Filtering out the Noise
The trending topic on so many online outlets are the fake news stories. It's our presidents favorite topic. Most media outlets operate off the premise of sensationalism because they need the ratings to generate revenue. That's understandable to most. Although most of what is reported by the 'major' outlets I believe to be nonsensical and manipulative I don't believe that there is clear intent to peddle false stories.
These false stories however do indeed exist. One can not browse the Internet without inadvertently coming across one. This was one of the reasons I dropped off Facebook. It seemed like it was breeding ground for these ridiculous stories. The problem is there are enough people that think these stories are real even if exaggerated a bit. That is both scary and dangerous. The reason the junk is so easily absorbed is because most people don't read books.
Only twenty-eight percent of all Americans claimed to have read a book in the past year.
We are all guilty of adhering to our own confirmation biases and our brains are organs that eagerly seek out patterns even when there aren't any to be seen but when you don't have a set reference point of accumulated knowledge and aren't actively adding to that it is incredibly easy for that mind to come across a web article that states Obama is a Muslim with a forged birth certificate. The junk mind is unable to differentiate the noise. It only seeks out what it wants to believe.
The more we accumulate knowledge the more we tend to question what we actually know. It's a weird dynamic but one that is useful in continuing our ability to grow intellectually. In a country where approximately thirty percent are college graduates and where forty percent of those graduates claim to not have read a book since they graduated the spread of false news seems like it has found a likely home in this country. Deep reading is declining and being replaced by Internet reading and this is the breeding ground for this. This is the digital version of burning books a if you study history we all know where this eventually leads.
#elliotyi
#paradigmleft
#habits
#mindset
These false stories however do indeed exist. One can not browse the Internet without inadvertently coming across one. This was one of the reasons I dropped off Facebook. It seemed like it was breeding ground for these ridiculous stories. The problem is there are enough people that think these stories are real even if exaggerated a bit. That is both scary and dangerous. The reason the junk is so easily absorbed is because most people don't read books.
Only twenty-eight percent of all Americans claimed to have read a book in the past year.
We are all guilty of adhering to our own confirmation biases and our brains are organs that eagerly seek out patterns even when there aren't any to be seen but when you don't have a set reference point of accumulated knowledge and aren't actively adding to that it is incredibly easy for that mind to come across a web article that states Obama is a Muslim with a forged birth certificate. The junk mind is unable to differentiate the noise. It only seeks out what it wants to believe.
The more we accumulate knowledge the more we tend to question what we actually know. It's a weird dynamic but one that is useful in continuing our ability to grow intellectually. In a country where approximately thirty percent are college graduates and where forty percent of those graduates claim to not have read a book since they graduated the spread of false news seems like it has found a likely home in this country. Deep reading is declining and being replaced by Internet reading and this is the breeding ground for this. This is the digital version of burning books a if you study history we all know where this eventually leads.
#elliotyi
#paradigmleft
#habits
#mindset
Comments
Post a Comment