
Niall Ferguson: The Destructive Power of Social Networks - SQL2219
https://www.advisorperspectives.com/articles/2018/10/29/niall-ferguson-the-destructive-power-of-social-networks?bt_ee_preview=uuW%2F%2FJJlE46SkhT2eumuO7xSWp3EJFpELCDdlvU6FM%2FbKkDdyn4h33FR52aqQqJC&bt_ts_preview=1540867238596&bt_ee=Y9ZOa3IixfWEtQ1RDNtByCw4kpmcmFqqCBPDC53MO7rBh7paZ1QtoBiz6xe%2Fc8qz&bt_ts=1540894040970
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hnmullany
Hyperpartisanship is a phenomenon we can see in societies far predating the
invention of movable type, and it has had a class trigger (the Gracchi revolts
in Rome), a religious trigger (Arian/Orthodox in late antiquity
-Iconoclasm/Iconophile in Byzantium), a sports trigger (the Blue/Green civil
riots in Constantinople) or traditionally an intra-elite trigger
(Guelf/Ghibbeline or White/Black Guelf in medieval italy.) Niall Ferguson is
not a rigorous historian and, like Malcolm Gladwell, should be considered an
entertainer not a thinker.

~~~
losteric
Communication friction, price and latency, has always shaped the structure and
reach of our communities. Historically, friction that meant most people
primarily interacted with "nearby" humans with differing perspectives...
moderating new ideas through socialization.

What's changed is that social media, and the internet at large, has finally
brought the cost of global peer-to-peer communication to (effectively) zero.
That's huge! Our tribal boundaries are now fully decoupled from distance. We
can define our community with complete freedom and precision while our phones
grant near ubiquitous access to those we have selected.

On one hand, I know this revolution helped some LGBT friends find themselves
and stay strong growing up in "traditional" communities... but the same tools
also enable bigotry and conspiracies to fester in our backyards.

Hyperpartisanship is not new, but the degree of tribalization enabled by the
internet feels new. Differences are being reinforced along every axis of
opinion, with a much weaker socialization factor. It's not just team A vs B...
the various groups of A are fighting themselves, all the variations of B
through Z, and hordes of bots. It's an unending unwavering battle royale.

How do we compromise or reach consensus in a system like that? How can we turn
this diverse melting pot into progress, mass adoption and acceptance of new
ideas? And how, if at all, can we self-regulate things like bigotry without
oppressing progress?

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tw1010
Niall wanted some way to cash out on his vast knowledge about history, and
decided to go after the current hype, facebook. He's not actually worried,
he's just following the current public anxiety, and gets to promote his book
in the process (nothing necessarily wrong with that, but it's not real fear,
and it creates a fear bubble). I'm just making this up, but that's what it
feels like based on listening to his interviews (and by reading his most
recent book, which feels super rushed and/or like not a lot of love went into
it).

~~~
akamaka
That’s exactly how I felt about a previous book of his, _The Ascent of Money_
, which was released at the height of the financial crisis in 2008 and then
rushed into production as a TV documentary. One review accurately called it
“rushed and uneven”.
([https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ascent_of_Money](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ascent_of_Money))

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nkurz
We talk about "internet witch hunts", but I hadn't really considered that it
might be useful to compare the situation with actual historical witch trials:

 _Ferguson said that the phenomenon of polarization was predictable, when one
considers similar historical events._

 _To understand our time, he said, you must go back 500 years to the early
16th century, when the printing press became widely available. It allowed a
greater volume of content to be produced and disseminated with a lower cost of
communication._

 _The Mark Zuckerberg figure of that time was Martin Luther, the leader of the
Reformation. Luther’s axiom, he said, was that if you could read the Bible and
have a direct relationship with God, everything would be awesome. But what
ensued was 130 years of conflict due to polarization. Half of the population
wanted to reform the church, the other half didn’t, he said._

 _The most insidious manifestation of this polarization was in the persecution
of those considered to be witches. The “witchcraft mania,” Ferguson said, was
not just in Salem, Massachusetts; it swept across Europe._

 _Today we see a similar manifestation in the context of fake news that
spreads faster than true news, which undermines our confidence in the media._

As an aside, in the unlikely event that you are passing through the small
Arctic town of Vardø, Norway, there's a stunningly understated monument to the
"witches" killed there in the 17th century. The main museum is a long raised
hallway, with dangling light bulbs illuminating excerpts from the court
records of each person that was executed. It's in historical order, so one
reads of one person who accuses another of witchcraft leading to their
execution, who then in turn is denounced and executed, who then in turn is
denounced and executed, layer after layer after layer. It's really quite a
chilling museum, and a testament to a legal process gone awry:
[https://www.iconeye.com/architecture/features/item/9674-pete...](https://www.iconeye.com/architecture/features/item/9674-peter-
zumthor-s-vardo-memorial)

~~~
chrononaut
_Today we see a similar manifestation in the context of fake news that spreads
faster than true news, which undermines our confidence in the media._

Has it really? I would think the editorial quality of any publication has not
noticeably diminished over the last three years.

Has most of the "undermining of confidence in the media" been really been a
manifestation to dislike publications that one already despised, such that
there is now just more people openly stating it and that now more people are
agreeing with it?

At the same time, I am interested if there have been any studies performed
that compared the populations perceptions of particular publication's accuracy
/ quality over time compared to an unbiased organization independently (if one
such exists) assessing the quality of the reporting over time.

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Bucephalus355
Worth noting the book “The Great Illusion” by Norman Angell published in 1909
in the years before WWI. The book is considered probably the best example of
Europe’s delusions regarding the nature of peace and war before 1914.

One of Angell’s main ideas was that trade between countries rendered them so
close, increasing familiarity and contact, that war would be extremely
unlikely because of decreased nationalist sentiment. He believed that contact
and connection reduces disagreement.

His book did not really account for the fact that increased connection and
encounters simply give you many more things with which to disagree and
possibly go to war over.

Charles Lindbergh years later took up this idea again, believing the airplane
to be a utopian machine of unity between peoples and countries. He believed it
so much he was helping the Nazis and the Luftwaffe well into 1938 without
issue.

Finally I want to note I see a concerning amount of similarity between the
utopianist rhetoric that came from physicists and aircraft engineers in the
1920’s and those of software engineers today, and I think this is worth
considering. Those inventions, while incredible, played a key role in one of
the most brutal wars of all time.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Illusion](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Illusion)

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jelling
It's refreshing to see social networks put into a historical context of human
behavior. Sites that I otherwise respect routinely run columns on social media
where I can't tell if the author is completely ignorant of history or if
they're blithely ignoring it.

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gumby
> Luther’s axiom, he said, was that if you could read the Bible and have a
> direct relationship with God, everything would be awesome. But what ensued
> was 130 years of conflict due to polarization. Half of the population wanted
> to reform the church, the other half didn’t, he said.

It's hard to say that this is bad. Before Luther, there was one system, like
it or not. With/after Luther, some people undertook to reform the system. You
can argue one side was better than the other but the fact is that under the
first system one set of power brokers ran everything. After, there was at
least some diversity.

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tropshop
I'm not sure why the content is lazy loaded on scroll. Extremely jarring,
can't skim, can't estimate the length of the article. Closed tab.

