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    21st Century Ideas: GEAS Report: Fact or Fiction

    How do we know who to trust?

    Started by: Race Brunton Raves:2

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    We all know that, in an Outlaw Planet world, the sheer amount of misinformation is staggering, and much of it goes undetected in the information overload. How do we know that the GEAS report itself is not a griefing attack, intended to inspire mass hysteria, undermine existing governments, destabilize the world financial system, etc? The list of possible reasons (and therefore motivations) for it is nearly endless. Could we, by scrambling to reorganize society to ward off impending chaos, actually be hastening the chaos?

    You have a point.

    Like any other information, you need to fact check it. Not even the most brilliant griefers can falsify information across the entire web. Then you have to sort the signal from the noise, and decide for yourself what's the true information. Separating the truth from all the lies people make is what signal/noise is all about.

    You're right; fact-checking is indispensible. But how do we fact-check a fictional world? Ultimately it comes down to who you decide to trust, provisionally. One of the most important ways we simplify the complexity of our world to human scale is by giving the benefit of the doubt to the trustworthiness of information sources. The key distinction from blind faith is that you keep learning and keep an eye out in case you discover reasons to withhold that trust.




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