We got lazy with the internet age. We’re going to have to go back to basic principles again. That means if you didn’t see it with your own eyes, it’s not real. If someone didn’t tell you in person, then they didn’t tell you. Maybe this won’t be a bad thing after all.
This is bad epistemology. I can't possibly verify all of the facts of physics, chemistry, biology, history, economics, medicine, law, politics, etc. through my own senses and through people that I know personally. It would be impossible to have any knowledge of the world that way.
The real solution is to carefully select a variety of experts who you trust as sources of information, and rely on the consensus of those experts to determine what is true, while maintaining a healthy level of skepticism.
I think the idea is what you say, and what the parent said.
Before internet and telephone, we still took things on faith from people we met, be it travellers or politicians or newspapers. But newspapers and politicians were more local, and didn't buy into whatever they read like scripture the way many seem to do these days.
Before the 20th century, newspapers were explicitly partisan and were basically free to publish whatever suited their agenda. It is only in the 20th century that we see a more objective journalism emerge with the ideas of journalistic ethics, reliable sources, fact-checking, etc.
I really don't think the situation today is as bad as people say it is. You can still go to the news pages (not the opinion pages) of the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, and the Economist, and the vast majority of what they publish is reliable information. We can debate over the partisan nature of what stories they choose to emphasize and editorialized headlines, but it's not like they are regularly publishing lies and nonsense.
This is how the world worked before the internet. Your high school science teacher would directly teach you things they also learned in a lab in college.
It might bring down all the bridges the internet helped build. Also, it will make the world more centralized, having to trust more on big names and institutions. As a libertarian, this is the opposite direction I’d like the world to go in.
We need to start trusting people we know again. Not institutions or celebrities on pedestals. We need to trust our family and friends and community again.
It's interesting that you've gotten so many downvotes. The sad thing is that as things are progressing in the west, a large number of people won't have families or communities to lean on.
Fertility rates going down, divorce rates going up, and young people finding it harder to navigate dating and relationships. To the latter point, soon most new relationships will start through dating apps, and these have their share of problems too. These are some of the things that I think make finding companionship and building families harder.
on the other hands, dating apps have made it easier than ever to find compatible partners, and technology means that even if your parents divorce there's no problem keep in touch with either parent which applies just as well to extended family/friends. It's a lot easier to keep in touch with friends after graduation than it was when your only option was often "pen pals". It's not all doom and gloom. In many ways we're more connected than we've ever been and we're just in an awkward state where we're adapting to all the changes.
