Stop Being So Gullible

Gullible?

Oh yes, but a lot depends what you are looking for.

I regard the Internet as an alternative to, not replacement for printed matter and certainly not the Answer to Everything; but there are important differences between them, and advantages and drawbacks to both.

I don't take too much notice of allegations of governmental censorship - anyone can allege anything but I'd ask for concrete evidence - but obviously there must be information for authorised eyes only, be it the highest diplomatic and military secrets or ones appertaining to our daily lives. (The Official Secrets Act protects our private letters and telephone calls, for example, and those are becoming possibly much more secure than anything on-line).

What does annoy me though is that whoever is responsible (Google?) finding simple information about anything has become far harder.

If you need a specific web-site and know its address, it's simple; though whether the web-site itself actually delivers what you want is another matter. A lot of big corporate ones make contact with the company for impossible... unless to buy from them or to use a "Help" page predicated on random, set questions never matching your own.

If though you need a more generic search though, whatever you enter now opens a morass of advertising links and company sites having no relevance to the subject at all!

For example, earlier this morning I wanted to look up the brand-name 'Babycham'. I found the Wikipedia history telling me what I wanted to know, eventually; but after a long list of links using the name to offer things having absolutely no connection to the drink, its manufacturers or even wine! (It is a perry - a white pear wine.)

It looks as if the outfit responsible has programmed your search-starter to tack itself to hundreds of commercial web-sites, automatically, so what you then see is things like "Babycham at Amazon".

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I think though what you refer to is social-media sites and blogs, on which there are many views on the news, but no news.

There are some very sophisticated, professionally-made, on-line "news" magazines usually made to look American, and probably aimed at America, but their biases are so clear once you read them carefully. There are other clues too, particularly the lack of definite publishing company name, address and contact details.

One I found was supposedly a defence analysis magazine, its banner book-ended by emblems of state of both the UK and USA. Though giving the appearance of being written in the USA (and it might have been) it was in fact so slyly anti-US and UK, that I wondered if it was really made in Russia or the like. Anyway, if as you suggest, the US government censors everything it would have blocked this one if it was American!

The biases or neutrality of newspapers are usually fairly clear quite rapidly, but at least these are honest publications by professional journalists, and though they occasionally slip up and become sued for libel, they are careful to try to print the truth... but not necessarily [i]all[/i] the truth for balance. The more sober papers will report more fairly but state their opinion as such in a clear editorial or contributed column.

The professional journalists in press and broadcasting face a peculiar problem in striving for balance when reporting some contentious matter involving vociferous campaigners. The interviewee who gives a fully accurate, reasoned, truthful and credible argument but is not a natural communicator of difficult matters to lay people, can become seriously undermined by utter twaddle from the campaigner who has learnt how to be a very persuasive liar.

On-line there are no constraints beyond perhaps vague moderation against childish swearing and personal abuse. If the mistaken or wilful liars outnumber or out-shout the truthful ones, their "side" may prevail among those who do not stop and think: false arguments often collapse under simple logic, never mind specific knowledge.

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So yes, too many people are too gullible and cannot sift honest opinion from fact, nor even from naked nonsense. Or can but won't. Perhaps they have never been taught to think properly, to examine opposing views and possible points in common; or to even accept that theirs is not the only nor necessarily correct opinion.

I think it was Lenin who once said something like, "If you want to know the purpose of a law, think whom it benefits".

Not just laws, either, but comments too; in these days of non-stop inundations of views, news and more views.