Everyone can’t learn everything. When you watch the news, do you fly down to Maui to interview victims and analyze the state of power lines yourself?
You have to remember where you got something and learn to evaluate the bias of a source, but going on an active forum full of people with various levels of knowledge on the topic is the best way to get a complete picture in a reasonable time frame. They’ll call out inaccuracies in reporting, give background that might speak to problematic motivations or conflicts of interest, and argue bad takes.
Is it perfect? No. It’s DD though, more and more usernames are quoted in the news - hell, even in this video forum posts are referenced frequently
Wtf is free will even? We’re chemical systems, or a metaphysical soul, that makes statistically predictable decisions based on available information as well as uncountable minor factors. If you rewind time and do everything the same, either everyone comes to the same conclusions the same way, or free will requires an aspect of chaos… And at that point you’re at predetermination - seems to me the whole idea is outdated philosophy
But here’s the thing - statistically, people respond in predictable ways. If every time you do X, the majority will respond Y… That’s just math.
Turns out, humans are super complex, but very predictable. And by that I mean policy is extraordinarily effective.
Free will matters on a personal level, it disappears on a societal level