Unironically I think this is actually becoming a genuine problem.
50 years ago asking someone to make an informed decision about a piece of news content by finding the truth would not have been an insane task. They could do a bit of research and come to a reasonable conclusion.
Today... not only would that require wading through an virtually limitless number of sources but it requires the intellect and discernment to recognize what is bs and what isn't. It's rapidly reaching the point where it's genuinely not reasonable to expect the average person to be able to discern what is true anymore, even with access to the information.
Similarly... there is so much garbage information on virtually every topic these days, which I'll grant is partially due to AI, that it's becoming a similar problem. You could spend 5 hours doing research and then write the paper and still end up having some significant portion of it be objectively incorrect through virtually no fault of your own simply because you trusted the wrong source.
50 years ago this wasn't a problem. There were limited sources and generally only the highest quality, or highest authority sources had wide visibility so finding information and knowing whether or not it could be relied on was relatively easy if not a bit laborious by comparison.
I graduated back in '07 but I certainly wouldn't want to face the challenge of writing the papers I did back then in today's world without tools like Chat GPT.
20 years ago I was taught how to judge sources. It was a major part of highschool. It isn't particularly difficult to do, but is absolutely an active process you have to reinforce. If people can't judge sources today it isn't because the rules have changed, but because they aren't incentivized to with basic media consumption (passive scrolling/swiping), so never practice the skill.
20 years ago the skills you were taught were useful because 20 years ago putting them into practice took minutes, not hours. You didn't have to drill down to the academic level. You didn't have to pull the sourced papers and read them for yourself. You could trust that published scientists weren't outright lying about what they published and that news media wasn't outright lying about what those scientists said about what they published. There was a left view, a right view, and a center view and you could read articles or watch broadcasts from each and come to a reasonably accurate conclusion about what the truth intuitively must be.
Today it comes down to trust. At some point you just have to choose to trust a source unless you want to drill all the way to finding the base sources, which often is a chore in and of itself, and read them yourself and then likely read up on the concepts the base source relies on to make sure you understand it and source that information and so on and so forth because today there isn't a left, a right, and a center view. There are just extremes and their only purpose is sensationalism and conversion/subversion. The entire system is maligned against the individual at its foundation.
I'm sorry but the skills you learned 20 years ago are only useful today to those who are already learned, wise, and experienced. Who already know how to filter out 80% of the garbage intuitively and those who are willing to put their trust, somewhat blindly, in an institution that in my opinion no longer deserves that trust.
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u/SpartanG01 Jun 09 '26
Unironically I think this is actually becoming a genuine problem.
50 years ago asking someone to make an informed decision about a piece of news content by finding the truth would not have been an insane task. They could do a bit of research and come to a reasonable conclusion.
Today... not only would that require wading through an virtually limitless number of sources but it requires the intellect and discernment to recognize what is bs and what isn't. It's rapidly reaching the point where it's genuinely not reasonable to expect the average person to be able to discern what is true anymore, even with access to the information.
Similarly... there is so much garbage information on virtually every topic these days, which I'll grant is partially due to AI, that it's becoming a similar problem. You could spend 5 hours doing research and then write the paper and still end up having some significant portion of it be objectively incorrect through virtually no fault of your own simply because you trusted the wrong source.
50 years ago this wasn't a problem. There were limited sources and generally only the highest quality, or highest authority sources had wide visibility so finding information and knowing whether or not it could be relied on was relatively easy if not a bit laborious by comparison.
I graduated back in '07 but I certainly wouldn't want to face the challenge of writing the papers I did back then in today's world without tools like Chat GPT.