> Some blame, if not a majority, belongs on whoever actually hears those views and facts though. Knowing someone's intent is extremely hard, it really shouldn't matter whether they intend to mislead or believe what they are saying. Just because someone shares what they may honestly believe to be a fact doesn't mean we have to take it as fact.

I don't think that casting blame on individuals here is productive. I agree, lack of critical thinking skills is a major factor. Who is responsible for ensuring that a plurality of the population of a democracy learn critical thinking? We've gotten by without critical thinking for so long because we mostly don't need it: when you get all your news from Walter Cronkite, what good could come of further analysis?

So it's not an individual failure, but a societal one. Susceptibility to misinformation is like a plague, or a meteor strike, or some other natural catastrophe that we just haven't prepared for. Maybe we'll find a solution; maybe we won't, and the future of humanity belongs to those with the boldness to lie most effectively.

Oh there are societal issues here as well, no argument there. They all roll down hill from individuals' choices though.

Society didn't force Walter Cronkite on us. People chose to listen to him and a small number of other trusted sources, and they began choosing to take what was said by those sources at face value. I'm not even saying that was a bad thing or wrong, at the time news did seem to be reported in better faith.

We choose our sources though, and we choose how deeply to consider what they say. I don't see how this could have started as a societal issue rather than individual choice first.

> I don't see how this could have started as a societal issue rather than individual choice first.

really? I'd say it's clearly a matter of education. Critical thinking and media analysis just isn't part of American public schooling. If anything, people are taught to believe authority figures.

Regardless of how it "started", blaming the individual isn't helpful, because that suggests there's nothing to be done. "Well," you say, "folks made a bad decision, c'est la vie." Instead, we should be looking for solutions to media illiteracy, and that solution is certainly social in nature.

Sounds like we just have a very different view the relative merits of individual vs collective (or societal) approaches.

I very much shy away from control, and that generally means trusting the individual to generally do what is best or at a minimum accept that the result of that will at least be more resilient than the result of a collectivist or top-down approach. Both have risks for sure and there are absolutely times where individualism are a bad idea in my opinion, this just doesn't meet that bar for me.

Since we're talking about the functioning of democracy, which necessarily requires a plurality of people, I don't see how anything other than group- or society-level action could possibly make any difference.

Oh we were a very individualistic nation for much of our history. That does come and go over the years, and like anything it has pros and cons, but it can be done.

If group or societal solutions are the only viable option we might as well cut to the chase and go full socialist. I don't mean that derogatorily, if collectivism is the only solution when individual choices inevitably lead to bad outcomes why bother trying individual at all?

The challenge with individuals making choices that ultimately move in us a better direction is fear. That is really embracing uncertainty and trusting the average person to do what they think is best or "right." Its my opinion that we should absolutely embrace that uncertainty and trust people, but that doesn't land well for most people today.

A group or collectivist solution sounds much safer. As long as we have a good plan and trustworthy people in charge, we just need to empower them to do what they know we need. That can run into just as many, and just as dangerous, end points as an individualist model.

Both are risky. Both can work, and both can go horribly wrong. I just prefer the one where I get to trust myself and everyone around me to think for themselves and do what they think is best. I also personally prefer the bad result of reaping what we sow rather than it going wrong because the well intended leader was wrong or the ill intended leader was right (I.e. got what the evil end they wanted).

I'm talking about public education. I don't know what you're on about.

This whole chain was you pushing back on the relative merit or feasibility of an individualist approach to this problem. You mentioned education very briefly a few posts up but that didn't seem to be the main point of that comment and definitely not of this back and forth.