> Now I get angry comments and threatening emails from hardcore fans.

Which is another example of a system (the human mind) not being smart enough to know it isn't smart enough.

FTA:

> Google’s Featured Snippets Are Worse Than Fake News, writes Adrianne Jeffries, pointing out the downsides of Google’s efforts to provide what Danny Sullivan calls the “one true answer” as fast as possible. About 15% of Google searches offer a featured snippet, that text excerpt that shows up inside a big bold box at the top of the results. It’s presented as the answer to your question. “Unfortunately, not all of these answers are actually true,” Jeffries writes.

> You know, like this one:

> "Barack Hussein Obama is implementing Alinsky’s rules on a much wider scale. He is using these rules to divide America so that he can cause widespread chaos and panic so he can declare martial war. This is his plan."

I suspect most people here have encountered (in-person or at least online) a person who believes such things, and shake their head at how silly and illogical this is. But if you change the topic from Obama to something involving Trump, a lot of the time the very same phenomena ("This is(!) his plan/intent/desire") will manifest, often within the very same people that scoff at those who would believe the Obama narrative. And if you call them on it, the magical post-hoc rationalization[1] process in the brain will jump into action, manufacturing in real-time an elaborate, not-entirely-logic-based narrative that justifies System 1's objectively incorrect prediction...which is what I suspect also prevents people from realizing what has just happened. And, if you challenge that narrative, a variety of other very interesting and predictable behaviors will manifest (which is incredibly easy to see in individuals within one's out-group, but incredibly hard to see within your own behavior, because of the innate(!) post-hoc rationalization capabilities of the mind).

This is what I refer to above when I say "the human mind is not smart enough to know it isn't smart enough" - this is simply how the human mind has evolved to work. Using Daniel Kahneman's terminology from "Thinking Fast and Slow"[2], this is simply an illustration of System 1 providing instantaneous (but not necessarily correct) answers to questions, and System 2 (the slow but more accurate conscious mind) not intercepting and correcting the prediction provided by System 1. Everyone falls victim to this (yes, even us geniuses on HN), no matter how intelligent and educated they are.

> How do we tell the mass to go a little beyond the snippets?

We could tell them to "just" be enlightened, like we tell people to "just" do a whole bunch of other things (be logical, intelligent, kind, understanding, "properly" informed and hold the "right" beliefs, etc). (In case it's not obvious, I say this part with tongue firmly in cheek.)

[1] https://www.patheos.com/blogs/tippling/2013/11/14/post-hoc-r...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow

EDIT: A good and important example where this behavior can be easily observed is in the climate change debate - particularly online discussions, and particularly (and seemingly counter-intuitively, see my "protected" comment here[3]) among more intelligent and informed people. As usual, it is incredibly easy to see (and imagine(!)) the flaws in other people's thinking on the topic, but good luck seeing flaws in your own. This is why I keep saying the root problem in the climate change debate is not one of climate science (education and understanding), but of psychology/neurology. And once again, this idea seems to be very unpopular and uninteresting, especially to those who care deeply about the problem.

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23093016