Too many people have peed in the pool • Hacker News Board

Re: Too many people have peed in the pool

#221

Post by fweespeech » Mon, Feb 15, 2016, 6:12 PM UTC

david-given wrote: post #154

jonstokes wrote: post #38

I have a theory about FB and Twitter -- or maybe more of an observation. Anyway, back in the stone age, people had bumper stickers with little slogans on them. And in the break rooms of various places of work, there was always a bulletin board an on a corner of it there was always some faded-from-to-many-xeroxes bit of humor/racism/sports fandom/sexism/dirty joke or other us-vs.-them thing on it that people would loo…

My theory is that it's because social media systems encourage and publicise agreement, while discouraging and hiding disagreement. This leads to a huge positive feedback effect on any meme that catches even a tiny number of people's attention, no matter how crazy. On twitter, you signify agreement by retweeting; this takes seconds and permanently adds to the tweet's score. But to disagree, I have to write a message o…

> My theory is that it's because social media systems encourage and publicise agreement, while discouraging and hiding disagreement. This leads to a huge positive feedback effect on any meme that catches even a tiny number of people's attention, no matter how crazy.

Well, honestly, I think that effect is largely an outgrowth of how we've designed anti-spam processes to date.

Scalable agreement systems where large numbers of users agree X is good, then X is not spam.

> Maybe we just need a 'dislike' button along with the 'like' button. It'd certainly be an interesting experiment.

Reddit clearly functions in such a manner [as does HN]. Twitter / Facebook hide this but fundamentally its the same concept and it is largely ineffective for what your goal is [publicizing useful discussion, including disagreements].

We'd really need to figure out a better way of mitigating problematic content without using up/down votes before we can solve this problem unfortunately.

Re: Too many people have peed in the pool

#222

Post by chriswarbo » Mon, Feb 15, 2016, 6:13 PM UTC

chasing wrote: post #134

AJ007 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no friendly way to say it, the mass market are morons. It might be derogatory jokes, but this can also include things like spreading urban legends which were debunked four decades ago. Just like Usenet and countless other online communities, what starts a a small group of fairly privileged and elite eventually degrades in to garbage as the reach increases. This is not so much an overall size issue but a rela…

> There is no friendly way to say it, the mass market are morons... I hate this super-condescending attitude. Even if you do happen to be smarter than the average bear (which, don't pat yourself on the back yet: there may be things these "morons" know way more about than you do), it's still asshole-ish to assume that everyone else just be completely dismissed...

> it's still asshole-ish to assume that everyone else just be completely dismissed...

I think you're being overly harsh, nobody mentioned "dismiss[ing]" "everyone else"; yet I agree with the parent that conversations with such broad participation seem to be less interesting/'more dumb'/however-you-prefer-to-phrase-it.

You even hinted at some of the reasons this might be the case; i.e. that different people have knowledge of different things (i.e. 'there may be things these "morons" know way more about than you do'). The more people are included in a conversation, the less common ground there is to work from. People certainly can make accurate, fact-checked, carefully-worded contributions; yet they may be less likely to spread for a few reasons, e.g.

- Being more difficult to understand for members who aren't as well-versed in the subject, compared to slogans, soundbites and memes.

- Being more difficult to produce, compared to off-the-cuff remarks and guestimates.

- Being realistic can be less attention-catching and thought-provoking for those who don't already know a subject, compared to baseless hyperbole

- Those who don't already know about a subject, and try to contribute with e.g. anecdotes or quotes from others, may be unable to tell accurate information from inaccurate.

It's unlikely that such contibutions will spread very far, so the content which does reach any particular individual will tend to be less useful bu good at spreading (e.g. "viral" videos of cats).

These sorts of factors can lower the usefulness of a discussion. At a certain point, the quality or depth becomes low enough that those with a vested interest will often split off to a more focused/dedicated area for discussion. This leaves the original "mass market" conversation even more impoverished.

As an analogy, let's say you're considering which of two datastructures to use in some project; imagine trying to debate their relative merits and solicit opinions on their complexity tradeoffs by posting to a generic "Computer Users" group on Facebook, amid the background noise of questions about what's the best MP3 player, how to change the colour of the Windows taskbar, and where to get a keygen for Photoshop.

Re: Too many people have peed in the pool

#223

Post by majani » Mon, Feb 15, 2016, 6:13 PM UTC

AJ007 wrote: post #102

jonstokes wrote: post #38

I have a theory about FB and Twitter -- or maybe more of an observation. Anyway, back in the stone age, people had bumper stickers with little slogans on them. And in the break rooms of various places of work, there was always a bulletin board an on a corner of it there was always some faded-from-to-many-xeroxes bit of humor/racism/sports fandom/sexism/dirty joke or other us-vs.-them thing on it that people would loo…

There is no friendly way to say it, the mass market are morons. It might be derogatory jokes, but this can also include things like spreading urban legends which were debunked four decades ago. Just like Usenet and countless other online communities, what starts a a small group of fairly privileged and elite eventually degrades in to garbage as the reach increases. This is not so much an overall size issue but a rela…

I think the friendly way to say it is that most people(yourself included) only achieve a medium/expert level of competence in one or two areas of their life. In the other areas, most of us are just bumbling through. Unfortunately though, manners require us to speak about various topics, leading to the bumbling side of humanity to be exposed in droves.

Re: Too many people have peed in the pool

#224

Post by toomuchtodo » Mon, Feb 15, 2016, 6:13 PM UTC

chris_wot wrote: post #196

toomuchtodo wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm surprised to hear that, considering the story on HN the other day about how educated woman don't marry down. It seems a non-insignificant number of people want to partner with and befriend those of the same or higher intelligence. Anecdotally, I gravitate towards above average intelligence people for friendships and romantic relationships. http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/07/06/has-being-si...

Percieved same or higher intelligence.

Whether its perceived or not, thats how its playing out on a macro scale.

Re: Too many people have peed in the pool

#225

Post by tremon » Mon, Feb 15, 2016, 6:15 PM UTC

gaur wrote: post #129

jgrahamc wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's like the way that millennials communicate with emoji I'm GenX and not a millennial. I don't see anything wrong with using some emoji as part of my language. I already speak a language (English) which is some bastard child of French, German, Dutch, Arabic, etc. I'm happy to add a (poo emoji) when it's appropriate.

> I already speak a language (English) which is some bastard child of French, German, Dutch, Arabic, etc. It's a Germanic language (not a child of German), with significant lexical input from French and Latin. The input from "Dutch, Arabic, etc." is minor.

But the Germanic language family is quite large; it basically describes every language spoken on the Northern Atlantic coast. You can't say "it's Germanic" and then say "it's hardly related to Dutch or German".

As for the development of the English language, I believe it derives mostly from Saxon - Frisian - Norse - French, in chronological order. I'm pretty sure Celtic should also be on that list, but I don't know in what order or to what extent.

Re: Too many people have peed in the pool

#226

Post by enraged_camel » Mon, Feb 15, 2016, 6:15 PM UTC

smithkl42 wrote: post #194

toomuchtodo wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even if you do happen to be smarter than the average bear > it's still asshole-ish to assume that everyone else just be completely dismissed... Devil's advocate: If you're above average intelligence, you're smarter than a majority of the populace by definition. Why would you not then dismiss the thoughts and ideas of those less educated? One person's condescension is another person's logic.

The obvious answer: because if you're wise, you realize that raw intelligence is a fairly small part of what makes someone worth listening to on a given question. On most questions of morals or politics, I'd rather listen to someone of average intelligence, but with a humble, good and patient character, than an MIT grad who's convinced they know everything.

Interesting. I'm not sure I can relate, though. I'd rather listen to Christopher Hitchens or Richard Dawkins talk about evolution and atheism than someone of average intelligence.

Re: Too many people have peed in the pool

#227

Post by cousin_it » Mon, Feb 15, 2016, 6:16 PM UTC

danharaj wrote: post #145

cousin_it wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, we can't have an apolitical space. But we can have an activism-free space, and that's exactly what I want.

so, a safe space from activism? :p i think your desire is reasonable. however, i think it would be unreasonable to demand it of something as public and global as Twitter.

Agreed that Twitter shouldn't be activism-free, but they could try to make it less threatening, e.g. by hiding or slowing down replies that are likely to be part of mobbing.

Re: Too many people have peed in the pool

#228

Post by moron4hire » Mon, Feb 15, 2016, 6:18 PM UTC

jsmthrowaway wrote: post #210

moron4hire wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See, you're part of the problem. You think you understand my friend's tone better now that I'm relating it to you better than I did at the time that I experienced it. You don't believe my version of the story, even though the only evidence you have is my telling of it. You've treated me as if I'm lying to you, yet you don't just come out and say it. This is the very definition of passive aggressive behavior. Just bec…

Actually, I believe your version completely and don't think you're lying at all from your perspective. What makes you think I feel otherwise? This is an odd, and overly defensive, reaction to something that you've clearly misinterpreted. (That sounds familiar.)

How could I have so clearly misinterpreted "GP can't take a joke" to be a refutation of my assertion the guy wasn't joking?

Must be you were also telling a joke and I just don't get jokes.

Re: Too many people have peed in the pool

#229

Post by Perceval » Mon, Feb 15, 2016, 6:19 PM UTC

carsongross wrote: post #15

I'm a bit monomaniacal about this, but the current online culture wars (and the previous offline culture wars) make me wish that secession didn't have such a bad name. It is obvious that large groups of people have irreconcilable differences of opinion on matters of free speech, sexuality, gun ownership and so on. It is a shame that rather than a firm handshake and friendly wave goodbye, we will end up with a totalit…

Federalism was supposed to enable pluralism within a single political entity. Each state could live the way they wanted to and have different rules/laws than their neighbors. The urge to use the federal level of government to impose uniform social rules on all the sub-units undermines the possibility of stable political pluralism. Once rules at the state level are no longer safe, the stakes for controlling the single central point of failure at the federal level rise to the point where political differences become intolerable.

Re: Too many people have peed in the pool

#230

Post by humanrebar » Mon, Feb 15, 2016, 6:21 PM UTC

inanutshellus wrote: post #218

david-given wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My theory is that it's because social media systems encourage and publicise agreement, while discouraging and hiding disagreement. This leads to a huge positive feedback effect on any meme that catches even a tiny number of people's attention, no matter how crazy. On twitter, you signify agreement by retweeting; this takes seconds and permanently adds to the tweet's score. But to disagree, I have to write a message o…

> Maybe we just need a 'dislike' button along with the 'like' button. It'd certainly be an interesting experiment. FWIW, this is coming very soon to FB in the form of "reactions" rather than a simple "dislike" feature. http://www.engadget.com/2016/01/27/facebook-reactions-launch...

Does that feature allow negative feedback? A frown for bad news is positive feedback.

I'm concerned that all reactions might be treated as good reactions. That is, that there is no way to politely disapprove. Does anyone have any more details on this?