Wealth means you can buy nearly anything and that includes people who found a non-profit so one can use them to get to entities like WMF.
The scariest scenario in my opinion is their growing influence on the power of definition.
Like news organizations led by wealthy entities the WMF could just be slightly tuned to spread their alternative truth.
I think this power of defining truth is one of the major battlefields of the 21st century. Look at the annexation of Crimea for example. Was it an annexation or not? For us (people of the West) it seems quite clear but ask people from Russia and a lot of them will tell you another story.
The problem becomes how deeply one needs to research before credible facts can be distinguished from agit-prop / disinformation.
I can't think of many people I know who have the time to become investigative journalists, in effect. And I know that a lot of things I think I know are probably propaganda or spin or just one sided stories.
very big problem. I think you are wise to recognise this, 'And I know that a lot of things I think I know are probably propaganda or spin or just one sided stories.'
How can we flush this from our minds? How do we trust those that purport to speak the truth?
For example, here's an easy one, pi=3.14159 (if rounded to 5 decimal places). Great! I think we all agree this is true. The trouble is without context, this is trivia.
Here is a harder one as we move up the complexity scale. Is Human-driven climate change both 1) real and 2) something we can reasonably combat?
Well, the scientists who study it seem to think it's real and there are ways humankind can reasonably push back against it. But there are many, many who believe differently. Which stance is "true"?
Even harder. Is there a God? I mean, from a philosophical view. Sure by scientific definitions we have to assume there is no measurable supernatural. But does that preclude it's existence? For a significant number of people, G-d of some sort exists. And which is the "truth"????
I'm not soliciting hard answers, just trying to show that as you move to more complex, and in many respects more important, topics of today the notion that there is one singular truth in existence gets fuzzier.
Maths, as I understand it, is merely an a priori deduction from an initial set of assumed-true axioms. In some ways, you can do whatever the heck you like, as long as it's consistent with your axioms and whatever laws govern your deductive process.
The only truth about the world is the world itself. Beyond that, truth is a story which omits and simplifies most while emphasizing some things specificially. Depending on what you omit and what you emphasize you can tell very different stories with "truth".
> Look at the annexation of Crimea for example. Was it an annexation or not? For us (people of the West) it seems quite clear but ask people from Russia and a lot of them will tell you another story.
Perhaps a far aside:
Annexation is a quite defined term, specifically: "the addition of an area or region to a country". Word definitions can change over time, but right now this is what it means. It's not necessarily a charged word either.
This was an annexation, regardless if you believe it was just or not.
And on the latter discussion, I'm much more interested in what people in Crimea think than Russians or us in the West.
Wealth means you can buy nearly anything and that includes people who found a non-profit so one can use them to get to entities like WMF.
The scariest scenario in my opinion is their growing influence on the power of definition.
Like news organizations led by wealthy entities the WMF could just be slightly tuned to spread their alternative truth.
I think this power of defining truth is one of the major battlefields of the 21st century. Look at the annexation of Crimea for example. Was it an annexation or not? For us (people of the West) it seems quite clear but ask people from Russia and a lot of them will tell you another story.