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The internet is increasingly a low-trust society

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Re: The internet is increasingly a low-trust society

#161

Post by [deleted] »

philwelch wrote: post #131
ikeyany wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I am arguing that. There is no way the US is the world power it was through the late 1800s and beyond, without centuries of coercion [0]. [0] https://www.history.com/news/slavery-profitable-southern-eco...

One of the key arguments against slavery was that it help the South back from being able to have a modern, industrial economy. If slavery was the key ingredient to being a world power, the slave states would not have had their asses thoroughly handed to them by the free states in the Civil War.

[deleted]

Re: The internet is increasingly a low-trust society

#162

Post by schaefer »

crazygringo wrote: post #160
schaefer wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author is definitely a "spiritual person", he's a Buddhist monk and the french translator for the Dalai Lama. But he is also very scientifically minded. He has a PHD in cellular genetics from the institute pasteur[1]. One of the central themes of the book, and motivators for the author to write, is to address the contrast between other oriented (altruistic) and self oriented (selfish) societies. The author assert…

From the links, it seems like his main criticism of Dawkins is actually merely the word "selfish" in the title of his book, and that the CEO of Enron liked it? Yes, Dawkins is saying that "universal love" does not have an evolutionary component, which seems like a fairly uncontroversial claim. It seems like your criticism of Dawkins is more a criticism of how other people have misunderstood him, rather than any criti…

Thank you, I'm familiar with the book you are recommending - the righteous mind. It is discussed in Altruism and cited in its bibliography. [1]

I get the impression you've decided to take a stance on the book Altruism without reading it. The summary you provide for Rightous mind could work just as well as a summary for Altruism too. At this point, we aren't even disagreeing, we're just citing different sources, and I'm content to just drop it.

https://books.google.com/books?id=1k_2AwAAQBAJ&printsec=fron...

Re: The internet is increasingly a low-trust society

#163

Post by AnimalMuppet »

abathur wrote: post #55

If I'm not mis-remembering, there's an interesting section in Dawkins' The Selfish Gene about cooperative grooming behavior (I think it was in some sort of water fowl) and how the birds deal with cheating behavior (individuals that accept grooming without reciprocating). My takeaway was roughly: Any exchange of value based on trust is exploitable. The simplest cure is excluding the exploiter, but this doesn't scale w…

Interestingly, one could view China's social credit score system as a way of dealing with this trust issue.

Note well: I am not advocating either a social credit score system, nor China's use of it. Instead, I am warning that any national-level attempt to solve the trust issue will likely be open to the same abuses as China's system.

Re: The internet is increasingly a low-trust society

#164

Post by chongli »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #159
chongli wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't just a dichotomy that bad writers produce bad writing and good writers produce good writing. Good writers are even better at producing bad writing, because they produce bad writing that masquerades as good. We're not dealing with random defects, we're dealing with agents and their agendas.

We're not dealing with random defects, we're dealing with agents and their agendas. That's a reasonable point, but people mostly don't tell me "It's a trust issue. I would pay if I believed I could trust the motives of the author/source." The overall attitude expressed is consistently "I'm simply not going to pay for writing. If writers want a middle class income, they should get a real job." Once in a great while so…

The overall attitude expressed is consistently "I'm simply not going to pay for writing. If writers want a middle class income, they should get a real job."

There's more to trust than belief in the veracity (or lack thereof) of a statement. When you trust a writer, you not only trust their claims, you trust that the substance of their writing is worth your time. The attitude you highlight suggests to me that many people do not see a lot of writing as being worth their time.

Unfortunately, people's judgements of value can be strongly influenced by price. When the quantity of readily available, free writing increases dramatically, people's judgement of its value goes down. Simply put, they no longer trust in the institution of writers as a medium.

Re: The internet is increasingly a low-trust society

#165

Post by AstralStorm »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #163
abathur wrote: post #55

If I'm not mis-remembering, there's an interesting section in Dawkins' The Selfish Gene about cooperative grooming behavior (I think it was in some sort of water fowl) and how the birds deal with cheating behavior (individuals that accept grooming without reciprocating). My takeaway was roughly: Any exchange of value based on trust is exploitable. The simplest cure is excluding the exploiter, but this doesn't scale w…

Interestingly, one could view China's social credit score system as a way of dealing with this trust issue. Note well: I am not advocating either a social credit score system, nor China's use of it. Instead, I am warning that any national-level attempt to solve the trust issue will likely be open to the same abuses as China's system.

That only works until enough people exploit the system in some way. (Both good and bad score...)

Specifically, once it becomes a means of political control it ceases to be useful as a system for trustworthiness.

Re: The internet is increasingly a low-trust society

#166

Post by DoreenMichele »

chongli wrote: post #164
DoreenMichele wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're not dealing with random defects, we're dealing with agents and their agendas. That's a reasonable point, but people mostly don't tell me "It's a trust issue. I would pay if I believed I could trust the motives of the author/source." The overall attitude expressed is consistently "I'm simply not going to pay for writing. If writers want a middle class income, they should get a real job." Once in a great while so…

The overall attitude expressed is consistently "I'm simply not going to pay for writing. If writers want a middle class income, they should get a real job." There's more to trust than belief in the veracity (or lack thereof) of a statement. When you trust a writer, you not only trust their claims, you trust that the substance of their writing is worth your time. The attitude you highlight suggests to me that many peo…

I'm a writer. Some of my writing hits the front page of HN. This piece did fairly well on the front page in terms of both karma count and discussion: https://raisingfutureadults.blogspot.com/2019/01/the-hand-li...

It also got copied and reblogged, sometimes legitimately with my permission and sometimes not. For me, it is the first hit if you google the expression "the hand licking incident." It seems plenty of people found the piece worth reading.

It made not one thin dime.

I spent around two weeks on that piece. It's at least my third attempt at a parenting blog. I get paid for freelance writing, have years of experience blogging, about six years of college and if karma count is anything to judge by I'm a "respected member of the community." (My old account has 25k karma and this one currently has 19k karma. If it was all under one account, I would be decently high on the leader board.)

It has no ads on it in part because I would rather not be a shill for god-knows-what. I would rather be paid for my writing. But it also has no ads in part because I know how much the internet in general and HN in specific hate ads these days. It is supported via tips and Patreon.

I'm quite open about how much I struggle financially and that I make my living as a writer in part because I'm medically handicapped and can't do a lot of so-called "real jobs." Given that we have worse economic inequality than in The Gilded Age, "get a real job" is a specious argument anyway.

The reality is that the current attitude is that writing simply should be slave labor. Period. If you don't like it, go do something else. Not our problem that you are literally homeless and going hungry, bitch.

Meanwhile, five million monthly visitors to HN expect the front page to be filled daily with good writing and they bitch and moan about how there isn't enough good stuff on HN and the front page moves too slow and on and on.

I don't particularly care to continue this discussion further. It's not likely worth my time.

(Edit: Not currently homeless, but I was for nearly six years. I still struggle with food insecurity and general poverty.)

Re: The internet is increasingly a low-trust society

#167

Post by kerblang »

adventured wrote: post #141
kerblang wrote: post #140

Maybe the problem is that ever since google the only metric anyone has bothered to devise is "popularity", which was never a particularly good indicator of truth to begin with.

Google was built heavily on authority, not just popularity. Otherwise you could easily buy your way above Wikipedia, a non-profit organization (Wikimedia) - which ranks at or near the top for every query. Quora, or some other VC backed knowledge service with a couple hundred million to vaporize, would overtake Wikipedia through the direct purchasing of popularity. Then others would quickly follow, entirely wiping Wik…

Interesting, but how do they assign this authority? Anything to cite?

Re: The internet is increasingly a low-trust society

#168

Post by josinalvo »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #148
chongli wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ideas follow from reality. Supply and demand would dictate that infinite supply should drive prices to zero. Isn't that what we're seeing? The other problem is that most people can't tell good writing apart from bad, but that problem is far older than all technology (apart from writing itself, of course).

That's a two-way street. Reality also follows from ideas. Perhaps most people can't tell good writing from bad, but the HN crowd is more able than average to distinguish the two. Yet the attitude here boils down to "writing isn't a real job -- if you don't like working for peanuts, then STFU and get a real job !" HN members actively find ways around pay walls, more aggressively than most use ad blockers etc. Most peo…

Not so much "writing should be free", but "I dont trust and consume a specific source enough to justify subscription" with the adendum that "ads are evil". At least for me.

Edit: having read the "hand licking incident" I believe it did give me value and I would be willing to pay 1 dollar or so as thanks (not implying that I got only 1 dollar value, or even that I got as much as 1 dollar value. Just a number that seems reasonable).

There is the matter of how: to do it I would probably have to spend much more than 1 dollar in effort.

And there is the matter of scale: I want to pay you for your work in giving me an interesting insight. But if we started to do that massively, people would optimize for "things that seems insights" not for insights... (see https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/)

Re: The internet is increasingly a low-trust society

#169

Post by josinalvo »

asark wrote: post #99
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Democrats with higher education are getting worse and worse at modeling Republicans . I think that means that, in higher education, Republicans get exposed to real Democrats, and Democrats get exposed to a caricature of Republicans.

If true, that seems odd. There was an awful lot of very public searching for "what are Republicans, and how can we understand and empathize with them more?" after the last election. Tons. It's ongoing, in fact. It's mostly been—to an almost absurd degree—very gentle and good-hearted. If there's ever been anything like this sort of massive effort by Republican media figures and public intellectuals, I'd love to know a…

> what are Republicans, and how can we understand and empathize with them more?" after the last election. Tons.

> very gentle and good-hearted.

That has not been my impression. Just one data point.

Re: The internet is increasingly a low-trust society

#170

Post by josinalvo »

pjc50 wrote: post #27
0xfeba wrote: post #13

At probably a naive glance it seems related to anonymity. Would tying identity to online posts increase this trust? What if you had to insert your National ID Card to comment in some feedback forums? I remember YouTube tried this and failed due to pushback. What's the driver of this clickbait/instant gratification/hot take culture that's developing? Is it just ads?

Some of the worst clickbait is published in national newspapers under a byline and photograph of the author. The Boris Johnson fiasco has got journalists openly saying "who are the people who called the police when they heard shouting and screaming next door? We need to find and expose them". Requiring ID means the culture war side with the best harassment capability can take over the space and decide who becomes the…

> Boris Johnson fiasco

Could you provide some context?

> who are the people who called the police when they heard shouting and screaming next door? We need to find and expose them".

Could you provide some links?

(sorry, not doubt, truly uninformed)

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