They will quickly pass this, mostly true information, on to other members of the cognitive elite. This means that the higher pace of information dissemination will translate into a higher pace of learning true ideas, for this group.
But spreading information is not the only reason why people communicate with each other and make statements. In some cases it isn’t even the most important one.
I used to follow a local politician on Facebook and read his blog. A few years ago, before he was elected, he used to post interesting ideas. Over the next few years he became more popular and eventually he was elected to a city’s council. Nowadays his facebook feed consists mosty of photos of him participating in various events, meeting local business owners, visiting municipal utility companies and so on. The whole feed is photos of people smiling and he basically never posts his ideas anymore, unless they are obvious applause lights. Oh, and he stopped blogging. I don’t blame him, because his political persona is based on being liked by anyone and not being polarizing.
Of course, this is an extreme case, but many people have their coworkers and bosses on their facebook. And being polarizing is rarely the best way to advance your career. It seems that only young people care about spreading ideas (good or bad) on their facebook feeds, older people usually prioritize different things when posting on facebook. When you are young it is easy to find new friends, therefore it is not a big deal if some people do not like what you post. When you are older, finding new friends is much more difficult and keeping the old ones becomes much more important. Maybe that’s why in my experience older people tend to post different things than young.
But spreading information is not the only reason why people communicate with each other and make statements. In some cases it isn’t even the most important one.
I used to follow a local politician on Facebook and read his blog. A few years ago, before he was elected, he used to post interesting ideas. Over the next few years he became more popular and eventually he was elected to a city’s council. Nowadays his facebook feed consists mosty of photos of him participating in various events, meeting local business owners, visiting municipal utility companies and so on. The whole feed is photos of people smiling and he basically never posts his ideas anymore, unless they are obvious applause lights. Oh, and he stopped blogging. I don’t blame him, because his political persona is based on being liked by anyone and not being polarizing.
Of course, this is an extreme case, but many people have their coworkers and bosses on their facebook. And being polarizing is rarely the best way to advance your career. It seems that only young people care about spreading ideas (good or bad) on their facebook feeds, older people usually prioritize different things when posting on facebook. When you are young it is easy to find new friends, therefore it is not a big deal if some people do not like what you post. When you are older, finding new friends is much more difficult and keeping the old ones becomes much more important. Maybe that’s why in my experience older people tend to post different things than young.