[loudmax]

People really need to understand how journalism works as a business model. When you only consume news that reinforces your beliefs, that creates an incentive to produce news that conforms to your beliefs. This doesn't mean your beliefs are wrong, just that you should be aware of your own biases and guard against them.

Excessive cynicism is a real danger too. Democracies rely on an informed electorate to guide decisions. If you throw up your hands and say the truth is unknowable so nothing matters anyway, you're giving into autocracy. There absolutely are forces that would like you to give up on the notion of being able to tell truth from falsehoods.

You may not know absolute truth for absolute certainty, but if you live in a democratic society and you'd like to keep it that way, you really ought to make an attempt to know what's going on.

[mistermann]

What if our aversion to pursuing absolute truth, insisting on stopping at true enough (like democracy being our most sacred institution) is the problem though?

I would like us to strive for better, not keep it the way it is now.

[Levitz]

It's an optimization game, and far too many people care far too much.

You could spend every waking hour reading news, it wouldn't improve your or anyone else's life much, and it definitely wouldn't be better than putting that effort into a whole lot of other things.

You care for democracy and politics? Excellent. Get involved in your local politics. won't take one tenth of the time and will pay off orders of magnitude more than reading stuff constantly.

[mistermann]

What if omniscience is an illusion though?