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Modern Media Is a DoS Attack on Free Will

m.nautil.us

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Re: Modern Media Is a DoS Attack on Free Will

#11

Post by emodendroket »

snerbles wrote: post #6

One can argue that this isn't really anything new - look back at the media hype for war surrounding an explosion of a certain U.S. warship. In 1898. Amusing, how the most vaunted prize in journalism is named for one of the most famous perpetrators of yellow journalism. Social media is merely a slimmer middle man in that frenzied feedback loop, and the legacy media is upset that their slice of the pie is shrinking.

The printing press was instrumental to the Protestant Reformation too, but I'm not sure social media is quite the same.

Re: Modern Media Is a DoS Attack on Free Will

#12

Post by wslh »

snerbles wrote: post #6

One can argue that this isn't really anything new - look back at the media hype for war surrounding an explosion of a certain U.S. warship. In 1898. Amusing, how the most vaunted prize in journalism is named for one of the most famous perpetrators of yellow journalism. Social media is merely a slimmer middle man in that frenzied feedback loop, and the legacy media is upset that their slice of the pie is shrinking.

The difference is how we are connected now 100% with media (and mobile device notifications) where before people lived mainly unconnected and with cognitive "load" instead of cognitive offloading. Not saying that the past was better but rather than we need to build new cognitive/policy tools against new media.

Re: Modern Media Is a DoS Attack on Free Will

#14

Post by ak39 »

snerbles wrote: post #7
QAPereo wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bullshit != Knowledge. Worse, bullshit benefits from the sharp end of Brandolini’s Law.

“The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it.” A blog entry on Brandolini's Law: https://real-psychiatry.blogspot.com/2016/12/brandolinis-law...

I think this could apply to the ratio of coding to debugging too.

Re: Modern Media Is a DoS Attack on Free Will

#15

Post by dmfdmf »

yosito wrote: post #9

As someone who works in tech, I like the analogy of a DoS attack. The root of the issue is attention capitalism. Our attention is essentially a resource being exploited for profit. In that scenario, we're effectivley no longer in control of our own free will as long as someone else can profit by controlling it. On an individual scale, we can give it relatively benign labels like "distraction". But when you look at it…

> In that scenario, we're effectively no longer in control of our own free will as long as someone else can profit by controlling it.

This is a self contradiction. You always have the choice to turn off or tune out the distractions and focus your attention on more important things (which is the essence of free will). That people don't feel like doing that is a psychological problem not a problem with capitalism or profit seeking.

Re: Modern Media Is a DoS Attack on Free Will

#16

Post by Raphmedia »

api wrote: post #5
Raphmedia wrote: post #2

Knowledge is the food of the soul. Problem is we are all binge eating. Edit : Good TED talk on this topic https://www.ted.com/talks/jp_rangaswami_information_is_food [2012]

I wouldn't put it that way. The problem is that a ton of the stuff impinging on us is not knowledge. It's propaganda, fluff, stupid memes, click bait, and systems with interfaces designed to be addictive and to act like Skinner boxes. What I really see happening is a "part 2" repeat of the spam apocalypse that hit e-mail, Usenet, and other federated systems on the early Internet. In the late 1990s spam destroyed most…

> I'm also anticipating the rise of spam 3.0. Spam 3.0 will be fully automated and AI-powered, with AI being used to create an individual "persuasive agent" for each human target.

This already happens.

The other day I was exploring internet ads; I clicked on every one I saw to see where it would lead me. At one point I ended up on a dating website.

All of the profiles were good looking Asian ladies. Creating an account was free but messaging users cost you points. You have 15 free points so you can messages ladies but after that, you need to pay for points.

Problem is, all of those women were robots. Very good quality chatbots, you wouldn't know unless you were tech-savvy. (I pasted them each other messages and they broke) They use emotional manipulation in order to pressure you to answer. At first, it was simply "Hi!" but it quickly turned into "Please answer me you beautiful man" and then "I'm looking for a man like you in my bed".

You need to pay to answer, but also to do things such as change profile picture, post a message on a public profile, etc. The bots pressured you into doing those things.

In short, this means that there are already people using "AI" that pass Turing tests good enough to fool people in order to manipulate them into giving out their money.

Re: Modern Media Is a DoS Attack on Free Will

#17

Post by wffurr »

yosito wrote: post #9

As someone who works in tech, I like the analogy of a DoS attack. The root of the issue is attention capitalism. Our attention is essentially a resource being exploited for profit. In that scenario, we're effectivley no longer in control of our own free will as long as someone else can profit by controlling it. On an individual scale, we can give it relatively benign labels like "distraction". But when you look at it…

"The root of the issue is ... capitalism"

FTFY. The structural issues mentioned in the original article are inherent in a free market economy. Democratic deployment of capital and technology would change the dynamic substantially.

An alternate approach would be to have substantial regulation on speech by companies (aka advertising and propaganda), but even this would require major changes driven by the democratic process, e.g a U.S. constitutional amendment.

Re: Modern Media Is a DoS Attack on Free Will

#18

Post by JepZ »

> Choice is such a messy thing to dive deep into, because then you realize that nobody knows what it means to choose.

Actually, I think I do know what it means, but I have the feeling that many people do not like the idea, that their decisions are based on past experiences and that their free will is actually just the evaluation of their perceptions (of their truth) and therefore, it is nothing that comes from some spritual origin within them, but instead is something that happend to them.

While it feels a little incomfortable at first, it explains a lot of human behavior as for example the impact of advertiments. The important part is to also understand that it does not free you from your own responsibility as the fact that you have beeen tought ethics is also part of the evaluation.

Re: Modern Media Is a DoS Attack on Free Will

#19

Post by eyeinthepyramid »

dmfdmf wrote: post #15
yosito wrote: post #9

As someone who works in tech, I like the analogy of a DoS attack. The root of the issue is attention capitalism. Our attention is essentially a resource being exploited for profit. In that scenario, we're effectivley no longer in control of our own free will as long as someone else can profit by controlling it. On an individual scale, we can give it relatively benign labels like "distraction". But when you look at it…

> In that scenario, we're effectively no longer in control of our own free will as long as someone else can profit by controlling it. This is a self contradiction. You always have the choice to turn off or tune out the distractions and focus your attention on more important things (which is the essence of free will). That people don't feel like doing that is a psychological problem not a problem with capitalism or pr…

That raises interesting questions -- how much free will does an addict have? Are those who exploit an addiction for profit complicit in that addiction?

Re: Modern Media Is a DoS Attack on Free Will

#20

Post by dcow »

api wrote: post #5
Raphmedia wrote: post #2

Knowledge is the food of the soul. Problem is we are all binge eating. Edit : Good TED talk on this topic https://www.ted.com/talks/jp_rangaswami_information_is_food [2012]

I wouldn't put it that way. The problem is that a ton of the stuff impinging on us is not knowledge. It's propaganda, fluff, stupid memes, click bait, and systems with interfaces designed to be addictive and to act like Skinner boxes. What I really see happening is a "part 2" repeat of the spam apocalypse that hit e-mail, Usenet, and other federated systems on the early Internet. In the late 1990s spam destroyed most…

I'm curious why this is getting downvoted without any response. You may not agree 100% but it's an interesting perspective nonetheless and certainly warrants a rebuttal instead of simply being hidden.
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