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Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

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Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#451

Post by mistermann »

moduspol wrote: post #441
mistermann wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would start with someone who is skilled in both critical thinking and education, or am I misunderstanding the question? Logical fallacies would be one place to start, you can see examples of this all day long on reddit for example.

Well, my understanding is that "critical thinking" is already very commonly considered to be part of various course curricula. If it's not being taught, then we'd need to do something differently. I've been hearing claims of the need to teach "critical thinking" since I was in high school. To me it always came across as one of those things that can't easily be taught, particularly in a traditional academic setting. E…

There's plenty of material out there that isn't remotely touched upon in a traditional education.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_logic

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logic-classical/

https://distancelearning.ubc.ca/courses-and-programs/distanc...

> If it's not being taught, then we'd need to do something differently.

When reading the news, forums, or overhearing conversations, do you not regularly encounter people who obviously have no significant skills in critical thinking?

Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#452

Post by dragonwriter »

jjrh wrote: post #248
cpncrunch wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN generally works very well. The echo chamber problem is due to allowing downvotes IMO. In my experience that simply leads to minority viewpoints being downvoted. Instead, downvotes should be removed, and people should be allowed to flag abusive comments.

The real issue is binary choice. I might disagree with a comment, but acknowledge it's a valid well thought out argument. On the flip side I might agree but acknowledge it's a poorly formed argument. Something might be totally off topic or funny, but if I made me laugh do I down vote it? Slashdot's model of tagging posts was a pretty good idea I think and allowed one to filter out the 'funny' or 'offtopic' comments.

> I might disagree with a comment, but acknowledge it's a valid well thought out argument.

So, upvotes and respond.

If it's a net positive contribution, you shouldn't be downvoting.

> Slashdot's model of tagging posts was a pretty good idea

Its a good model for a customizable user experience, and a bad model for a community. Those two goals are often opposed.

Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#453

Post by verylittlemeat »

1337biz wrote: post #423
seany wrote: post #404

I can't be the only person who is just not bothered by this kind of thing at all, am I? I'm way more worried about political indoctrination in upper education than trolls on the internet.

Then you are running in the wrong circles where you can't just reject any oposing viewpoint as 'Russian bots'.

In the past month I've had 2 comments accuse me of being a Russian bot or a shill on hacker news. People really do just see what they want to see.

Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#454

Post by dragonwriter »

forapurpose wrote: post #395
cpncrunch wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN generally works very well. The echo chamber problem is due to allowing downvotes IMO. In my experience that simply leads to minority viewpoints being downvoted. Instead, downvotes should be removed, and people should be allowed to flag abusive comments.

> HN generally works very well After reading a few discussions over the last few days, I was thinking to my self that HN was better than ever, and very good (with one serious shortcoming). Even the echo chamber is much better than I remember. EDIT: The shortcoming, IMHO, is the abandonment of politics. HN is the ideal place to solve that problem, with s sophisticated audience open to and interested in experimentation…

> The shortcoming, IMHO, is the abandonment of politics. HN is the ideal place to solve that problem

No, it's really not, as HN demonstrates most of the time it interacts with politics.

Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#455

Post by taupefrancis »

enraged_camel wrote: post #267
Tiktaalik wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit is not actually strong moderation. Forum communities with actual strong moderation, eg. Something Awful, ResetEra have near zero issues with hate speech, Nazis and other things that reddit has let fester.

I'm a regular on Something Awful. One of the major factors that keeps it relatively clean is that user registration costs $10. That's a strong financial disincentive against trolling, bots, etc. I really believe that successful online communities of the future will have paid signups.

The Something Awful forums provided my first real exposure to 'internet culture'. I find myself reading their forums more and more often lately because discussions there seem less likely to devolve into an echo chamber. An account there is well worth the registration cost imo.

Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#456

Post by verylittlemeat »

One more opinion for heap?

People are too sensitive about seeing their snowflake opinions validated. Upvote and downvote do not map to right and wrong. What makes an opinion popular has as much to do with rhetoric and appealing to a million fallacies as it does to facts or logic. This is human nature, not an inherent problem with the internet.

Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#457

Post by ecommerceguy »

dragonwriter wrote: post #407
ecommerceguy wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Downvotes but no replies. School yard bully techniques. Triggered you are.

From the guidelines: “Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.”

Ditto. You know what ff that. The downvote system is broken. If you downvote, say why or don't allow downvoting. It's a petulant drive-by mentality and is exactly what makes Reddit "Toxic".

Keep Downvoting.

Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#458

Post by [deleted] »

gowld wrote: post #284
digitalantfarm wrote: post #25

Reddit used to be a place where you could post links to anything on the internet (kind of like this place) and comment on it (without signing up with your email). Now it's place more like Facebook with algorithms based on your personal taste, geolocation, forced email, shadow banning, banning of politically incorrect subreddits, endless political posts and "Futurology" and "Uplifting" news articles. Free speech on re…

Reddit has a common frontpage (two, actually: /popular and /all) and user-customizable list of subreddits. > algorithms based on your personal taste, only for recommending subs to try > geolocation only for recommending subs to try > forced email no it does not > shadow banning extremely rare, and per-sub, not reddit-wide > banning of politically incorrect subreddits extremely rare; most of why Reddit is publicly des…

[deleted]

Re: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

#460

Post by moduspol »

mistermann wrote: post #451
moduspol wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, my understanding is that "critical thinking" is already very commonly considered to be part of various course curricula. If it's not being taught, then we'd need to do something differently. I've been hearing claims of the need to teach "critical thinking" since I was in high school. To me it always came across as one of those things that can't easily be taught, particularly in a traditional academic setting. E…

There's plenty of material out there that isn't remotely touched upon in a traditional education. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_logic https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logic-classical/ https://distancelearning.ubc.ca/courses-and-programs/distanc... > If it's not being taught, then we'd need to do something differently. When reading the news, forums, or overhearing conversations, do you not regularly encoun…

> There's plenty of material out there that isn't remotely touched upon in a traditional education.

Right. I took a logic class for my undergraduate degree. It's actually the source of the "modus" in my username. I guess to me that's a far cry from what people refer to as "critical thinking." Being able to identify textbook logical fallacies isn't the same thing as rationally and objectively forming a judgment about something.

It's certainly a helpful part, but I doubt most would remember it any better than geometry or 1800s history.

> When reading the news, forums, or overhearing conversations, do you not regularly encounter people who obviously have no significant skills in critical thinking?

I do, but it's rarely a clear-cut example of misunderstanding a logical fallacy. More often than not, it's the blind acceptance of supporting evidence while rejecting opposing evidence. Or assigning way too much value to a poorly-sourced news story. Or approaching the issue with a different worldview / values. Or any number of other biases that affect decision-making.

To be clear, though: I agree it's clearly not being taught. I'm just not convinced you can take a bunch of high schoolers, put them in a room, and after X weeks of doing something, they'll be critical thinkers. I agree you could probably teach them logical fallacies well enough to pass a test on them, but that's not the same thing.

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