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Facebook’s war on free will

theguardian.com

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Re: Facebook’s war on free will

#211

Post by raverbashing »

firmgently wrote: post #126
raverbashing wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 decis…

> Modern mainstream science does not allow for the existence of free will.

Physics and math do allow it. I'm not in the least bit worried about those who disagree, they will give some excuse when they are shown to be wrong (maybe something about underpowered studies). Though I suspect the choice not as free as people think.

> everything that ever happens is an inevitable and ultimately predictable consequence of The Big Bang

No. By quantum physics. Most things are not predictable. Add to this non-linear effects and you get a really non-predictable universe (some part of this is Chaos theory).

> and several studies have shown that decisions happen before we become aware of them and believe ourselves to have consciously decided

This means exactly what it means and nothing else, that is, the brain decides before it is aware of that fact (and it can be argued most decisions are "hardware accelerated" and automatic: nothing wrong with that). No further conclusions can be taken out of that

Re: Facebook’s war on free will

#212

Post by andrei_says_ »

ameister14 wrote: post #11

This 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…

Ascribing ulterior motives to the author and thus constructing a straw man argument makes it difficult for me to take your comment at face value.

Re: Facebook’s war on free will

#213

Post by andrei_says_ »

ikeyany wrote: post #16

You could take a year-long class on the psychological influence (some call it social engineering) of Facebook and you'd barely scratch the surface. One example I find particularly interesting is how Facebook slowly expanded what would trigger a notification, keeping people fixated on that red box like rats to sugar water.

I see a similarity between food corporations pouring money into making food addictive and cheap, and corporations competing for our attention by making their digital products addictive.

I highly recommend this TED talk by Tristan Harriss on the topic: How a handful of tech companies control billions of minds every day

https://www.ted.com/talks/tristan_harris_the_manipulative_tr...

It's a war for our attention and the first step of taking it back is admitting that we are easy to distract and persuad-able.

Re: Facebook’s war on free will

#214

Post by gerbilly »

root_axis wrote: post #101

I 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…

Well facebook does attempt to track you on other websites though.

Re: Facebook’s war on free will

#215

Post by root_axis »

AlexandrB wrote: post #205
root_axis wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suppose that makes Zuckerberg god in your analogy. This is a terrible comparison. A decade old tech company is not at all comparable to one of the oldest and most powerful and influential institutions in history.

> This is a terrible comparison. A decade old tech company is not at all comparable to one of the oldest and most powerful and influential institutions in history. Actually it's rather apt given that there are more Facebook users (2B) than Catholics (1.2B). The reality is that Facebook has a disturbing amount of influence on what a quarter of the worlds population see and hear on any given day. No, Facebook can't dir…

> Actually it's rather apt given that there are more Facebook users (2B) than Catholics (1.2B).

I apologize for sounding like a jerk, but have you ever read a history book? The impact of the Catholic church on human history completely eclipses Facebook's entire existence, the comparison is completely absurd. Comparing Facebook's monthly active users to the global population of Catholics is like comparing the total number of World of Warcraft subscribers to the total number of active duty U.S. soldiers; the difference in numbers is categorically meaningless.

> The reality is that Facebook has a disturbing amount of influence on what a quarter of the worlds population see and hear on any given day.

I don't really think it does. As I stated, the majority of people use Facebook for pretty standard social behavior like photo-sharing, messaging and comments. People go to Facebook because they can see what's going on with their friends and family or they subscribe to content providers that they already like and explicitly hide content they don't want to see. Don't misunderstand, this isn't to say that Facebook couldn't potentially abuse it's power for the purpose of spreading propaganda, but the reality is that this isn't really happening because people don't look to Facebook to form their opinions, they look to the echo chambers that Facebook allows them to curate at their own discretion. Facebook is a mirror of their users and that is by design because Facebook only care about eyeballs. Of course, whenever Facebook filters or deletes something people get up in arms and complain about censorship and blah blah blah, but 99% of the time this is just sour grapes from the community that favored the removed content.

Re: Facebook’s war on free will

#216

Post by KGIII »

ntsplnkv2 wrote: post #83
KGIII wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate to defend Facebook, but I'm not sure about their data having no value for the users. One such example would be that they've connected people who were otherwise unknowing of each other. People have found long lost relatives due to the big data that Facebook has. I'd say that's value.

And I've seen friendships and families destroyed by arguments on FaceBook. We've also seen how much of it is truly fake, curated by foreign companies and political groups to push agendas.

That doesn't actually negate my point. I don't actually have a Facebook account, but their big data does provide some value to some people. The question of it being worth the overall harm is a different question altogether.

Like it or not, it provides value to some. Which is, coincidentally, about the nicest thing I've ever said about them. Please don't make me defend them again, I feel dirty.

Re: Facebook’s war on free will

#217

Post by Radim »

molteanu wrote: post #113
athenot wrote: post #65

> 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, from Dune: "Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them."

Worse!

"The machines themselves condition the users to employ each other the way they employ machines."

- God Emperor of Dune

Frank Herbert was a genius.

Re: Facebook’s war on free will

#218

Post by xellisx »

athenot wrote: post #65

> 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…

I'll just leave this here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVGINIsLnqU

Re: Facebook’s war on free will

#219

Post by funkymike »

nql wrote: post #143
firmgently wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 decis…

The non-existence of free will has no direct policy implication. Since people are deterministic, the knowledge of punishments would create different behaviors.

The non-existence of free has huge policy implications. There are many discussions of this. For example the top result on Google for me looking for "free will justice punishment" was this:

https://www.orlandocriminaldefenseattorneyblog.com/2016/01/f...

If a criminal has no free will, then they are not responsible for their actions since responsibility is dependent on moral agency. I disagree with that author's conclusion though, that you have to let every criminal go. I think that when someone is apprehended and determined to have committed the crime the decision to be made now comes from a different perspective. What treatment of this person will produce the best (or least bad) outcome for society on the whole? In one case that could mean letting the person go if every indication is that they will not commit another crime regardless of any punishment. In another case it could be locking them up and never letting them out, even on a first offence, if it is very likely that they will commit serious crimes if freed.

Of course there are still discussions to be had weighing the impact of the sentencing decision on the victim, the perpetrator, and the rest of society. There's also how much trust to place in the scientific models of likelihood for recidivism. But accepting that people have no moral agency undercuts the most basic premise of laws and the justice system.

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