Yeah, solipsism.
Consider that when you read, there are 2 sources of information, the arrangement of the words and the meaning of the words. The arrangement comes from the screen the meaning comes from you. Which is the bigger hunk of information?
That much is obvious.
I’d say that the important things are
That we swallow knowledge gained this way pretty much automatically. Like the default is to believe it or react to it, with very little filtering.
That it lacks indicators that might help us filter it. First-hand knowledge and tenth-hand knowledge look exactly the same.
Of course not. Why?
I’m talking about any statement about reality. All by itself. With no knowledge about the person who said it.
I think that the guy who saw it and the guy who heard it tenth-hand get equal weight, because we have no way of telling the difference.
So maybe we should have a way to tell the difference.
I imagine language with some new tags.
Tags like “original source” and “number of iterations from original source”
(“Iterations” probably isn’t the right term. If Bob saw it, then Bob told Sally, then Sally told Frank. Frank has “3rd iteration” knowledge. But what’s the better term?)
I mean if I tell you about the taste of a peanut butter sandwich, how do you tell whether I actually ate a peanut butter sandwich? Or I just read about a peanut butter sandwich??
That’s a damn good point. It could be chat bots talking to chat bots all the way down and we’d never know the difference.
This is a quality of the kind of knowledge we deal in here. Compared to first-hand experience, it is a lesser quality of knowledge. A trashy knowledge if you will.
Because being a jerk is more fun than sex?
Visit a house where they have the tv on all the time. Commercials and everything. It’s harsh.
I jolly roger everything. No commercials.
Find a way to make money where you sell your services directly to the customer. No boss or job. Flexible schedule. Good money.
Yes, drug dealer is one such, but there are others.
You can’t make better people and better cattle at the same time.
Imagine you were a billionaire. Which do you want?
Movie intros must be 10 seconds or less.
Is ludo parcheesi?
Most of the information isn’t filtered that way, for various reasons. Maybe we could but we generally don’t.
We could make information that’s easier to filter. For example, tags telling us how many steps-removed from the original source.