Clive Thompson on How More Info Leads to Less Knowledge

Clive Thompson on How More Info Leads to Less Knowledge:

"'People always assume that if someone doesn't know something, it's because they haven't paid attention or haven't yet figured it out,' Proctor says. 'But ignorance also comes from people literally suppressing truth—or drowning it out—or trying to make it so confusing that people stop caring about what's true and what's not.'

After years of celebrating the information revolution, we need to focus on the countervailing force: The disinformation revolution. The ur-example of what Proctor calls an agnotological campaign is the funding of bogus studies by cigarette companies trying to link lung cancer to baldness, viruses—anything but their product."