Actually, that’s the short version. Here’s the long one.
Any opinion, value, product or service that achieves critical mass in terms of popularity will therefor become true (or false), or valuable, or not valuable (you get the idea) REGARDLESS of its actual characteristics.
Thus, you have pet rocks, Twitter, and other social media, other fads, myths about learning and training.
Corollary: That which is repeated enough by enough people becomes “true”, even if it is false.
Or at least it makes belief…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belief#How_beliefs_are_formed
Certainly belief is “probably” more accurate, but I’m not sure whether, in practical real life outcomes, whether the distinction between belief and truth actually makes a difference.
I suspect that social media now allows regular people with little knowledge to help determine what is “true”.
Sort of interesting, and scary, come to think about it.
You may well be right — though when we start talking about what’s “practical”, we perhaps should take note of which context of *practice* we’re talking about. Certainly, the beliefs of the Righteous Harmony Society were at odds with the truth:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Righteous_Harmony_Society
I think we can find plenty of accounts closer to home of the damage that can result from either our beliefs not taking account of reality, or our practice being out of line with the beliefs we espouse. And it’s that damage that concerns you, yes?
Did you happen to see this?
http://www.miller-mccune.com/health/convincing-the-public-to-accept-new-medical-guidelines-11422/
The viral nature of false truths coupled with social media scares me on a number of levels, but yes, my concern is damage in both the narrow and broader sense.
What does it mean for democracy when social media gets used to leverage election campaigns by recruiting millions of people to state their opinions as fact? Obviously that process is not new but what is new is that now everyone can easily participate in viral lying and spinning and have some chance of being heard.
Right now I’m researching a bit on social media for a book I’m working on, and what jumps out is a) the lack of evidence to support its efficacy as a business tool and b) (worse) how poor data or irrelevant data is being “spinned” to create “truth”.
I’ll check your links out when I get a chance. TNX
Technology, it appears, is value-neutral; at the same time as it extends our strengths, it extends our weaknesses. I suppose one could argue whether, on the whole, it does more of one than the other…