I'm not sure that people's ability to identify truth has become any...
· Comment — Michelle Burke's post · View on Facebook · Markdown source
I'm not sure that people's ability to identify truth has become any worse. What has happened is that the power of the ruling class to dictate the "truth" has become increasingly difficult. In the past, it was expensive to store and distribute information (books, magazines, newspapers). Kings, noblemen, and presidents could control the flow of "truth" by leaning on / colluding with the newspaper publishers, priests, and academics. (IMO, the true purpose of copyright laws was to give the ruling class control over who could publish.) As recently as the 1980's, you had to make substantial investment (tens of thousands of dollars) to publish/distribute a book. There were only three major TV networks, and most radio stations were under the control of a few conglomerates. With the advent of the internet, the cost of information retrieval and distribution fell to almost zero. The principal problem now is not access, but curation and filtration. The rulers and priest class are still trying to control the flow of information, of course: https://archerships.substack.com/p/the-litany-of-censorship And, they still enjoy some success, especially in the more authoritarian countries like China, where they can whisk you to the organ farms or weld you into your home if you disobey. But in more free countries like the US, heretics, blasphemers, wrongthinkers and "denialists" can't easily be put in prison or shut up. And people are still dumb and gullible, so they still believe in superstition, propaganda, and scams. But now that they have access to a rich forest of information, they fall for different superstitions, propaganda, and scams than those pushed by the ruling class. So the ruling class laments this loss of respect for the monopoly on "truth" they once claimed.