SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Humanity is in the early stages of the most significant evolution in its history: learning to think as a species.
This is the linking of human minds, values, information and solutions at lightspeed and in real time around the planet, via the internet and social media, says science writer Julian Cribb.
Global thought is opening the way to solve some of humanity's greatest threats – including climate change, famine, global poisoning, weapons of mass destruction, environmental collapse, resource scarcity and overpopulation, says Mr Cribb, who is the author of 'Surviving the 21st Century' (Springer 2017), a new book describing the ten mega-threats and what can be done about them.
"Thanks to the internet and social media, people are for the first time communicating across the barriers of language, race, nationality, religion, region and gender. While the internet contains much rubbish and malignance, it also contains huge amounts of goodwill, trustworthy science-based advice, practical solutions to problems – and people joining hands in good causes."
(Score: 1, Redundant) by khallow on Wednesday March 29 2017, @04:02AM
What separates us now is that scientists do the science, religious do the religions so on and so on. If the internet truly does bring together all manner of thought into such a single point, it will become more and more difficult to distinguish those statements which are fact from those which are opinion. This is already being shown in an exceptionally scary demonstration by the Trump administration with the whole "Alternative Facts" which simply proves that if you don't have issues with misleading statements, playing brinkmanship with statements, then recalling them/saying you didn't say that etc. For the average person, it is getting harder to distinguish what's true versus what's complete rubbish.
Sorry, I don't buy that it's that hard. And I certainly don't buy the sudden concern among politically-orient folk with alternative facts when these things have been around for millennia. The old tools and tricks for dealing with rumors, innuendo, propaganda, and outright lies still work. You just have to use them.
The scary thought about a world hive-mind is that it means equal volume is given to all the voices in all aspects of thought.
Actually, no it doesn't. Dampening noise from ignorant or false sources would be one of the first things tackled. Because otherwise it wouldn't work at all. It's a necessary precondition. And specialization still is relevant. Experts still are experts, even if they routinely have conflicts of interest that warp their communication. Let us keep in mind however that we have rather weak means of determining who is an expert in a field.
Finally, if you can't present a topic in a way that is understandable by the educated layman (particularly, understandable enough to make a society-wide decision on the matter), then there's probably serious problems lurking in the experts' understanding of the matter as well.