This is one of the best articles I've seen in a while. I'll just give some of the best excerpts here. Link to the full article is at the bottom.
"We are all entitled to our own opinions and can believe what we want to believe. But if we can't agree on what the nature of reality is, then we can't really have a conversation that goes anywhere.
So…why do people believe bullshit when they have all the information necessary to discover the truth sitting in front of them?"
The writer quotes Phil Plait from Discovery magazine -
"In a sense, the loudest proponents stick to their movement the way a racist sticks with their prejudices. You can tear down their specific claims about a particular group of people point by point, but in the end the racist simply hates people in that group. It's not rational, or logical, or reasonable. It just is."
The writer suggests that news has become infotainment and that contributes to a society where no one has to accept reality as it is if they don't want to.
- My political philosophy didn't really lose. The election was rigged.
- My team didn't really lose. The refs and league fucked us to get the win.
If no one can accept reality, there can't be any growth. People are supposed to learn from their mistakes. But in a world where existence is a multiple-choice option, there are no mistakes. There's just a bunch of people screaming at each other about how the other side is wrong or part of the conspiracy."
Full article:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/09/08/1326196/-Information-and-conspiracy-in-the-age-of-the-internet?showAll=yes
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