If only there was some kind of major indicator of overall public sentiment, conducted nationally, say every four years, which might allow one to draw conclusions about the portion of the population who is either ignorant or malicious. Surely the data would show the vast majority of my countrymen are rational, thoughtful people.
Great point. The internet is both a skewed reflection of us AND it influences us. Similar to the well-known reflexivity of legacy media but much greater scale and shorter time-frame. To bolster your point even further, I'd say that no human can bifurcate their life, their thoughts, their values, as "real" versus "online". It's just too hard, so they inevitably converge - giving lie to the constant refrain that it's "just trolling" or "just online bullying" etc.
It seems the internet has profound structural issues that undermine the forces that traditionally retarded and punished ignorance and malice. If it's true that society will inexorably evolve in the direction of the internet, and if we are all helpless to stop, or even slow, this evolution, then we are well and truly fucked.
sorry but what forces "traditionally retarded and punished ignorance and malice"? very wordy but not much substance to what you write
There is much more personally impactful shame and alienation associated with being a loud idiot and/or jerk IRL.
You know who's won every single selection in modern history? "None of the above." Even in the 2020 election where millions of mystery people suddenly appeared, only 155 million people voted with a voting age population of some 256 million. Some of those 101 million (the delta between voters and 'abstainers') couldn't vote, but most could.
And that, to me, indicates rather widespread rationality. Because elections are a facade. Do you want to vote for somebody who struggles to complete a single coherent sentence and has a grand vision of 'I'm quite fond of power', or for a narcissistic entertainer? Either of which who will agree on most things that people themselves disagree with, like injecting ourselves into endless conflicts around the world because the MIC needs that dough. No thanks. I'm quite happy with my 'none of the above.'
So the conclusion I'd draw is that there's two rather radical sides constantly flinging poo at each other and pretending this moment is the most important moment ever, always, while everybody else looks on from behind the glass amused at a bunch of monkeys covered in poo which, come to think of it, also works as a fine metaphor for internet discussions.
I care about consequences, not about feeling smarter than other people. I care about policies, not candidates. In particular I believe that policies like “Defund the NSF” are bad, actually.
That's a great example. NSF funding (as of 2023) is < $10 billion. So the money spent shipping weapons to Ukraine could have funded it for decades. The money spent on Iraq or Afghanistan could have funded it for centuries. But in modern politics we simply accept that politicians will endlessly blow money like this, and we then content ourselves with fighting over the table scraps that are left over for whatever our pet interests happen to be, while framing those scraps as representing the most important existential crises to have ever existed.
Don't you see how comically dysfunctional this is? If you took the amount of money we spend and actually optimized it for outcomes, the possibilities are unimaginable. But we simply are incapable of electing the sort of people who could do this, because succeeding in politics is mostly just legal corruption (and illegal, but hey that's what pardons are meant for!) on a massive scale where everybody wants their bellies buttered to the point that suddenly government receipts of $5+ trillion dollars, $14k+ for every single man/woman/child, is literally not enough to maintain the basic operation of government. All the while our 'public servants' somehow get filthy rich in office. It's just lol.
> Even in the 2020 election where millions of mystery people suddenly appeared
Registered voters voted. Sad to see this ignorance here on HN.