tinfoil hat wearing conspiracy theorist who doesnt believe anything and has a completely cynical view on the world. I know a few of these...

[throwuwu]

A healthy amount being defined as 90%

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon's_law

[dahart]

Interesting thought. Sturgeon’s Law is normally referring to the quality of things created honestly, like sci fi novels, and not to the level of dishonesty or disinformation. I’ll have to think about whether those are actually different, but I feel like it’s relevant in the sense that Sturgeon’s Law is normally tautological: you can decide for sci fi novels what percent of them you would define as “good”, and the rest are “crap”. 90% always works, but so does 80% or 98%, the top group is always better than the bottom group by definition. So in that sense, saying that 90% of information might be dishonest and justify skepticism isn’t supported by Sturgeons Law, I think.

[hammyhavoc]

What about the tinfoil hatters that believe everything just because it's on some 2h YT video?

[JumpCrisscross]

> What about the tinfoil hatters that believe everything just because it's on some 2h YT video?

Classic contrarianism. Where evidence of pushback is used as evidence of the argument itself. It's commonly used by cults to increase cohesion, e.g. sending members into the world to get rejected.

[uvnq]

That's a case of not enough skepticism

[hammyhavoc]

After seeing the QAnon folks, I think you'll just see in-fighting about what the "truth" is, when in reality, both sides are full of shite but for different reasons.

[Frummy]

Rest in peace to saying "pics or it didn't happen" I guess