The Mainstream Media is unreliable, we get nuggets of facts without proper context, at BEST, and complete propaganda (usually corporate, but sometimes government) on the regular. The "alternative" is usually Social Media, which has a few truth tellers... but mainly a mix of corporate censorship/social manipulation, self-inflicted Echo Chambers, propaganda, and lots of ego. Take all of this together and we get a world where the public has no reliable source of facts... so what is left to inform our decisions, to prioritize actions on... feelings. When facts become too hard to access, the world becomes a "choose your own adventure" of beliefs, conspiracies, and heavily biased/manufactured priorities. Nothing and everything is real.
So what do we do?
1) We need News/Media that is Publicly Funded and has no profit motive.
2) We need a new "Public Square", it can be digital but it must be free from Big Tech censorship/manipulation. We must create a space where robust discussions can take place with a focus on actual Problem Solving, not virtue signalling, not manufactured crises, not selling clicks.
3) As a Civilization, we must prioritize Scientific Consensus. We are always in a state of learning, but we must go on the BEST data/evidence, the HIGHEST state of understanding we have access to. We must all adopt a Bayesian Worldview, learning to live with uncertainty, but accepting that some things are more likely than others.
