[Cheer2171]

I'm old enough to remember when they first said that about the Internet. We were going to enter a new enlightened age of information, giving everyone access to the sum total of human knowlege, no need to get a fancy degree, universities will be obsolete, expertise will be democratized.... See how that turned out.

[elliotbnvl]

The motivated will excel even further, for the less motivated nothing will change. The gap is just going to increase between high-agency individuals and everyone else.

[CamperBob2]

I'm old enough to remember when they first said that about the Internet.

(Shrug) It was pretty much true. But it's like what Linus says in an old Peanuts cartoon: https://www.gocomics.com/peanuts/1969/07/20

[svnt]

I’d suggest we are much closer to that reality now than we were in the 90s, in large part thanks to the internet.

[Cheer2171]

Since the Internet became ubiquitous, more people believe the moon landing, climate change, and vaccines are hoaxes.

[slavik81]

Is it really that much worse today? When I was a kid, my great aunt died of skin cancer. She was a Christian Scientist and rejected medical treatment in favour of prayer.

As a teenager, I remember being annoyed that the newspapers had positive articles on the rejuvenating properties of nonsense like cupping and reiki. At least a few of my friends' parents had healing crystals.

People have always believed in whatever nonsense they want to believe.

[Yhippa]

It feels like the friction to get un-science has been completely removed now. Before you had to get lagged content and physically fetch it somehow. Now you can have it in the palm of your hands 24-7 with the bonus of the content being designed to enrage you to get you sucked in.

[1dom]

LLMs and the internet both make it easier for us to access more information, which also means we can reach dumber conclusions quicker. It does go both ways though.

[svnt]

As an aside, internet hasn’t officially been a proper noun since 2016 or so.