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Cake day: February 16th, 2025

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  • Not sure whether this is serious, but to provide a serious answer: you can’t create a healthy democracy by spreading misinformation. Misinformation that’s aligned with your agenda might help push it in the short term, but it also undermines trust (in this case trust in what the average person is saying, since you can’t tell who genuine participants in a discussion are). In a low trust environment, people tend to gravitate toward big personalities and believe sources and make decisions based on their own gut feelings (i.e. their personal prejudices) rather than on things like people’s real experiences and accurate information from trusted institutions.

    Demagogues like Putin thrive in this environment because ultimately they don’t have (or care about) solutions to the average person’s problems. They get by based on personality, stoking prejudice etc. But policies that are based on the truth and what the average person actually needs suffer.