There's a Noam Chomsky quote for this:

    “I’m sure you believe everything you’re saying. But what I’m saying is that if you believe something different, you wouldn’t be sitting where you’re sitting.”

[1] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/9692159-i-m-sure-you-believ...
[2] "Manufacturing Consent" by Noam Chomsky

“It requires a macro, alongside a micro- (story-by-story), view of media operations, to see the pattern of manipulation and systematic bias.” (p. 2) -- Manufacturing Consent

Isn’t this well documented by folks like Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman with Manufacturing Consent (1988)? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent

cf Noam Chomsky: Manufacturing Consent (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent_(film))

Great beginning, because this captures perfectly the feelings of so many, especially older, Americans. Even dissent feels like it was easier back then, when it was hippies vs. squares, a simple yes or no on Vietnam, yes or no on the Civil Rights Act.

There are two glaring omissions from this article. First is any mention of Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent [1], which the author spends a lot of time loosely recapitulating. The other is a lack of sensitivity to the Boomers and the (non-geek) Gen Xers that were simply not exposed to online anything and so do not have immunity, and they generally don't have a good feel for dealing with modern information systems.

The upshot is that I think this is a transient, but because of better health outcomes for the elderly, it's gonna be a long and painful one, because easily manipulated Boomers are going to be voting for a long, long time.

The problem is largely Fox News. Fox has a strangle-hold on the older minds and gives cover and support to the online insanity, specifically because it's format isn't the news, it's a news walk-through (like a game walk-through), which makes you feel like you're good at consuming the news, feel like you have the right opinions, all while saving you the trouble of actually having to think.

The solution, I'm sorry to say, is not teaching critical thinking, or appealing to better emotions, but rather an equal-and-opposite channel: a news walk-through with the same emotional profile, but with opposite opinions to Fox.

With luck, such a channel would become equally popular and cancel out the Fox effect, and leave the actual political decision-making to the critical thinkers.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent

Well, a quick Google search brings this up from Wikipedia:

Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media is a 1988 book by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky. It argues that the mass communication media of the U.S. "are effective and powerful ideological institutions that carry out a system-supportive propaganda function, by reliance on market forces, internalized assumptions, and self-censorship, and without overt coercion", by means of the propaganda model of communication.

"Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media" was published in 1988.

> It argues that the mass communication media of the U.S. "are effective and powerful ideological institutions that carry out a system-supportive propaganda function, by reliance on market forces, internalized assumptions, and self-censorship, and without overt coercion", by means of the propaganda model of communication.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent

The advent of the Internet has rocked the "mass communication media" and exposed their "system-supportive propaganda function" in a way that is pretty hard to counter. It's a case of "How Ya Gonna Keep 'em Down on the Farm (After They've Seen Paree)?"

> a World War I song that rose to popularity after the war had ended. The lyrics highlight concern that American soldiers from rural environments would not want to return to farm life after experiencing the European city life and culture of Paris during World War I.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_Ya_Gonna_Keep_%27em_Down_o...

I try to read every night before going to bed, and I'm trying to alternate between a technical book, and a pleasure book.

I recently finished the whole lot of Foundation from Asimov, Zero to sold from Arvid Kahl and I'm currently reading "The wealth of Nations" from Adam Smith (Gotta admit, it hurts).

The motivation behind alternating between pleasure and technical is to try to increase my knowledge (even though I feel like I retain 1% of what I read), and to enjoy reading too (with the pleasure book)

On my to read next list, I have:

- High growth Handbook (Elad Gil) (Pleaure book)
- Utopia - Thomas More (Technical)
- Beyond the rift - Peter Watts (Pleasure)
- Manufacturing consent (Noam Chomsky) (Technical)
- Children of time - Adrian Tchaikovsky

Were people getting accurate facts about the world previously?

Wen it came out in 1988, Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman’s Manufacturing Consent rattled the accepted view in post-Vietnam, post-Watergate America that journalists’ relationship to power was essentially adversarial. Instead, they argued, the institutional structure of American media — its dependence on corporate advertising and sources in the upper ranks of government and business — created a role for the press as creators of propaganda. Without any direct press censorship, with full freedom of speech, the media narrowed the political debate to exclude anything that offended the interests of the market or the state.

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2018/10/matt-taibbi-interview-fai...