> Data, like victims of torture, tells its interrogator what it wants to hear That is a great analogy and something that bit more than a few scientists and engineers over the years
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Facebook’s war on free will
121–130 of 284 posts
Re: Facebook’s war on free will
#122This was written so disrespectfully and dismissively of programmers, hackers and engineers that I have a hard time reading it, despite my extreme distaste for Facebook. >In the labs of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) during the 60s and 70s, they broke any rule that interfered with building the stuff of early computing, such marvels as the first video games and word processors. Also, Calling a 33 year…
I am out of the loop. How did Silicon Valley ruin his life?
Re: Facebook’s war on free will
#123> The problem is that when we outsource thinking to machines, we are really outsourcing thinking to the organisations that run the machines. This is the money quote of this article, and it's been on my mind quite a bit as of late. More than ever, we live in a world where there are many forces ready to take full advantage of our laziness. It takes a bit of introspection to really understand the tradeoffs that are appr…
This is probably the main reasoning behind the "crazy" valuation of some companies that have seemingly simple business model of selling ad views. People who talk about some kind of tech bubble often dismiss the indirect value, the value beyond the basic economics of their business models.
It's not $10B worth of tech or business model. It's $10M worth of tech, and $9.99B worth of minds with your foot in the door already.
Re: Facebook’s war on free will
#124> The problem is that when we outsource thinking to machines, we are really outsourcing thinking to the organisations that run the machines. This is the money quote of this article, and it's been on my mind quite a bit as of late. More than ever, we live in a world where there are many forces ready to take full advantage of our laziness. It takes a bit of introspection to really understand the tradeoffs that are appr…
> > The problem is that when we outsource thinking to machines, we are really outsourcing thinking to the organisations that run the machines.
Ah, there we go. The writer was taking me around the real garden path, and I bounced. It's a stupendously important point, and really doesn't require most of the build up to get there.
Re: Facebook’s war on free will
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
While it was "easy" for me to drop Facebook, I realize that for others it's harder. And not because "it's addicting" but rather for practical reasons. My wife, who is still on Facebook uses it as a tool to coordinate social events, message teachers, stay in touch with family and even ask useful questions to specific groups. You can't force everyone in your life to communicate on your terms , unless you want to A) pis…
"You can't force everyone in your life to communicate on your terms..." Isn't that what many people and groups on Facebook have done? Why feed that mentality? People who will only communicate with you through Facebook are likely not worth communicating with, as that signals that they don't think you're worth the extra effort. Email and telephone are still quite valid and effective means of communication.
It's not that they force you to use Facebook, you find that it's simply the most optimal way to communicate - to use Mark's own words it's "friction-less". Some people you will text, call, email and no response - message them on FB and bam, instant reply. I realize that's pretty f*cked up but it's useless to scold or hound them to respond to your other inquiries.
"People who will only communicate with you through Facebook are likely not worth communicating with"
Really? You're suggesting I cut people out of my life who want to communicate via Facebook over other mediums? Pretty harsh.
Re: Facebook’s war on free will
#126This implies that there is such a thing as 'free will'.
So, you making this comment has been inevitable?
Modern mainstream science does not allow for the existence of free will. Materialism (everything is physical) and Determinism (everything that ever happens is an inevitable and ultimately predictable consequence of The Big Bang) reign in contemporary thought. Free will is largely considered to be an illusion or psychological trick (see eg. Daniel C. Dennett 'Freedom Evolves') and several studies have shown that decisions happen before we become aware of them and believe ourselves to have consciously decided (see Benjamin Libet's experiments amongst many others).
For free will to exist the question of what is doing the willing has to be answered. The classic (René Descartes) explanation was that of the Cartesian Theatre, the idea that somewhere inside our heads there is some kind of entity that is separate from the physical substance that makes up our bodies. As far as I can see modern science's answer to that is 'nah - neurons' (I'm oversimplifying, people go into lots of detail about electrochemical processes which happen in the brain).
I'm not necessarily saying I agree with/believe all of this (although Dennett's books are quite persuasive) but I'm not aware of any 'respectable' current theories that allow for any kind of 'ghost in the machine' - and without that, there's nowhere for free will to come from (and with that all that happens is you then need to answer what is driving the free will of the ghost/spirit/agent and where it comes from - which is similar to how The Big Bang doesn't explain why something could spontaneously appear out of nothing, only that it did and what happened next. Soap Bubble Universes, Multiverses etc just push the question one step further away... one turtle further down the stack).
The world has a serious problem to resolve here because if there truly is no free will then there is no justification for punishing people for their actions - they had no choice in the matter... in which case the criminal justice system is barbaric and unfounded.
I realise a lot of people here will already know this stuff but it plays on my mind quite a lot so please excuse the essay :)
Re: Facebook’s war on free will
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
I see the big 4 as robber barons[1]. They see opportunity in millions and billions of dollars. The company doesn't care about the individual. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robber_baron_(industrialist)
Of course they don't care about people. The social network that the members enjoy is merely a side-effect of the true business. Sort of like the fact that a cow pasture is not really about the cows' enjoyment but, when you get down to it, hamburgers. Amazingly most people are still as oblivious to this concept as cows are before becoming hamburgers. What I am wondering about is the possibility of a social network tha…
I've been thinking about this sort of thing for a couple of months now. I really like the idea of an open-source social network, maybe supported in part or in full by crowdfunding via something like Patreon. If the intention is connection rather than profit, you'd mostly just need to cover server/hosting fees. Of course, that's still not a cheap proposition.
But I'd rather have a small network focused on good connections than a large network focused on invading and selling user data, and maybe a smaller network could be managed by user contributions over investments that lead to treating users as the product.
Re: Facebook’s war on free will
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
Disabled all that social media shit way back. Didn't look back once. People who mattered reached out, those who didn't, didn't. Life moved on. So much for all their "psychological influence".
Yeah, it seems like there's a thread on HN every week where half of us jump in to share our story. I haven't been on FB in over 5 years and am much happier without it. That said, I have other more tolerable addictions (like reddit).
Same here. I did use it often in college when it was still .edu only and got a lot out of it so I understand why people like it.
On the flip side, shortly after I graduated I realized it was my default "thing to do" online (i.e. when I open my browser it was muscle memory to type in facebook.com). Yet when I opened it up I cared less and less about what I would actually see. Anything worthwhile I would have gotten a text/call about, everything else was just attention-grabbing noise.
After I disabled my account honestly I can't say parting with it had any negative effect on my life whatsoever. Anyone who would have invited me to something on FB just sent me a message on something else, or text/called. Any friends I wanted to stay in touch with did so any way in other ways. Anyone that I lost touch with wasn't someone I was trying to stay in touch with in the first place.
It's amazing how often I hear people complaining about Facebook or the people they have "connections" with on there, but just not using the platform is almost a foreign concept for them at this point.
Re: Facebook’s war on free will
#129I wish people would stop contributing to the Facebook mythos that elevates a social media platform into some kind of software based deity. It's just a website, it's not a threat to "free will" any more than a cigarette or coke addiction is a threat to "free will". People recite grand expositions regarding how "I stopped using facebook and it changed my life forever! I've never looked back!"... wonderful, but I want t…
It's not a website, it's a complex and sophisticated media and marketing platform with many, many different features and all of that comes with a bunch of pros and cons.
That sounds like marketing speak. It's a website; yes it's a very sophisticated one, but the crux of all that sophistication (for the user) comes down to a web page with posts on it. There are pros and cons to everything so I'm not sure that's a very useful observation, but, once again, Facebook is nothing special compared to e.g. services provided by google, microsoft or amazon. I think that is the reason you see so many claims of "I quit Facebook and it was the best decision I ever made" and very few "I quit using Amazon and I've never looked back!"
Re: Facebook’s war on free will
#130It's the Internet that enables communication. Families and friends would be able to communicate once the Internet became possible whether Facebook exists or not. People would be able to use and get value from the Internet whether Google exists or not. These companies add value but they are not the Internet. If they didn't exist the Internet will continue being useful. What they have been able to do is inject themselv…
I'm not sure if you remember the internet before Google, but finding stuff was significantly more difficult. Other search engines were either based off of manually curated indexes or were simple keyword searches and you'd often need to scroll pages of results to find a match that was actually relevant to what you wanted. People used to buy printed books with lists of useful websites to help find things. So yes, the i…
A better search was inevitable. Google achieved it first and snowballed into a monopoly. Same with Facebook – many social networks went extinct just because it was spreading faster.
These companies appropriated the natural course of evolution of information exchange between humans.