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

christianheilmann.com

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

#71

Post by denton-scratch »

Tenoke wrote: post #22
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…

People also used to be confidently wrong all the time before the internet was ubiquitous, except then it was hard to quickly verify they were.

This is true.

Long before the web, when I was a child, my father would chide me for my bold claims unsupported by facts with the phrase "Confident; but wrong."

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

#72

Post by marcus_holmes »

mudrockbestgirl wrote: post #27
Tenoke wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People also used to be confidently wrong all the time before the internet was ubiquitous, except then it was hard to quickly verify they were.

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…

> 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.

> If my mom wrote a blog or posted on HN/reddit, she could certainly come off as a doctor, or even lie about being one, and many would believe her.

I don't think your mom (likeable as she no doubt is) could get an audience of millions just by posting her opinion on HN/Reddit/Social media.

I think the situation is pretty much back to what it was: most of the population have a limited reach of influence. Some people have a much greater reach.

The difference is that the people with greater reach used to be trained journalists who held to a code of conduct and were given that reach by institutions. Now there is no such code of conduct, and the assignment of audience reach is more random, and totally uncontrolled by any institution.

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

#73

Post by zaknil »

eimrine wrote: post #2

I use to ask people about the thing exposed in your photo (why the seasons change, what the moon phases means) to make a quick test about random interlocutor's intelligence to see is it worth to keep discussion. Your father passed this test in absentia.

If that feels too intrusive, just ask people if they use snopes.com to check if the shocking thing they just read is real.

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

#74

Post by denton-scratch »

sandruso wrote: post #12
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…

Its good to remind myself this . Not once I thought I know something after watching a summary video. When I tried to explain the topic to somebody else I struggled. If you can’t explain you know nothing. Simple as that.

> If you can’t explain you know nothing.

Strongly agree. And I'll raise you: if you can't explain in simple, plain language that a 12-year-old could understand, then you are not enlightened.

I concede that some subjects are intrinsically complex; e.g. the cosmological history of the Universe. But a large part of the reason that topic is complex is because it's not settled; we haven't got to the bottom of it, so there are loads of unanswered questions. How can you explain cosmological inflation in language a 12-year-old could understand? Well, I can't explain it to myself, so I sure as hell can't explain it to a 12-year-old.

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

#75

Post by b112 »

mountainb wrote: post #67
ricardobeat wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not sure you and the author are talking about the same thing. He mentions the fact you can’t even read the news from 10 years ago, the content has simply disappeared. No amount of YouTube videos can replace that. The problem is not “everything, everywhere” or a lack of filters but the extreme commercialization of all content available, closed networks, the short life of URLs…

Not really. There are vast archives of newspaper articles accessible through a web interface. You just need library access. The free, open web is mostly just a spam ocean, but if you make an effort to access the services that catalog useful information, it’s still very useful. The Google web is shit, though.

Yes, old paper newspapers, which are very thin now, and vanishing.

For web based newspapers, good luck trusting longevity there, just because the library has a free interface to an api...

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

#76

Post by eimrine »

zaknil wrote: post #73
eimrine wrote: post #2

I use to ask people about the thing exposed in your photo (why the seasons change, what the moon phases means) to make a quick test about random interlocutor's intelligence to see is it worth to keep discussion. Your father passed this test in absentia.

If that feels too intrusive, just ask people if they use snopes.com to check if the shocking thing they just read is real.

Cursive means irony? I visited the website but I have not seen any good use for me in this website.

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

#77

Post by b112 »

ricardobeat wrote: post #39
pasc1878 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends where you read. Also how do you read the news of 50 or 100 years ago - isn't that more difficult. I use UK news sites. BBC Guardian and Telegraph all have their old articles online

One of the functions of public libraries is to archive the news. One could browse weekly papers going back decades, either as hard copies or microfilm. There's a good chance major city libraries still do that, or have digital scans. For example: https://www.chipublib.org/resources-types/newspaper/

Even on Canada (only a few hundred years in the new world), we have microfiche going back hundreds of years in many libraries.

Much has been digitized, I hope they kept the microfiche for longevity.

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

#78

Post by hobs »

_Algernon_ wrote: post #60
grumbel wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No amount of YouTube videos can replace that. The irony here is that Youtube videos from ten years ago are still alive and well. As Youtube makes a much better places for publishing and archiving content than the rest of the Web. With Youtube you don't have to worry about URLs changing or domain names expiring or anything like that. You just publish your video once, get a unique video-id and don't have to worry abo…

There's plenty of videos on youtube that have been removed. Every few years when I look through my list of liked videos, a couple more are gone forever. Granted, this is likely by the creator themselves, but that doesn't matter when the purpose is archival.

On a playlist of about 27 thousand videos (me and my cohorts links to each other over ~8 years) I observe about 10% missing, its a lot!

Most of these are not information but amusing, random, short videos, and of course some of it is account deletions/disabling - copyright strikes - and people taking down their own stuff, but still, a lot!

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

#79

Post by mountainb »

b112 wrote: post #75
mountainb wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. There are vast archives of newspaper articles accessible through a web interface. You just need library access. The free, open web is mostly just a spam ocean, but if you make an effort to access the services that catalog useful information, it’s still very useful. The Google web is shit, though.

Yes, old paper newspapers, which are very thin now, and vanishing. For web based newspapers, good luck trusting longevity there, just because the library has a free interface to an api...

There are scans of old newspapers going back ages, and current ones also. Stop using the web, it sucks ass. Use ProQuest and other similar databases. Web searches are wastes of time for most things. Google wants to train you to believe research is not a skill and that you can get usually get good information from the open web. Neither of those points are true.

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

#80

Post by hobs »

lordnacho wrote: post #36
nicbou wrote: post #5

It has never been easier to share knowledge, and thus there has never been a greater time to be curious. Encyclopaedia Britannica is still there, and it's great . But there's also an army of content creators are there to teach you just about anything. If one source doesn't do it, you have more to choose from. Yesterday, I read an article about North Africa that mentioned in passing Qaddafi's underground river. A few…

It's really the curation that needs to be taught to everyone. A big dose of critical thinking skills is what we all need, because in earlier times you could tell the crappy ideas by the way they were packaged: crazy guy at Hyde Park Corner, dude with a megaphone shouting out passages of the bible, crappy home-made flyers. You could work backwards from "nutter is probably wrong" to why he was wrong. Part of why this w…

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