Do you ever think...

[BillyStubbsTears]

...that we are just not mature enough as a species to deal with the internet?

The demand for immediate response. The unfiltered spread of rubbish, passed on virally because it supports what people want to be true.

Look at this.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-51504512

Look at that map that The Sun posted with the grossly incorrect blurb.

Just stop and look at it for a minute. And ask yourself how any remotely sentient being could have looked at that and not had an internal dialogue saying "Odd on. Is that right? Very few trips directly from China to Europe but then an infestation of trips by Wuhan residents inside Europe? In 2 weeks? Including loads to the Canary Islands?"

But those questions don't seem to have penetrated the craniums of The Sun editors. And now that bullshit has gone viral globally. And folk will be repeating it for years.

And all it needs is a little bit of thought.

[Bentley Bullet]

The good thing about the internet is everyone can use it. The bad thing is everyone can use it.

[BillyStubbsTears]

Couldn't agree more BB.

It's the lack of responsibility that gets me. For me, we only progress by making decisions based on reliable information. That is why the BBC's remit to "Inform, Entertain, Educate" is such a brilliant concept. Raise the level of general knowledge and intelligence but do it by entertaining people as well.

I'd naively assumed the internet was going to do that in spades. Never dawned on me that it could equally well be used to spread bullshit and ignorance by the ignorant, the careless  or those deliberately bent on destruction.

What it's actually done is to be a fantastically enabling tool for some, because you CAN inform, entertain and educate yourself.  But it's developing into a destroyer of the whole concept of objective truth for many. Because there is so much shite pedalled out, like that but in the Sun, either carelessly or deliberately. And folk who want to believe the shite can insulate themselves from anything that contradicts it.

Three biggest threats to humanity.
Global Warming
Uncontrolled AI
Losing the control of objective truth.

[Axholme Lion]

Biggest threat to humanity is uncontrolled population growth. Everything else is a symptom of the disease.