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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

#71

Post by zamalek »

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…

Attention as well as free will is a scarce resource on a personal level. I used to seriously question why anyone would buy almost identical Apple devices year-after-year; where-as I'd spend at least a day researching which Android devices were available. The truth is that it's a bloody phone. I was expending all my free will on trivialities and wasn't making choices that actually matter.

I think this problem is more complex than just the media. In general, people are spending their attention and free will on broad spectrum of useless junk. Media, especially Netflix ("what do I do with my free time?"), is definitely a major offender - my point is that it's not the only one.

The modern world has wound up being an attack on free will, malevolent or not. It's exponentially easier to make a choice from a menu of 5 items vs. a menu of 50. There seems to be a biological limit on our ability to choose and the modern world has far exceeded that.

Re: Modern Media Is a DoS Attack on Free Will

#72

Post by wffurr »

smsm42 wrote: post #36
wffurr wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 pro…

So you're saying to fix the problem of you voluntarily surrendering your free will to distractions brought to you by profit-seeking entities, we need to take free will out of the equation by introducing a system where resources would be centrally allocated and there would be no free will involved in what is offered for you and what you could consume, thus no distractions - you always read the content that the People'…

"voluntarily surrendering your free will to distractions brought to you by profit-seeking entities"

That's one way to describe an "industry [that] employs some of the smartest people, thousands of Ph.D. designers, statisticians, engineers [that] go to work every day to get us to do this one thing, to undermine our willpower." From the article.

"People's Democratic Central Party Committee" Nice straw-man that conflates democratic socialism with authoritarian one-party rule.

There is an entire world of alternative possibilities out there for economic and governance systems. Don't throw the socialist baby out with the Soviet bathwater.

Re: Modern Media Is a DoS Attack on Free Will

#73

Post by cracell »

wslh wrote: post #12
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.

> The difference is how we are connected now 100%

I think 100% is misleading.

You could say that a morning newspaper connected people 100% when that was a new thing. Phones/computers only connect us as often as we use them to connect.

For instance something like AR goggles with a constant ticker of information would connect us even more.

I think it's more accurate to simply say that we are more connected. In specifics that the 24 hour cycle of evening news and morning newspapers has changed into an on-demand system that pushes information to people that want to receive it and that anyone can pull it when they have free time.

Re: Modern Media Is a DoS Attack on Free Will

#74

Post by jimmytucson »

The same is true for TV and radio. Think of all the popular culture that's been created and paid for, not directly, but by merely agreeing to have commercials on in your home for a few minutes. This still boggles my mind. How can viewing advertisements be an adequate substitute for paying cash?

Re: Modern Media Is a DoS Attack on Free Will

#75

Post by Hextinium »

auggierose wrote: post #43
tribune wrote: post #34

I've been coming to resent my smartphone more and more, essentially because of this. I recently quit using tobacco. I remembered all the warnings from my school health classes about how hard it was to quit once you start, how there's a physical dependence and all that. It was uncomfortable at times, and there were plenty of cravings to get over, but I was ultimately successful. I can compare this to the couple of tim…

Don't check your work email on the go. Quit facebook. It is actually pretty simple!

This may work well for you but there are somethings that cause you to have to check email and Facebook for fear of external consequences which is what the OP is saying. For example Hangouts makes me lose at least half a hour of productity a day but if I uninstalled it and never checked it then I would never talk to all of my friends on Hangouts which is not a trade-off that I am willing to take. Same for email, if I stopped checking email on my phone I could lose my job because it requires prompt responses to emails and I like my job and not willing to take that trade off. But then I am stuck with this phone that also contains all of the other things a phone can do and rob me of my attention that way. It's a Catch-22 of productivity.

Re: Modern Media Is a DoS Attack on Free Will

#76

Post by schoen »

rado wrote: post #61

Yes. Media has been dead since the Kuwaiti girl testimony in 1990. It's done, it's over, today's scandals are just aftershocks of that turning point.

For people who aren't familiar with this incident, you can read about it at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nayirah_testimony

Re: Modern Media Is a DoS Attack on Free Will

#77

Post by cousin_it »

tribune wrote: post #34

I've been coming to resent my smartphone more and more, essentially because of this. I recently quit using tobacco. I remembered all the warnings from my school health classes about how hard it was to quit once you start, how there's a physical dependence and all that. It was uncomfortable at times, and there were plenty of cravings to get over, but I was ultimately successful. I can compare this to the couple of tim…

Let's start a startup making a replacement for the internet! Some kind of locked down phone that lets you communicate with people you care about, but not get high on random information. With a built-in limitation to check for emails only a few times a day. Something you could buy and then ditch all other devices without remorse.

Re: Modern Media Is a DoS Attack on Free Will

#78

Post by wffurr »

snerbles wrote: post #44
wffurr wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 pro…

This has to be one of the most heavily-couched calls for Marxism I've seen all week. "Democratic deployment" will still suffer from well-applied demagoguery, the people themselves are still prone to manipulation - even when their choices are abstracted away in a command economy.

Did I deliberately avoid the M-word? Maybe.

A solid counter to demagoguery is economic justice and education that encourages critical thinking. People are much less prone to be swayed by that sort of thing when their health, shelter, and food are not at risk.

Re: Modern Media Is a DoS Attack on Free Will

#79

Post by wffurr »

erasemus wrote: post #70
wffurr wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 pro…

>require major changes driven by the democratic process Marxists tell people what's best for everyone; they don't do what people want.

Funny, I would say the same thing about advertisers.

Re: Modern Media Is a DoS Attack on Free Will

#80

Post by CamTin »

mobilefriendly wrote: post #52
ako wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given free hand, corporations can be just as dangerous as governments. I don't know why you would trust corporations more, since their only goal is to make money.

>just as dangerous as governments Corporations don't have nukes or concentration camps.

They could easily get them if we didn't prevent them from doing so.
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