September 13, 2020, Daniel Miessler
I think we’ve lost the plot on disinformation. It’s not the attacks that are the problem. It’s the fact that too many Americans are willing to believe almost anything.
Ideally we’d reduce both the attacks and the vulnerability.
Of course it would be nice to have fewer attacks. Of course it would be nice to keep attacks from being used against higher numbers of vulnerable people. But ultimately the problem is the vulnerability itself.
Bad ideas are worse than bad code because they’re naturally contagious.
This is easier to see in the information security world. If you have a target that will run any code that it’s given, you cannot spend all of your energy making sure it doesn’t receive any code. Part of your plan has to be making sure it’s not so eager to do so. We call that patching.
It’s the same with people. We need to do more than control bad ideas; we need to patch our population against them.
Trade school doesn’t immunize against specious ideas.
For people, patching means education. And not the worker-prep kind of education where you learn how to be an obedient and productive office worker, but the kind that teaches the fundamentals of how things work—from physics to psychology, and from physiology to philosophy.
MORE: https://danielmiessler.com/blog/our-real-weakness-is-gullibility-not-disinformation
Drop from what, school? People don’t learn from schools in USA, they learn from HDTV Fox News, they learn from Reddit, Twitter, Bluesky, Alex Jones, podcasts, Joe Rogan, cinema, sports stars, TikTok, TV entertainment, video games, etc.
Adults over age 24 do all their learning and study on social media and junk news networks.
Thats what I mean. If you put 100 people in a classroom, teach them something, and then filter out all the people who didnt learn anything youll be left with a pool of people who have been effectively educated. That works great if you are trying to create an educated class of professionals with specific skills and knowledge. However, if you are trying to improve the education level of society as a whole you are still stuck with all the people who cant or wont learn. You end up with training thats about as effective as a mandatory slide show, which is maybe better than nothing, but also not very good.
Preaching to the choir here. We have a world full of Wikipedia and we could put every HowTo on a Wiki, but we rather suck down Rupert Murdoch and Elon Musk bullshit, “Trickle Down Garbage” from Disney. Wealth televangelism networks.
“Public education does not serve a public. It creates a public. And in creating the right kind of public, the schools contribute toward strengthening the spiritual basis of the American Creed. That is how Jefferson understood it, how Horace Mann understood it, how John Dewey understood it, and in fact, there is no other way to understand it. The question is not, Does or doesn’t public schooling create a public? The question is, What kind of public does it create? A conglomerate of self-indulgent consumers? Angry, soulless, directionless masses? Indifferent, confused citizens? Or a public imbued with confidence, a sense of purpose, a respect for learning, and tolerance? The answer to this question has nothing whatever to do with computers, with testing, with teacher accountability, with class size, and with the other details of managing schools. The right answer depends on two things, and two things alone: the existence of shared narratives and the capacity of such narratives to provide an inspired reason for schooling.” ― Neil Postman, The End of Education: Redefining the Value of School, 1995