
Writer Neal Stephenson Thinks We've Gotten Dystopia All Wrong - greesil
https://www.wsj.com/articles/writer-neal-stephenson-thinks-weve-gotten-dystopia-all-wrong-11594389600
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Sylamore
For those on the wrong side of a paywall:
[https://outline.com/CJVH9a](https://outline.com/CJVH9a)

"I see people make blunders that I wish people had stopped making 10 years
ago: that tendency to see something that strikes an emotional chord and
immediately share it, like it, pass it on without thinking about it, without
considering whether it came from a human being, or a bot, or a troll, or a
political actor."

To me there's a lot of truth in this statement, so much of being online seems
to be driven by how to emotionally manipulate you, and to pull traffic by
being the 1st one out of the gate with a story by being the one passed around.
It doesn't feel like a very productive model for making any concrete progress.
If you try to be more engaged you end up exhausted due to the energy required
to cross check information for veracity.

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sharkmerry
> If you try to be more engaged you end up exhausted due to the energy
> required to cross check information for veracity.

This came up in a similar vein in the PG tweet thread yesterday. There is an
assumption when commenting that everyone has the same knowledge base and it
simply isnt true a large majority of the time.

I wonder if some kind of social media has tried only "sourced" comments. So
your comments can be more easily interpreted when you make a leading
statement. I presume then you just get into the weeds about what is and isnt a
source though..

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lurquer
Good ol' Neal Stephenson... I found HackerNews due to an offhand response made
in an interview when asked what message boards he frequents.

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seemslegit
William Gibson otoh thinks we're on the right track.

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greesil
Towards dystopia? Or away from it?

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seemslegit
Hmm, which one has megacorps with private armies, runaway AIs and hackers
hustling for a living ?

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greesil
That's a very specific dystopia. There are probably very many other kinds.

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thebigspacefuck
Paywall free version: [http://archive.is/zr91c](http://archive.is/zr91c)

