
In social networks, group boundaries promote the spread of ideas (2015) - triplesec
https://www.phys.org/news/2015-06-social-networks-group-boundaries-ideas.html
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highd
Modern discourse is clearly affected by the "leveling" of communication that a
popular internet provides. People frequently interact with very large
conglomerations of people, rather than primarily with their geographic
neighbors. This analysis suggests to me an explanation for why massive
internet inter-communication can be a bad thing for discourse.

And this matches intuition in the real world for different reasons - friend
groups formed mostly by environmental and proximal circumstance result in more
diverse yet still tightly-knitted communities than, say, a niche hobbyist
subreddit might. So you have the opportunity to be exposed to new ideas by
trusted members of your in-group.

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observation
Should mass communication be deliberately dampened?

Examples:

1\. Ban on Televsion News during the weekend. 2\. High taxes on mass produced
media for general audiences. 3\. Internet time limit restrictions for social
media.

I'm sure I'm not the first to suspect talking all the time to everybody is
unhealthy. It sounds like the inverse of autism. I believe surveys show the
hyper-social media users are often mentally unstable.

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highd
It seems difficult to imagine any reasonable means to restrict communication
like this, especially government imposed. Alternate possibilities:

1\. People eventually tire of mass online communication and use it less. One
can hope! 2\. The continued abuse of public internet space by interested
groups (political and commercial astroturfing, etc.) results in a drastic
decline in the quality of public internet content (tragedy of the commons) and
people migrate to more niche semi-private communities.

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observation
I know that, and think it immoral myself.

I want to see better ways for people to 'opt out', because otherwise they will
begin making demands that put other people's options in jeopardy.

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Joking_Phantom
Kinda reminds me of how the United States is set up. California and Alabama
are composed of different populations, differ on key issues, but still share
many overarching principles and laws.

Group identities are key to the functioning of society - we cannot destroy
them, nor should we endeavor to do so. Instead, the differing identities of a
people should serve to unite them, with diversity becoming a strength shared
by those who identify with multiple groups.

More concretely, within a workplace, as long as each different group of people
is connected somehow by another group, things should work out fine.

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stefco_
This also seems to be the equilibrium solution that academia has reached. You
have your specialization, but your whole department has events and colloquia
and discussions meant to stir the pot and move information between groups.

