It's an extremely accurate definition of what we genuinely believe. There is no ulterior motive. There is no hidden agenda. It's very simple, and we're all confused why it even needs to be a 'thing.'
Yelling about the "woke" left, is basically like yelling about the "ayran" right. Nobody disagrees that these things are bad, it's just that they're irrelevant.
When the mainstream left treats the woke left like as the ayran right, let me know. And I think the ayran right is more deplorable than the woke left, though probably less harmful at this point
At some point we'll need to deal with the fact that the clubs self-reinforce any beliefs the tribe wants to put forward, and isolate them further from society, creating true problems for actually running said society.
At some point we'll need to have a psychological nuclear weapon disarmament... the question is when and how, not if.
The big dilemma is which rules should be written to make sure that republicans are deradicalized by democrat information, without democrats having to be traumatized by propaganda from the cesspools of the republicans, isn't it?
I think it just delays a bigger problem, kicks the can down the road.
In 2-4 years' time, we'll have an even bigger festering cesspool of self-reinforced beliefs than ever before, and an more difficult time having rational discourse among our society about how to run it.
How do we get back from where we are now? I have to admit, my social skills are lacking, my patience is low; and the problem just seems so vastly overwhelming that I can't imagine where to even begin.
I suggest that we fully acknowledge in comprehensive, "dimensional & behavioural complexity", that which lies at the bottom of all of these problems: the human mind. [1]
And then, to ensure that all that hard work does not go to waste, modify the HN guidelines (or, introduce a brand new, experimental mode that includes these modified guidelines, to be used when discussing culture-war topics) such that ignoring this aspect of reality is explicitly forbidden.
There's no way of knowing whether this technique would fix the problem unless we actually try it. But as long as all social media platforms refuse to try this (or similar experimental ideas), choosing instead to only pay lip service to the idea of trying new ideas to improve the situation, I do not foresee humanity escaping this mud pit that we have built for ourselves.
[1] This is the fundamental root problem, but there are a few subordinate ideas that should be addressed simultaneously to maximize the chances of success.
Is there no possibility that you may be somewhat mistaken?
Note:
- your first statement references the entirety of HN; it is plausibly likely that you have not consumed (and comprehensively perceived with complete accuracy, and remembered) the entirety of forum discussions on HN
- your second statement involves events in the future - as far as I know, the ability to accurately predict the future in a multivariate scenario has never been proven
If I am incorrect on either of these two items, I would appreciate any corrections you may have.
That's a good place to start with these kinds of questions.
I figure this is true simply because of the remarkably low population of Hacker News compared to society at large; there's simply not enough people here for changes to this specific site to make an impact on the larger social media ecosystem.
To be more realistic, I'll estimate that getting the social media platform Hacker News exactly perfect from a systemic standpoint might have an impact on around 0.001% of the societal social media problem. We've then got 99.999% more to impact.
And if you believe that people reading Hacker News are somehow more influential to society than the average social media user or something... well, we would not then have that belief in common.
>>> How do we get back from where we are now? I have to admit, my social skills are lacking, my patience is low; and the problem just seems so vastly overwhelming that I can't imagine where to even begin.
I suggested a novel idea:
>> I suggest that we fully acknowledge in comprehensive, "dimensional & behavioural complexity", that which lies at the bottom of all of these problems: the human mind.
>> And then, to ensure that all that hard work does not go to waste, modify the HN guidelines (or, introduce a brand new, experimental mode that includes these modified guidelines, to be used when discussing culture-war topics) such that ignoring this aspect of reality is explicitly forbidden.
What I meant by the root problem being the human mind, is this commonly recurring issue where people make stuff up, and assert it as fact.
> In [physics or engineering education], a Fermi problem, Fermi quiz, Fermi question, Fermi estimate, order-of-magnitude problem, order-of-magnitude estimate, or order estimation is an estimation problem designed to teach dimensional analysis or approximation of [extreme scientific calculations], and such a problem is usually a back-of-the-envelope calculation.
> Example questions given by the official Fermi Competition:
> "If the mass of one teaspoon of water could be converted entirely into energy in the form of heat, what volume of water, initially at room temperature, could it bring to a boil? (litres).", "How much does the Thames River heat up in going over the Fanshawe Dam? (Celsius degrees).", "What is the mass of all the automobiles scrapped in North America this month? (kilograms)" [2][3], Possibly the most famous Fermi Question is the Drake equation, which seeks to estimate the number of intelligent civilizations in the galaxy. The basic question of why, if there were a significant number of such civilizations, ours has never encountered any others is called the Fermi paradox.[4]
These are pretty extreme, needle in a haystack class problems. Funny thing though: I seem to be able to find "needles in a haystack" on HN with about 75% of my comments. This is suggestive that perhaps these needles may not actually be as rare as you perceive, and claim (with evidence that consists of nothing but rhetoric).
> I figure this is true simply because of the remarkably low population of Hacker News compared to society at large; there's simply not enough people here for changes to this specific site to make an impact on the larger social media ecosystem.
My thinking is that if one group of people could learn how to have honest(!), non-imagination-presented-as-fact based discussions about the nature of reality (which includes massive amounts of unknown variables), something no other social media site (or perhaps even individual human being) that I know of seems to be able to accomplish in the year 2020, perhaps this knowledge could be shared to other subreddits, and we could get some sort of a grassroots anti-delusion movement underway. I know of several subreddits that have been trying different things to get people to stop fighting, I doubt they'd turn their nose up at a technique with a proven track record.
> To be more realistic, I'll estimate that getting the social media platform Hacker News exactly perfect from a systemic standpoint might have an impact on around 0.001% of the societal social media problem. We've then got 99.999% more to impact.
More imagination-based numbers, with no concern for the details of the underlying idea, or what might actually be possible. No concern or intent to improve the world. Must. Win. Argument. Must. Support. Tribe.
> And if you believe that people reading Hacker News are somehow more influential to society than the average social media user or something... well, we would not then have that belief in common.
Alternatively, you could consider the possibility that you are not omniscient, and that someone you disagree with may actually have a valid point.
Not at all! I very much appreciate any corrections you may have.
> More seriously, I think you would be surprised at the variety of human experience that’s not covered by your ideals here.
I'm not sure what you are getting at here. I am not talking about my "ideals", or at least that is not the primary focus of my comments. The primary focus of my comments is this phenomenon whereby people have an extremely strong aversion to discuss what is Actually True.
If you believe I am mistaken in this, I would be more than happy to discuss it at great length. Perhaps I have some imperfections in my analysis that I am unable to see, and you can point them out so I can then improve upon my model.
I welcome being proven wrong - I encourage people to do it.
Sever the internet connection to certain, key nations. Or even targeted strike stuff. Foreign propaganda is not to be tolerated as “free speech” like it came from a citizen.
> Sever the internet connection to certain, key nations.
And to nations that have connections to those key nations, right? Because encryption and steganography and VPNs all exist, and the amount of dangerous foreign propaganda in tweets is probably only being generated at a few bytes per minute.
Someone should write a techno-thriller set in your alternate universe where spies are investigating a WiFi connection between north and south Cyprus, with the endpoint in the north connecting via Turkey to Russia, and the endpoint in the south connecting via Ireland to the US. It could be a fun read if you can suspend disbelief.
Reinstitute the draft, or national service where every young kid has to spend a year fighting along side people they didn't know before hand, far from home. Or spend a year traveling the US doing worthwhile projects (fixing up broken jungle gyms in schools) again with people they didn't know.
It is a little bit less likely that you dislike heartland America when you spent a year working with Fred the Farmboy before you headed to Princeton. Fred could probably swap stories with a kid from the ghetto and may be they would come out with the understanding that they were not quite as different after all.
Of course, like any draft it would be a huge violation of the persons personal freedom.
(Replying again as I can't seem to edit my original).
> It is a little bit less likely that you dislike heartland America
This is a strawman. Relatively few people "dislike" heartland America in and of itself. The objection has always been to people voting for bigotry, and on top of that, it's always to their own detriment, plus it is all too common that it is "heartland America" that are the ones who need to exercise more empathy and are the most likely to disparage "others" and outsiders because they are not exposed to them. There's a reason people become more liberal and in favor of progressivism as they move towards higher population centers and become more educated and exposed to the rest of the world.
> It is a little bit less likely that you dislike heartland America when you spent a year working with Fred the Farmboy before you headed to Princeton.
I find it interesting you choose this as an example, and not rather say that "Fred the Farmboy" might actually see those
"librul coastal elites" or "ivory tower intellectuals" as people like himself. The latter are terms I've actually seen used.
But on the topic of a Civilian Conservation Corp, yes, definitely bring that back!
I choose the example because I assumed that there would be more people here who would be "coastal elites" than farm boys.
In addition I think that if you are destined for the elites then it is more important that you understand (really understand) the life of the others, than if are apprenticing to be an electrician.
> In addition I think that if you are destined for the elites then it is more important that you understand (really understand) the life of the others, than if are apprenticing to be an electrician.
Two things here:
1. What exactly makes you think the college educated are exposed to fewer points of view than those from the "heartland"? Everything I've ever seen points to the opposite being true, where going to an institute of higher learning puts you in touch with a *vast* array of different people, and living in an urban center does the same. Which leads me to my second point:
2. Why exactly do you think it's not important for someone from the "heartland" to exercise empathy or be exposed to other viewpoints? It's pretty obvious that a large factor in the problems of today is tribalism and "othering", which gets pretty quickly destroyed by exposure to those same "others", something you don't often get in the "heartland."
What is there to understand when two people’s assumptions are different and in conflict with each other?
For example, someone wanting others to act according to their religion.
I spent decades with my parents, but there’s nothing to “understand”. They speak a different language (even though we have the ability to use the same words) and live in a different world than me.
If we can think about 5% of the population who simply have different life situations and backgrounds having a better appreciation for why they think what they do, and those 5% become less extreme and more understanding of compromising for the benefit of others, then you've just changed society completely.
> I find it interesting you choose this as an example, and not rather say that "Fred the Farmboy" might actually see those "librul coastal elites" or "ivory tower intellectuals" as people like himself.
I wonder, if he had instead chosen your example, would you no longer have found it interesting, but other people would then have found his new comment interesting (who did not find the one he made here interesting).
Abstractly, it is quite interesting what humans find to be interesting, and how that interest level can be so easily inverted by simply injecting of new values into various seemingly innocuous variables.
Well, I find it interesting anyways. But most other people I've encountered seem to kind of consider such topics to be....~"not appropriate for discussion in polite company", in that they often have strong negative reactions to the very idea, if not outright demanding that you cease engaging in discussion of such topics ("starting flame wars" is the formal terminology used during Overton Window enforcement) - and if you do not, they themselves will disengage from discussing the topic (while maintaining an air of extreme confidence and certainty in their alternative ideas). "Gaslighting", "whataboutism", "gish galloping", etc are some of the most common rhetorical accusations that I have experienced in my journeys (if any are given at all that is).
My apologies; I was being sarcastic, but my writing ability does not match my intent, which in any case was not in good faith.
My point is that many on the right claim there is no attempt at empathy from the left, meanwhile there are many on the right (not always the same people, I acknowledge) who will say "fuck your feelings" and use (from their POV) epithets against leftists instead of addressing grievances or even ideologies.
I myself have what I consider enough perspective on the heartland; my parents grew up in Iowa, and both sets of my grandparents worked in the agricultural fields. This is not to claim I have first hand knowledge, but I am white and I recognize the many aspects of privilege I am afforded. I feel I have enough of that perspective.
Meanwhile, it seems glaringly obvious that many on the right are not even making attempts at understanding why BLM exists, and can't seem to comprehend systemic racism, because they've never been a victim of it. FFS, when Bloomberg admitted to stop and and frisk, that I felt should have been a turning point. For decades people of color have been telling us about this, but they were commonly dismissed by white americans as imagining it.
To elaborate on why I am not willing to empathize further than I have, I have no wish to empathize with bigotry. One set of my grandparents were also homophobes, which was laid bare in their will when their estate left out my homosexual brother completely. I hope I don't have to cite Popper's paradox of tolerance.
"Fred the farmboy" wants understanding and compassion? I'm all for that, I even want to put policy in place to help! But I have zero tolerance for intolerance, and will call it as I see it.
Oh, I meant no ill will to you personally, my comment was more so an observation about human nature in general.
My point is that there is a widespread phenomenon whereby individuals notice logical or other shortcomings in members of their various outgroups, and then write comments on forums about this behavior in a manner that implies (if not outright asserts as fact) that this sort of behavior is overwhelmingly limited only to members of the outgroup, and does not exist within their ingroup.
And if one is in a community with a user base that is ideologically homogeneous, this one-sided, inaccurate description of reality often becomes kind of a constant theme that reappears in thread after thread, in turn (so they say) reinforcing these beliefs in the minds of those who regularly read such comments.
Regarding "found it interesting", it can also be observed within such communities how certain ideas catch the attention of people, but abstractly ~identical ideas (but differing at the object level due to different values of variables) go unnoticed.
If one observes these discussions carefully over a long period of time, patterns of behavior become extremely apparent: basically, textbook confirmation bias, information bubbles (and the flawed descriptions of and predictions about reality that inevitably result), and so forth and so on. Of course, this shouldn't be too surprising.
But the interesting part is if one happens to wade into such a conversation, drawing people's attention to the manifestation of these abstract behaviors within the current thread. At this point, one would logically expect a reaction something like surprise and then realization (due to HN being largely composed of highly logical people with above average levels of integrity and honesty). However, this is not what actually occurs, the majority of the time (in my experience as an ideological outlier). What actually occurs usually more so resembles what one would see on "less high quality forums" than here (rhetoric, "mental gymnastics", insults, logical fallacies, etc etc etc). Of course, this is just human nature in action, but still - it's weird, I don't see why we can't do better (than other communities), and I really can't wrap my head around why we wouldn't want to do better than other communities. And yet, here we are (not you...I am speaking in general).
> To elaborate on why I am not willing to empathize further than I have, I have no wish to empathize with bigotry.
> But I have zero tolerance for intolerance, and will call it as I see it.
I completely agree with the sentiments of what you've written here. However, I wonder if you are as good at exercising these beliefs as you perceive (I'm making no accusation, I am merely discussing the idea - I too deserve the very same cross examination, and encourage anyone to do so).
Let's start with defining some terms:
bigotry - stubborn and complete intolerance of any creed, belief, or opinion that differs from one's own
truth - the true or actual state of a matter; conformity with fact or reality
epistemology - the theory of knowledge, especially with regard to its methods, validity, and scope. Epistemology is the investigation of what distinguishes justified belief from opinion
perception - the act or faculty of perceiving, or apprehending by means of the senses or of the mind; cognition; understanding.
prejudice - preconceived judgment or opinion; an adverse opinion or leaning formed without just grounds or before sufficient knowledge
So, a non-controversial example of bigotry would be racism, which typically involves some variation of racist individuals forming negative conclusions of POC (individually, or as a group) based on preconceived ideas, without just grounds or before sufficient knowledge. Racism is a pretty easy one to spot, everyone here has consumed plentiful educational material, and most likely engaged in several conversations on the matter.
Now let's examine another group that is often subject to bigotry, even here on HN: conspiracy theorists.
1. Do you happen to have a personal opinion on conspiracy theorists?
2. Do you have an opinion on the nature of typical discussions here on HN related to conspiracy theorists?
And before you answer, please note:
a) I went to the trouble of stating definitions for several terms above, but really only made use of [prejudice] thus far.
b) It has been my experience that such questions are typically responded to with rhetoric, evasiveness, character attacks (insinuations of bad faith, gish-galloping, etc). I would prefer that this conversation does not fall victim to that pattern, but rather, follows a more honest, curious, and productive path (which I believe is one of the more important things that is missing in the world).
That and you can instantly find a huge tribe. In the past you had to deal with others around you as well, which challenged ideas. Now you plug in to this huge tribe of anonymous people around the world and assume you’ve found the truth.
I see it as the opposite: this may be how a technical network is supposed to work, but it's not how a society is supposed to work.
The internet has created the ability for any given subculture to discover instant validation and reinforce their beliefs into a tribe, which further solidifies and extremifies those beliefs.
It's a psychological power almost equivalent to a nuclear reaction: beliefs and ideas that might have naturally died out pre-internet are instead amplified and spread, and dug deeper into peoples' minds.
This is a critical time to be in tech, but not for the growth: for the need to design solutions to that problem. Censorship is a primitive attempt at stopping this psychological nuclear reaction; people are finding ways around it. We need a bigger, better solution to the reaction, lest society destroy itself through unfettered tribalism.
> The internet has created the ability for any given subculture to discover instant validation and reinforce their beliefs into a tribe, which further solidifies and extremifies those beliefs.
I don't believe this is true. I remember "Ye Olde Days" (TM) of the Internet. You went to an independent forum or mailing list that supported your interest (video games, music, politics) and then you argued with everyone in your "tribe" about video games and music and politics regardless of the purpose of the forum (which is hilarious and endearing to me). You had friends and you had frenemies but you didn't have strangers. It was nice. It was a community. Some interest brought you all together but you didn't stay there solely for that interest. You stayed for the people.
Now what do we have? Complete corporate domination and centralization. All interests are segmented into hashtags and subreddits but exist in the same super-massive platform. And there conversation is moderated by two entities. Moderators and the mob. There is no community anymore because the community is too fluid and too large (sometimes its everyone on the internet). You don't know the people you argue with. And so argument can never be taken on good faith.
You know, I had more stuff written but can't quite complete the thought in words. I think I'll just make an alternative.
You're right. The way we design our social platforms has a gigantic impact on how people see each other, and talk to each other, and the impact that has on us.
Perhaps the problem isn't the self-reinforcement, but rather the platforms being designed more on instantaneous engagement and addiction rather than talking and human-level discussion.
We've devolved internet discourse into very simplistic, unintelligent, instant gratification that's friendly to advertising and monetization.
That makes a lot more sense, and why I think it's so important to think of this problem as a much bigger systemic ecosystem. The design of a platform or a system impacts how people behave; the ones we have now have just the right mix of characteristics to cause this sort of insular tribalism.
Screamy and thirsty seem to be innate to most (important) human discussions. So we can throw those out. They're irrelevant to the platform problem if the platform didn't create them (amplification is not relevant either in my mind).
So then, did users "choose" censored, algorithmic ones. Technically... but I think the nature of the censoring and the algorithms changed. It went from pulling spam and porn to pulling "harmful" content. The algorithm went from "WHERE user_id IN ..." to "curation".
I don't think those things are necessarily bad or evil. But these things started as open platforms to connect everyone. Now they're reverting to "communities" and people are adapting. People are forming "communities" on different "platforms".
The whole social media marketplace is so muddled and ripe for disruption. Network effects are bogus. Its just an excuse incumbents and academics use to rationalize their dominance post hoc. Twitter, Facebook, Parler, the rest will fail and fail fast with the right alternative.
The worst argument for designing an experience is that users want it.
We can do far better.
But I get your point. Realistically this has to be a societal change that demands better social media platforms, not something just thrown into the market with no demand.
> The worst argument for designing an experience is that users want it.
This statement may be the crux of disagreement in the culture wars as well. To me this is an alien and hostile idea against all that can be good. I'm sure you have some reasoning based on an experience behind it, but it's very likely one of those irreconcilable differences of interests that we have conventions and civilization to navigate and negotiate around. I don't think we persuade each other, but rather, negotiate boundaries. Those boundaries are what we understand as tolerance.
I am just a user experience designer. There is a wide, wide rift between what users desire and what will actually solve their problems. I'm paid to reconcile that difference.
I do not intend to design society. But then, people are, as we speak. I don't know what's better--letting them design for what people want regardless of what it does to society, or designing for a society that's better regardless of what individuals desire.
We're primitive creatures. All of us, myself included. We're mostly run by our lizard brains, going after what spurts the happy chemicals into our brains.
I don't think society should be shaped to battle against human nature; but I certainly don't think uncontrolled human nature should shape society. As in all things, a balance.
The only community you have is your friends, and your friends usually have similar beliefs to you. So the space where you could have people with significantly different political views meet on the same terms is gone.
The point is that your friends don't always have similar beliefs to you. You don't think rednecks in the south play video games or soup up their cars or listen to rock and roll, the same as a Biden voter from Los Angeles?
So if you set up a forum for fans of the Atari, you get all kinds. They get to know each other. And then they talk about whatever.
But several things have smashed that all to pieces.
The first and main problem is that everything is a single site with millions of people now. You can go over to /r/atari and talk about Atari, but if you try to talk to any of those people about climate change they'll direct you to a different sub, which is full of entirely different people who you don't know or trust.
Then the sites that are independent are often operated by the company that makes the product. Sony might host a PlayStation forum, but they're going to boot you out for talking about politics or religion.
And then there's the fact that everything has become disposable. What do you do with your broken out of warranty Atari? Get a soldering iron. What do you do with a broken out of warranty iMac? Get a rubbish bin. But then there's nothing to build a community around, because everything is an appliance that you can't improve or repair.
Well said! Makes me think about the scope of tribalism before the internet. Without a doubt there was some, perhaps to a lesser degree though? I think certain views/opinions were more privately kept, perhaps shared with family members and close friends but very rarely shared with people outside their inner circle -- everything you said had your name attached to it and thus carried risks. I suppose you could write newspaper columns under a pseudonym, maybe mask your voice/face on radio or TV, but that was likely the most anonymous you could be. The internet is more or less anonymous by default. Should users be allowed to hide behind anonymity? I have to say yes because otherwise it just feels like 1984.
I think that it's possible to minimize tribalism by enabling civil discussion that shares many perspectives, with all hostility removed (and perhaps minimal emotions), and most importantly, let the audience form their own opinions. I really think that technology can solve this. Like all ideas, success is entirely dependent on implementation.
> I think that it's possible to minimize tribalism by enabling civil discussion that shares many perspectives, with all hostility removed (and perhaps minimal emotions), and most importantly, let the audience form their own opinions.
It is unsurprising that HN commentators think that the best discussion forum would be one without any emotion or hostility.
I think it is important, however, to guard against the hubris of porting your own model (whether it is American-style democracy or HN-style discussion forums) to every corner of the globe.
It might be apparent to us why this model is better, but it might be equally apparent to other, more combative internet commentators, why their model is better. When very smart people on both sides think that a different approach is best, it might be worth treading carefully.
I wonder if instead of it being a technical solution it will be a social one. That maybe in the future we will look at people constantly hooked on their phones and posting on social media the way we now look at smoking.
E.g where it was once totally normal to light up a cigarette in the elevator, the subway, the theater, etc, it is now acceptable to spend every moment of down time staring at your phone, scrolling.
If there is wider recognition of the negative (mental) health effects of that it will be less acceptable to do it in public, and less acceptable to espouse views or information learned from such a source.
Censorship is the last-resort solution. Ideally, you'd want to have control over people's education and social structures to prevent deviation before any censorship is even needed.
It's a real shame, because it seems we had reached a peak with the advent of mandatory state school and television. Now things are going downhill with more and more diverse subcultures allowed to build upon themselves and explore the limits and avenues for improvement in their ideas.
There has to be a way to keep people in line with our society's values while still giving them an impression of freedom.
Recognizing the satire, I agree with the implicit critique that you're making.
That said, I think we also have to recognize that there is no true vacuum of discourse - ie.
> There has to be a way to keep people in line with our society's values while still giving them an impression of freedom.
Even if this is not what we're moving to with public schooling, it is essentially what we're moving to in the private sphere post-Citizen's United, etc. only the values are dictated by those with wealth, rather than procedural, governmental power.
We need to start understanding that there is no such thing as a natural state of freedom; there is only freedom from and freedom to, within specific environmental constraints and power structures. We are always influenced--the question is just what influences we want to prevent, design, or control and which we want to leave undesigned or "free."
It's trying to explicit and bring grandparent's ideas to their logical conclusion. I dislike slippery slope-type arguments, but I fail to see how one can coherently agree with their comment and not mine.
I appreciate the sarcasm. Some responses in this thread are giving me a bad vibe. This site is full of users thinking they can somewhat engineer society towards what they think its a proper state and that aligns very well with the currant behavior of big social media corporations. I wonder when did we tech people deviated so much towards being aspiring tyrants...
It makes more sense when you think about the fact that society is already engineered to be in some state, and the power of social media companies appears to be influencing that in the wrong direction.
If you're okay with putting society to the whims of its current incentives and the corporations' addictive advertising-optimized technology, you're free to your opinion, but that seems even more dystopian to me than attempting to do better.
At the very least I think arguing for sustaining the current complex designed incentivized structured state of society is morally equal to arguing for some different state.
It's fanfic of that scene in 1984 where the person (whose name I forgot) responsible for designing NewSpeak talked about how the goal was to simplify language until dissent was impossible to reason about, much less discuss.
Very funny; not arguing for censorship here, but for the design of social media technology that reinforces humanity and not primitive dopamine hit engagement driven advertising. What people say is not the problem.
Anyway, we are already in a balanced system that keeps people in line with society's values while still giving them an impression of freedom. The question is just which direction you go from there.
The problem with your arguments is that they are full of assumptions of things that you say are good for society and humanity, while we don't actually have a scientific understanding of what the humanity is for to even be able to decide what is good or not to get there. Which, of course, makes all the arguments imply a power in someone's hands to decide what is "good" for humanity and society or what they are for as long as it's not "primitive dopamine hit engagement driven advertising", but someone more aligned with your ideals. I hope you can see how this is not much different from somebody else you don't align with having that power.
First, in no world am I arguing that I personally get to decide what is good or bad. Lord no.
Second, your argument devolves to everyone should be able to decide what to do for themselves or their company without discussion about what is good or bad for society or the environment at large.
So no, I can’t agree with that.
At some point we need to be able to discuss how to make society better. If that’s not allowed, then that’s not a society I want to live in.
Censoring and filtering ideas will just lead to evasion of the filters. It will never work, we need to embrace free speech and let people believe as they choose.
The long term solution might lie in educational technology. Can we find scalable ways to teach children critical thinking, epistemology, and metacognition?
The last two sentences say that censorship is not a functional solution to the problem and that we need to find something better, so I’d say very definitely no.
I’m not the person you responded to, of course, but I don’t see how you could’ve read their post and thought they were advocating for inescapable censorship.
It's not a gripe, it's a reality. I have no horse in this race other than the systemic outcome.
Censorship (or official annotation, let's call it) was an attempt to curb the tribalism or put some controls on the spread of it; I'm certainly saying that it will not work.
I can't imagine alternative solutions at this time, but we need to. It will likely be some sort of system we can't yet imagine, and it will likely need to be at the societal level of mutual agreement. Think less of controlling speech, more "wow cars can kill people, we should probably agree to some rules around driving them around."
I expect things will get much worse before those types of systems are put in place.
By saying I have no horse in the race, I'm saying that I'm trying to take an objective viewpoint on what is happening and what impact that has, not that I have no opinions or moral positions on the matter. Keep those separate.
Keep in mind also that censorship is a government matter: the government should not censor people; that's enshrined in the 1st amendment. But private platforms and companies have every right to design their communications systems the way they see fit, and I expect them to do so ethically with societal impact in mind.
I expect soon the government will need to enter into this race and take some wider action, but I don't know what that will be, nor how it will play with our constitution. It's going to be a wild ride as the psychological nuclear weapons we've created duke it out with the individual rights principles we've laid in stone hundreds of years ago. I can only hope we design some systemic solution that does not require that fight to take place.
And just to give an idea of the solution type I have in mind: right now the social network systems we have are optimized for addiction and engagement of content, and quick viral spread of content with minimal thought. Could we instead design systems that are more about human communication and understanding? Could we alter our existing platforms to tune down the addictive tribal dopamine hit in their nature? I bet that would have a large impact.
In other words, simply censoring speech without considering the design of the technology would be foolish. The platforms, not the speech, are the problem.
No. I'm saying that censorship isn't the long-term solution here, because it's untenable from a human rights perspective as well as simply a functional perspective (people don't like it).
We'll need to find something better, but it's difficult to imagine what shape that'll take at this point.
then I would say your vision is incoherent since you obviously aren't for small pockets "absolute free speech" but aren't willing to commit yourself to controlling speech ubiquitously which would be necessary to prevent the former.
I would say you're not looking wide enough here. Absolute free speech isn't a problem in isolation by any means; but there are impacts to the ability of that to grow into self-reinforcing belief that doesn't match reality. One appears harmless, like a single alpha particle; but the other is an impact akin to an alpha particle chain reaction, or nuclear explosion. Similar impact on society, I would argue.
Could we conceive of a way not to control speech, but to inform or educate or provide information in context--or do something, anything so that it doesn't have the power to self-reinforce and create psychological weapons of mass destruction? What if it's the design of our current social networks around instant engagement and addictive content that's the root of the problem? Could we change the nature and design of that platform without restricting the speech on it whatsoever?
I have to believe it's possible. I'm under no illusion that I know the answer, or that the answer is even something that we have a name for yet. This is not contradictory or incoherent, it's just yet unknown.
While I disagree with the GP, I think you are drawing a false dichotomy and there are multiple conceptions of free speech besides the negative, non-interferential, liberal one that would permit limits on some speech without "ubiquitous" control.
Take, for instance, limits on total expenditures on political speech over $1,000,000.
No. The post explicitly said that censorship isn't solving the problem and we need a better approach.
The problem is the asymmetry between bad-faith and good-faith action. In tightly-connected local societies that asymmetry is generally countered by reputation effects and limited scope of bad-faith action. In the worst cases, it's countered by societies being small enough that even when bad-faith ideas take over their spread is limited.
Technology has broken down the limitations. Information is spread by entities with no history or reputation at all (Twitter bots, for instance). The spread of bad-faith ideas is no longer limited spatially. The result of this is that obvious scams like QAnon (created to sell merchandise) thriving because there are now mechanisms to bypass all the natural limitations that used to constrain them throughout centuries of history.
Censorship is kind of like slapping a tourniquet on it. It may stop some of the worst symptoms, but it has a lot of terrible side effects and doesn't work that well anyway.
The biggest advances that need to be made are in recognizing that there is a problem in the first place, and that a "marketplace of ideas" is not equipped to deal with asymmetric bad actors. I don't know what the solution is, but "marketplace of ideas" has proven insufficient to deal with the real world. We need people to be looking for something better instead of claiming there is no problem.
While I agree with that, it all depends on which direction you look at it.
For example, how much of this reaction is caused by the earlier amplification of other ideas that would have just as easily died out?
I’ve been watching the political machine for a long time and one thing I can say for conservatives is that they are consistent in what they “say” they believe. It hasn’t changed much in years and I can at least respect that.
On the other side, there seems to be a new cause every week. Maybe it’s simply better use of technology, but most of what I see on Twitter seems to be messages designed to benefit the left. Whether it’s drawing attention to a subculture that feels marginalized or convincing that same group that everybody on the right hates them, it’s a pattern that’s really hard to deny. IMO Reddit is far worse that Twitter or FB in this respect too.
Nobody has the energy, time or capacity for the amount of things the right is supposed to hate.
I don’t think a different platform is going to change any of that. I think it’s just going to create a new channel.
It's disturbing to think the socio-technological phenomenon that let my fun, happy community grow to multiple 10k+ person conventions and hundreds of smaller ones worldwide also gave actual Nazis and various schools of white supremacy a new life.
The argument that we need to stop tribalism to preserve society is both an un-self-conscious conservativism and a more pernicious appeal to cultural homogenization, which is what the dominance of the platforms caused, and which these innovations are a reaction to.
There is no diversity in 140 characters of closely monitored claptrap, and there is no risk and opportunity in trust and safety. There is no culture in a homogenized overton window, and there is no innovation in walled gardens.
The very idea that we need to suppress ideas for fear that the ignorant masses may be exposed to them is a fatuous, aspirational elitism that is the very reason the platforms have become stagnant.
> The very idea that we need to suppress ideas for fear that the ignorant masses may be exposed to them is a fatuous, aspirational elitism that is the very reason the platforms have become stagnant.
There are ideas and then there are lies. I think the problem is the lies, not the ideas. If an idea, like that the Earth is flat, can only find support in lies, the idea will go away if people aren't free to lie.
To be clear, a lie is a proposition insincerely asserted with the intention of causing others to sincerely believe it.
Yes, but people who get annoyed by someone else's ideas just calls them "lies."
I, for instance, watched in astonishment as a relatively straightforward story about Hunter Biden's emails somehow became a Russian disinformation campaign.
I still vote Democrat, but it is the growth of exactly this attitude that you've identified that is causing me to move increasingly away from considering myself a "Democrat".
I can't see how people fail to notice the snobbish elitism underlying "we need to manage the discourse so that people's behavior is under control."
It's amazing how cyclical this sort of stuff is. Plato's Republic was enmeshed with a similar logic: that there is a natural way for society to progress, that human society is interfering with this natural way and that is a problem, and that we ought to have philosopher-kings (read: techies & politicians) to shape beliefs and discourse into a more natural (and thus "good") direction.
G.A. Cohen's writings on the history of philosophy have a scathing critique of this sort of thinking that I recommend.
I do not think we need to manage speech or control discourse whatsoever. If you think that's the idea here, you're not thinking deep enough about the nature of the systems that are problematic right now.
We've designed communication systems that are optimized for instant gratification, engagement, getting the dopamine hit of seeing things you agree with or angry at, and rapidly moving to the next. That's not speech, that's a designed system of attention seeking, all with the primary objective of getting eyeballs on advertisements and content primarily.
We've designed communication platforms that cause us to cease seeing each other as human beings, and instead condensed thoughts and memes that are simply repeated to conform and get reinforced for a quick natural drug.
I do not think we should control the discourse or have structural control over what's right or wrong to say or think; that would be absurdly dystopian.
I do think we need to change our systems to incentivize human context around that speech, and reinforce our own humanity in how we read and respond to it.
I think it's possible to design better platforms that don't bring out the worst in society, and that we should do so.
Anyone who has studied the history of philosophy would know that the arguments you are making are classics among defenders of censorship: limiting speech for the "sake of speech" (over attention-seeking), "incentivize the context", "reinforce our humanity." None of these exempt you from managing speech, you're just trying to launder your values to a higher level - like what "good speech" is or whether a given speech-act appropriately "reinforces our own humanity." Tune the knobs of the social media platform until it starts producing speech I am more comfortable with.
Indeed much of JS Mill's On Liberty (1859) was dedicated to responding to these and others.
> we need to change our systems to incentivize human context around that speech
Who is the "we" who "should" do so? How does that "we" coordinate so that everyone building these systems builds them in the same way?
And why should these systems be optimized for whatever extrinsic goal you like better than "attention seeking"? That is managing speech.
The key difference here is that the speech is already highly managed and influenced to a degree never before seen in history. To think otherwise would be foolish.
Twitter isn't some natural state of the world that is pristine and unassailable; Facebook isn't the square in the park where people can speak their voice, and other choose to listen, participate, or walk along. Neither are anything like a book or newspaper.
If you're saying we shouldn't optimize or manage or turn the dials of these systems, then that's accepting that the current management and optimization and dials are somehow, inexplicably, acceptable or natural.
Someone has designed these systems and is influencing speech with their decisions. I don't have any power over them, but someone does, and the dials and designs of the system and the type of speech and communication they reinforce or encourage will change over time.
What gives them, the designers of the systems, any more right to manage their own system and the speech on it by their design choices? Are we to simply accept the corporations' design of their systems without critique or argument?
Not taking any action is to accept the current action, which still influences society. Not managing systems is to accept the current state of those systems, which still manages speech.
I do not see any difference whatsoever in those paths, so I will argue for trying to improve the systems.
And that's paying $50 more than what is apparently already too much for almost equivalent gaming performance (slightly better after overclocking and the motherboard and cooler priced in above support that too)
