Yeah, about that…

i think actual information is way too difficult to suss out these days with the misinformation campaigns and the paywalls and the trolling, etc.
shit try to do some comparison shopping today and try to figure out which reviews are real and if the thing you're buying is really the thing you think you're buying.
- The signal to noise ratio is getting worse by the day, unfortunately.
- Definitely doesn't help, and modern machine learning models are only going to make this problem worse.
- People don't do their own research past the most cursory google searches at best of times, and now google is absolute garbage and the links that are relevant mostly go to massive SEO whale sites written by AI.
  That's all before you get to the actual mainstream media sites that spout the same commercial news cycle stories, or spread sensationalized headlines and absolute nonsense. I have managed teams of people and on daily calls people talk about news stories they read like "Did you hear they found another spaceship on mars?" and "They found proof that covid was a Chinese bio-weapon!" and similar statements from working, middle-class people who just browse the websites and social media before work. Most people have very little time to dig into things they see, and now once-reputable sites are just cashing in on clickbait and lies.
  This is how most people get their news and information, and it's absolute garbage now. Browse a major news site like MSN and it's worse than grocery store tabloids from the 1980's. And don't even get started about social media like twitter and facebook.
  Something happened in the last couple decades that has made people literally just stop caring what's real or not. I feel like it was an attitude deliberately seeded into our culture, and it's now maturing as a society that has lost belief in everything and accepts anything.
  
  Agreed: "I feel like it was an attitude deliberately seeded into our culture, and it's now maturing as a society that has lost belief in everything and accepts anything."
  That is the "feature" and the dead end... The full compliance on anything! No thoughts, no free speech!
- That's kind of the point.
  We now have access to the information, and we've discovered that all along it was our inability to distinguish between misinformation and real information that was causing the stupidity.
- Another issue is that information is easy enough to find that people don't bother to remember things as much anymore, since they can just look up the majority of stuff on Wikipedia or something if they ever need to know it. It leads to people having a smaller pool of background knowledge, which makes them easier to mislead.
  
  I question whether or not this is true. People will remember things if they find them interesting, so incurious people didn't know much in the past, either.
- Best case example I know of these days: try to shop for a mattress
- Ain't hard. Bullshit has a smell
  
  But most people don't know how bullshit smells in the first place... Check the downvotes...

Stupidity has never been because of lack of access to information. That's ignorance.
- Certainly ignorance and stupidity are two different things.
- They do seem to be positivelly correlated, though.
  
  Stupid people don't care if they're ignorant and non-stupid people endeavor not to be.

To the people saying that this is because of "laziness" or "lack of curiosity":
I'm bombarded with so much information every day that it's not feasible to fact-check it all. I have to pick my battles and take things I care less about at face value until I have a reason not to.
- I'm bombarded with so much information every day that it's not feasible to fact-check it all.
  Source?
  
  Have you been on the internet? Source: personal experience.
  Dude, you're on a link aggregator right now, you can't honestly think that you're fact checking every post you read.
- While I understand this, I definitely do not take things at face value. I take things I care less about with big grains of salt.
  (I could take my travelers checks to a competing resort)
- You are right, but that seem a "feature" and not a "bug"

Nah. We knew the difference between ignorance and stupidity before then.
- We did not, or at least not universally: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_deficit_model
- I have to admit, even while finding the crooked corners of the internet with rotten and CJ, I did hold onto the belief that access to information was going to lift the masses up out of ignorance. I knew about flamewars since the BBS days. I knew about trolls since rm -rf advice was given. I, in my naivete, seriously underestimated the effects of these phenomenon on society writ large.
  
  As with many things, I think the point where it all started to go down hill was once facebook became a thing.

Lack of applicable or pertinent information is still rampant.
Excess information of the stupifying type is everywhere.
- How can we access applicable or relevant information?

It's still the problem. Information is widely available but misinformation is easier to find and the ones that need information are the ones that find the misinformation
- Not only that, but the good quality information is often blocked behind paywalls

- Sure, but before the internet somebody had to actually print a magazine or a book etc. to spread it wider than word-of-mouth

The problem with internet was always that access to bullshit is way easier than access to information. Except now the difference gets exponentially bigger, and bullshit is indistinguishable from truth.
- Good information isn't everywhere. You have to work at finding it or pay for it
  Bullshit is everywhere. You have to be careful you don't step in.

Yes and no. If people had access to correct information, rather than every passing thought anyone has ever had ever, including complete fabrications and things that were never meant to be taken seriously, then they'd probably be okay.
Even making a claim about what is true and factual seems to be a point to be argued on the internet lately.
We've given everyone a voice and access to everyone else's voice as well as access to all information. Most are lost in the noise, and can't find the signal.
- It's also let the wackos(technical term) converge into echo chambers and amplify their voice.
- Here it is: https://signal.org/ 🙂
  
  Thanks? I think?

I remember seeing a lot of people expand their horizons on all kinds of topics when the internet first started catching on.
Now I think it was because they were actively looking for understanding something new, and did not represent the general population.
- Now I think it was because they were actively looking for understanding something new, and did not represent the general population.
  Assuming that intelligence (and I don't mean IQ or any other psychometric "proxy" for intelligence, but intelligence as an abstract trait) is normally distributed like most other traits, 50% of people are going to be dumber than average because in normal distributions the mean is the median. The "general population" is not smart by any definition.
  And anyone trying to claim that intelligence as a concept is completely socially constructed and that there is no difference in intelligence between people, or tries to conflate IQ etc psychometric measures and intelligence, can shove it up their ass.
  
  I wasn't even commenting on IQ, just the general population's interest in even trying to understand new things.
  A lot of otherwise smart people I know just can't get past the indoctrination of bigotry from their youth that is reinforced by conservative media.
  
  50% of people are going to be dumber than average because in normal distributions the mean is the median. The "general population" is not smart by any definition.
  What if "smart" begins at the 35th percentile, rather than the 50th? What if "gifted" is anything above the 50th percentile?
  
  intelligence as an abstract trait
  I read something about this two days ago, it's called "g factor" or something. And yes, it follows a normal distribution.
  Apparently, it's very similar in animals than it is in humans.
- i think its more about deliberate disinformation than about it being just a subset of people.
  i remember everyone was in awe that they could just type out a question and get the best information we had

Turns out, people are just stupid and the more information access you give them the more they can reinforce their stupidity with other idiots' opinions
- The human brain doesn't seek logic, it seeks validation and a storyline to explain how you feel. It will whip up stories very easily, but even easier if they're supplied.
  So this system has been exploited to the extreme. It's our largest vulnerability as a species, that someone can make us feel an emotion and then attach a story to it, and our brains will adhere to that story without question.
  
  This is very true, they get thousands of clicks especially by playing on people's anger and fear.
- Ex-fucking-actly. Like I said in another recent comment, the problem with the internet is that it allows the worst people you can imagine to form communities, and instead of them essentially dying alone and shunned by anyone who isn't a complete psychopath they start to think that their fuckwittery is not only acceptable but common
  
  Yeah it can even be less sinister. The dumbest people can all hear someone of perceived authority (like someone on Rogan for example) who says “there’s actually no proof the world is round” and the idiots can be like “I knew it! I was right all along!” And they’ll never accept anything else because they were “proven right” that one time
  It’s the complete degradation of (capital T) Truth
- Definitely! Unless you have the ability to think critically, it is very easy to get swept away in the information dump.

People here seem to be mistaking stupidity as a measure of intelligence. Stupidity is a measure of wisdom.
An abundance of information doesn't fix stupidity in the same way that shoveling water out of a boat with a leak won't stop it from sinking.
You have to address the leak before shoveling water becomes productive. Or to circle back around, you have to address how someone learns, parses, and applies information before feeding them more information becomes productive.
- Indeed! Understanding of information and how one applies that information...

We shall not confuse data and information. With internet we have access to a lot of data, but information is hard to find. Furthermore information are structured by the institution that made it : university, TV, newspaper, and social network Those dominant institution are not very interested in homelessness or other class struggle in your neighborhood. So relevant information for your social and geographical position is even more rare.
- A beautiful mind! Well put mate! Thank you!

I truly believe it’s a lack of curiosity, people simply are not interested in learning more than they have to.
That’s why I see curiosity as a gift. Friends think I am intelligent, but I’m simply curious enough to learn things.
- Agreed. Smart people aren't smart because they simply are. They're smart because they learn how to learn. They learn the recognize that the steps to success involve failure. Being smart is about being willing to feel stupid, since anything new you learn/try you're going to feel overwhelmed.
  
  100%
  
  Not being afraid of failure is key, and the tenacity to drive through it.

Late 90s to 2000s was the decade of internet glory. Then social media and big tech took over. Now with personalized feeds and searches, along with conflict promoting engagement metrics, many people spend their time within echo chambers and those chambers keep getting more partisan. On top of that, rampant misinformation has made it all the more difficult to separate fact from fiction.
- Then social media and big tech took over.
  Things like BBSs, Usenet and IRC are all social media. So is Lemmy for that matter.
  I don't think social media itself is the problem, it's the big tech / purposefully biased algorithmic content selection part that screws it up.
  
  But you had to deliberately look for BBSs that contained what you wanted. Platforms weren’t as all-encompassing as they are now compared to the scattered and independent phpBB groups of yesteryear. People didn’t have social media in their faces all the time. You had to dial-up and go looking for whatever it was, whether it was AIM, ICQ, or your favorite forum.
  No, social media in the super-limited context that it existed in 20 years ago wasn’t an issue. It absolutely is an issue today because of their size, popularity, ease of access, and definitely the algorithms.
  
  Lemmy can have its fair share of echo chamber syndrome. For example, almost nobody here vocally likes Reddit, and if you post anything pro-Reddit, it's likely to be met with a lot of negativity. I'm anti-Reddit too, for the record, but it's good to acknowledge tribalism even when you agree with the tribe. But the nice part is Lemmy can't have competing echo chambers nearly as easily as Reddit can because we're so much smaller.

Sure, but let's not remove our libraries please.

Plus the access to misinformation. Now where even more stupiderer,

We've had libraries since long before the Internet. I don't think lack of access to information is as much to blame as lack of time and/or willingness to make an effort.
Also, we live in a culture that celebrates, glorifies and rewards stupidity to an insane degree. There is simply very little incentive for people to try and improve themselves.

Kinda? I figured that there's some portion of the population that's not smart - bell-curve statistical distribution and all that. But I always thought that the problem was education, or rather, access to a _good_¹ education and all the socio-economic and political boundaries around that.
To be blunt: modest to insanely powerful people have something invested in keeping such barriers high, and it's worrysome.
Good = a program that teaches critical thinking and has access to liberal arts, trades, traditional arts, libraries, and information technology.
- To be blunt: modest to insanely powerful people have something invested in keeping such barriers high, and it's worrysome.
  cheaper workers tend to be less intelligent, ergo: prevent children from being expensive by preventing them becoming intelligent see:"a brave new world"

It's called the Information Deficit Hypothesis.
And yes, it's been proven wrong.
- Ah I knew there had to be an actual term for it. Thanks!

Stupid, ignorant, misinformed, and gullible are all different things.
Access to information helps with ignorance, and even then only if the ignorant person isn't too dumb to understand or hear had their mind poisoned with falsehood.

Pretty sure it's a complex soup of dis/misinformation, conservative (not necessarily the political type) leadership, laziness, indifference, lead poisoning, and a kaleidoscope of logical fallacies.

- Huh. IQ is normalized. 100 is always the mean no matter if the entire population got smarter. It’s impossible for everyone to have an IQ of at least 100.
- That's not how IQ works.
  
  Which part? By definition IQ follows a normal distribution and 100 is set as the mean/median – meaning that 100 is always the average result
  Edit: nevermind I did a stupid, you're correct that it's literally impossible for everybody to have IQ over 100
- I don't think this is about IQ dumb.

I think what we currently see is too much misinformation.

Cause is a mix of laziness and mental traps. Aside from targeted missinformation (which uses other mental traps).

As with any TOOL it is all about HOW YOU use it...

It was always culture

Apropos (https://youtu.be/9vWqTOtkYPo?si=i9bIwtuYQi2LkD9h)
- Calculators didn't make math obsolete, it just made getting the wrong answer that much quicker

The net is more an amplifier than an elucidator
- Sure but it often isn't a megaphone where the speaker controls the volume and where it's pointed, which I think is important to consider.

this post vs tankies

....nah. we didn't think that. You'd meet motherfuckers with a grade 3 education that were on it, ignorant somewhat, not dumb

IIRC there are around 51Million americans thats have low IQ (~80 and less). I imagine its worse in developing countries. Not much you can do about them.