Has the Internet made it easier or harder to indoctrinate people?

[PC2]

It has also given people who ascribe to crackpot economic and political ideologies (revision to gold standard, balanced budgets, "small"? government, low taxation, taxation is theft, etc.) false equivalence to real, effective, proven economic and public policies.

You're worrying about things like the gold standard which have just a small percent of supporters. It's when bad ideologies reach the masses that you get crackpots leading in polls.

[Forgettable]

The internet makes it easier to indoctrinate dumb people, and more difficult to indoctrinate smart people.

[Daelak]

You're worrying about things like the gold standard which have just a small percent of supporters. It's when bad ideologies reach the masses that you get crackpots leading in polls.

Like building a 2000 mile wall or systematically deporting 12 million people while at the same time cutting taxes and starting another proxy war in the middle east?

[PC2]

Like building a 2000 mile wall or systematically deporting 12 million people while at the same time cutting taxes and starting another proxy war in the middle east?

Are you claiming the masses support that?

[Endus]

I would argue that the Internet has made it harder to push someone down a particular path of indoctrination against their will, because contradictory information is a Google away.

By the same token, it's made it easier for people to self-indoctrinate, because confirmation bias is just a Google away.

[Daelak]

Are you claiming the masses support that?

40 million likely republican voters is considered a lot.

[Kurioxan]

I would argue that the Internet has made it harder to push someone down a particular path of indoctrination against their will, because contradictory information is a Google away.

By the same token, it's made it easier for people to self-indoctrinate, because confirmation bias is just a Google away.

Not only that.. echo chambers and isolation from divergent opinions, people before were forced to face different opinions, nowadays its quite easy to shadowban or simply avoid places where different narratives are not accepted abd get everything constantly reinforced, which is why things like "safe places" in universities, which are places exactly to grow and be involved in intellectual conflict, confuse me.

[Pony Soldier]

I guess it can go both ways. Parents can feed you these myths and lies and you'd believe them because they are your parents and they know everything. The internet can provide a way for kids to read up on the truth and find out their parents have been lying to them all along. But then it can go the other way as well where the internet will feed you lies and myths and parents will tell you the truth. There are so many gullible idiots out there and I can be one of them sometimes depending on how convincing it sounds. Anyone can go online and spew out some spiel about how they're a doctor and what they're saying is true because of them being a doctor. People will believe him because why not? He is a doctor, why would someone lie like that?

Why people lie like that on the internet I will never understand. They never get anything from it other than being infamous for spewing bullshit from their mouth and looking like a huge idiot. At least with parents they have a reason they tell you myths when you're younger and that's because they want to protect you or to prevent you from doing something stupid or going somewhere that they feel isn't safe for you. On the internet they're just looking for attention and a lot of times just trolling with people.

[Endus]

Not only that.. echo chambers and isolation from divergent opinions, people before were forced to face different opinions, nowadays its quite easy to shadowban or simply avoid places where different narratives are not accepted, which is why things like "safe places" in universities, which are places exactly to grow and be involved in intellectual conflict, confuse me.

That's always been the case. Try going into a Pentecostal church on a Sunday morning in 1925 (to pick a date that well precedes any of this and, to my brief glance, avoids any major world events that would affect things) and start preaching about the wonders of Bhuddism as an alternative faith. They'll kick you out. Because it's their "safe space", and they don't want to face other opinions.

Or hell, the entire concept of segregation, which was about whites enforcing "safe spaces" for their own race.

I agree that I don't like the concept of "safe spaces", but let's not pretend they're a new idea. They're just on the other foot, now.

[Kurioxan]

The issue with the internet is exactly the good thing about it, the amount of information, the issue that this also means there is a LOT of biased, or even downright false information. And its hard to discern if it is true or not at times, almost everything in the internet is very polarized nowadays.

- - - Updated - - -

That's always been the case. Try going into a Pentecostal church on a Sunday morning in 1925 (to pick a date that well precedes any of this and, to my brief glance, avoids any major world events that would affect things) and start preaching about the wonders of Bhuddism as an alternative faith. They'll kick you out. Because it's their "safe space", and they don't want to face other opinions.

Or hell, the entire concept of segregation, which was about whites enforcing "safe spaces" for their own race.

I agree that I don't like the concept of "safe spaces", but let's not pretend they're a new idea. They're just on the other foot, now.

Oh no no, not that its a "new" thing, simply that its a lot easier for this to happen, and to find like minded people in the first place.

[Endus]

Really, I'd say it's less "the amount of information", and more that in many ways, education has become about homogenization and standardization rather than the core principle it SHOULD be based on; critical thought. We should be encouraging and expecting students to challenge their teachers and their opinions, and those challenges should be marked on their capacity to justify and defend that challenge, not whether or not the teacher agrees in principle.

[PC2]

40 million likely republican voters is considered a lot.

You are terrified of a whopping 15% of the country.

[Reeve]

Not only that.. echo chambers and isolation from divergent opinions, people before were forced to face different opinions, nowadays its quite easy to shadowban or simply avoid places where different narratives are not accepted abd get everything constantly reinforced, which is why things like "safe places" in universities, which are places exactly to grow and be involved in intellectual conflict, confuse me.

It used to be that the echo chamber was your entire town. If you lived in a small town in Iowa in the 1950s, everyone you knew would go to the same church, speak the same language, have the same politics, same color skin, same culture. If anyone deviated from that norm, there were severe social repercussions, so you never encountered any other type of thinking unless you left town and went to a big city.

Nowadays, even in those small towns, you have access to every other viewpoint in the world, and even if you don't seek alternative viewpoints out, they are, to some extent at least, impossible to avoid. I think this is a big part of the reason for the rise of Homo Iratus, the angry man. In previous generations, people could happily comfortably live in their bubble, secure that their way of thinking was right, as evidenced by everyone around them thinking the same. Now, in large part because of the Internet, they're being confronted against their will by moral questions that they don't want to have to think about. That makes them defensive and angry, and leads to increasingly extreme politics.

[Faesroll]

I think it did both. It's easier for secluded communities, like the middle eastern ones to spread their indoctrination they won't visit sites where even the bare mention of the denial of god is present. On the other hand it I think it helped for more open people who do visit sites where religion is discussed.

So in the end I think the internet has made a positive difference in Europe and America and will probably continue to do so the upcoming years. But it also made indoctrination in middle eastern countries far more effective, and as time passes they will become more secluded, more indoctrinated and harder to get them to think.

[Daelak]

You are terrified of a whopping 15% of the country.

I'm not terrified, I am just showing you the extent as to which shitty ideologies can prosper in such a free country as ours.

[Graeham]

It's easier, especially when many major sites outright censor people for embracing specific political views. So many people end up being mislead the moment they read something pushed by 'experts' too, even if the sources are dubious and/or based around a hypothesis that may not even be t rue at all.

[Mifuyne]

Easier because people are still stupid as hell.

[Reeve]

You are terrified of a whopping 15% of the country.

That whopping 15% seem to have the ability to determine one of the two presidential candidate we'll be faced with in November. It's significant.

[Damajin]

Easier especially on the premise of 'question everything' which is almost a life goal for some people at this point. They conveniently forgot the part about questioning the need for that very question though, funny. End up with a populace of scattered mentality and fringe attentions much easier than before the internet.