The sum of all knowledge and the sorry state of the web • Hacker News Board

Re: The sum of all knowledge and the sorry state of the web

#101

Post by wslh » Fri, Sep 23, 2022, 2:25 PM UTC

mudrockbestgirl wrote: post #6

IMO the worst side effect of current web of knowledge is what I'd call the illusion of knowledge. When it was more difficult to access and publish information, that imposed a much higher bar on what was being consumed. These days, people watch a 10-minute YouTube video or read a reddit comment or twitter thread and believe (perhaps unconsciously) that makes them knowledgeable in said topic. They will then, in an abso…

At the same time you see people (mainly young people) learning at a faster pace watching videos.

Re: The sum of all knowledge and the sorry state of the web

#102

Post by saperyton » Fri, Sep 23, 2022, 2:25 PM UTC

AshleysBrain wrote: post #55

Blogs are still an underrated goldmine of knowledge, especially in tech. I find academic papers often too abstract or opaque, textbooks are good but generalized, and documentation is reference-like. Stumbling across a tech blog where someone explains some fairly specific and difficult problem they had, and an interesting solution they found, can be exactly what you needed to solve a problem. The web has its problems…

A great resource to find new blogs is the Thinking About Things newsletter. Been getting it for a while and it's a great way to find new blogs to read.

Re: The sum of all knowledge and the sorry state of the web

#103

Post by closedloop129 » Fri, Sep 23, 2022, 2:37 PM UTC

The social web is no problem. We can choose what we visit like the author's father chose to buy those books.

What is missing is a beacon of light in the desert of choice. There is no lack of knowledge anymore but a lack of orientation. The author's father knew that he could buy knowledge in a bookstore. Where do we go to find orientation on the web?

People don't know. That's why they are stuck in the social net with its memes.

Re: The sum of all knowledge and the sorry state of the web

#104

Post by tomrod » Fri, Sep 23, 2022, 2:45 PM UTC

lmm wrote: post #68

mudrockbestgirl wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, but a difference is that they could not spread their confidently wrong opinions globally, only locally, and that opinions were tied to their identity. Take my mom for example. She's 80 years old and doesn't use the internet that much. She is confidently wrong about a lot of things she sees on TV or hears on the radio. A recent example is COVID misinformation. The difference is that my mom can't easily influence…

Many true things about COVID were labelled "misinformation" at one point or another. The publishing gatekeepers of a few decades ago projected an image of confidence, but I'm not sure they were actually any more accurate than random youtube videos. The media establishment of today certainly doesn't seem to be.

That's a mislabeling. True facts were batched together with false conclusions, and should have rather been classified as disinformation since it was performed by people who knew better in many cases.

Re: The sum of all knowledge and the sorry state of the web

#105

Post by tgv » Fri, Sep 23, 2022, 2:46 PM UTC

trasz wrote: post #69

tgv wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> religion ... homophobia Do you really consider that knowledge? > homophobia - it got global, affected everyone, even non-Christian cultures like China Do you think that aversion of homosexuality starts and ends with Christianity?

Homophobia generally spread throughout the world with Christianity, carried by colonialism. Again, China is a good example. And fixing homophobia in western societies strongly corresponds to decreasing importance of religion. It’s not limited to homophobia of course - pretty much every single Catholic claim about human sexuality is antiscientific bull - but I think homophobia is a good enough example of a harmful, fa…

For one thing, you may be underselling the homophobia in Islam a bit. And there's Tacitus, who says that the Germans punished homosexuals. That's a bit before the Christians, and it comes from someone from a culture not opposed to the practice.

Second, I find it hard to believe that the Chinese were turned homophobic, and remained so, by a few Christians despite millenia of tolerance, when the vast majority of the country isn't even Christian. It smells like bad historicism.

Re: The sum of all knowledge and the sorry state of the web

#106

Post by danrocks » Fri, Sep 23, 2022, 2:50 PM UTC

wslh wrote: post #101

mudrockbestgirl wrote: post #6

IMO the worst side effect of current web of knowledge is what I'd call the illusion of knowledge. When it was more difficult to access and publish information, that imposed a much higher bar on what was being consumed. These days, people watch a 10-minute YouTube video or read a reddit comment or twitter thread and believe (perhaps unconsciously) that makes them knowledgeable in said topic. They will then, in an abso…

At the same time you see people (mainly young people) learning at a faster pace watching videos.

[Citation Needed]

Re: The sum of all knowledge and the sorry state of the web

#107

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Sep 23, 2022, 2:57 PM UTC

seydor wrote: post #95

> The web we have these days is in a sorry state The web is one of humanities greatest inventions, right up there with Gutenberg or even more. It's a shame that people focus on politics and miss the rest of the web. There are two webs, one is a medium of mass manipulation, just like all media before it, the other is the library of all human knowledge, ever, everywhere. The printing press precipitated major societal c…

[deleted]

Re: The sum of all knowledge and the sorry state of the web

#108

Post by MMS21 » Fri, Sep 23, 2022, 3:05 PM UTC

llaolleh wrote: post #99

Part of why the web is shit is low barrier to entry. More often than not, if you read classics or older books, it's information dense. Every prose and sentence constructed had some economy baked in. Now everyone and their mom, as well as bots and marketers,can spam right on over. We either need a search portal with aligned incentives, or perhaps a new internet with none of this crap.

Check out Gopher/ Gemini protocol

Re: The sum of all knowledge and the sorry state of the web

#109

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Sep 23, 2022, 3:06 PM UTC

seydor wrote: post #95

> The web we have these days is in a sorry state The web is one of humanities greatest inventions, right up there with Gutenberg or even more. It's a shame that people focus on politics and miss the rest of the web. There are two webs, one is a medium of mass manipulation, just like all media before it, the other is the library of all human knowledge, ever, everywhere. The printing press precipitated major societal c…

[deleted]

Re: The sum of all knowledge and the sorry state of the web

#110

Post by vmoore » Fri, Sep 23, 2022, 3:17 PM UTC

Just going to leave this gem of a video[0] here. Whilst I agree the web has been walled gardened into various silos like social media, and people think Facebook and Twitter are the Internet, it's still read/write. The blogosphere is still ticking along nicely and last time I checked it's thriving.

Yes, people have gamified Google and search to get traffic and the blogosphere of old has largely been co-opted by profiteering gluttons, but there's still hope. Surf Hackernews enough and you'll find little gem posts that don't have an ulterior motive and are not 'monetizing' their content and sprinkling it with affiliate links and ADs. They just want to vent, exchange techne, and share knowledge.

Then there's Wikipedia which has remained AD-free for as long as I can remember (apart from their donation banners which I don't mind). Wikipedia is the coolest thing ever and my IQ has probably gone up a few notches over the years because of it. It is the closest thing to getting home-schooled without going through formal education, and you can verify all the claims made in its entries by going to the footer section and reading various citations usually written by esteemed scholars.

The web is in a sorry state due to the commercialization and walled garden silos, and also because of the proliferation of smartphones which are mere consumption devices IMHO and not designed for producing any meaningful or substantial content, apart from maybe uploading photos/videos to Instagram or writing tweets etc I can't write a blogpost on a phone because I have bad dexterity, and I typically have to have 100+ tabs open to verify claims, provide sources, do cross-referencing, find relevant images etc...all something done best on a workstation PC or laptop.

Some context: I have professionally blogged for more than five years but due to reasons I won't go into here, I have stopped. I'm thinking of jumping back in, only this time armed with the wisdom of my previous blogging shenanigans. Failure is an opportunity to start again more intelligently!

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gmP4nk0EOE