>The idea that giving people access to more knowledge about the world and about other perspectives would be a big help in addressing social problems isn't crazy.
Yes it is crazy and we need to wake up to that. Just look around, people have access to all sorts of information and divergent opinions but that doesn't help. Trumpers have access to CNN. Liberals have access to Truth. Antivaxers can go read all the vaccine studies and doctors and academics could lurk in forums skeptical of modern medicine. Simply making these available online does not force people to seek out the correct information or interact with people with diverging opinions.
People do not have access to all sorts of information. They have access to plenty of cherry picked fact-less divergent opinions, a lot of it even counterfactual. But nothing with any quality.
Atntivaxers can't go read all the studies unless they are willing to push some tens of thousands of dollars into it or break some law.
Even when someone gets exposure to a competing viewpoint, it's rare for them to really give it thought if the topic is important to them.
People build their identities on what they believe about the world or on which people (dis)agree with them.
When their belief (and thus their identity) is threatened, people readily perform whatever mental gymnastics allow them to continue believing they're in the right.
The excellent book The Scout Mindset covers this in depth.
Yes it is crazy and we need to wake up to that. Just look around, people have access to all sorts of information and divergent opinions but that doesn't help. Trumpers have access to CNN. Liberals have access to Truth. Antivaxers can go read all the vaccine studies and doctors and academics could lurk in forums skeptical of modern medicine. Simply making these available online does not force people to seek out the correct information or interact with people with diverging opinions.