I started using the internet about twenty years ago and began gathering all kinds of knowledge from many sites. I think I was able to acquire a lot of knowledge thanks to the internet.

When I was around high school age, I often thought that information on the internet was correct and television was wrong, or that people who could not access internet information were not getting correct information.

But as the internet gradually spread, I came to understand that some of that was true, while much of it was not. In other words, the internet is also wrong. For example, whether LASIK is safe or not is probably not something you can know just by searching the internet.

More strongly, there are problems in the world where correctness is hard to judge, and finding answers to them is extremely difficult on today’s internet. I want to summarize that.

Why the internet gets things wrong

Information on the internet is generally formed through the following flow.

1. Someone publishes an opinion or information
2. People who see that information spread it
3. When it becomes the majority view, that information is treated as correct

This is actually also why misinformation spreads. Rephrasing those steps gives this:

1. People with loud voices form opinions
2. Loudness turns into volume
3. Volume turns into correctness

In other words, the internet gets things wrong because “loudness = correctness.” Loudness and correctness have no relationship at all, but the mechanisms of the internet, search engines, and social media amplify this.

Using the internet correctly

So when using the internet, I think we need to be careful about things like the following.

• Do not assume that the information you can find is always correct
• Judge information together with the background in which it was published
• Know that loudness is not correctness
• Know that volume is not correctness
• If possible, express your own opinion too

Correctness is not always correct

Expanding the discussion a little further, correctness is actually not always correct. As I wrote at the beginning, there are problems in the world where correctness is hard to judge.

There are moments when values collide, as in truth, goodness, and beauty. Problems that are logically correct but ethically wrong. Works of art created on top of some sacrifice. Problems that are correct but cannot be accepted because of emotion. We have to confront these kinds of problems.

What are truth, goodness, and beauty?

Truth in cognition, goodness in ethics, and beauty in aesthetics. They refer to universally valid values as human ideals.

https://kotobank.jp/word/%E7%9C%9F%E5%96%84%E7%BE%8E-538151

These issues are not limited to the internet, but on the internet, even information that began subjectively can look like objective information, so mistakes often cannot be corrected.

Can we think while holding a balance of truth, goodness, and beauty inside ourselves?

What is necessary to choose one thing while still preserving diversity?

While worrying about such things, we move things forward. We have to confront these problems.