It Should Be Okay to Just Read Headlines

What open source software has to teach about practical epistemology

It is often the object of lamentation that consumers of information in our newfound information rich era often do no more than parse a headline - in reality, this specific practice is merely the irresistible urge to optimize data flow into one's consciousness and under different cultural circumstances would be a rationally credible compression of information.

To understand why, one should examine the practices and game theory behind open source software, that is, a culture around computer programs which enforces that software is not to be used if the recipe for its creation is not published alongside the program itself. It may sound like a tech-hippie fantasy, but it is in fact true that the majority of computing power in the world runs software adhering to this principle, though not the programs most consumers directly interact with.

A primary reason this trait of openness is important is the elimination of the need for trust. When high stakes machines run code which is freely exposed for introspection, the managers of those machines can be far more certain, first hand, that no consequences of malice, manipulation or third-party incompetence will occur - in theory they can be absolutely sure. In practice, the majority of those using open source software employ a strategy to verify their software much closer to skimming headlines than pouring over computer code for hundreds of hours. Take Bitcoin as a prime example: it would not be surprising to discover that the majority of users of the Bitcoin Wallet software have not carefully audited its source code, but they do not need to. If the Bitcoin Wallet software had any tricks which may drain users of billions of dollars worth of value, it would only take one person pointing it out for that information to go viral and be specifically verified. Trusting a minority of users knowing only one is needed to signal an issue is the realistic, practical approach, even with high stakes.

And so describes most users experience with open source software. The exposure of its inner workings is not a direct benefit to most users - it simply makes undesired and unexpected behaviors detectable and unsustainable. This is not wholly unlike the common media consumer's desire to truncate what information they need to consume to reach conclusions. The primary difference is that the culture behind open source software is much stronger and much better equipped to categorize missteps; a diligent, almost neurotic enforcement of ideals of just enough zealots at the bottom has created the nursery for a software utopia opposing the predatory consumerist norms.

While *The News* may not be so cut and dry, nor should it be, the system does not need to be perfect or uniformly coherent - people can and should disagree. The issue with the information which would allow readers and consumers to *faithfully* navigate reports on the world through compressed data like headlines is the general inability to distribute opposing views in accordance with their internal logic’s' strength and relevance to the public: censorship, the very antithesis of *open source*. Should the general citizen looking to remain informed ever gain the privileges of open, accessible, freely distributed, unregulated and clear information flows, the practice of heavily abstracting reports and their refutations actually becomes a great enhancement to processing and composing information as opposed to the treacherous and tricky intellectual exercise it is when information is selectively suppressed and promoted - it is only when information distribution is manipulated that the truth becomes *more difficult* to discern, and that applies to those of and against the opinions and beliefs of those manipulating. Strong, but basic critical thinking, not among all, but spread among enough, is sufficient to collectively process information. It is the faux authority of censorship which causes such a practice to appear unreliable.

What good the common and slippery censorship of our time does is to ameliorate the problems caused by the manipulation of information in the first place. Should information be liberated and organized, the full audit of scientific studies will only be necessary for those looking to progress from ninety-seven to ninety-nine percent certainty - and their work doing be more plainly and compactly communicated. The walls put up to suppress misinformation today form the crevices where lies may hide. In an open environment, the most certain of truths may only be approached asymptotically, but a lie at any level takes but one alert for all to pinpoint and scrutinize. The suppression of information creates a labyrinth where lies may lurk and slither.