Rumors in the age of unreason

[dubman]

couple more things..

Originally Posted by Strangelet

3. There is no such thing as unuseful information.

4. And this is the biggie. Truth will always prevail. Always always. You can spin your propeller hat all day, it doesn't change the fact that reality is the framework in which you need to achieve your goals of survival. That means that even the most loudly shouted, manipulative news source, by definition must fail, and the reasons for that failure will be stark and unmistakable.

3. to summarize a lot of the above, information is made useless by how people talk, or are expected to talk, about it. since 'they' go for the kind of discourse people 'want', all usefulness out of this information starts to deteriorate with each person/source reporting it.

4. i'd like to believe that a lot of things are built on lies, and sometimes the bigger the lie, the more the truth, when/if found, serves as a symbolic triumph for those that found it, because whats been made from it is often treasured as a necessary thing.

if truth becomes something that can be decided by whoever markets their version the best, and it becomes normal, and we all dont become a grotesque monstrosity out of it, the habit will be considered how news is done today, with objections being waved off as 'archaic' vs 'what people want'
i suppose thats speculative and alarmist, conceivably the rules of backlash could mean an era of real unromantic reporting sometime, but it seems less likely somehow