
How the Internet Is Broken: Big Questions and Bad Answers - rhema
https://nextbison.wordpress.com/2019/01/07/how-the-internet-is-broken/
======
k9s9
I am going to keep posting the ledger of harms -
[https://ledger.humanetech.com/](https://ledger.humanetech.com/)

Until we see all the issues in one place like a github issue tracker,
solutions will always be piece meal and confined to personal experience.

We need more issue trackers like this, so that people with solutions to one
issue or another have some sense of the big picture. Also Big Tech cant weasel
out of one issue by talking selectively about another.

Who knows, maybe one day we will get to proper integration/system wide testing
for fixes to social issues...

~~~
DyslexicAtheist
I love this concept. I think it could benefit by branching out in a way that
tracks different companies, then create different branches for these companies
to track the people making these decisions. There is a huge problem with
greedy and horrible individuals hiding behind a corporate structure. A company
is by definition a group of people and since we treat companies now legally
the same as people the same rules must apply. The reason why this works is the
same as why shaming individuals who rape people (Weinstein, Stacey etc) works.
The only way to improve things is by moving the goalposts in corporate ethics
the same way it has been moved by the #metoo movement for sexual violence.

the reason why I think this works is that ethics is an individual thing that
can only be applied on an individual level. If a CxO suggests to set up
offshore structures to channel profits away then burn them to the ground
(figuratively).

the tech to do it is already there: the darknet!

~~~
k9s9
"The only way" you are suggesting is not the only way.

Changing people's thinking and behavior, especially that of highly misguided
characters in power, requires as Psychologist Marshall Rosenberg would say,
choosing between Violence and Compassion.

Ideally for progress we want people to change the way they think about what
they are doing, not spend their time defending it or how to get away with it.
The latter being what we manage to keep doing.

This is where the choice of approach we take makes a huge difference.

Our Natural instinct is to choose violence, punishment, judgement, name and
shame etc. We want to see heads role for suffering caused.

But this approach takes the focus off the suffering of the victim, and puts
focus on how to cause pain to the perpetrator. It doesn't get perpetrators to
change the way they think - to reflect. Instead they react - play defense, and
spend their time and resources on avoiding and skirting punishment.

Think about this. Think about what Gandhi, MLK, Mandala did by not choosing
this route. They didn't allow perpetrators to play that game. They showed us
there is a big difference in outcomes when we tell a man - look at the pain
you have caused VS you are <LABEL> and will be punished for the pain you have
caused.

This ledger of harms concept is great, because it keeps focus on the suffering
produced. It makes people in power squirm and reflect. Which is what plants
the seeds of change. They will feel the need to change, just as the British
Empire, US Govt or the South African govts did.

But as soon as you add punishment to each issue their focus will shift to self
defense at all cost.

------
packet_nerd
> We need to teach our children to observe the world accurately and debunk
> pseudo-science.

I'm not a scientist and don't have the depth of insight in many fields that I
feel I could always accurately debunk pseudo-science. Most people aren't
experts, and most kids certainly aren't. I've spent my career getting the
measly amount of domain expertise I do have, and that's only in a very narrow
IT field.

Rather, we need to focus on learning to better evaluate authorities. Who's the
most qualified source of information? Which of several competing theories have
the most qualified proponents? What incentives might they have to color what
they believe?

On the web its really hard to know who's who. Mostly we have nothing better
than the tone and look of the site and domain name. That's really pretty weak
if you think about it! I'd definitely be interested in a system of some kind
(browser extension?) that added a little more information.

~~~
drKarl
That's interesting. I always struggle to understand why people believe in a
god (or many), or that the Earth is flat and dismiss Science and evidence on
the other direction. From the point of view of something that you can't
understand, and you choose to delegate to an Authority... and you choose which
Authority to trust... if you've been indoctrinated into religion you'll be
more prone to choose a priest/pastor or a magic book as your source of
Authority, even in things like the origin of the universe and where does life
and animals and humans come from. Other people choose David Ike as Authority
and believe there's a reptilian master race ruling humanity for millennia, and
so on.

------
ohiovr
A lot of people could benefit from more skepticism. Thinking things through is
not just work but it can be a hell of a lot of work. People naturally don’t
like to work. It is easy and fun to think someone’s pipe dream will provide
energy without cost. And it is easy to think that the such and such ethnic
group is the cause of all our problems instead of thorough analysis of the
issues.

The internet is mostly ok (besides the occasional bgp attack)

The web is really mostly rubbish though.

There is no way to fix the fact that a lot of people are wrong on the web.
Anymore I don’t feel a huge need to try to correct people.

~~~
Droobfest
_> A lot of people could benefit from more skepticism. Thinking things through
is not just work but it can be a hell of a lot of work. People naturally don’t
like to work. It is easy and fun to think someone’s pipe dream will provide
energy without cost. And it is easy to think that the such and such ethnic
group is the cause of all our problems instead of thorough analysis of the
issues._

Could you maybe also benefit from more scepticism of your own opinions?

I ask this, because of the way you project the opinion of a 'wrong' group of
people with two simplified strawmen. I don't think many people exist in the
way presented. At least not in a quantity that makes the web rubbish.

It's easy to think other people are simplifying things too much, but maybe
that's just an oversimplification itself..

~~~
ohiovr
We are allowed to be wrong. That is why I don’t care to correct random people
anymore.

------
coldcode
Any mechanism that amplifies information also amplifies noise, something I
think we didn't really understand when the web/internet started. Understand
the provenance of information we see is still difficult, its not as if there
is git log of changes in some concept or news item in some random website that
goes back to whenever it was created globally. Even "blockchain" doesn't
really fix the idea that it was garbage when it was inserted. Simple ideas
like someone saying some words in a public context seems difficult to validate
or verify sometimes much less complex ideas like climate change. Information
is a messy concept made worse by the freeform nature of the internet/web.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
Hmm. I seem to recall AT&T figuring out, about 1927, that they could amplify
long-distance signals better (with less noise) by adding some negative
feedback.

I know it's only an analogy, but maybe the Internet amplifies too well, and
therefore the noise gets amplified much too well. Maybe the internet
(especially the echo chamber parts) need some negative feedback.

------
renholder
>We need to teach school children to be better at interrogating evidence and
deciding (for themselves) what to believe.

 _And..._

>We need to teach our children to observe the world accurately and debunk
pseudo-science.

These two ideas directly conflict with one another and create a dichotomy: If
I have the freedom to beleive what I want, how does this translate into having
the initiative to observe the world accurately and debunk pseudo-science?

The better approach would be to understand that a lot of the laws that govern
our universe (or whichever other science) has been peer-reviewed. While this
doesn't mean that they're infallible (see: ether), it does mean that we should
still shouldn't question them, if there's something that doesn't align with
our thought-processes on it.

The harder part, of course, is proving/disproving these ideas that they may
have because of limitations - whether it be levels of education (such as in
the states) or the time available to go through the scientific method until
they have arrived at 'x' conclusion regarding it.

People working 40+ hour work-weeks, with their own families, etc. are -
generally - less inclined to take-up the mantles of science because, at the
end of the day, the cost versus rewards are too askewed for them.

Instead, what I think should happen is that the sciences should have bounty
programs, much in the same way that technology does, to incentivise these
ventures.

At the end of the day, people still need to put food on the table and deal
with day-to-day life. While some are hobbyists (e.g.: hobbyist astronomers), I
don't see such large communities around the heavy sciences (e.g.: hobbyist
cosmologists, hobbyist theoretical physicists, etc.) and I think that would
change if either people had more free time to donate to such ventures and/or
it was incentivised.

Even the old precepts of the scientific minds gathering weekly for banterings
about (might be stuff of media to blame for this, if untrue) to challenge and
expand our understandings isn't something openly lauded - which, to me, should
be. (I want to say this was something practiced by Einstein and
friends/colleagues?)

Let's face it: Despite the advancements of the last 50 years, the word "nerd"
is still a pejorative.

~~~
FigmentEngine
> These two ideas directly conflict with one another and create a dichotomy:
> If I have the freedom to beleive what I want, how does this translate into
> having the initiative to observe the world accurately and debunk pseudo-
> science?

no these two ideas work well. be curious, but question what you see, and
question yourself.

------
deckar01
No matter how educated you are about the scientific method, there are going to
be hypothesis that you don't have the technical skills to test yourself.
Scientific knowledge has advanced, in part by accepting consensus. Not until a
new idea fails do the assumptions it is built upon really need to be
scrutinized.

------
stunt
I think the proposed solution in this article also covers educating people to
find a qualified source of information.

I was prepared to read an article talking about a problem without giving a
proper solution for it. But it seems proposed solution is covering (not all)
but a lot of the ground.

------
vfclists
_It’s easy to see how people might wonder if vaccines cause autism—many
children regress developmentally right after receiving vaccinations. It’s been
conclusively proven that this is correlation, not causation. There is
absolutely no doubt: vaccines do not cause autism. But it’s emotionally easier
to for parents to believe they have a reason and someone to blame than the
stark truth that their child’s autism is not yet understood_

Tell that to the parents of the afflicted children. If the autism was not a
genetic condition then the vaccines must be the cause. Simply because the
mechanism by which autism develops is not understood doesn't mean the vaccines
were not the cause.

 _post hoc, ergo propter hoc_

It is similar to the argument of those who maintained although there was a
correlation between the presence of the HIV virus and the AIDS disease, it was
only a correlation because the mechanism by which the HIV virus caused AIDS
was not understood. I for one not being in the medical profession cannot say
for sure that the actually mechanism is well understood.

I say again, tell that to the afflicted.

And what has this got to do with the Internet? If the Internet gives the
opportunity to spread falsities as well as truths at Internet speed is it an
inherent fault?

~~~
SketchySeaBeast
Sorry, I'm a bit confused - are you trying to lay out the faulty reasoning, or
are you saying that vaccines COULD cause autism?

~~~
vfclists
Wasn't there a link between the MMR vaccine and autism in African-American
boys that the researchers suppressed in the initial findings?

As far as autism was concerned research showed a correlation between autism
and African American boys and the parents of those boys noticed that it began
soon after the boys were adminstered the vaccine, and that was way before the
researchers themselves admitted that there was a correlation.

As far as I am concerned vaccines cause autism in some cases.

Just because the actual mechanism has not been discovered doesn't mean they
are not the cause, for the simple reason that you cannot simply vaccinate
human beings with the intention of finding the causal link between vaccines
and autism, which assumes that the neurological basis of autism is clearly
defined.

[https://www.ageofautism.com/2014/08/whistleblower-says-
cdc-k...](https://www.ageofautism.com/2014/08/whistleblower-says-cdc-knew-
in-2003-of-higher-autism-rate-among-african-american-boys-receiving-mmr-shot-
earlier-than-36-mont.html)

[https://thevaccinereaction.org/2017/05/african-americans-
vac...](https://thevaccinereaction.org/2017/05/african-americans-vaccines-and-
a-history-of-suspicion/)

 _On the other side are numerous horror stories involving vaccinated children
like that of Harvard-educated attorney George Fatheree, who was pressured by a
pediatrician to resume vaccination despite seizures his infant, Clayton,
experienced after a previous round of vaccines. That night, Clayton’s seizures
returned and he stopped speaking for three years. He grew into a severely
disabled teen, suffering dozens of seizures a day. Because of similar vaccine-
related injuries and deaths, the National Vaccine Injury Compensation
Program—a fund under the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services set up
to shield vaccine manufacturers from liability—has paid out over $3.6 billion
in compensation to affected families._

If the blogger wants to give an example of false notions propagated at
Internet speed, they can do a lot better than using the link between autism
and vaccinations as an example.

~~~
SketchySeaBeast
>Wasn't there a link between the MMR vaccine and autism in African-American
boys that the researchers suppressed in the initial findings?

> As far as autism was concerned research showed a correlation between autism
> and African American boys and the parents of those boys noticed that it
> began soon after the boys were adminstered the vaccine, and that was way
> before the researchers themselves admitted that there was a correlation.

You're going to have to find some articles that aren't from suuuppppeeerrr
biased sites. Only the age of autism has any sort of scientific paper link,
and that paper they referenced was withdrawn due to Brian Hookers conflict of
interest
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Hooker_(bioengineer)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Hooker_\(bioengineer\))).

> Just because the actual mechanism has not been discovered doesn't mean they
> are not the cause

That's a weird thing to assume. In that case turning 1 is the greatest cause
of autism.

