this post was submitted on 29 May 2024
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submitted 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 144 points 6 months ago (5 children)

The Internet as a whole seems a lot less interested in actually listening to anyone with credentials to back themselves up (Musk obviously included).
Literally, people will just "nuh-uh" a piece of fact for purely emotional personal reasons.

Maybe it's that we made the Internet so full of disinformation that everyone is just automatically refusing to listen to others, maybe we have created a social group that just assumes they are more educated than everyone else cause they read some stuff in the internet.

Maybe all the smarter people with credentials have done the smart thing and left the internet, cause if I hear one more person tell me I'm wrong and that people totally explode in the vacuum of space cause they watched a movie. (Someone even called me confidently incorrect after I provided the research paper I cited when working on decompression in a vacuum), I honestly will think humanity has no right to claim themselves master of any part of nature and I will praise the universe for wiping us out hopefully Armageddon style, with an asteroid with a bunch of oil drillers on it.

[–] Carrolade 61 points 6 months ago (3 children)

My theory is that as people get more success in life, they tend to get "busier". They have families, careers, hobbies they've invested time in, money to take travel vacations, etc. They just do more "stuff". This results in less time and interest towards getting into arguments with randos on the internet.

The internet is extremely accessible and economically inexpensive though, so almost everyone can get on here if they want, regardless of any personal degree of any sort of life proficiencies.

Together, these factors result in it being the mass of humanity with some of the cream skimmed off. So that's what we tend to see around us, the internet is the skim milk of humanity. Then to avoid all the watery garbage so prevalent everywhere, we further clump into more segmented communities where we can find more like-minded people to associate with, simply because that's more enjoyable.

This is one of the reasons I think it's important to actually put effort into interacting on here, to try to help prevent it from worsening before we can address some of the underlying technical problems it has introduced into our societies.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 6 months ago (1 children)

So we are kind of like cheese curds.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago

I hate how well this analogy works.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

Yeah

There are jobs where it's specifically to be in the Internet but if you are actually doing "important" stuff and/or just busy living you likely won't be trying to scrape through social platforms for a sense of cheap easy joy and validation.

I think in it's earlier days when it was the cool new social space it made more sense to show up and show off but if you have connections now you no longer need or maybe even want that kind of exposure.

[–] PoliticalAgitator 19 points 6 months ago (2 children)

It was true before the internet too, there was just less opportunities to witness it because you didn't interact with thousands of strangers at once.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 6 months ago

Well... Yeah that probably checks out. I have met an engineer who was sure 9/11 was planned demolition even though we literally sat and did the math to prove it was essentially a damaged free fall with no outer explosions... And a biologist major who believed in creationism...

People are full of bad takes in shocking hypocrisy. This is definitely just the more public long lasting version of all those.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 6 months ago

To paraphrase the post,

We people have always been ignorant, we just keep the receipts now.

[–] ameancow 5 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Maybe it’s that we made the Internet so full of disinformation that everyone is just automatically refusing to listen to others,

We've made a vast social space where people can get validation and acceptance as easily as they can choose to be challenged and face threats to their own sense of self importance and their egos, and this isn't to sound disparaging, we ALL have sensitive egos and all feel a resistance to facing challenges, so what will we all choose over and over? It's natural that we seek the path of least resistance that also boosts our positive feelings about ourselves.

We're not a rational or reasonable species, we use rational and reason to explain our emotions but those explanations are rarely accurate or based in reality.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dF98ii6r_gU pretty sure this is the one [from the series] your post made me think of.. My take away as relevant here is that it's not overcomplicated: If your a marginalized person and you know your rights, all the facts and appeals reason will be dismissed by those who buy into the fear-based moral panic propaganda about you, solely on your intrinsic traits.

That's not a two-way street.

Choosing not to engage with such people does not put me in an information silo in the same way that the population influenced by right-wing authoritarianism choose to stand on both sides of a contradiction and refuse to analyze the true root causes of their woes; that you can't class traitor yourself onto the side of the ultra-wealthy, and that their Supreme Leader will throw them under the bus at the first incentive.

A person who chooses to protect their energy from such a Facebook uncle, does not consitute a both-sides.

Not that I went looking for anyone pressing a "both-sides" angle...hoping we can leave it behind in terms of "information silos"

[–] EtherWhack -1 points 6 months ago

They haven't left, they just chum the water a bit and sit back and enjoy the show.

With hard vacuum though, I believe I remember you may get a couple seconds of consciousness before you pass out from the stress. (unless it's explosive which could knock you out instantly) You should usually get a couple minutes without any permanent injuries before death from asphyxiation. Any injuries would more or less be your larynx and eardrums, both from air getting rapidly pushed out. To minimize it you would need to be actively exhaling while opening the tubes to your ears (what you do when popping them) which will allow air to escape less forcefully.

Emboli and frostbite will however happen towards the end of those minutes. But with us being mostly a mix of liquids and solids, (with dissolved gasses) which take time to sublimate, (evaporation in a vaccum) no insta-freeze or red mist.