Facts, Fakes, Fantasy & Physics
The world as a product of information image credit : https://pixabay.com/en/fantasy-eyes-forest-aesthetic-face-2824304/ With social media spewing facts like a firehose, the world today is in danger of drowning in a pool of information. Or as the cynic would say, in a cesspool of fake news because, as anyone who has been on Facebook would know, most what is peddled as news is really alt-news, an euphemism for propaganda and misinformation. In an earlier era of the internet, spam had similarly threatened to undermine the utility of email. Even today, 60% of all mail sent through the internet is spam but thanks to intelligent spam filters, most are trapped and never reach the main inbox. Unfortunately, similar filters for fake news are not yet available and so our social media timelines are cluttered with material deliberately placed to confuse us or to convince us of things that we would not otherwise agree with. IRA, the St. Petersburg, Russia, based Internet Research Agen...