[HN Gopher] Some biologists and ecologists think social media is...
___________________________________________________________________
Some biologists and ecologists think social media is a risk to
humanity
Author : Tomte
Score : 162 points
Date : 2021-06-26 16:34 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.vox.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.vox.com)
| mudil wrote:
| It sure feels thought provoking to read an article or a paper
| that essentially predict how the future will unfold, or what we
| need to do to prevent something from developing in the future.
| And yet, the future is inherently unpredictable, and these
| exercises in predicting fail more often than not. Even if there
| is something that could be predicted becomes the reality, the
| degree of expression of that reality could not have been
| predicted.
| thethethethe wrote:
| This might be an unpopular opinion but I am getting very tired of
| academics thinking they can comment cross discipline and
| journalists somehow think it is worthy of writing an article
| about. This scientist isn't bringing any interesting, new ideas
| to the table, they are just repeating the same talking points
| pushed by mainstream "liberal" politicians.
|
| > My sense is that social media in particular -- as well as a
| broader range of internet technologies, including algorithmically
| driven search and click-based advertising -- have changed the way
| that people get information and form opinions about the world.
| And they seem to have done so in a manner that makes people
| particularly vulnerable to the spread of misinformation and
| disinformation.
|
| This is such an unbelievably shallow take. Much of the "truth"
| mainstream liberals have been pushing in the past year has turned
| out to be false. In the past, before the internet and social
| media, the media lied to the public all the time. It was probably
| easier because regular people didn't have a good way to spread
| primary information quickly. The media got most of their
| information from government press conferences and, if the
| government didn't like what an organization was saying, the
| government would stop inviting those journalists to those press
| conferences. There's a whole book about it, it's called
| Manufacturing Consent. That type of information control is no
| longer possible now that everyone can livestream from their
| phones to millions of people and the establishment is mad about
| it. Now they are trying to wrestle back control of information by
| writing think pieces about the dangers of "algorithms" and
| threatening tech giants with anti-trust action.
|
| Its ironic because I feel like these people are the reason social
| media is a threat to society. They want to use it to manipulate
| the public like they always have and are willing to go to great
| lengths to do so.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > This might be an unpopular opinion but I am getting very
| tired of academics thinking they can comment cross discipline
|
| If academics can't comment cross discipline, no one else can
| comment at all.
| thethethethe wrote:
| I never said that they cant, it's more that people are
| writing articles about their opinions when they are bringing
| nothing new to the table. Why doesn't vox write articles
| about a grocery store clerk or trucker's opinion on social
| media and society? Why does some biologist somehow know more
| about this stuff than other people who aren't sociologists?
| This is why conservatives think academics are snooty and
| elitist
| anigbrowl wrote:
| I am absolutely interested in the opinions of biologists
| and ecologists on this topic because they are in the
| business of studying complex systems, competing populations
| etc.
| thethethethe wrote:
| I'd be interested too if they wrote a paper about it
| instead of repeating mainstream talking points in a Vox
| article
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| I didn't know that being concerned about the impact of social
| media was strictly a liberal position.
| thethethethe wrote:
| Im not saying that it is, that is just the perspective that I
| believe this article is being written from. American
| conservatives are concerned about censorship, American
| liberals are concerned about "misinformation and
| disinformation". This article is firmly on the
| diss/misinformation side of the debate
| sitkack wrote:
| "Stewardship of global collective behavior."
|
| https://www.pnas.org/content/118/27/e2025764118
|
| Abstract
|
| > Collective behavior provides a framework for understanding how
| the actions and properties of groups emerge from the way
| individuals generate and share information. In humans,
| information flows were initially shaped by natural selection yet
| are increasingly structured by emerging communication
| technologies. Our larger, more complex social networks now
| transfer high-fidelity information over vast distances at low
| cost. The digital age and the rise of social media have
| accelerated changes to our social systems, with poorly understood
| functional consequences. This gap in our knowledge represents a
| principal challenge to scientific progress, democracy, and
| actions to address global crises. We argue that the study of
| collective behavior must rise to a "crisis discipline" just as
| medicine, conservation, and climate science have, with a focus on
| providing actionable insight to policymakers and regulators for
| the stewardship of social systems.
| grawprog wrote:
| I think social media needs to be redefined. What the average
| person thinks social media is is very different than what it
| actually is.
|
| I think a lot of people think big social media platforms are
| actually communication platforms, they're not. They're designed
| intentionally to be difficult to communicate on.
|
| That the not the purpose of them, it's in the name 'social media'
| they are the media, you are the social. They are creating media
| based on the things users post. They're not made to facilitate
| communication between friends, family, coworkers, etc...
|
| They are designed specifically for users to generate monetizable
| content and data. They use a veneer of 'connecting the world
| together' so users will generate content that drives clicks and
| makes them money.
|
| A true global communication platform would look nothing like the
| social media we have today. It would be designed around allowing
| people to communicate easily and freely, it would give you
| control over who and what you interact with and it would allow
| you to maintain granular levels of privacy.
|
| Ya know...like other systems designed to facilitate
| communications...like say the telephone system...
| v_london wrote:
| These are some very good points. For me the biggest problem
| with existing social networks is how difficult it is to get to
| know new people through the applications. Despite us spending
| more time online than being present on the physical world (this
| is probably also a problem, but one for another time), we get
| remarkably little real social interaction out of these hours
| spent.
|
| Good news is that the seeds of better social do exist. I'm
| trying to set up one of them, http://www.reason.so/ which will
| match people with similar interests into small (3-10 people)
| group chats with the intention of creating small communities
| where it's easy to discuss things you find interesting semi-
| privately (i.e. somewhere between a public Twitter thread and a
| private group message). By keeping the chats small you also get
| rid of clickbait, astroturfers and "thought leaders" who only
| want to build an audience instead of actually interacting with
| other people.
|
| The biggest problem with setting up a social network like
| Reason is probably monetarisation. People just aren't ready to
| pay for social media when Facebook, Clubhouse and co are free.
| coopierez wrote:
| That looks interesting. How do you plan on moderating the
| platform?
| krapp wrote:
| Social media is as successful as it is precisely because it
| works so well as a communications paradigm. No popular social
| media platform is difficult to communicate on, they draw in so
| many users because they're easy to use.
|
| My mother who can barely use Windows knows how to chat with me
| on Facebook. People use social media to communicate between
| friends, family, coworkers etc all the time. That's _how_ all
| of that monetizable data gets generated.
|
| Yes, the purpose of social media is to profit from user-
| generated content and data, but it still works as intended for
| 99% of people.
| ppf wrote:
| >it still works as intended for 99% of people.
|
| I would argue that it _feels_ like it works, for 99% of
| people. I strongly believe that "social media" is a low-
| quality and unsatisfactory replacement for meaningful social
| interaction and bonding.
| carapace wrote:
| > I would argue that it _feels_ like it works
|
| But that's effectively the same thing if you can't get
| users to change networks/platforms, eh?
|
| > I strongly believe that "social media" is a low-quality
| and unsatisfactory replacement for meaningful social
| interaction and bonding.
|
| Sure. It's easy-bake oven internet for non-geeks. But they
| don't care. The cupcakes taste fine (to them.)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easy-Bake_Oven
| krapp wrote:
| Social media was never intended to be a replacement for
| meaningful social interaction or bonding, any more than
| telephones or letter writing, or the generation of forums
| and personal websites it more or less replaced.
| ben_w wrote:
| I dunno, _replacing_ it was exactly the vibe I got from
| the Facebook people when my employers sent us to a
| Facebook dev conference in London.
|
| Whole thing creeped me out.
| grawprog wrote:
| That's not quite what I meant. Sure you can chat directly
| fairly easy through Facebook, but communicate is more than
| just that. Keeping to the Facebook example, much of the
| 'communication' is done through user or group wall posts.
|
| It is notoriously difficult to browse through, responses are
| sorted in non-intuitive ways, sometimes responses are hidden
| for no apparent reason, yet people regularly use it to
| communicate.
|
| When people post status updates or pictures or whatever,
| they're trying to communicate, how many times have you gotten
| status or upload notifications from people you haven't talked
| to in years, but it never showed you your best friend's new
| baby pictures or something like that?
|
| Twitter, It's designed around a character limit that strictly
| discourages longform communication. Yet, you get people
| trying to write blog posts using it, much to the chagrin of
| many HN commenters, and generally, the quality of most
| communication suffers greatly on twitter because of the
| inherent design.
| cvwright wrote:
| Wow, well said. We are trying to build something like this with
| Circles. https://github.com/KombuchaPrivacy/circles-ios
|
| It's E2E encrypted, so the server can't datamine your posts or
| meddle with your timeline. Built on Matrix underneath, so
| building federated communities will be straightforward.
|
| Let me know if you'd like to try it out.
| mrfusion wrote:
| > true global communication platform would look nothing like
| the social media we have today.
|
| Perhaps it would look like that brief golden age when everyone
| had a self hosted blog and we subscribed to each other with RSS
| readers.
| lovemenot wrote:
| Not everyone chose to do that then. and I don't think of it
| as a golden age.
|
| I wouldn't know how many deliberately chose not to self-
| promote in that way, but it is probably far more than those
| who chose to blog.
|
| I think system architecture is part of the present problem,
| but it is not at the root. Even during your so-called Golden
| Age the deeper issue was already manifest, though not yet
| scaled.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| softwaredoug wrote:
| I'm more interested in what would cause people to ignore their
| doctor and choose to believe whatever insane thing is on social
| media about, say, vaccines. There's always been places you could
| go and find nonsense. But what's different about this moment?
| What's drawing people to nonsense?
|
| IMO social media gets the blame, but it's just the vehicle for
| something darker happening. Something more about widespread
| nativism that distrusts an educated, cosmopolitan elite.
|
| Just because we see this on social media, doesn't make social
| media the cause.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| On the other hand... have you considered that your doctor,
| politicians and scientists may also effected by social media in
| their professional advice you are supposed to take because they
| are an authority?
|
| We don't need to get into all the times doctors have been way
| wrong. Now those people who might know that are within your ear
| shot, perhaps a little less than the lunatics who just want to
| talk shit.
|
| Maybe you are right, maybe it's not social media but an extreme
| polarization for another reason and social media is speeding it
| along? Maybe that's just what we do over time?
|
| Either way, I can't accept the appeal to authority you started
| with. I have personally be on the wrong side of a diagnosis and
| it's a good thing I didn't listen to my doctor in favor of
| information I discovered first on social media.
| relax88 wrote:
| I agree with your point, but social media certainly appears to
| amplify the effect, regardless of what the root cause may be.
|
| I wonder if perhaps the main problem is that social media
| changes the structure of human interaction by allowing those
| with similar ideas to congregate instead of being spread across
| the network in a diffuse manner.
|
| Like in the 1970s if you believed that Aliens were here on
| Earth and abducting people, the vast majority of people you
| interacted with would think you're a crackpot. It would be very
| difficult to find validation that your ideas are good.
|
| Today you simply need to open a Facebook group for UFO
| conspiracy theorists and you've got all of the confirmation
| bias you need. It has never been easier to find people who
| agree with you.
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| Umberto Eco said it best:
|
| "Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when
| they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without
| harming the community. Then they were quickly silenced, but now
| they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's
| the invasion of the idiots."
| cvwright wrote:
| I see no problem with letting idiots say idiotic things. As
| your quote shows, the world has survived the idiots for a
| very long time.
|
| The problem with social media is not that there are people
| saying things that are dumb or wrong.
|
| The problem is that the platforms survive by finding the most
| virulent idiocy and spreading it as widely as possible.
| MrRadar wrote:
| I think science fiction author Charles Stores put it best in this
| 2016 blog post[1]:
|
| > 2007 is when the human species accidentally invented telepathy
| (via the fusion of twitter, facebook, and other disclosure-
| induction social media with always-connected handheld internet
| devices). Telepathy, unfortunately, turns out to not be all about
| elevated Apollonian abstract intellectualism: it's an emotion
| amplifier and taps into the most toxic wellsprings of the
| subconscious. As implemented, it brings out the worst in us.
| Twitter and Facebook et al are fine-tuned to turn us all into
| car-crash rubberneckers and public execution spectators. It can
| be used for good, but more often it drags us down into the dim-
| witted, outraged weltanschauung of the mob.
|
| [1] https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2016/01/some-
| am...
| maverick-iceman wrote:
| Humans simply didn't evolve to live in communities as large as
| the ones which enabled us to really push our foot on the gas in
| terms of technological and civilization progress.
|
| People look at social media but it started waaay earlier, back in
| old Mesopotamia.
|
| Mesopotamic Urbanization>Ability to
| write>Journals>Newspapers>Radio>TV>Internet>Social Media
|
| Social media is just the last step in the process. Each and every
| step of the process contributed to make humans learn about how
| many humans are there in the world and this somehow makes us feel
| less special.
|
| When we wrap our minds around how many humans are there in the
| world, we feel insignificant and we feel like we don't matter at
| all. In a sense our sense of worth feels diluted by the immense
| quanity of people who are just like us.
|
| This creates anxiety and resentment. Our brain is still the same
| as we had back in pre-Mesopotamic eras.
| underseacables wrote:
| I think the global reduction in in person communication is a
| grave risk to humanity. We used to spend so much time together,
| doing things together, I'm talking in the office to the roller
| rink. Perhaps this just shows how old I am, but I really felt
| like that was better for humanity. Global communication and
| interaction is great and all, but I really miss sitting around
| the backyard with friends talking
| MeinBlutIstBlau wrote:
| Text based communication is the cause. Not social media.
| Anytime I go to a bar, people are paying attention their
| friends if something is going on, watching a band, or on their
| phone. Stranger interaction declines heavily the more people
| that are there.
|
| I've noticed this since the advent of texting. Not since the
| advent of social media. It's absurd to me honestly that someone
| would prioritize someone on their phone over the person who
| took the time and effort to physically be present and engage
| with them that day.
|
| >I really miss sitting around the backyard with friends talking
|
| I do as well. But it makes me wonder now, if people always have
| been flakey and unwilling to hang out with new people. I swear
| when I was a kid, asking someone to hang out or do something
| was easy, even if you met them one time. It's almost as if
| unlimited media and instant communication halts people from
| pursuing anything with other people unless they have something
| they dont.
| kingsuper20 wrote:
| >I think the global reduction in in person communication is a
| grave risk to humanity.
|
| You know, that could be.
|
| I'll present a meta-hypothesis. Diversity is generally
| dangerous and global communications/global movement drives
| everyone closer to hazardous behavior. Without the filtering of
| slow tempos, things get sporty.
| CodeGlitch wrote:
| > I think the global reduction in in person communication is a
| grave risk to humanity.
|
| I'm not sure I agree. For the most part of humanity, we have
| been at war, murdering each other, enslaving each other, and
| numerous other atrocities... Including nearly a nuclear war.
|
| The reduction in in person communication is due to the increase
| in global communication... Which I think is a net benefit.
| Social media is a bump in the road, and my hope is that we'll
| overcome the likes of Twitter soon.
| dantheman wrote:
| There's no reason to not do that; in fact its easier than ever
| to invite and plan things.
| tayo42 wrote:
| yeah I don't get that point, its not like people are deciding
| to scroll facebook instead of going to their friends bbq.
| maybe you could make the point that people pick activites for
| how good of a social media post it would make.
|
| But that's not even what this article is about, its
| discussing the spread of misinformation and social media
| being full of low information content.
| slipframe wrote:
| I think that ubiquitous global communication is the "Great
| Filter" that prevents intelligent civilizations from colonizing
| the universe. Before any intelligent species can hope to tackle
| a problem like that, they invent something like the internet.
| And once they've invented an internet, they become addicted to
| low latency communication and will never stray far from it, at
| least not in significant numbers. Even one year of latency
| becomes utterly intolerable once an intelligent species has
| been using an internet for a few generations.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > at least not in significant numbers
|
| That's ok. Insignificant numbers are more than enough to
| colonize an entire galaxy on geologic timescales.
|
| The thing about the "Great Filter" is that it is great. If
| you can even imagine an exception for your candidate filter,
| then it's not great enough.
| slipframe wrote:
| I'm thinking that if you sent a dozen people to Alpha
| Centari, it wouldn't make any difference because that is
| under the threshold of people that would be required to
| establish a self-sustaining colony that, in turn, sends out
| similar expeditions in the future.
|
| Do that sort of stunt as much as you like, it won't become
| something more. It's like trying to jump over a building by
| hopping a bunch. You can hop one time or one billion times,
| you won't clear the building because after each failed hop
| you're back to square one.
| nitrogen wrote:
| _under the threshold of people that would be required to
| establish a self-sustaining colony_
|
| Such a small group of people, armed with current genetic
| engineering and future artificial means of reproduction,
| could bring with them enough genetic diversity and
| reproductive capacity to reach colonizing scale.
|
| _You can hop one time or one billion times, you won 't
| clear the building because after each failed hop you're
| back to square one._
|
| Despite the first part of my reply, this point about
| minimum activation energy is relevant to a _lot_ of
| contexts, from escaping poverty to switching careers,
| from getting fit to overcoming medical conditions. This
| is a pretty good analogy that I might use in the future.
| slipframe wrote:
| I think genetics is actually the easy part. A few dozen
| or so people, selected for strong health, probably
| contain enough genetic material in their groins to start
| a colony. More would doubtlessly be better, but I think
| such things have been done by humans on earth before.
| Frozen eggs/sperm and women willing to be surrogate
| mothers help a lot too; you wouldn't need artificial womb
| technology, necessarily.
|
| The hard part I think is "playing factorio IRL" on a
| planet we weren't evolved to cope with. Bootstrapping
| industry sufficient even to create additional shelters
| would be very challenging. Maybe we could practice this
| on Mars.
| throwaaskjdfh wrote:
| I suspect the Great Filter is that sufficiently intelligent
| life has no interest in expansion, and doesn't communicate at
| all.
| ben_w wrote:
| Only stable if the whole society can force itself to not
| even want to expand.
|
| If 1 per billion wants to expand, out of a population of 8
| billion, you have 8 expansionists. If each of them breaks
| the social conventions and have twice as many offspring as
| the sustainers (and if the desire is heritable), after 30
| generations they're now equal in number to the sustainers.
| Cambridge University is in the order of 30 generations old.
|
| https://isogg.org/wiki/How_long_is_a_generation%3F_Science_
| p...
| birdyrooster wrote:
| Humans will never make it, but our computers will. The
| internet is the singularity now.
| bckr wrote:
| This comment is probably about 3 or 4 decades too early.
| dasil003 wrote:
| The media narrative that social media is the cause of these
| societal ills, especially environmental problems is laughable.
|
| The real danger technology poses is the increased leverage of
| ever-increasing automation consolidating in the hands of
| oligarchs who using it to enrich themselves and isolate
| themselves from the consequences with no regard for broader
| impact on the planet or future generations.
|
| Despite the problems with social media, removing it would have no
| beneficial effect on this trajectory towards environmental
| catastrophe. To the contrary, I still believe that lowered
| barriers to global communication and information access are
| generally good for society. Sure it hasn't resulted in becoming a
| nation of philosopher kings in the utopian ideal envisioned by
| those early Berkeley engineers, but the problems we are seeing
| are just the same old dance of populism and propaganda that have
| always been at the heart of large scale politics.
| bumby wrote:
| Don't you think social media impacts policy though?
|
| Take your example of automation. Wouldn't the way to counteract
| this be through smarter policy (like an automation tax as an
| off-the-cuff example).
|
| I think the angle of the paper is that social media makes
| enacting smart policy that much harder because weaponized
| misinformation can be used to stymie such policy.
| JoshTko wrote:
| There is simply too much noise/signal. We truly need a protected
| class of speech/news that cannot lie by law. This is similar to
| standardizing currency in order to facilitate trade without risk,
| except for information.
| ineedasername wrote:
| I don't think that would work. Whether or not something is a
| lie might only ever be known to the person who says/writes it.
| It could just be a mistake. Or part of the truth so incomplete
| as to make someone believe something that isn't true.
|
| Human speech just doesn't lend itself to the type of formalism
| required for this to be possible. If you want the closest
| approximation, look at legal jargon, specifically for
| contracts: It is a set of speech standards that evolved over
| centuries in an effort to reduced ambiguity in transactions. As
| a result, it is extremely verbose to the point of
| incomprehensibility by outsiders, and it's still possible to
| deliberately misuse it without easy detection.
| errantmind wrote:
| I understand the appeal but I don't want the government
| deciding what can and can't be said.
|
| Free speech is important for a free society, although we are
| moving away in recent years with all of the platform censorship
| and truth labeling. While this censorship is technically legal,
| these platforms are used like public land and are training
| generations of people to undervalue freedom of expression.
| gnull wrote:
| One crucial difference that seems to break the analogy is that
| money is a utilitarian tool. It doesn't have an absolute,
| "true" price or way of managing it. Anything that makes people
| feel happy and economy grow is good, and is "true" way to run
| money.
|
| Truth is not like that. It's must be absolute, and it should
| not be defined arbitrarily based on what improves people's
| well-being. (Or maybe it should, but that's going to be a
| different kind of truth.)
| polalavik wrote:
| But who will be the arbiter of truth?
| pessimizer wrote:
| We'll end up with licensing of journalists, just like every
| fascist state. People without a license will not be limited
| in what they can say, but they will be limited in what they
| can record or distribute, especially if it crosses state
| lines or borders. It'll be like what authoritarians say about
| driving: speaking may be a right, but being heard is a
| privilege. Free speech will be defined down to making noise
| with your mouth when outside of the company of anyone who
| might be offended or exposed to disloyalty.
|
| We'll be prosecuted for sending communications across state
| lines to mislead a child under Texas's Anti-Critical Race
| Theory statute.
|
| We're nearly there already, happy to ban clearly-marked
| Iranian, Russian, and Chinese state media. Those actions have
| already been used by private media to ban US journalists by
| associations as weak as sharing the same opinions as enemy
| media outlets.
| stuntkite wrote:
| I'm currently not that busy really. Let me know when the
| arbiter position opens up and I'll rearrange my schedule.
| forgotmypw17 wrote:
| Web of Trust
| wwweston wrote:
| Any society that is premised on the rule of law already has
| to solve that problem in the enforcement; there is no rule of
| law without arbitration of facts relating to whether the law
| is upheld or not.
|
| So, probably the courts. That's an imperfect solution, but it
| beats the hell out of the position that any attempt to
| arbitrate the truth is unacceptably oppressive.
|
| On another level: _everyone_ has an obligation to arbitrate
| the truth as honestly and ably as they 're capable, in every
| domain they have responsibility for, first and foremost in
| training themselves to be more careful about their own blind
| spots, tendencies, incentives, and limits, and then in
| exercising whatever influence and authority they have.
| errantmind wrote:
| The courts are specialists in the law, not the truth. I
| sincerely doubt them deciding what is true and what isn't
| "beats the hell out of the position that any attempt to
| arbitrate the truth is unacceptably oppressive". It would
| quickly turn into a dystopian nightmare.
|
| Have you never thought about why freedom of speech is an
| important and worthy fundamental right?
| wwweston wrote:
| > The courts are specialists in the law, not the truth
|
| You're confusing the fact that courts are legal
| institutions directed by legal professionals with the
| conception that's _all_ they are. In fact, a court is a
| process. That process is guided by law, and results in
| legal findings, but it is not limited to the legal sphere
| when it comes to findings of fact and truth. Where a
| court lacks specialists in truth, advocates on both sides
| will find whatever ways they can to bring them to the
| discussion.
|
| And again, there is no such thing as rule of law
| _without_ examining questions truth. You want liability
| for poor engineering standards? Courts must ascertain
| what good engineering standards are. You want murder to
| be illegal, and people to be tried for violating murder
| laws? Courts must ascertain evidence, often scientific
| evidence relating to whether or not someone is guilty. A
| court without capacity or authority to weigh in on truth
| cannot apply the law.
|
| > Have you never thought about why freedom of speech is
| an important and worthy fundamental right?
|
| Enough to know that speech and robust discourse are in
| fact a significant part of courtroom proceedings.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| Courts currently do a decent job at determining _some_ truth
| (whodunnit) - while a lot of innocents get convicted (and
| sometimes death row 'd, in the more backwards corners of the
| world), it's pretty good within its limited domain of
| truthseeking.
| thethethethe wrote:
| This begs the question that truth can be formalized. Who gets
| to decide what is truth? That's incredible power and it's
| unlikely that people will agree on who gets to wield it. If
| some does have that power, how do we know that they won't
| control the "truth" to build an autocracy?
| whatever1 wrote:
| And don't forget that truth also depends on the observer. If
| for some reason my sensor is not calibrated properly, my
| "truth" will be different compared to your truth. It does not
| mean I necessarily lie, or that I do it intentionally.
|
| Academia has been trying for centuries to crack this nut, and
| it is not easy.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| That's why it's useful to distinguish between
| misinformation (false statements made by people who
| sincerely believe them) and disinformation (false
| statements by people who know them to be false).
| Philosopher Harry Frankfurter also argues persuasively for
| a category of bullshit statements, which are made by people
| who don't care about their truth or falsehood.
| [deleted]
| mrfusion wrote:
| I thought this xkcd had a humorous take on this idea
| https://xkcd.com/2481/
| pelasaco wrote:
| But not all social media are the same. HN for example, is the
| only social media that I consume completely (news feeds + comment
| section). Everything else I limit as much as I can.. what makes
| HN so much better than the others? Lack of ads? Moderation?
| CodeGlitch wrote:
| I don't consider HN to be social media. It's a forum isn't it?
| Mostly anonymous and no "pushing" of feeds or content.
| thethethethe wrote:
| From Wikipedia:
|
| > Social media are interactive technologies that allow the
| creation or sharing/exchange of information, ideas, career
| interests, and other forms of expression via virtual
| communities and networks
|
| Sounds like social media to me
| igravious wrote:
| Please read properly what you copy-pasted.
|
| "[...] via virtual communities and networks"
|
| (Friend and follower (and so on) relations create these
| virtual communities and networks, these don't exist on HN.)
|
| Ergo, HN is not social media.
|
| Facebook is social media, Twitter is social media. IRC is
| not, HN is not. Tiktok is, SnapChat is. Reddit isn't,
| Slashdot isn't. Google+ was, Orkut was. LWN isn't, Ars
| Technica isn't.
|
| Social media implies a massive global social graph which
| under-girds the communication flows - not rooms, forums,
| articles, channels, "subreddits", spaces, etc.
| CodeGlitch wrote:
| > Social media are interactive technologies that allow the
| creation or sharing/exchange of information, ideas, career
| interests, and other forms of expression via virtual
| communities and networks
|
| This description would include email and SMS - and no one
| describes those as social networks.
|
| HN is a forum.
| thethethethe wrote:
| To start, social media != social network. I am saying
| that HN and other forums are a form of social media,
| albeit a very primitive form. Forums enable individuals
| to interact to create and exchange information, as
| opposed to mass media where things are centrally
| distributed and consumed with no input.
|
| > This description would include email and SMS
|
| I would absolutely consider SMS and email to be a social
| network, they are just limited and have fewer features.
|
| Definition of social network from wikipedia:
|
| > A social network is a social structure made up of a set
| of social actors (such as individuals or organizations),
| sets of dyadic ties, and other social interactions
| between actors
|
| > no one describes those as social networks
|
| I do acknowledge that there is a more nebulous popular
| definition of social media which refers to the major
| platforms. However, when you try to define what makes
| them different than email and SMS, things get
| challenging. If email, an network of independent actors
| exchanging information isn't a social network, then what
| set of features would make it a social network and why?
| All of the major platforms have different sets of
| features, some of them overlapping. What set of common
| features makes them a social network and why?
| bckr wrote:
| Intention of the creators and, yes, moderation. The exact same
| HTML/CSS/JS could power a community devoted to fighting a holy
| war against Lizard people.
| pelasaco wrote:
| but not all moderation are the same too, right? I mean reddit
| has moderation, but IMO, there, it doesn't work as good as
| here.
| bckr wrote:
| That's why I mention intention of the creators. Reddit is
| meant to be "the front page of the Internet", which means
| it needs to be enormous and serve many different
| communities.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| That's because Reddit has a million subreddits and to some
| extent they compete with each other. You may find this
| study of virtual conflict dynamics interesting:
| https://snap.stanford.edu/conflict/
| pessimizer wrote:
| I think a big part of it was that it was seeded (and
| continues to be watered with) people who are looking for
| funding and/or people whose hopes are already dependent on
| YC and other sources of financing. People have to behave
| well, or there are consequences far beyond the forum.
| pessimizer wrote:
| It's an ego-vehicle for billionaires; a bauble to show off. HN
| isn't really a business or a public service. It's a rich man's
| hobby spun-off, and its only purpose and governance is to make
| him happy enough to continue to bother.
|
| It's an aging salon, and reflects the product of the current
| mood and amount of attention given by its host.
| motohagiography wrote:
| What a relief it was to read that these particular people were so
| concerned about misinformation prevailing, as most of what they
| consider misinformation is many of us call freedom, leadership,
| faith, and courage.
|
| Social media is horrible for lots of reasons, mainly because it
| throws everyone who would never normally encounter each other
| into the same bucket of crabs, but their framing of the problem
| essentially reduces to being concerned the wrong kind of crabs
| are climbing too far.
| docdeek wrote:
| There's a quote in a Michael Crichton novel (The Lost World) that
| seems relevant here. As part of a rant connecting the idea of the
| internet and evolution, a character opines:
|
| "This idea that the whole world is wired together is mass death.
| Every biologist knows that small groups in isolation evolve
| fastest. You put a thousand birds on an ocean island and they'll
| evolve very fast. You put ten thousand on a big continent, and
| their evolution slows down. Now, for our own species, evolution
| occurs mostly through our behaviour. We innovate new behaviour to
| adapt. And everybody on earth knows that innovation only occurs
| in small groups. Put three people on a committee and they may get
| something done. Ten people, and it gets harder. Thirty people,
| and nothing happens. Thirty million, it becomes impossible.
| That's the effect of mass media - it keeps anything from
| happening. Mass media swamps diversity. It makes every place the
| same. Bangkok or Tokyo or London: there's a McDonald's on one
| corner, a Benetton on another, a Gap across the street. Regional
| differences vanish. All differences vanish. In a mass-media
| world, there's less of everything except the top ten books,
| records, movies, ideas. People worry about losing species
| diversity in the rain forest. But what about intellectual
| diversity - our most necessary resource? That's disappearing
| faster than trees. But we haven't figured that out, so now we're
| planning to put five billion people together in cyberspace. And
| it'll freeze the entire species. Everything will stop dead in its
| tracks. Everyone will think the same thing at the same time.
| Global uniformity."
| adt2bt wrote:
| See: Edison bulbs in every dark bar worldwide. This phenomenon
| is real.
| amelius wrote:
| On the other hand, are tribes or nations which are not
| intimately connected to the western world that much better off?
|
| And science evolved greatly in the highly interconnected parts
| of the world.
| [deleted]
| FooBarBizBazz wrote:
| I dunno. Every time species from that big Eurasian land mass --
| say, house cats -- showed up on an island, there was an
| extinction event. Every time an isolated tribe meets
| "civilization", 90% of the tribe drops dead from unfamiliar
| pathogens. Being wired in to the big Evolution Chamber seems to
| forge a kind of strength (not that it's peaceful). Evolution
| has more dice to roll.
| lamontcg wrote:
| So you're saying a wide varity of echo chambers is a good thing
| to avoid intellectual monoculture?
| klipt wrote:
| I think echo chambers are part of the problem. Previously
| you'd love in your village and have to get along with other
| villagers (or move, which took a lot of effort) so people had
| to learn to compromise more.
|
| Now everyone can live in virtual echo chambers where everyone
| agrees with them and they never need to compromise. So they
| start viewing anyone who disagrees with them as pure evil.
| jack_pp wrote:
| That's a pessimistic way of putting it.
|
| "In a mass-media world, there's less of everything except the
| top ten books, records, movies, ideas"... but aren't those
| brought about by evolution as well? And as far as I can see the
| top ten keeps changing, evolving.
|
| My argument is that the internet has enabled hyper-evolution.
| You get access to the best possible information, you have
| through torrents and libgen access to all the media and books
| ever produced at your fingertips, free of charge. What you
| might've figured out in 30 years of your own trials and
| tribulations can now be learned in a couple of years reading
| books. Of course pride and arrogance keeps us from learning but
| that's a different story and will probably be weeded out by
| evolution much faster now than ever before thanks to free
| access to information.
| horsawlarway wrote:
| But isn't this _exactly_ why you end up slowing down? You get
| groups trapped in local maxima of behavior.
|
| An isolated group is forced to find novel solutions because
| they don't have a body of evidence to lean back on.
|
| In comparison, if you have an existing, known solution to a
| problem it usually makes sense to just use that.
|
| It might be sub-optimal, but the odds you develop something
| better are low. So it benefits _you_ to use the established
| method.
|
| But the _group_ at large would benefit more from having lots
| of people try novel things, because otherwise innovation
| stagnates as the "known" solution takes precedence
| everywhere.
| bumby wrote:
| > _if you have an existing, known solution to a problem it
| usually makes sense to just use that. It might be sub-
| optimal, but the odds you develop something better are
| low._
|
| There's ways around this, though. For example, occasionally
| accepting a method that's worse in the short term can
| eventually lead to a better long term solution. There
| likelihood of accepting a worse solution can be
| proportional to how much worse it is to the current
| solution. The Metropolis-Hastings algorithm does exactly
| this to avoid local maxima.
|
| Meaning you just need _some_ people to take a seemingly
| worse idea and run with it occasionally. I think there will
| always be a few brave or naive souls willing to do that.
| jack_pp wrote:
| > In comparison, if you have an existing, known solution to
| a problem it usually makes sense to just use that.
|
| Depends on the problem. If the problem is complex enough,
| say nutrition, then you see constantly changing narratives
| and theories and even competing ones in the present.
| There's no Best Solution(tm) way to nourish ourselves yet
| so people experiment and the top competing theories are
| being actively discussed and debated. Sure there are keto /
| vegan / paleo nuts out there but they're just test subjects
| really. Same argument can be said about software dev,
| there's no best language or best framework; or about ways
| to earn money, employment vs entrepreneurship is not a
| settled debate.
|
| Can you name some problem that you feel has stagnated in
| the modern world?
| Ko76 wrote:
| I am a big Crichton fan and wish he was around to skewer
| Fuckerberg & Co.
|
| Truth is we haven't got to 5 billion online. Just getting 3
| billion online has run into massive issues that has split the
| net in many ways no one imagined. It doesn't look like we will
| ever get to 5 billion.
|
| So there is some baked in natural resistance. Andrew Odlyzko is
| looking like he was onto something when he said Metcalfe and
| Reeds Law of network growth would not hold.
|
| Primarily the limitation is the 6 inch chimp brain and the
| Dunbar number. If the avg chimp has the channel capacity for a
| 100 ppl max what's the point of all this connectivity?
|
| We are taking our sweet time to realise it.
| prox wrote:
| Nicholas Taleb puts forth the same ideas, where he believes in
| fractalistic localities, in order to improve anti fragility.
| jdmoreira wrote:
| On the other hand if "global uniformity" stops us from nuking
| each other to smithereens than maybe it's not a bad thing.
| Sure... we might not innovate enough, hopefully we don't
| decline to the point of pre-industrial levels but at least we
| might have a chance to make it out alive; instead of being in a
| creative destruction process akin to evolution.
| paulpauper wrote:
| H
| 2939223 wrote:
| Globalism is the great filter. Social media is the first taste.
|
| COVID as an example, would have previously been a contained
| regional outbreak. Globalism made it an instant problem for
| every continent. Social media exacerbated responses in most
| every country.
|
| Interconnectivity is fragility.
| ben_w wrote:
| Plenty of global pandemics before COVID. Globalisation is how
| we got so many viable vaccinations so quickly.
|
| _Monocultures_ are fragile. The only part of globalisation
| that gives me cause for concern is that it can make bigger
| monopolies that would otherwise be possible.
| specialist wrote:
| The Last Archive's It Came From Outer Space [S01E06] helped me
| better understand Crichton.
|
| https://www.thelastarchive.com/season-2/episode-6-it-came-fr...
|
| My own TLDR: Explains how the trauma and betrayal experienced
| by Boomers impacted that generation, and how it may have forged
| Crichton's personal philosophy.
| cortesoft wrote:
| I get the sentiment, and there might be nuggets of truth to the
| idea, but there are some fundamental aspects of biological
| evolution that make it different.
|
| Biology evolves through mutation propagation, and larger
| populations tend to regress mutations to the mean more than
| smaller populations.
|
| Behavior changes don't require any mutations, and they can be
| shared in all directions (unlike mutations, which can only be
| shared with descendants) This already fundamentally changes how
| societies can evolve.
|
| Second, if this were true, the number of innovations would have
| decreased after we became globally connected. This hasn't been
| the case, as we have continued to innovate and create new
| things even after we have been globally connected.
|
| While our global society does propagate some homogeneity
| (McDonalds and Starbucks everywhere), it also lets innovations
| spread very quickly, which gives more chances for amazing new
| things to propagate.
| tracerbulletx wrote:
| Agree 100% with everything you said here. Continuing with the
| example of food, the ability to watch a Youtube video about
| an emerging food trend on Saturday, try making it on Sunday
| because they taught me how to do it, then watch 5 more
| channels doing the same idea in different ways, and
| eventually understand the idea enough to use the techniques
| does not seem to be restricting the evolution of ideas in any
| way and seems to actually rapidly accelerate it.
| version_five wrote:
| > Second, if this were true, the number of innovations would
| have decreased after we became globally connected. This
| hasn't been the case
|
| I read the argument as being about diversity. There are
| innovations, but as you point out in the next paragraph, they
| spread quickly, which could be good, but also destroys a lot
| of diversity. Look at how different UI design trends spread
| e.g. I don't consider that a clear win. Having many less
| connected groups could potentially lead to more, and more
| diverse innovations, vs. everyone jumping on the same
| bandwagon
|
| The other thing that spreads more quickly is disease (here I
| mean metaphorically). If everything is the same, it gets
| infected the same way, and I believe there is an element of
| that when you look at online discourse, at dark patterns and
| other user hostile business practices, etc.
|
| There are some reasons homogeneity is good, especially
| locally in time, but it presents an evolutionarily
| disadvantage over longer scales, which is what I took to be
| the point of the MC quote
| ElViajero wrote:
| > Second, if this were true, the number of innovations would
| have decreased after we became globally connected.
|
| It is not only about "innovation" but about cultural
| diversity. For good or bad, a globalized world is
| standardizing culture around the world. Hollywood was a very
| powerful starting point as allowed everyone to see what the
| USA produces.
|
| > innovations spread very quickly
|
| That is the point. There are less and less pockets of
| different approaches. In one side of the world someone
| invents a new app and people is using it in the other side of
| the world 3 days later. Innovation may be fast, but it is not
| diverse but there is a convergence of ideas and ways of
| thinking. If we get it right it is fantastic, if we get it
| wrong there are no alternatives.
|
| A good example, hot topic, is cryptocurrencies. If it is
| something good they are everywhere, if it is a mistake then
| it is consuming an incredible amount of resources for no use.
| If you had pockets of innovation the impact would be smaller
| and it will take more time to copy it if it becomes
| successful.
| meh99 wrote:
| They don't require a biological mutation but they do require
| a change in agency, social state.
|
| Take society as an organism in the abstract and it definitely
| needs to mutate.
|
| Crichton was a pop science author, right-wing believer in
| America. His idea small groups get things done was lost on
| this guy who watched entire corporations publish his books
| and movies. I'd take his philosophy and science creds with a
| grain of salt.
|
| The masses were too busy collectively validating his banal
| artistic efforts, so of course he would balk at collectivism
| philosophically while ignoring it took a village to lift him
| up.
|
| Those folks are scared that if everyone can have time to
| write mediocre sci fi they'd have to get real jobs.
| hypertele-Xii wrote:
| > unlike mutations, which can only be shared with descendants
|
| Actually, transgenesis happens. E.g. bacteria can share genes
| horizontally with plasmids. And viruses may bring genes from
| unrelated species.
| RGamma wrote:
| Diversity: bottom-up
|
| Uniformity: top-down
| mrkramer wrote:
| Wasn't early Facebook all about connecting with friends and
| family and looking for boyfriend/girlfriend? Today I only hear
| something like "fake news, hate, racism, violence" etc.
|
| I wonder what has changed? I think that it is not Facebook's
| management fault but the reality kicked in. Medium like Facebook
| is convenient for all type of content and interaction unlike
| Instagram for example which is more for showing off with photos
| and following other people's lives.
| justbored123 wrote:
| Well, I don't know how your friends and families are, but mine
| are quite racist and quite hateful of minorities and they were
| that way long before the internet.
|
| Facebook just shows that, it doesn't change it. I think that
| most people (specially white, heterosexual and not poor) were
| simply living in a bubble of ignorance thinking the world was a
| much better place that it actually is and social media simply
| popped that bubble and showed reality for everybody to see. And
| now they are angry at Social media in a classical shoot the
| messenger reaction.
| donatj wrote:
| I'm 90% sure it's when they started personalizing the feeds.
| You only see things the algorithm thinks you're going to like,
| but it has a very shallow idea of you as a human being limited
| to your outward expression.
|
| Then It pushes you further and further to the extremes of what
| it thinks you like.
|
| People were warning about filter bubbles even before Facebook
| did it.
| bckr wrote:
| > People were warning about filter bubbles even before
| Facebook did it.
|
| Makes me think of "reality tunnels"[] written of long before
| Zuck made his website.
|
| [] https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Reality_tunnel
| sewercake wrote:
| There's a lot of 'political' content on instagram. do a quick
| google search for 'politigram' and you'll see what I'm talking
| about. That being said, there are definitely per-platform
| affordances that may change the degree and extent to which its
| expressed (and, crucially, to whom).
| mrfusion wrote:
| They didn't get enough engagement with positive social
| interactions so they had to harness the worst parts of our
| psyche.
|
| Sounds eerily similar to this:
|
| > Did you know that the first Matrix was designed to be a
| perfect human world, where none suffered, where everyone would
| be happy. It was a disaster. No one would accept the program,
| entire crops were lost. Some believed that we lacked the
| programming language to describe your perfect world, but I
| believe that, as a species, human beings define their reality
| through misery and suffering.
| drewcoo wrote:
| If the threat is misinformation and use of social media is the
| risk, then I'd expect a comparison to baseline mass media
| misinformation. And everyone seems to agree that there is a
| frightening amount of that.
|
| No comparison against control and this is only evidence that
| scientists publish clickbait.
| PicassoCTs wrote:
| The problem is, that social media and the hate waves it
| generates, can be used to hack the elite - the decision makers.
| It convinces them, that more social media, more china style
| social media control is necessary. Fear is a strong vector. And
| if you can create the proof that you are needed, you control the
| market.
| incrudible wrote:
| _" For example, the paper says that tech companies have "fumbled
| their way through the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, unable to
| stem the 'infodemic' of misinformation" that has hindered
| widespread acceptance of masks and vaccines"_
|
| The numbers on masks and vaccines show that acceptance _is_
| widespread. What are we looking for here, approval rates to rival
| Kim Jong Un? The worst thing that could happen to what little is
| left of social cohesion is an even stricter attempt at
| controlling information.
|
| Sure, some information shared on social media is misinformation.
| Some information coming from mainstream media is misinformation,
| too. In some cases, the authorities will spread misinformation.
| After all, some of the "evidence" used to argue that masks are
| ineffective came from the CDC itself.
|
| With the politicization of everything, even facts can not be
| considered neutral anymore. For every verifiable fact, there's a
| set of other verifiable facts that may be omitted to achieve the
| desired effect. Fact-checks are used for propaganda. When
| consuming information, always keep your salt dispenser at hand.
| LarryEt wrote:
| It seems many people have a completely unscientific view of
| reality in that they have absolute certainty in what they
| believe to be true.
|
| I think there are people who are looking for North Korea level
| approval ratings on things. If you have zero uncertainty in
| what you think is true then anything contradictory is naturally
| "misinformation".
| anigbrowl wrote:
| If you wanna go around arguing the Earth is flat, you need to
| have something more persuasive than 'do the research.' Not
| that you personally believe in a flat earth, but it's a good
| example of why we shouldn't treat epistemological uncertainty
| as the starting point; there is so much evidence for Earth
| being round and so little offered in favor of it being flat
| that its roundness should be treated as a fact unless
| extraordinary new evidence to the contrary is produced. If
| someone comes along insisting on its flatness without
| overcoming that bar, then it's OK to treat them as either a
| fool or a troll and reject their opinions.
| incrudible wrote:
| Do you believe this is an appropriate analogy, given our
| very limited understanding of the COVID situation?
|
| If so, I would implore you to ponder the shape of the
| surface that we inhabit _without_ the hindsight of 1000
| years of R &D.
| twirligigue wrote:
| Yes, and as much as I dislike political correctness, I
| sometimes wonder if it's a response, perhaps even a necessary
| response, to the accelerating politicisation and polarisation
| brought on by the web. If all events and even facts must be
| framed according to a simplifying narrative then I wonder if
| the human mind/brain is doing something similar in order to
| operate stably? This could be the origin of the _ego_ -- a set
| of unacknowledged fears and desires which shape a personal
| story or set of goals through which we attempt to organise our
| lives.
| enteeentee wrote:
| Ive often joked about this being the great filter. (Fermi
| paradox)
| freebuju wrote:
| Misinformation and scarcity of quality information on social
| media platforms was bound to happen when these platforms hit
| critical mass. Moderating SM is damn near impossible to do
| effectively. It is also easy to game SM. From fake clicks/views
| (bots) to old accounts used for astroturfing etc, the information
| market is not at a level playing field.
|
| And since they are all run on some form of hyper-intelligent ML
| algorithm, none of it from a user perspective is intuitive
| anymore.
|
| The bigger risk in my opinion is how SM and use of it on digital
| devices has impacted human behavior. More specifically,
| psychologically. Dopamine hits and instant gratification must
| have rewired our brains in the past ~2 decades.
| baby wrote:
| History repeats itself. The same thing happened when the phone
| was invented, and radio, and tv, and the mail, and newspapers,
| etc.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| Long before social media, most movies, TV shows and the like in
| the US came out of California and New York. These are very urban
| places and I spent a lot of my life feeling kind of like "I must
| be doing it wrong" because my life didn't seem to match up with
| what I was seeing in popular media.
|
| I eventually concluded that for most of America, what we see on
| TV and in movies doesn't match our lives.
|
| I think the internet is actually an opportunity to give push back
| against that and better develop local or regional identifies
| elsewhere and give them a voice.
| falsaberN1 wrote:
| You are expected to believe that what a movie offers is an
| idealized, exaggerated or just plain fantastic take on real
| life. Examples exist that cannot tell reality from fiction, but
| that's generally the gist of it.
|
| However, much more people are willing to believe that what they
| see in social media is real. Now think of how many people are
| feeling "they must be doing it wrong", with that in mind.
| baldanders wrote:
| I believe that we are going to start seeing the rise of purposely
| stripped-down software, ie text-only social media platforms or
| social media platforms with hard-caps on the number of
| connections you can add per account. Information technology will
| begin to be viewed through a more biological lens. The best
| analogy I can think of is our current relationship with food. We
| acknowledge that our biological reward systems can be hijacked
| via junk food and we have erected massive systems to curtail
| these destructive impulses. Despite this, there are still those
| who gorge themselves on unhealthy food due to their lack of
| education and/or an inability to afford healthier food. As soon
| as the negative effects of social media begin to manifest
| themselves in the upper classes (students failing classes en
| masse, severe incompetence in the job market, increased
| generation of brain-dead media) new platforms will be created to
| allow people to take advantage of technology without being caught
| up in the biological loopholes that modern social media create.
| The majority of the lower classes will continue to use
| exploitative platforms, which will probably become much worse as
| it is made more explicit that their user-base is made up of a
| cattle-caste. Much like food, I predict that the health-conscious
| platforms will erect paywalls and other barriers to entry that
| will further cement the class divide. It would take me hours to
| really flesh out what I'm trying to say here but I think that I
| was able to squeeze some of it out.
| justbored123 wrote:
| > contributing to phenomena such as "election tampering, disease,
| violent extremism, famine, racism, and war."
|
| Sorry, but what are you talking about? The holocaust happened
| before social media, segregation and slavery happened before
| social media, religious extremism has been going on for at least
| 2000 years and its latest incarnation like in the middle east
| happened before social media. We had 2 world wars before social
| media, election tampering? Did you forgot about the Gore vs Bush
| fiasco before social media? I could go on all day, what are you
| talking about?
|
| This is the best we had had it on all those fronts today after
| social media. You are making no sense. The first "cross-
| disciplinary" change we need is more historians combating this
| type of unbelievable childish ignorance and lack of perspective
| of reality.
| electrondood wrote:
| I 100% think that social media is shrinking our collective
| attention spans, and the cumulative effects of this are
| unpredictable.
|
| Infinitely scrolling through flashy, zero-effort "snackable"
| content is the equivalent of mental junk food.
| ko29 wrote:
| Like HN.
| WillDaSilva wrote:
| Definitely true to some extent. I think the degree to which
| it applies corresponds to how deeply a person engages with an
| individual post/thread. Having long conversations in the
| comments of a post is probably not conductive to shortening
| attention spans. Ideally we could mimic the sorts of deep
| conversations that can be had with small groups of
| people/friends in-person. Maybe Hacker News would benefit
| from live updating comment threads so that people wouldn't
| have to refresh the page frequently to have a back-and-forth
| conversation.
| specialist wrote:
| Every new communications media has the same lifecycle.
|
| Initial enthusiasm, lots of disruption & creativity, then
| captured by reactionaries and traditionalists. Spasms of
| overreach and overcorrection. Cycles of purges and remything.
|
| Obelisks, cuneiform, drums, papyrus, pigeons, pony express,
| paper, moveable type, radio waves, light beams.
|
| The disruption to society and culture is always the same. The
| only variable is impact predetermined by production costs.
|
| Lather, rinse, repeat.
|
| The trick for us plebes is finding untapped margins and eddies,
| do our own thing, maybe find our tribe.
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