"I see an entire civilization confused by a ubiquous mass communication tool which they invented to do exactly the opposite: enlight them."
There was never a stream of pure, refined truth available, that just somehow lacked a distribution method. All there ever was was a confusing mixture of an uncountable varieties of different possibilities, theories, and facts of varying veracity. Now you can have more direct access to that confusing mixture, with all the attendant privileges and responsibilities.
There were things that claimed to be streams of pure, refined truth. Those claims didn't become false. They always were false. Now you can tell that better. It may not feel like progress, but it is.
> There was never a stream of pure, refined truth availablem, that just somehow lacked a distribution method
Academic educational programs have exactly been the source-without-a-scalable-distribution-method for at least the past century.
You're unlikely to find a treatment of mathematics or physics or even Computer Science that is as well-curated, free of coercive bias, and well-presented as it often is in the undergraduate programs at universities that care deeply about their educational programs. (Such universities and colleges do exist; they unfortunately also tend to be expensive, selective, and not always well-represented in top N lists -- especially in the US.)
The reason the distribution method of university education is lacking has more to do with economics than anything else. Hiring truly high-quality people to teach small groups of people difficult content in a rigorous way is expensive. If you skimp on any of those features, the quality of the end result goes way down (c.f. typical MOOCs and the university courses to which they are purportedly equivalent, in pretty much any dimension.)
> There were things that claimed to be streams of pure, refined truth. Those claims didn't become false. They always were false.
Again, I fail to see how this critique applies in any meaningful way to high-quality undergraduate education programs in hard sciences. Nothing is perfect -- and in fact I doubt any of those programs ever claimed to be "streams of pure, refined truth". But they come far closer than your comment seems to suggest.
Now, going back to the contents of the article, universites certainly aren't "streams of pure, refined, and new truth". Such streams very likely don't exist.
They are talking about how the internet, which was once seen a conduit of 'truth', is just a conduit which also spreads bullshit, and that there is no 'truth'. You are talking about education and scientific rigor as a means of talking about truth. While what you say may be true it doesn't seem applicable to their arguments.
> They are talking about how the internet, which was once seen a conduit of 'truth', is just a conduit which also spreads bullshit
That's what bikamonki was saying.
jerf's comment was tangential to the central thesis of bikamonki's post, and stated "There were things that claimed to be streams of pure, refined truth. Those claims didn't become false. They always were false"
> You are talking about education and scientific rigor as a means of talking about truth
No, I'm stating directly that there exist educational institutions that, through educational programs, transfer truth from one person to another.
There was never a stream of pure, refined truth available, that just somehow lacked a distribution method. All there ever was was a confusing mixture of an uncountable varieties of different possibilities, theories, and facts of varying veracity. Now you can have more direct access to that confusing mixture, with all the attendant privileges and responsibilities.
There were things that claimed to be streams of pure, refined truth. Those claims didn't become false. They always were false. Now you can tell that better. It may not feel like progress, but it is.