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Hmm my biggest problem is that all narratives are untrustworthy. Official sources, unofficial sources, journos of both the professional and DIY variety, conspiracy theorists and conspirators alike. I find myself in a constant state of having to make decisions about which parts of any narrative, conspiracy theory or official story, is likely to be sound information and what is not.

Maybe it's just me that is experiencing the signal-to-noise ratio decline this hard. My sources were a lot more reliable 10-15 years ago than they are now, and maybe that's why I feel like everything I read is at least half a lie.

168 sats \ 9 replies \ @k00b 11 Sep
Maybe it's just me that is experiencing the signal-to-noise ratio decline this hard.

It's not just you. I think the problem is that most people don't (viscerally) want truth and the internet provided enough competition among information outlets for that to manifest. Or, abundance generally creates noise.

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I think the cost of information production and dissemination has vastly outpaced the cost of information verification. And it's only getting worse.

We're all getting shaken in a bag and I don't know where we'll fall.

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285 sats \ 6 replies \ @k00b 11 Sep
I don't know where we'll fall.

I think it's pretty obvious. When everything may be fiction, we do/will choose our preferred fiction. Unless verification catches up, fiction will keep spreading until we are all living in literal video games where every atom/pixel is our preferred fiction.

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You don't think people will get accustomed to just accepting a high level of uncertainty?

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306 sats \ 3 replies \ @k00b 11 Sep
You don't think people will get accustomed to just accepting a high level of uncertainty?

I think accepting uncertainty means not seeking certainty which means not living an informed life which makes a video game life equal to an unknowable real life hence people will choose a video game life.

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I expect many people to choose the video game life, either way.

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160 sats \ 1 reply \ @optimism 12 Sep

Me too. It's going to be so boring. Maybe we should legalize LSD to keep life interesting.

I wrote a couple of paragraphs about the "gamification of life" earlier, under Natalia/Billy's convo and deleted it. Should have probably just hit post on it.

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That's the second time you mention this in 24h, buddy. Do you know what causes you to feel this way? (As if things are fully out of control, I guess?)

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My sources were a lot more reliable 10-15 years ago than they are now, and maybe that's why I feel like everything I read is at least half a lie.

I think it's partly due to the heavy-handed SEO and search engines... before, you'd go online to search for something and it was much more relaxed, the same with YouTube... now you search for something and your search engine bombards you with everything but what you're looking for... all manipulated to get you to those sites. You'll see, information is much harder to find, in addition to censorship, of course. And now, with sites creating content using AI, it's even worse.

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Nah my sources 15 years ago were private intel firms. Not google or youtube. Those are entertainment platforms.

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Interesting....did you have access to that or what?

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Yeah. You pay them a couple thousand bucks per year then you know when a warlord in Africa farts. If you pay them 100k or more they'll even tell you what it smelled like.

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Hahaha... I understand... hahaha

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1137 sats \ 2 replies \ @optimism 11 Sep

https://wikileaks.org/the-gifiles.html <-- this breach of stratfor has a lot of data about how such companies operate. They're complete a-holes with no respect for anything, and they infiltrate and bribe what they can, but, if you pay companies like these, you can get pretty high quality intelligence for a corporate/civilian.

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Wow... a lot of info there... imagine how much info META or Twitter has.

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They sell it to brokers, so that's information everyone has.

1 sat \ 0 replies \ @dendehomie 12 Sep -125 sats

if it's not posted on SN, don't need to read it.

at this point, if a writer doesn't know how to use sats to post on stacker news, that writer is not well informed enough to be worth your time.

you can't focus on everything. just focus on the most important.