[HN Gopher] The Great Distractor
___________________________________________________________________
The Great Distractor
Author : cbzbc
Score : 99 points
Date : 2022-01-09 11:18 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.mediatechdemocracy.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.mediatechdemocracy.com)
| nonbirithm wrote:
| This reminds me that the same, naive spirit that drives young or
| college-bound persons to incubate new ideas in the pursuit of a
| different future is the same one that can be ruthlessly exploited
| when it's in the hands of unethical agents.
|
| I would think that the ability to start up your personal
| computer, download an entire UI engine like Flutter and build
| whatever you feel like with it is not going to be the same
| ethically if you were directed to replace a text widget in the
| Flutter control responsible for showing YouTube's video dislike
| count.
|
| The mindset and opinions of both parties would be drastically
| different. But in both cases, focusing on the smaller picture
| makes the entire process appear to the programmer to be nothing
| more than an afternoon reading through some documentation and
| StackOverflow posts, followed by the morally neutral stimulation
| of typing out keystrokes and figuring out interesting puzzles.
|
| Developer documentation and the like will never give suggestions
| about one's life goals, but it's worth asking just what the
| pursuit of that knowledge is ultimately intending to accomplish.
| iib wrote:
| I feel this is the exact blind spot that technical projects
| such as GNU tried to avoid, by putting human rights before the
| actual code and documentation, and telling you every time about
| it.
| xg15 wrote:
| > _Fogg also sounded a note of caution. Captology research would
| require a strong ethical component, because persuasive techniques
| could easily be employed by those without the best interests of
| their users at heart. He was concerned, for example, by the
| possibility of casinos using captology to make their slot
| machines more seductive, or corporations deploying captology to
| track and manipulate employee behaviour._
|
| And the rest, as they say, is history.
| [deleted]
| twic wrote:
| Interesting read. I realised about halfway through that it felt
| exactly like an Adam Curtis documentary.
| AlexCoventry wrote:
| You can't opt out of the societal impact, obviously, but in my
| experience youtube makes it relatively easy to opt out of this on
| a personal level: Just turn off the record of your viewing
| history, and be deliberate about what you like and subscribe to.
| siavosh wrote:
| I liked this quote: "The Turk remains emblematic of the only real
| ghost in the machine: human agency."
|
| Most, if not all of us, are offended by direct or indirect
| manipulation. So it stands to reason, that our agency is the
| greatest thing we must protect.
| mosselman wrote:
| " build a dedicated following among students and other stoners"
|
| Apparently I did being a student all wrong.
| the-dude wrote:
| I am amazed at how fast the regular household went from 1
| breadwinner to at least 2 breadwinners. I lived through it.
|
| And I am confused as to what it exactly brings to the average
| family.
| watwut wrote:
| Quite a lot of people benefit from it, actually. A lot of those
| people are women. Domestic violence rates went down
| significantly - and that has a lot to do with not being that
| much dependent. Both because ability to leave, but also because
| man is less resentful.
|
| Yes other benefit is to families where women were employed
| anyway. A lot more women worked then people assume, even in
| 1950 if you check employment stats. They salaries were lower
| and they did not had access to many jobs.
|
| But they still had to work, in jobs that were available. Fun
| trivia: even Rosa Parks worked and loss of employment after
| sitin was felt heavily in her family.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Had other trends continued as they had been in the '50s (in the
| US at least), it would have brought a diminished number of
| hours in the workday and overall improved quality-of-life.
|
| Instead, things went alright until deregulation allowed the
| market to capitalize on the increased supply of labor, wages
| stagnated in the median due to supply depressing wages, and now
| the market has adjusted to operating under the assumption that
| each household has approximately two able-bodied people who can
| contribute to the workforce. So we have unprecedented GDP and
| most of the money is kept by those who can employ other people,
| not the employed.
|
| https://www.cbpp.org/research/poverty-and-inequality/a-guide...
|
| relevant graph: https://www.cbpp.org/income-gains-widely-
| shared-in-early-pos...
| dantheman wrote:
| Lets factor in costs of goods and see how it impacted others
| around the globe. the big "problem" is that a lot of low
| skill labor has to compete with low skill labor around the
| world due to improvements in communication and shipping. This
| greatly increased the overall quality of life across the
| world. It's a shock to the system, but as productivity and
| wages rise across the world all boats will rise. And they are
| already rising in the reduction of the cost of goods.
|
| The it took communities that were impacted by the mechanical
| loom quite awhile to recover - multiple decades.
|
| I'd say the big problems are inflation - destroying the value
| of the dollar and savings not in equities and rising taxation
| that also decreases income.
| steelstraw wrote:
| It's been terrible for families, but great for corporations as
| a way to get cheaper labor. Double the labor force = lower
| wages. They sold 2x breadwinners as "progress" and we believed
| it.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I still believe it. I have a son and daughter, and I would
| not want my daughters' opportunities to be restricted. That
| was progress.
|
| The proper way to counteract the increased labor supply would
| be to use laws to reduce labor supply, such as overtime
| wages, minimum paid time off, parental leave, etc.
| dantheman wrote:
| I don't what world you live in where there is too much
| labor. We have shortages of everything and always have. We
| need more housing more, more technology, better healthcare,
| more research... people can choose to live with less, but
| as of right now people seem to choose to want modern
| amenities.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| "Too much labor" is a subjective metric that depends on
| what type of quality of life you think is acceptable for
| the people earning the lowest wages, but changes in the
| price of labor indicate the movement of supply and demand
| curves. And the changes in the price of labor according
| to this report clearly show unfavorable amounts of supply
| of labor relative to demand for the bottom 3 (or even 4)
| quintiles of wage earners over the previous decades:
|
| https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R44705/6
|
| Recent changes due to the pandemic response shocking the
| system and catalyzing changes in the labor markets, are
| not reflected in the reports above, and I suspect we
| (USA) are just beginning to see a reallocation of labor
| resources in the market as the US finally confronts a
| reducing portion of working age population relative to
| non working (old people) population.
| beebmam wrote:
| Let me tell you what it brings: independence. I've lived
| through an abusive relationship where I was almost murdered,
| and I am thankful every day that I had a career to keep me
| alive after I escaped from my abuser.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Freedom (or possibility of) for women, at least in some sense
| from their spouse/family.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > Freedom (or possibility of) for women, at least in some
| sense from their spouse/family.
|
| Does this actually work against the two income trap?
|
| Before you needed one income, so a woman not allowed to work
| had to find a new man before she could cut loose a bad one.
|
| Now you need two incomes, so a woman who has to work in order
| to provide one of the incomes has to find a new man before
| she can cut loose a bad one. And has less time to find one
| because she's working 40 hours on top of everything she used
| to do in the home.
|
| Sometimes progress doesn't know which way the arrow is
| pointing.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Perhaps for the women at the bottom of the pay scales, but
| an average or above average earning woman should be able to
| downgrade quality of life and still "cut loose".
|
| Progress for some portion of society can be a regression
| for others.
|
| There is no question that I would rather live in a world
| where my daughter had just as much opportunity as my son to
| be a doctor or start her own business or whatever she wants
| to do. The possible cost of this reality is that the
| variance of family life across society will increase, with
| those at the bottom experiencing a quality of life worse
| than they would have had if society did not offer women the
| freedom to pair up with similarly advantaged men and
| compound their benefits.
| watwut wrote:
| Domestic violence rates went down significantly by all
| estimates. Also, they in fact go up and down with female
| employment - when women loose work they go up, when they
| get it they go down.
|
| > Now you need two incomes, so a woman who has to work in
| order to provide one of the incomes has to find a new man
| before she can cut loose a bad one
|
| This is simply not true. People break up a lot. Real world
| people sometimes stay with bad partners for money reasons,
| but employed ones significantly less so. The "I can't leave
| because I have no job" is a thing tho.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > Domestic violence rates went down significantly by all
| estimates. Also, they in fact go up and down with female
| employment - when women loose work they go up, when they
| get it they go down.
|
| https://xkcd.com/2560/
|
| A plausible theory is that things that improve the
| economy reduce both domestic violence and [female]
| unemployment. Or maybe it's what you said. Or maybe it's
| something else. No way to tell because correlational
| studies are worthless.
|
| > This is simply not true. People break up a lot.
|
| I think lotsofpulp has it on this one. It's a real
| benefit to women who make good money, because they can
| actually leave. It makes things worse for women with low
| pay or no job, because it makes things cost more, which
| makes it harder to survive on your own and exhausts the
| resources of non-rich friends or shelters.
| cassonmars wrote:
| But prison for children. I say this as a woman -- I am
| currently the sole income earner, and will swap roles with my
| spouse when it is time to have kids. Kids need a lot of
| attention, it's a real job, and having a parent home is
| essential.
| tabtab wrote:
| > Kids need a lot of attention
|
| I'm not sure that's the case. They _demand_ lots of
| attention, sure, and it 's often hard for adults to say
| "no" as they leverage their ever-gushing cuteness.
|
| They do need a certain level of focused attention with
| adults, but overdoing it spoils them. Have friend and
| relative kids come over; most kids are social and occupy
| each other, learning social skills in the process. An adult
| does need to check on them every now and then to make sure
| they are not lighting the cat on fire again. If they seem
| too hyper, put them in sports, and rotate the driving with
| other parents. Boys especially need hard physical activity
| to milk their wiggles out, or they _will_ light the cat on
| fire.
| striking wrote:
| Sure, but that still involves the parent (of at least one
| of the kids) being _present_ , at the least. Not everyone
| has that opportunity, especially when both parents feel
| they have to work to keep their family afloat.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| There are many boundary conditions and parameters that come
| into play, but I can envision a scenario in which children
| are not imprisoned, but women are still able to work.
|
| The major cause for imprisoning toddlers and even young
| kids these days is the risk posed by vehicles.
|
| My parents' generation grew up in a developing country
| where the villages did not have paved roads, and 90% of
| traffic was very slow moving ox pulled carts or
| motorcycles, and maybe a small portion of small cars. The
| grandparents' generation all had 4+ children, and women
| were not staying home to watch the toddlers. The toddlers
| were supervised by older toddlers, who were in turn
| supervised by older kids and they all just ran around the
| village all day until it was time to eat.
|
| Outside of caring for infants, the mothers had many duties
| such as working in the farms, factories, cooking, and
| cleaning, similar to men. What they did not have is legal
| ownership of capital and sufficiently high income streams
| to go their own way if they wanted.
|
| But none of this is applicable in modern US society.
| majormajor wrote:
| I wonder about this. I sometimes think my social skills
| would've been more developed had I had pre-school, daycare,
| etc, like most of my friends throughout school had had. How
| much of my social late-developing was that they had years
| of practice on me from the day when I started kindergarten?
| the-dude wrote:
| I went to pre-school for this reason only while my mother
| was stay-at-home.
| quacked wrote:
| That's most of the reason, yes. Just be careful not to
| make the dual mistake of (a) assuming that the way that
| schoolchildren are "socialized" is "better" than they way
| that you were socialized and (b) school and daycare are
| the only ways to achieve socialization.
|
| Your problem wasn't that you were socialized "late", but
| that you were socialized in a way that didn't allow you
| to compete in the world outside of the circumstances of
| your upbringing. If everyone else was socialized like you
| were, you probably wouldn't have that problem.
|
| The reason I don't like recommending school or daycare
| for young children is that although they learn superior
| marketable social skills (lying, deference, aggression,
| status gaming, etc.) early on in life, for the most part
| they think and behave like inmates do. I cannot deny that
| those who don't go to school find themselves at a social
| disadvantage, but I do not think that those who go to
| school are "socialized" in a healthy way.
| majormajor wrote:
| First, I think you're disregarding a lot of _healthy
| interaction_ social skills too. For instance, dating is
| hard when you don 't know how to give or receive a
| compliment. Or how to tell if someone is interested in
| spending more time with you.
|
| But that aside...
|
| So what would you recommend? Seems like those skills,
| though you don't like them, are currently useful in
| college and the adult world as well. But often quite
| lessened! Adult friend relationships tend to be healthier
| than high school social games!
|
| And with the particular case of teenagers, it's often
| _all they have_. Tiny aspects of social standing are
| important because there is often nothing actually
| meaningful that they can contribute to or do with a near-
| term payoff. So it 's either grind in the hopes of a
| payoff when you're 20-something and have graduated
| college, or play vicious games for short term social
| prizes, or both.
|
| I would definitely be in favor of trying to figure out
| how to make the late-teenage years more "meaningful" but
| I think tearing the _rest_ of the system down is not
| realistic.
| steelstraw wrote:
| It's not freedom when a household now needs both parents to
| work. That's the opposite of freedom! Both are now being
| effectively forced into the corporate world, instead of
| having the flexibility for one parent to choose where they
| spend their time.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| That is why I specified what kind of freedom was achieved.
| There are always tradeoffs, but those can be mitigated in
| other ways. If the argument is that adding women to the
| workforce harmed the working class because it doubled the
| supply of labor, then we could easily have legislation that
| halves the number of work hours in a week before overtime
| rates kick in.
| [deleted]
| kkoncevicius wrote:
| Not that long ago there were a lot of hard work that had to be
| done around the house. Cooking dinner, washing clothes and
| dishes, ironing, sewing, heating the house. Now we have
| microwaves, dishwashers, automatic heating infrastructure.
|
| Similar thing happened with raising children. Women used to be
| in the job of raising kids. But around the time of World War I
| kindergartens were popularised, so that women could be
| incorporated into the war economy. The wars ended but
| kindergartens remained.
|
| After the war a lot of women were already employed. And others,
| due to technological innovations, suddenly found themselves
| with a lot of free time on their hands. So it was only natural
| for them to follow the rest.
| iib wrote:
| I think this is also very US-centric. America suffered very
| little economic damage throughout the war compared to Europe
| and Asia, and it's economy was pretty well off until the
| others repaired themselves.
|
| Of course, the political system was also a factor. In some
| parts of eastern Europe, now considered part of "the West",
| women were obliged by law to work.
| kkoncevicius wrote:
| Soviet Union was big on Women's rights and they encouraged
| women to work, that's true. But all the other factors were
| there as well - Eastern Europe had the same technological
| shift, went through wars full time, and kindergartens also
| became a lot more popular after the war.
| majormajor wrote:
| It's a race to the bottom, but is there a realistic solution
| that still provides choice and opportunity to both men and
| women? Once everyone has options, the "defector" couples who
| send _both_ spouses to work make financial gains over those who
| would rather not, until there 's not as much of a choice left
| for those making typical incomes.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > It's a race to the bottom, but is there a realistic
| solution that still provides choice and opportunity to both
| men and women?
|
| The core of the race to the bottom is artificial scarcity.
|
| You need a house, another family needs a house, there is only
| one house. If they have two incomes and you don't, they get
| the house, but it costs them the second income. Better
| solution: Build another house. Then you can have one without
| a second income and they can spend the second income on
| vacations or something. But we have zoning restrictions
| prohibiting that, hence the problem.
|
| That's the biggest example, but artificial scarcity exists in
| other places. Education is a big one. For K-12, get school
| vouchers and stop tying it to housing costs -- that will also
| help with housing costs.
|
| Make more of stuff instead of forcing people to outbid each
| other for artificially constrained supply and the extra
| income becomes extra income instead of the baseline you need
| in order to stand still.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| Virtually every part of your argument has been empirically
| disproven by evidence. We would be much better off banning
| AirBNB and rentals to return supply to the market rather
| than building more to throw away as "luxury rentals".
|
| - Vouchers don't work. The vast majority of parents don't
| have time to shuttle their kid(s) outside of their
| district.
|
| - Removing housing prices from school funding was such a
| disaster in California that they reversed the policy
|
| - You cannot build more housing in major cities which is
| where the vast majority of people want to work. There is no
| more space. We used it all on housing.
|
| - Making more doesn't help anyone as long as foreign
| investors are allowed to come in, buy it up, and
| effectively remove it from the real estate market by
| turning it into an AirBNB (to say nothing of Zillow
| inflating prices beyond affordability to begin with).
| fallingknife wrote:
| > You cannot build more housing in major cities which is
| where the vast majority of people want to work. There is
| no more space. We used it all on housing.
|
| The only place in the entire US where you possibly make
| this argument is Manhattan.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > Vouchers don't work. The vast majority of parents don't
| have time to shuttle their kid(s) outside of their
| district.
|
| So put a drop off point in each district where a bus
| takes everyone from there to a school in another
| district. Or build more, smaller schools so they compete
| with each other without being far away from each other.
|
| > Removing housing prices from school funding was such a
| disaster in California that they reversed the policy
|
| Politics was involved.
|
| > You cannot build more housing in major cities which is
| where the vast majority of people want to work. There is
| no more space. We used it all on housing.
|
| We know how to build hundred story buildings. No city on
| earth is comprised entirely of hundred story buildings.
| We can build more housing anywhere.
|
| > Making more doesn't help anyone as long as foreign
| investors are allowed to come in, buy it up, and
| effectively remove it from the real estate market by
| turning it into an AirBNB (to say nothing of Zillow
| inflating prices beyond affordability to begin with).
|
| People do this because they predict housing prices to
| increase in the future. They predict housing prices to
| increase in the future because they predict that zoning
| will constrain sufficient housing from being built.
|
| Build enough housing that prices actually go down and see
| how many speculators it attracts.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| >Make more of stuff instead of forcing people to outbid
| each other for artificially constrained supply and the
| extra income becomes extra income instead of the baseline
| you need in order to stand still.
|
| While I agree with the gist of your comment, the reality is
| that humans create artificial scarcity regardless of
| actually supply in many scenarios. The want to compete is
| deeply ingrained in the mating process, and it inevitably
| manifests as participants of society outbidding each other
| for something.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| So let the artificial scarcity be in vapid signaling
| bullshit instead of necessities you actually need to live
| and thrive.
|
| Look at me, I have more expensive art than you. Your car
| is efficient and reliable but mine costs three times more
| and has the right logo.
|
| Better yet, I donate more to charity than you.
|
| Competition for true scarcity is fine. Competition for
| artificial scarcity deserves to burn.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| That competition is at least partly responsible for the
| zoning laws. The standard real estate advice is to buy
| the cheapest house in the most expensive neighborhood you
| can afford, so that your kids can be surrounded by kids
| of parents of better means and resources, thereby
| strengthening their network.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| That's kind of the point. We can shape what the
| competition looks like by changing the zoning laws and
| not tying schools to housing.
|
| The competition will then move somewhere else, but the
| somewhere else could be more efficient, i.e. it sends
| more money to schools or charities or artists rather than
| inflating a housing bubble and making housing
| unaffordable.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Oh, I see. The only problem with that is the current non
| dense US suburban design makes it so the distance to
| school has a huge effect on quality of life, and I wonder
| if many neighborhoods would be dense enough to be able to
| support multiple schools serving multiple levels of
| incomes. Because if not, then that brings back the same
| incentive to only live near those at or above your level.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| The lack of density in the suburbs is a consequence of
| the zoning. Higher density housing is the thing that's
| prohibited, so allowing it would address that.
|
| > Because if not, then that brings back the same
| incentive to only live near those at or above your level.
|
| But then what happens if there is no constraint on
| building higher density housing? More people want to live
| near the good school, so housing prices are higher there,
| which causes higher density housing go up there and the
| housing supply increases until prices come back down.
| That doesn't happen now because the zoning doesn't allow
| higher density housing to be built there.
|
| They'd probably find a way to gate access to schools
| other than housing costs, e.g. testing for which test
| prep courses improve outcomes, something like that. But
| it would stop making housing unaffordable.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| You make good points for why it does not have to be the
| way it is. I agree there should be no constraint on
| higher density housing. Hopefully, people come around to
| this and supply of housing increases!
| kdmccormick wrote:
| It is a race to the bottom, isn't it?
|
| What about a generous, gender-blind stipend for families in
| which only one parent is employed? Might get tricky for the
| case of separated or single parents, but there are already a
| lot of careful laws and tax provisions there, so I imagine a
| system with the right incentives could be designed?
| watwut wrote:
| It is called parental leave, formerly known as maternity
| leave.
| kdmccormick wrote:
| I am suggesting something that (1) lasts from late
| pregnancy through to the child's 18th birthday and (2) is
| payed directly by the government, not by an employer who
| expects you to return.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| The achievement of freedom for the individuals/small units
| is commonly in conflict with the goal for the larger
| collective. I see this play out in many aspects of life and
| is a constant source of tension, for how to let the top
| soar (race to the bottom is also race to the top), while
| also continuing to lift the floor for those at the bottom.
|
| Some examples are the constant debate about schooling and
| segregating kids, to higher achieving children in families
| moving away to achieve success, but leaving other members
| of the family behind, to various companies achieving
| outsize gains and leaving behind or obviating other
| industries in a society.
| sdoering wrote:
| > Although he was named Google's first "design ethicist" after
| the report reached the top levels of the company, Harris left the
| company in 2016 having failed to convince managers to actually
| change their products.
|
| This reminded me of the saying to "keep your friends close and
| your enemies closer".
|
| It might be me being a cynic, but whenever I read about some
| critic being promoted into a visible role that makes them the
| official evangelist of their ideal I ask how much actual power
| they were instated with. More often than not it is not there.
| katmannthree wrote:
| I'm pretty sure this is one of the bigger reasons why timnit
| gebru didn't make it at google, because she thought her job was
| to actually make progress regarding machine ethics when it was
| instead to give them the appearance of having done so without
| slowing them down or making them look bad in any way.
| notacoward wrote:
| Fantastic article. As it suggests, the key to fighting back
| against social-media manipulation (including here BTW) is
| _education_. Learn how you 're being distracted and guided
| against your rational will, and you'll be better able to resist
| that pernicious influence.
|
| Fun anecdote, related to the Google snack-bar example mentioned
| in OP. When I went to Facebook bootcamp (yes I worked for the
| evil empire), there was a segment on the cafes. Not cafeterias.
| Cafes. It's classier, and TBH the quality of the food at those
| cafes does justify the distinction. Anyway ... they made a big
| point of how they _consciously_ arrange healthy vs. non-healthy
| choices at the serving stations to guide employees toward
| healthier choices. At the time I thought it was cool. Now, all I
| can think is that they 're showing _far_ more consideration for
| their employees than they ever do for their users. On the site
| /app we all worked to support, every design decision was made to
| encourage _unhealthy_ choices for the sake of profit.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-01-10 23:01 UTC)