Excuse me, but if Google or someone can create an active intelligent search agent which will build me a comprehensive list of public corruption news, political news, civil liberties issues, etc., then I'll be a hell of a lot more informed and less "ignorant" than I would be if I had to read a paper or magazine that caters more toward the assumption that the only thing people want to read about is celebrity news and what pretty white girl got killed after hooking up with 3 strange men in a foreign country.
While it is certainly laudable that you actively seek out information about topics involving corruption and government (which is more than I can say for many others that I know), isn't it still possible to fall into a similar problem that the article speaks of? By being presented with only stories of corruption and failings of government, wouldn't you start to miss out on the success stories? In other words, it is easy to recognize when something goes wrong, but it takes more effort to recognize when something goes right and use it as a fix for the things that go wrong.
As odd as it sounds, I think that news should not ever be tailored to the "consumer". Telling the people only what they want to hear is just as bad (if not worse) than only telling them the news YOU want them to hear...
The problem is with confirmation bias. In either case, having control of the message being delivered allows for confirmation bias to set into the minds of the people. If there are no contrary information or if information is only about certain topics, then the reader's world view shrinks.
Because contrary and/or "boring" news tends to be undesirable, humans will tend towards things that pleases them. The internet allows for a very fine-grained control over the information that you view, and it is easy for people to fall very deep into a confirmation bias.
It is difficult to come out of this bias when you have control over your own sources. At least with sources like newspapers, tv, and radio, the broadcasters can still slip in other stories to keep you out of a rut.
This problem has been getting better with each release. Software developers are rethinking their assumptions when designing their GUIs, which has lead to improved GUIs for everyone. Diversity exposes assumptions which leads to more robust software.
What I do wish is to somehow teach all users the "Alt-drag" trick to deal with dialogue boxes that are too large. While it is fairly common knowledge among many users, it is non-obvious to the uninitiated.
You could try adding those things to the appropriate place in the/etc/skel directory. Every new account will use the skeleton directory as a template, thereby letting you create a more robust initial account profile.
Not unfortunately, it's been done so that they can explore different areas and they don't have to compete for communication time with the orbiter.
And it was a good thing, too. Spirit landed in a volcanic region while Opportunity landed in (I believe) a lake bed. Exploring two completely different geologies has yielded an amazing wealth of information. If we had both rovers in the same region, we would not have a sense of the geological diversity that we have now.
Slashdot Mirror
Excuse me, but if Google or someone can create an active intelligent search agent which will build me a comprehensive list of public corruption news, political news, civil liberties issues, etc., then I'll be a hell of a lot more informed and less "ignorant" than I would be if I had to read a paper or magazine that caters more toward the assumption that the only thing people want to read about is celebrity news and what pretty white girl got killed after hooking up with 3 strange men in a foreign country.
While it is certainly laudable that you actively seek out information about topics involving corruption and government (which is more than I can say for many others that I know), isn't it still possible to fall into a similar problem that the article speaks of? By being presented with only stories of corruption and failings of government, wouldn't you start to miss out on the success stories? In other words, it is easy to recognize when something goes wrong, but it takes more effort to recognize when something goes right and use it as a fix for the things that go wrong.
As odd as it sounds, I think that news should not ever be tailored to the "consumer". Telling the people only what they want to hear is just as bad (if not worse) than only telling them the news YOU want them to hear...
The problem is with confirmation bias. In either case, having control of the message being delivered allows for confirmation bias to set into the minds of the people. If there are no contrary information or if information is only about certain topics, then the reader's world view shrinks.
Because contrary and/or "boring" news tends to be undesirable, humans will tend towards things that pleases them. The internet allows for a very fine-grained control over the information that you view, and it is easy for people to fall very deep into a confirmation bias.
It is difficult to come out of this bias when you have control over your own sources. At least with sources like newspapers, tv, and radio, the broadcasters can still slip in other stories to keep you out of a rut.
This problem has been getting better with each release. Software developers are rethinking their assumptions when designing their GUIs, which has lead to improved GUIs for everyone. Diversity exposes assumptions which leads to more robust software.
What I do wish is to somehow teach all users the "Alt-drag" trick to deal with dialogue boxes that are too large. While it is fairly common knowledge among many users, it is non-obvious to the uninitiated.
You could try adding those things to the appropriate place in the /etc/skel directory. Every new account will use the skeleton directory as a template, thereby letting you create a more robust initial account profile.
Unfortunately, they are on the opposite sides of the planet.
Not unfortunately, it's been done so that they can explore different areas and they don't have to compete for communication time with the orbiter.
And it was a good thing, too. Spirit landed in a volcanic region while Opportunity landed in (I believe) a lake bed. Exploring two completely different geologies has yielded an amazing wealth of information. If we had both rovers in the same region, we would not have a sense of the geological diversity that we have now.