[HN Gopher] Hell is ourselves
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Hell is ourselves
Author : cratermoon
Score : 51 points
Date : 2022-06-25 16:00 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.thenewatlantis.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.thenewatlantis.com)
| wonderwonder wrote:
| Firmly believe that these algorithms will be the downfall of
| society. They are driven by pay per click/ view advertising and
| have done more to echo chamber people than anything in history.
| You are only shown news and videos that support what you already
| believe. If you don't believe it at first you will soon as you
| are just going to get fed messages enforcing what you clicked on.
|
| Remember when the NBA player believed in a flat earth because of
| a youtube rabbit hole? This is what's caused the massive
| political split in the US and perhaps eventually the collapse of
| democracy.
|
| With that said there are few sites more frustrating than the
| Google News homepage. I clicked on a marvel movie review months
| ago and now half my news is comics related. Drives me insane.
| akomtu wrote:
| > that support what you already believe
|
| More likely, the echo chamber algorithm wants to show you what
| will trigger you the most, so you'd contribute as much of your
| energy as possible in response. I believe that somewhere in the
| dungeons these companies keep user profiles with red-blue
| response maps: areas with red mean that the user will be
| outraged with this statement, and areas with blue mean
| something that the user agrees with religiously. By skillfully
| matching these red-blue maps with each other, the algorithm
| creates an angry echo chamber.
| cratermoon wrote:
| The behaviors they try to evoke are less like outrage and
| more like gambling. It just so happens that many people are
| motivated by controversy, but just as many are motivated to
| get likes, follows, or just to see if the next pull of the
| lever will come up all 7s. In Vegas, the slot machines and
| games are explicitly designed to pay off in small amounts
| just enough to keep the player engaged, hoping for the big
| payoff. Some of those same game design theorists have worked
| with social media companies.
| https://www.economist.com/1843/2016/10/20/the-scientists-
| who...
| mrwnmonm wrote:
| I like this one very much from that series
| https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/reading-ourselve...
| widjit wrote:
| a big chunk of the people who read HN are the exact people
| responsible for the systems and algorithms that create (and
| perpetuate) the solipsistic hell-mirror described in the article
|
| my least favorite part of engineering is that it is led by smart,
| capable humans who diligently build systems to destroy the best
| things about being a human
| musha68k wrote:
| I'm still hoping it's slowly getting better though.
|
| I just recently had some eye-opening actual seeing-forest-from-
| the-trees moment myself through this book and the different
| insider perspectives collected therein:
|
| https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374538675/voicesfromtheva...
| musha68k wrote:
| I actually listened to the audiobook, which was very well
| done if anyone else is genuinely interested:
|
| https://www.audible.com/pd/Voices-from-the-Valley-
| Audiobook/...
| cratermoon wrote:
| In _Silicon Values_ [1] author Jillian C. York does a good
| job describing the user-attention-as-profitable-product
| perspective.
|
| 1 https://www.versobooks.com/books/4034-silicon-values
| leto_ii wrote:
| There were a lot of smart capable humans working for the Nazis
| as well. The issue is not so much the individual, as the
| social/economic system they're a part of.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| Facebook was actually fun until monetization and creepiness
| destroyed the vibe.
|
| Now you get reminded every two friend posts (of those that
| still do) of a creepily targeted ad, and then of course another
| 1-2 posts mixed in from "friends" trying to monetize their
| daily reiki personal training life coach bullshit, but you keep
| them around because you've known them for a long time.
|
| Manipulative ads that are coarsely targeted I think we got used
| to from television. But manipulative ads with foreknowledge of
| your medical google searches is fucking creepy.
|
| The engineers were following the orders of the businessmen.
| Does it excuse it? No, but I'm hard pressed to see any salaried
| employee not actively working against the greater interests of
| mankind and the world.
|
| Hell is truly us. We are our greatest and only true enemy.
| cratermoon wrote:
| > Facebook was actually fun until monetization and creepiness
| destroyed the vibe
|
| The same can be said of social media generally. Some manage
| to disguise it better than others, but they are all selling
| you, the user, your data and your attention, to sell ads. To
| do that, they work hard to show you a world that they think
| you want to see.
| octokatt wrote:
| > Being self-conscious, then, relies on the gaze of someone else.
| "The Other penetrates me to the heart," Jean-Paul Sartre writes,
| describing Hegel's intuition about how we are dependent on one
| another in our very being. "I cannot doubt him without doubting
| myself, since 'self-consciousness is real only in so far as it
| recognizes its echo (and its reflection) in another.'"
|
| > Personalizing algorithms thus offer a startling twist on
| Hegel's idea, as we begin to see ourselves more and more through
| the gaze of these unselfconscious but intelligent and highly
| attentive algorithmic "others."
|
| This article is a little heavy on prose, but this part was
| interesting. We define ourselves in part by how others see us
| (i.e., programmer, husband, poor, rich, crazy, inspired). As more
| of our social feedback comes from algorithms, it changes our
| self-perception.
|
| Anyone who's read through, say, Antisocial, is probably already
| aware. But the idea of the algorithm's gaze... that sticks with
| me a bit.
| night-rider wrote:
| Yet targeted ADs get it wrong. A lot. I'm male and still get ADs
| for tampons in Facebook and YouTube. Google and Facebook have a
| whole decade of my browsing history and still can't infer I'm
| male.
| widjit wrote:
| FB/Google/etc. don't actually need to make correct inferences,
| they just need to provide infographics that _say_ they are
| correct so that marketing departments can report to their
| superiors that they are responsibly spending advertising
| dollars and getting "impressions" from the right people
|
| it's a multi-tier confidence game
| cratermoon wrote:
| They also just need to provide enough stimulus to the users
| to keep them engaged. Whether that means posting, commenting,
| or just refreshing their feed, the end result is a) the user
| counts as active and b) the user is contributing, for free,
| to the overall content that gives the userbase as a whole a
| reason to keep coming back.
|
| The 'secret' I learned from AdTech is that while the social
| media companies do need, to some extent, to be able to show
| their customers that buying ads provides value, what the
| social media companies need for themselves is just to keep
| the users engaged and coming back, generating content (posts
| and comments) for free so that there are pages in which to
| place ads and generate impressions.
| throw8383833jj wrote:
| and since Big brand advertisers (that can't calculate ROI)
| are the biggest spenders, most ad dollar can not be
| attributed to purchasing behavior reliably and thus wasted.
| (queue the ebay 100% wasteful ad story)
| night-rider wrote:
| $hasCervix: falsey
| walleeee wrote:
| not only is it multi-tier, it's circular: FB/Google/etc
| marketing depts eat the same dogfood when it's served back to
| them
|
| hence stuff like this https://www.memo.co
|
| (note the Google endorsement if you scroll down)
| rhn_mk1 wrote:
| They probably can, but they prefer not to make it too obvious.
|
| https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2020/4/9/21204425/targeted-ads...
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| Btw this is a reference to sartees quote "Hell is other people"
| from this book
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Exit
|
| I choose this for my GitHub name - with the unspoken ending being
| "Hell is other people's code"
| psbp wrote:
| "Hell is other people" is supposed to mean "Hell is ourselves"
|
| It seems like the article makes the connection, but it doesn't
| make it clear that the whole point of the famous line is that a
| critical self-perception, sprouted from a fear of an ambiguous,
| judgmental "other", is truly our undoing.
| cratermoon wrote:
| When Satre wrote "Hell is other people", he meant "other
| people". Hell is thinking that our "self" is solely what
| other people tell us it is.
| widjit wrote:
| "Hell is my own code" still works in my case
| jamal-kumar wrote:
| Yet heaven is each other [1]
|
| [1] https://1000wordphilosophy.com/2021/02/08/hell-is-other-
| peop...
| antiverse wrote:
| I'll save you the trouble of reading, whatever this is. Here you
| go:
|
| >But what is the psychological impact of a bespoke Internet,
| tailored to you, and one where it is increasingly difficult to
| outrun yourself? "Bespoke" sounds luxuriously considerate, but it
| also entails a kind of revelation. It comes from the older word
| bespeak, which refers to an indication or a piece of evidence.
| Sewn into the bespoke is the fabric of external judgments. In the
| tailor's series of sartorial calculations and decisions, the
| wearer is shaped, a silhouette is cast.
|
| Imagine seriously writing word salads and calling them articles.
| It's too disjointed with no coherent thesis to it, and just
| meanders for what is (i imagine) an attempt to fulfil a wordcount
| quota.
| WaxProlix wrote:
| It's asking what we will make of ourselves when the determining
| factor of Identity - the returned gaze of the Other - is 'just'
| an AI. Hegelian dialectic and such aside, it's an interesting
| question and I for one found the article more or less readable,
| if a bit on the self indulgent side (as these types of essays
| tend to be).
| _mhr_ wrote:
| What do you consider to be the difference between identity
| and Identity? Or other and Other?
| klodolph wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitonym
|
| > A particular example of where capitonyms are prominent is
| in terminology relating to philosophy, [...]. Capitalized
| words are often used to differentiate a philosophical
| concept from how the concept is referred to in everyday
| life, [...]
|
| In other words, capitalizing "Identity" or "Other" just
| means that the word has a specific meaning in this
| particular text, and the dictionary definition may be
| unreliable.
|
| "The Other" is often capitalized.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Other_(philosophy)
|
| I'll also just note that, for the tech-minded folks, some
| of these philosophical concepts have surprising relevance
| to applications in machine learning & AI, especially these
| days. Epistemology was a purely philosophical topic until
| machine learning researchers stumbled around trying to
| reinvent it.
| WaxProlix wrote:
| capitalization?
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| Can you clarify what is confusing about the quote that you
| reference above?
|
| It seems pretty well formed and makes it's point succinctly and
| with a reasonable metaphor.
| Aperocky wrote:
| > succinctly
|
| Really? I can think of plain english way to describe (if I
| understood it correctly) the sentiment in less words and far
| less cognitive load.
|
| Personally I feel repelled towards this in the same way as
| code golf, except it's also long, so perhaps worse.
| widjit wrote:
| clearly this article is not meant for you
| klodolph wrote:
| I _like_ cognitive load when I 'm reading. Unless I'm
| reading an email from a coworker or a manual for some
| software I'm using, the cognitive load is nice.
| new_stranger wrote:
| I do too, but from the weight of the idea - not the
| complexity of the delivery
| klodolph wrote:
| Complex ideas require complex delivery to communicate.
| rnk wrote:
| No they don't. This is just pointless sophistry. It does
| not explain the idea. It's writing that looks like the
| point is to show the writer's erudition, not explain the
| idea.
| klodolph wrote:
| If you try to express a complex idea directly, in
| practice, your audience often misses the point or
| misunderstands it. The complex delivery has in it
| redundancy. It approaches the idea from different angles.
| It connects the idea to other ideas.
|
| (That's also a misuse of the word "sophistry", by the
| way.)
| Aperocky wrote:
| Complex idea require multiple simple deliveries in a
| structured way.
| klodolph wrote:
| My experience is that this is often insufficient--or if
| we suppose that it's possible, I can't figure out how to
| express the complex idea by sticking a bunch of simple
| deliveries together.
|
| I don't want to abuse analogies, but let's say that you
| get asked the question, "Why don't you write a computer
| program that detects when another program hangs, and then
| restarts the program?" If I'm just going to give an off-
| hand answer, I'll say that this is connected to a famous
| problem in computer science, and it's proven to be
| impossible to solve. If I really want to explain why it's
| not possible without hand-waving it, I'm going to have to
| explain concepts like computability, models of
| computation, and "code as data".
|
| But it's natural to encounter people with these
| questions.
|
| Philosophy is the same way. It's easy to come up
| philosophical questions and hard to come up with answers.
|
| If you're writing an article, in either philosophy or
| computer programming, you're going to have to be careful
| to ride right line between simplicity and complexity. Too
| simple, and what you're saying is incorrect. Too
| complicated, and nobody will understand you.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| "Word golf" has different rules than code golf. In word
| golf, highest score wins.
| mcphage wrote:
| > I can think of plain english way to describe (if I
| understood it correctly) the sentiment in less words
|
| I don't think the goal of any serious writing is to do it
| in as few words as possible. Instead, the goal is to write
| it with the right number of words. Taking a complicated
| idea and distilling it down to concrete bullet points loses
| all of the subtleties of the meaning, destroys the pace,
| and any of the poetry as well.
|
| What you're left with is something like
| https://norvig.com/Gettysburg/sld001.htm
| teddyh wrote:
| As short as possible, but no shorter.
| thfuran wrote:
| >I don't think the goal of any serious writing is to do
| it in as few words as possible.
|
| Even if that's true, it's irrelevant. They were
| responding to the claim that ithis particular piece was
| written succinctly, which it manifestly was not.
| aaroninsf wrote:
| TLDR different people absorb and engage with information in
| different ways.
|
| What is "word salad" for you, is a lyrical and motivated
| translation into humanist terms for the non-technical but well-
| educated reader with a different background, reading style, and
| perhaps, agenda.
|
| The lyrical essay is a form of writing and argumentation with
| hundreds of years of literary history. It's not meant to be a
| man page.
|
| For people rooted in this type of argumentation, fully-examined
| metaphor is what animates ideas and frames them in terms they
| can reason with.
| musha68k wrote:
| Definitively subjective. IMO the metaphor was apt in bringing
| their point across. Got me thinking about other tangents like
| general systems interplay, conway's law etc. This kind of
| etymological philosophizing just might not be your cup of tea
| but not everyone is like that.
| dang wrote:
| " _Please don 't post shallow dismissals, especially of other
| people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something._"
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| nelox wrote:
| thenerdhead wrote:
| This article is hard to understand the point, but it feels like
| it's talking about ridding one's ego.
|
| The biggest ego trip is getting rid of your ego. - Alan Watts
|
| TikTok and other "for you" infinite feeds only feed our egos.
| They prey on our inability to think for ourselves and have us
| desiring what others have (or claim to have).
|
| I think one needs to think deeply about who they are as a person
| and hold the integrity to maintain their character. These
| platforms will give you fragmented pieces of what your identity
| might be rather than what you believe you should be. In other
| words, we should trust ourselves more that we're on the right
| path.
| klodolph wrote:
| I don't think that's an accurate description of what the
| article discusses.
|
| The article is more about how our perception of reality is
| distorted by our interactions with algorithms that attempt to
| cater to our taste (or if not, at least get us to watch more
| ads).
| thenerdhead wrote:
| I see that perspective too. It mostly read to me as a Jungian
| self/ego fight being amplified by personalized tech.
| Zababa wrote:
| > In my 2015 book The Four-Dimensional Human, I describe a failed
| promise of the 1990s Internet: that it would free us from our
| earthly identities and let us move like quicksilver through
| cyberspace, inhabiting all kinds of experimental selves in gaudy,
| rackety chat rooms. Instead, our online movements got pinned with
| thumbnail avatars of our real-world faces; we solidified in the
| heat of the personal brand. We developed what I called "chain-
| store selves" as we spread ourselves across the Internet with the
| trademarked consistency of a franchise.
|
| Who is "us", who is "we" here? I certainly don't post my real
| face on the internet, and don't develop a "personal brand" there.
| Those "us" and "we" are doing a lot of heavy lifting in the
| article, turning a sentiment felt by the author into some kind of
| universal truth.
| Agamus wrote:
| "The feeling of being exposed occurs whenever the Internet
| addresses us in the second person."
|
| This has rubbed me the wrong way since I first saw an icon that
| said "My Computer". That's the computer addressing me, in first
| person, as itself, pretending to be me, with words I never
| used... (gaaah - whose computer is it?!)
|
| This was my first reaction to the new layout for Google News, for
| example, which features a "briefing" section. Who the heck am I
| that I need a "briefing"? I'm just here to gaze over the
| headlines! I know myself - and I know I don't have the stomach
| for that - I will be looking for a new news aggregator soon.
|
| Can anyone else relate here?
| javier_e06 wrote:
| TV had a similar grip to society back then. I once entered a
| circular argument with a roommate who insisted hi liked Sprite
| better than 7UP. My retort was the fact he, like me, where
| already indoctrinated with thousand of hours of tv commercials
| telling us what to like. TV commercials where more casual. The
| internet tells me: "News for YOU". I find it creepy and
| demeaning.
| hkon wrote:
| No, I stick with the previous definition.
| throw8383833jj wrote:
| I have found the facebook algorithms to be completely inaccurate
| in predicting my wants and needs. The products that get
| advertised to me are laughable. I feel like they don't know me at
| all, in the least bit. they could have 10 times more information
| about me and it still wouldn't help. For all this talk about
| algos knowing us and how scary it is: it just doesn't hold water.
| at least for me.
|
| Just as an example: I once searched for a hoody on google. For
| weeks, they advertised a hoody with a disgusting piece of raw
| meat on it. I'm mostly vegan and don't eat much red meat at all.
| how in the world did the algo come to such a completely
| inaccurate conclusion? A human just skimming over my profile for
| 2 minutes would have been able to target ads much better than the
| incredibly inaccurate job of the algo.
|
| And, they have such a hard time understanding intent. I once
| repeatedly clicked on At&t ISP ads because I hate them so much
| (all that rent seeking behavior), and i'd like to waste their
| stupid ad dollars. the algo, then proceeds to give me more of
| those ads because it thinks i like it.
|
| Virtually nothing I buy is a result of online advertising. I find
| it, incredibly ineffective on me.
|
| I think the term "surveillance" as used with advertising is
| unnecessarily emotionally loaded and completely innacurate. If an
| FBI agent or an advertiser real person was actually "surveilling"
| my browsing habits and purchasing habits, I think they'd be able
| to come up with a much better product recommendation and would
| very quickly come to the conclusion that I'm not worth the ROI to
| be advertised to in the first place for 99.9999% of the products
| out there.
| thereisnospork wrote:
| I would posit that at least some of the problem is the lack of
| 'closing the loop' on the ad model. Even if Facebook does know
| everything about you, the ad buyers don't and instead bid
| naively using their best judgment. Whereas in an 'optimal'
| system Facebook should centrally[1] control who sees
| everything, dispensing the most valuable ad to any given user.
| In which scenario, because they control everything, they should
| be able to ML and optimize ads on a per person basis.
|
| [1]So that they can unambiguously determine ad end point value.
| Here they might even guarantee a sales per ad dollar spend
| figure - where they simply will not show the ad to anyone they
| deem less likely to buy the statistically profitable amount of
| product.
| throw8383833jj wrote:
| there is something interesting about that. If all the smart
| ad buyers are avoiding me because they know the ROI is really
| low, that would explain why I only see the very dumbest ads:
| they're the only ones who don't calculate any kind of ROI
| whatsoever. If the ML algo has to show me an ad, by process
| of elimination it would have to show me those that only count
| page impressions or views.
| night-rider wrote:
| I'm repeating myself here incase you didn't read my comment,
| but this is exactly what happens to me. Google has a decade's
| worth of my browsing history but can't make the basic
| assumption that I am male and serves me ADs for tampons.
|
| $hasCervix: falsey
| leto_ii wrote:
| > can't make the basic assumption that I am male and serves
| me ADs for tampons
|
| Be careful, nowadays this is pretty inflammatory stuff.
| cratermoon wrote:
| They don't have to predict your wants and needs, they just have
| to keep you engaged. As long as you refresh the site, comment,
| and post, you're providing your labor as free content
| generation.
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