Idiots exist with or without knowledge. What the world needs to learn is to not put idiots into positions of power, and to remove the ones that found their way into power.
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Recently there was a rumor spreading around my work that the earth was about to lose gravity for seven seconds and they should stay home to be safe.
Bosses are dumb. Use that to score extra vacation. Don't rock the fucking boat.
No, no. It’s absolutely true.
Scientists have known for years that the Earth’s gravitational field is remarkably stable, except when I fart.
At precisely 8:47 PM, I unleashed a fart of such extraordinary magnitude that NASA immediately detected a gravitational anomaly.
For exactly seven seconds, gravity simply gave up.
Cars floated. Birds were suddenly extremely confused. Somewhere in Ohio, a man watched his refrigerator slowly drift toward the ceiling.
NASA scrambled to identify the source.
“Where is this coming from?”
The technician checked the instruments.
“Sir… Georgia.”
A long silence followed.
“Dear God.”
At exactly seven seconds, gravity returned.
Scientists are now studying the event.
I have been asked not to fart again.
I have declined to comment.
If the result is I'm staying home for the day I'm happy to spread it along.
Flat Earther: Complicated explanation on why it's flat
Me: Your argument is flawed. Look the earth is flat but your argument is missing the important part.
Flat Earther: (leans in with excitement)
Me: The oceans, all of them, none of them are carbonated... all flat!
the more co2 we put in the atmosphere, the more carbonated the oceans will become
Fun fact, CO2 dissolved in water is acidic so not only are we heating it up we're also poisoning it too!
You don’t cook much do you? You want to tenderize your meat with something acidic. Ocean water is already salty, so that takes care of some of the seasoning.
🧑🍳 💋
yeah the swedish name for carbonated drinks is literally kolsyrad, "carbonic acid-ed".
Flat Earther: Sheesh, looks like somebody's never heard of the Great Jurassic Shake-Up
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodybuilding.com#2008_days-in-a-week_debate
Or spending multiple days arguing whether there are 7 or 8 days in a week.
This is the best thing I've seen on the internet all week. A whole 8 days!
>The two users' rhetoric intensified to where they were posting harsh insults, such as when Justin27 told TheJosh: "You are the dumbest boy alive. Jump off a bridge."
>dumbest boy alive
So harsh lmao
Exactly, the image is wrong. The internet does not provide unlimited access to knowledge, it provides (easily manipulable) access to information which may or may not be true.
It does provide nearly unlimited access to knowledge. But, the Internet user needs to bring their own ability distinguish knowledge from strongly held ignorant opinions.
If you're an eye surgeon you can probably use the Internet to find out the newest techniques in eye surgery. You probably have enough knowledge of your own to spot fraudulent things, and to know where the real information can be found and how it can be vetted. OTOH, if you're an eye surgeon, you might know nothing about farming, so you might not be able to separate the wheat from the chaff. If you're not careful you might come away believing some crazy farming-related conspiracies.
There's minimal farming related conspiracies, the US government is trying to trigger a famine. That's why I'm growing my own potatoes and carrots. I can sustain myself for a full week, of a whole 8 days if push comes to shove.
Plenty of time to travel to Mexico and experience food surplus
Unlimited access to information, including finite amounts of knowledge, but also unlimited access to unlimited amounts of not-knowledge-at-all.
In the past there were gatekeepers. That sounds like a bad thing. In some ways it was. But, at least Walter Cronkite wasn't allowed to go on a rant about the chemicals turning the frogs gay.
This is something I realised growing. Information and actual knowledge are two separate things.
The former is withour filter and the latter is under scrutiny for proper verification. In the hands of layman, it can be impossible to properly determine.
The current LLM mania is just an extension of that 'validation through evidence' that has been on-going.
A TV with 100 channels of content and 1 billion channels of static.
Back when people were saying that unlimited access to knowledge was possible, they were also saying "don't feed the trolls".
When you engage with someone making a stupid statement or argument, you lend them your intellectual legitimacy. You implicitly acknowledge that, "this viewpoint is grounded enough to be worthy of debate". In reality, some viewpoints are so absurd and ridiculous that they are not worthy of debate, and you get a societal benefit from simply laughing at them rather than engaging with them like they are legitimate people that can be persuaded by science and debate.
Stop feeding the trolls.
Where this approach falls apart is where the argument they're making is convincing enough that it might appear legitimate to a less informed reader than you. The reader may not engage with the comment, but, if there's no counter-argument, instead go away believing it may have some validity.
Obviously thus doesn't apply to the more blatant forms of trolling, but even that distinction can be blurry.
“Nazis are bad”
“AckShUaLlY…”
Actually shut all the way the fuck up.
Nazis were a product of their material conditions. They emerged from the Holocaust of WW1 and gave birth to the Holocaust of WW2.
Terror of the outside, the foreigner, and the radical didn't begin with Nazism. And it sure as hell didn't end with them.
So what is to be done? Just wagging your finger at folks 80 years in the grave isn't cutting it.
Especially when the term has become so polluted and distorted with ideological baggage that it ends up being used like this.

I never feed trolls and I don't read spam
-Albert Yankovich (early '00s philosopher)
People were having those 6 hour arguments back then and before, too.
Internet can connect people, so that Flat Earthers can expose Australians being all actors, because Australia doesn't exist!
The internet DOES give you unlimited access to knowledge. The problem is:
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Not all of that knowledge is useful
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Learning is pretty boring when compared to arguing with someone about a book neither of you have read but are too proud to admit it.
Flat earthers all over the globe unite!
Also in 2005: a forum post about gingerbread recipies hijacked for a 20 page long debate about the existance of God
I mean I think this is kind of expected. Ignorance doesn't change overnight. The age of Internet rage is definitely part of the information dispersal, people are confronted with a confusing reality that doesn't match the one they want or believe. Religion is down, polarizing opinions are up, fake and misinformed information abound. What did we expect?
If they haven't listened after the first 30 seconds of objective proof, it's a lost cause.
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