I like this little article by Sean Carroll for Edge:
I wanted to write that the Internet keeps people honest. The image of thousands of readers bursting into laughter gave me pause.
So let me put it this way: the Internet helps enable honesty. Many of us basically want to be honest, but we're fighting all sorts of other impulses -- the desire to appear clever or knowledgeable, to support a point we're trying to make, to feel the satisfaction of a rant well-ranted. In everyday conversation, when we know something specific about the expertise and inclinations of our audience, these impulses may tempt us into laziness: pushing a point too hard, claiming as fact some anecdote whose veracity isn't completely reliable. We're only human.
Read the rest here. And in related news, Sean Carroll's new physics book is out, and it looks excellent. Read the prologue.
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The internet inspires truthfulness? Uhhhhhh........ no. I'm sure her book is good, but there's no way in hell I buy that.
It's his book, not hers (this Sean is the physicist-blogger from Caltech, not the biologist author from Wisconsin, and both are male.
And I agree with Sean, sort of: the internet enables honesty to be imposed. You can, and many do, say all kinds of outrageous nonsense online. But as never before, the corrective is available to the community.