[HN Gopher] The Silence Is Deafening (2020)
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The Silence Is Deafening (2020)
Author : luu
Score : 55 points
Date : 2022-03-12 18:44 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (devonzuegel.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (devonzuegel.com)
| holoduke wrote:
| In real life you communicate on a much higher level. Non verbal
| communication is so important. That's why I don't believe in pure
| working from home. At least till we have full 16k VR work
| environment simulations.
| kkfx wrote:
| Honestly I agree only very partially: in some context seeing
| others in a room, full body is indeed _very_ useful, but that
| 's not the case most of the time. Giving a remote lecture is
| painful because it's almost impossible to feel the class,
| discussing serious business is similar, but daily work, at
| least most of daily works do not really have, or can be
| designed not to, such needs.
|
| The real issue is being _really_ able to separate work and
| life, or have a _local_ social activity in person, in the
| physical world, while have a secondary and separated working
| life in a "virtual" world. This is hard IME, we tend to make
| friends where we are most active, then it's hard to separate
| remotes people from work to real physical and human world, for
| that I still have to find a real solution but meeting each
| others _sometimes_ while keeping WFH for the rest again suffice
| in most cases. Having a local physical life separated from the
| work it 's not that hard, at least if we do not live in a
| desert/very remote areas.
|
| The main issue I see in practice are mostly due to the lack of
| "social interest" in many remote workers who actually prefer to
| be remote _just_ to avoid working with their colleagues, so
| they do not interact as needed, they do not try to communicate
| what 's needed etc, the lack of habit and organization where
| most people simply start from scratch just like child doing
| their first experience "in the wild" without real experience,
| but those issues can be solved just with trials and errors in
| few years: for the system part we need to rediscover _really_
| remote work vs working on the shoulders of giants on their
| platforms, for the human part simply learning to develop a kind
| of "remote sociability" for work and a healthy local
| sociability where we physically live.
|
| "Remote sociability" is hard, but not that hard IF we learn it,
| of course we (society) have to _really_ try to learn...
| earleybird wrote:
| There are conversations and then there are conversations. The
| dinner party conversations are ephemeral, often in a smaller
| groups than the whole of the attendees. This is discourse in a
| small group where there is high bandwidth communication and
| nothing is recorded verbatim for posterity. Opinions can be
| malleable, folks may change their mind in the course of
| conversation.
|
| Online forums have much smaller bandwidth and much larger pool of
| participants. Nuance in expression is terribly limited to the
| ASCII character set. What ever you've written, whether a
| thoughtful paragraph or two, or just adding a short bit of
| flavouring to the discussion is now cast in stone for all time.
|
| My suspicion is that the size and durability of online forums is
| antithetical to nuanced discussion.
| bambax wrote:
| Very insightful post in general. About this:
|
| > _Bringing it into a private space like DMs is crucial, because
| it credibly shows that you 're not trying to get brownie points
| from your in-group by bashing them in public._
|
| The problem with DMs is that they are too much work for the
| passive onlooker.
|
| Public forums like Twitter, Reddit, etc. should include the
| possibility of sending private signals: "uncool" badges that take
| no more than one click, but that are only seen by the original
| poster.
| wkearney99 wrote:
| This doesn't work if the author doesn't care.
|
| Perhaps a weighted surfacing of the "uncool" numbers. If a
| certain number of 'considered authentic' users mark it as such
| that starts to become visible on a post, and on the overall
| 'karma' of the author's profile.
|
| The idea being if the author DOES care, and sees they're
| getting marked as 'uncool' then they have a chance to self-
| censor/edit/adapt. But if the authosr doesn't care then the
| audience still has a chance to see what some sort of 'curated'
| members have said about the content, and that the author's
| overall rating has potential to take a hit for it.
|
| Any system can be gamed, of course, but the lack of clear
| options for contributing negatives about content is how we've
| gotten into this mess. Sole up/down votes are not enough.
| bambax wrote:
| I think that would work, yes. Someone should try it...
| agrover wrote:
| So, like YouTube? Where only the creator can see dislikes?
| bnralt wrote:
| I've seen a lot of sentiments like this article, where the author
| is talking about what methods they can use to make others behave
| the way they'd like. But I rarely see the opposite - an author
| talking about being receptive to others trying to change their
| own behavior. That seems to be a large part of the problem right
| there. As long as everyone is convinced that the problem is other
| people and not themselves, it's hard to see how things will
| improve.
| parksy wrote:
| People just need to be able to speak freely. Likes and dislikes
| and other scoring systems just encourage echo chambers and are
| almost purpose-built tools for astroturfing.
|
| People are afraid to say their opinion because of the backlash.
| Not everyone has a well thought out opinion, that doesn't mean
| they deserve to be punished. The human experiment can only move
| forward with open displays of ignorance coupled with open-minded
| discussion and acceptance.
|
| It's idealistic to think this could happen easily, but I see no
| other way for global civilisation to come to terms with our
| historical cultural differences.
|
| We're either going to devolve into systems where nothing matters
| and everything goes, which frankly we already have with 4chan, or
| allow certain views to prevail over others, which literally every
| forum or approval-based channel has these days, or find a
| different way to share differences and come to terms with them,
| which I hope somebody invents soon.
| verisimi wrote:
| I totally agree with the comment here. I love that you say:
|
| > I see no other way for global civilisation to come to terms
| with our historical cultural differences
|
| I agree.
|
| But the path we are on is the opposite. 'We' (or whoever is
| running the show - as I don't think the state we find ourselves
| in is natural) is not about allowing for diversity of opinions,
| and building personal resilience and tolerance to diverse
| thinking via the application of reasoned argumentation.
|
| No. Instead we herded into low engagement, preferably
| simplistic binary positions. We are even moving away from law,
| into a time of cancel culture driven by corporate policy. We
| are going into hardcore tyranny of the individual.
|
| The reason is (imo) that it is far easier to govern when you
| treat people as a collective. If you have imprinted thoughts
| patterns into what might have been individual thinkers, and
| support that throughout their lives via top-up programming from
| the media, you can guide this communal thinking.
|
| The answer from my perspective is for everyone to be trying
| achieve maximum individuality. (Everyone thinks they are
| individual, but they are actually expressing received opinions.
| I don't even say I am an exception - though I do think I am
| working on it.)
|
| But who's got time for individuality?!? There are mortgages to
| pay, children to train into the system - er, I mean educate,
| work takes a lot out of you, and passive engagement with
| screens is so tempting.
|
| Maybe in the next life!
| hirundo wrote:
| "A huge part of the problem is that digital spaces generally have
| no equivalent of a disapproving glare."
|
| That's largely what down votes are, and why it's a problem that
| YouTube now hides them. We need both smiles and glares to
| communicate well.
| peakaboo wrote:
| YouTube and Google and their attitude is the problem. And that
| we don't have many popular alternatives.
|
| Our tech overlords are the equivalent of Kings now, above the
| law. And their attitude to humanity stinks.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| >That's largely what down votes are,
|
| Has it ever been theorized that in even so pure a place as HN
| the down vote is abused?
|
| At any rate the disapproving glare has been the go to tool of
| small minded and provincial people throughout history, and is
| often enshrined as such in media. So I guess I'm not that sure
| that having one will solve all problems.
| moltke wrote:
| This is what happens when you kick everyone with different views
| off your platforms; you get an echo chamber.
| 1270018080 wrote:
| I don't think you read the article? How did you get that out of
| what was written?
| meredydd wrote:
| This article accurately describes a problem, but while it claims
| to talk about digital media in general, it is really just talking
| about Twitter.
|
| Here's the giveaway:
|
| _> A huge part of the problem is that digital spaces generally
| have no equivalent of a disapproving glare._
|
| Every. Single. Platform. has an equivalent to this - except
| Twitter. Reddit (and HN) have visible downvotes. YouTube's
| downvotes, invisible though they now are, can at least influence
| the recommender algorithm. Even Facebook has "frowny emoji"
| reactions. But on Twitter, the only way to express disapproval is
| to "join the conversation" - thereby amplifying it, and incurring
| all the negative consequences Devon explores.
|
| It's engagement genius. (Accidental genius, naturally - like most
| of Twitter's "core game loop", it's an unforseen, emergent
| phenomenon about which its inventors seem faintly embarrassed).
| The "grifter" problem Devon mentions exists almost exclusively on
| Twitter, _because it 's incentivised by the platform!_
|
| Normally I wouldn't get so heated about this stuff, but Twitter
| has attracted a critical mass of the world's journalists, so its
| incentives flow directly into The National Conversation(TM). This
| has visibly malign results, prompting many people to look for
| ways to fix it. This is a noble aim, but won't get anywhere if we
| regard Twitter's design decisions as immutable and inevitable,
| rather than a deliberate choice.
| umvi wrote:
| Frowny emojis on Facebook aren't anonymous though so people are
| reluctant to use them
| yesenadam wrote:
| > on Twitter, the only way to express disapproval is to "join
| the conversation"
|
| I've never signed up for Twitter, so not an expert, but doesn't
| unfollowing someone express disapproval?
| GauntletWizard wrote:
| Unfollowing someone is the best way to get their tweets in
| your timeline with the current state of Twitters algorithm.
| You were interested enough to follow and mad enough to
| unfollow == engagement.
| twoxproblematic wrote:
| laretluval wrote:
| > A huge part of the problem is that digital spaces generally
| have no equivalent of a disapproving glare.
|
| It's interesting to see that people are now arguing in favor of
| public shaming and peer pressure as ways to control behavior, and
| lamenting that these are now harder to implement at scale. A
| generation ago the internet was seen as a way to escape pressure
| for conformity.
| dang wrote:
| Discussed at the time:
|
| _The Silence Is Deafening_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23728212 - July 2020 (225
| comments)
| egypturnash wrote:
| From the footnotes:
|
| _Imagine a "tth_tth" button on each tweet. The poster finds out
| how many people _THAT THEY FOLLOW* clicked that button, but can't
| find out specifically who. They just know that the crowd of
| people _that they respect_ has a certain air of disapproval.*
|
| I love this. This is so much more interesting than a downvote,
| which could easily come from someone you're disagreeing with or
| people who share their views. This is _your friends_ giving you
| the hairy eyeball. I want this.
| Animats wrote:
| _A huge part of the problem is that digital spaces generally have
| no equivalent of a disapproving glare._
|
| Hm. Need to think about that for virtual worlds.
| swivelmaster wrote:
| It's easy to physically move away in a virtual world. Lots of
| options: Walk, fly, teleport...
| Animats wrote:
| Yes. One point I make about virtual worlds is that space
| keeps everything from being in the same place. The annoyance
| radius of jerks is limited. In Second Life, it's about 100
| meters, and the world is the size of Los Angeles. There's no
| "retweeting" or "following" or "broadcasting" to amplify
| jerks. So jerks are a very local problem.
| cardamomo wrote:
| https://archive.ph/d8nrR
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