There is No Algorithm for Truth by Tom Scott (Video)

A long but rather profound talk about the Internet and the search for truth. 

The news at the beginning of 2021 is that for the first time, the big Internet platforms have shown us that they are more powerful than the President of the United States. This is an amazing development and maybe the most potent one to date. 

As the end of the talk makes clear, avoiding the two extremes of the "Nazi Bar" which promotes extreme views and the "Echo Chamber" which forbids everything you disagree with is a very complex dilemma with no clear solution. I empathize with this view. 

But there is also a deeper risk in that the truth almost always starts as fringe or what we call today "conspiracy theory". If that was not the case, there would be no "discovery" and no paradigm would ever be overturned. In plain words: If we censure everything that deviates from accepted wisdom and "truth", we also kill off the Galileos, Newtons and Einsteins.   

This is the long term risk. There is also a much more immediate and ominous risk in giving too much control to these companies which is guarantied to be abused in their quest for power.

It may well be already too late. but the fact that 2021 starts with such a bang as the banning of the President of the United States is a good reminder of the risks ahead.