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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

#191

Post by smsm42 »

wffurr wrote: post #113
smsm42 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> go to work every day to get us to do this one thing, to undermine our willpower That's ominously sounding bullshit. You decide what to do with your willpower, and if you don't like the consequences, it's your fault, not some nefarious engineers. If you don't like facebook, don't go there. If you don't like particular site, don't go there, of if you absolutely can't control yourself, install one of a thousand progra…

Not sure where to go from here. You clearly don't believe that such a thing as structural inequality exists. Without an acknowledgement of the massive power imbalance between mass media corporations on the one hand and the citizenry on the other, there's no possible discussion here.

> You clearly don't believe that such a thing as structural inequality exists

I have no idea what the thing you call "structural inequality" is, so I can't say whether I believe it exists or not. It could be you call by this term some well-established phenomenon, and then I'd agree it exists, or it could be that you call some imaginary bugaboo like engineers taking your free will with their evil algorithms, and then, absent any empirical evidence of its existence, I do not believe in it. Hard to say without understanding the term.

> Without an acknowledgement of the massive power imbalance between mass media corporations on the one hand and the citizenry on the other, there's no possible discussion here.

I certainly see discussion going on right here, so it is possible, but if you mean by that "without you accepting my point as an axiom without proof, I am not ready to continue because my winning is not guaranteed and I have no means to prove my claims" then I agree that continuing the discussion in this situation is not the best move for you. If, however, you are ready to prove your points, you are welcome to do it anytime you like. Free will, you see :)

As far as I can see, there's no "massive power imbalance", on the contrary - the press is often criticized for catering for the basest instincts of the masses and being too easily swayed by a short-term fads and frivolities of the public. Scandal-of-the-day, however minor and vapid, often supplants more deep and important topics. If this criticism is true - and I believe evidence suggests to a large measure it is - then the public is the one to hold the power. If nobody wants to click on clickbait, if nobody comes to your site to view and click on the ads, if nobody reads whatever content you are providing - where is your power? What is your power? You can publish anything and nobody would even know about it, and pretty soon you couldn't publish anything because your servers will be shut down for the lack of payment.

I would say if we can see anything, it is that media corporations are too timid, foolish and cowardly to do anything but what the lowest common denominator demands from them. Clicks and ad impressions are kings, and who makes those clicks? The citizenry does. Nobody stands with the gun to your head and demands you to click or visit certain site. You decide it on your own power. If you don't like the result - maybe time to think what you can change?

Re: Modern Media Is a DoS Attack on Free Will

#192

Post by lbotos »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #185

Modern Media is definitely another addictive thing that one needs to manage. As an older git, I try to remember what it was like in the 80's with no phone, no distractions. Even watching a movie is an event that needs planning in advance. But how do I convey this to my kids, growing up with this? The only way I can think is we do holidays where we go offline for the week, and maybe set an example at home by limiting…

I live a life very similar to this. My phone only has instagram on it (and I'm considering removing) but I try to "use with intent". A recent HN comment that summed it up brilliantly:

"It was when Going Online was still a ritual, just like starting up the computer was - it took a while, sometimes you had to go through a menu or start up Windows or whatever separately still, you got this jingle when starting up, sometimes a login screen, all that stuff. Then going online, dialing up, telling the family (if any) that you're using the internet for a while, firing up the browser, etc. Using the internet was (for most people anyway) a very focused task too, given the per minute charge - get online, do what you want, get offline again." -https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15635817

Re: Modern Media Is a DoS Attack on Free Will

#193

Post by anigbrowl »

snerbles wrote: post #181
anigbrowl wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The foundation of Marxism is public ownership, not a centralized command economy. Other approaches exist, eg participatory economics. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participatory_economics

One can argue that public ownership necessitates central planning in practice. My cursory searches have failed to find a sovereign state that has successfully implemented parecon. Feel free to cite a counterexample.

One can argue anything, but so what? I don't think anyone has even tried implementing ParEcon so far, as it's a relatively new approach and has some problems of its own. My point is that central planning is not the desideratum of the left that some people here are claiming to be.

Re: Modern Media Is a DoS Attack on Free Will

#194

Post by Veen »

smsm42 wrote: post #103
tarsinge wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is that free will cannot be exercised under certain circumstances because for-profit have found a hack to shutdown it. Sure completely surrendering it is disproportionate, but for me it would be more akin to banning certain toxic substances in food, like too much sugar cause addiction and health problems so consumers lose their ability to make an informed choice. Here we would simply ban certain practices i…

> The issue is that free will cannot be exercised under certain circumstances because for-profit have found a hack to shutdown it. No they did not. You don't go to Twitter/Facebook because your free will has been "shut down". You do it because you like it. If you don't want to do it, it is very easy to stop. You won't have excruciating pain and debilitating disease if you don't read what she did next, you heart won't…

> You have free will

What justifies your certainty here? If history proves anything, it’s that people are eminently manipulable. That’s no surprise: we’re biological machines at the endpoint of eons of evolution. We’re not gods. Of course we can be hacked.

Re: Modern Media Is a DoS Attack on Free Will

#195

Post by maksimum »

senko wrote: post #128
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…

Here's how I (try to) keep the Internet-based distractions to a minimum: * Uninstall twitter, facebook and other social apps from your phone; only use the computer (or other device that's not constantly in your pocket). * Even on your computer, log out of twitter, facebook and others. Only log in when you want to look into something (eg. check the social events, send a message), and use private/incognito mode for thi…

Love the 2FA idea.

Do you know of an app/browser extension that lets you bookmark arbitrary HTML pages, and keeps track of how far down you've scrolled; maybe let you write notes? Or maybe one that converts an arbitrary page to PDF, and stores it locally for you?

Re: Modern Media Is a DoS Attack on Free Will

#196

Post by smsm42 »

wffurr wrote: post #123
ucaetano wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is an entire world of alternative possibilities out there for economic and governance systems. Yeah, and in some way or another, every single one of them seem to end in a bloody dictatorship. Thanks, but no thanks, please keep your "alternative possibilities" to yourself.

Did they? European social democratic countries (Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, Germnay), Britain (e.g. the NHS), Costa Rica, Mondragon Spain, etc. Lots of workers' blood was spilled to ensure the capitalist systems we see in the US and other countries, too. All sides in the history of politics and economic systems are bloody-handed monsters. It might, just might, be possible to learn from history and not repeat pr…

None of these countries implement control over the press you propose. None of them even comes close to "Democratic deployment of capital and technology" - if I understand correctly, by this you mean both allocation of capital and permission to create and use certain type of technology is controlled by government, which is elected democratically (though how you could ensure that it is elected democratically given that it controls all the technology is a mystery to me, but let's say we found the magic way to do it). None of these countries - even one with large amount of governmental redistribution - do it. There's still a huge difference between having unemployment insurance or government-sponsored housing for the poor and government taking over all capital and technology. Like between milking the cow and butchering and barbecuing the cow.

Re: Modern Media Is a DoS Attack on Free Will

#197

Post by asavadatti »

graeme wrote: post #188
tammer wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I follow a similar protocol & find it very helpful. The missing link for me was the events function of Facebook, which I find endlessly useful. Luckily FB now has a standalone app specifically for this, Facebook Local. Its no-nonsense, no ads, just relevant events. Plus, the feed it gives you actually ends!

Oh wow, dod not know about facebook local. Does it let you manage events you’ve been invited to, amd host events? I could avoid facebook entirely with that. Friend’s birthdays would be tye only thing i’d miss.

I believe there is a way to link your FB friend's birthdays to your google calendar.

Re: Modern Media Is a DoS Attack on Free Will

#198

Post by anigbrowl »

wallace_f wrote: post #139
anigbrowl wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The social aspects of information propagation are anything but marginalized. The problem, as in the days of yellow journalism, is that sensation is easier to monetize than the truth and this creates opportunities for bad actors to flourish. Of course there's a possibility for over-reaction and repression, but personally I think that the best solution is more information, in the sense of accessible trackbacks (not unl…

>so people can see where stories originate and learn to be skeptical of stuff that comes from consistently unreliable or bizarre sources. This is closer to the problem, not the solution. This caused the NASA Challenger disaster (authorities silenced engineers who warned of foam strike). This caused the US to lose the space race (all the authority and "intelligence community" was behind the Vanguard rocket). This caus…

I fail to see what my comment has to do with your laundry list of examples. I'm not arguing for centralized autocratic filtering but a mechanism for labeling points of origin and exposing that information to consumers.

Your examples don't seem appropriate either. I suggested that people would choose to reject information from 'consistently unreliable or bizarre sources'. Your first counter-example is that of a NASA engineer whose warnings were overlooked, but engineers are not hired for their unreliability or bizarre opinions.

Many of your other examples either ignore the well-known fact of parallel discovery or are themselves relying on the mechanism you claim to deplore of pre-emptively delegitimizing the source. Yes, I know some mainstream news outlets are inaccurate or agenda-driven. I hardly ever consume any news from CNN because I find most of their output to be low quality.

I really don't understand the point of your comment. You seem to be projecting someone else's ideas onto my comment rather than evaluating what I actually wrote.

Re: Modern Media Is a DoS Attack on Free Will

#199

Post by shmageggy »

theonemind wrote: post #53
shmageggy wrote: post #33

I would gladly pay for something like what is advocated for in this article, but I'm not aware of anything like it. A news publication that: * Has the goal of filtering rather than flooding * No ads * No pop-ins 3/4 of the way through the article telling me about four other articles I should read * No endless scrolling * Upfront about bias * Cites sources

This actually reminds me of Delayed Gratification https://www.slow-journalism.com/ . I don't think they make an online version of anything, though. You get it in print. A quarter (3 month) time delay helps with the filtering. No bother about what Trump tweeted on any given day. Kind of like a history book being written in "real time".

This looks great, and I like the idea of print. Three months is a longer lag than what I had in mind, but it might still make for a good supplement. I'd like to preview the writing before I throw down $72, but I can't seem to find any sample articles online.

Re: Modern Media Is a DoS Attack on Free Will

#200

Post by shmageggy »

aag wrote: post #50
shmageggy wrote: post #33

I would gladly pay for something like what is advocated for in this article, but I'm not aware of anything like it. A news publication that: * Has the goal of filtering rather than flooding * No ads * No pop-ins 3/4 of the way through the article telling me about four other articles I should read * No endless scrolling * Upfront about bias * Cites sources

I am a huge fan of Blendle, the news micropayments system, which meets the first four of these criteria. The last two depend on the underlying news organization.

This looks really intriguing. I've signed up for the beta. Thanks!
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