Saturday, January 23, 2021

Everything Is A Giant Conspiracy

      And they don't want you to find out.  Learn the secret hidden truth!

1 comment:

Douglas2 said...

Golly!

That first paragraph sent me straight back to review an old Murray Rothbard essay "Modern Historians confront the American Revolution" and re-confirm what I remember reading there:

Particularly important is the monumental and definitive, though densely written, two volume political history of the coming of the American Revolution by Bernhard Knollenberg, Origins of the American Revolution: 1759–1765; and Growth of the American Revolution, 1766–1775. By examining British archives, Knollenberg shows that the supposed paranoia and “conspiracy theories” of the American colonists were all too accurate. The British officials were indeed conspiring to invade the liberties of the American colonies after the “salutary neglect” of the pre‐​1763 period.

I'm not moved by the "We'll write games to help train people to become critical thinkers" approach. But the 'nudge' techniques being built into social media (to for example encourage people to read articles before re-sharing them) does seem promising if applied evenhandedly.