Przemek writes: "there are plenty of internet users gravitating to well-presented, vetted and refereed expert opinions."

In response:

And yet I now face, as we all do, a genuine conundrum. How to combat the worst aspects of the Internet, that parallel universe in which important information and total garbage coexist, side by side, with, apparently, the same levels of authority, making it harder than ever for people to tell them apart?

We need to recognize that any society’s idea of truth is always the product of an argument, and we need to get better at winning that argument. Democracy is not polite. It’s often a shouting match in a public square. We need to be involved in the argument if we are to have any chance of winning it.

It is for us—writers, thinkers, journalists, philosophers—to undertake the task of rebuilding our readers’ belief in reality, their faith in the truth. 

-- Salman Rushdie, in The New Yorker

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