I feel some inevitability...
The information environment we are immersed in works to lower our intellectual level, to undermine the ability for independent, logical, and critical perception of reality.
First. I have an elderly relative. A war veteran, candidate of medical sciences, maxillofacial surgeon, radiologist. She once headed a department at the Institute for Physician Advancement. She carefully preserves her dissertation – a thick, richly illustrated folio with X‑ray images, devoted to a detailed proof of the effectiveness of the method of jaw fracture treatment she proposed.
Unfortunately, she lives alone, and her main interlocutor has become the television. She is interested in health‑preservation issues, watches and takes notes on medical programs. She saw on TV an advertisement for a miraculous device called LivingEnergy. It relieves pain, eliminates waste, reduces weight, trains muscles, normalises circulation! The effect is said to be achieved through vibration and infrared radiation. She called the number given in the ad, was taken in by professional manipulators and got entangled. All her medical knowledge and culture did not save her. Knowing how to substantiate the efficacy of treatments, she believed the panacea advertisement.
She bought (supposedly with huge discounts!) a massager for 4 500 hryvnias (about 18 000 rubles) – a considerable sum for a pensioner. She received documents that did not specify either the address or even the seller’s name. After paying, she consulted a doctor and received a prohibition on using the miracle machine. She decided to use the return option that sellers kept insisting on. Unfortunately, no one intends to fulfil that promise. State authorities cannot help because the seller hides his data. Getting in touch with the place where they had recently spoken politely to her is not easy for my relative (if you are interested, more details – here). In fact, it was difficult. When the column was already written, the situation exploded. Now she is threatened by phone, to the point of heart attacks. The version is as follows: she bought the device at a discount and does not use it. Therefore she obtained the discount fraudulently, and if she demands termination of the contract, collectors will soon appear to extract an even larger sum of money from her. We await the collectors…