Ai is a Skinner box right now. It’s designed to capture attention. It does that by measuring how intensely something makes you feel. Dopamine high = content dependence and an attention reward.
If you see people fighting your brain looks. If you see something normal who cares? You’re not forming relationships with people. You’re trying to get likes and shares. Why the hell would you do something boring like find a middle ground?
It’s fun because this article from another thread might help people think of ideas on how to fix this. Algorithms are the attention filter right now. They obviously suck and don’t respect autonomy. Personally I liked the days of “content like this” navigation. I used to spend hours just walking around the network of Spotify songs to find new content. Now you can’t do that. The algo suggests stuff and you’re not really free to explore the graph.
https://lithub.com/how-we-pay-attention-changes-the-very-sha...
Ask HN: How do we stop the polarization/toxicicity filling the web?
651–660 of 859 posts
Re: Ask HN: How do we stop the polarization/toxicicity filling the web?
#652It's neither new nor fixable. It's why we have elections. Now that unlimited amounts of untraceable cash can easily subdue any and all resistance, well. We're F*cked. There is nothing any of us can do about it but hope we die painlessly before global warming really kicks in.
Re: Ask HN: How do we stop the polarization/toxicicity filling the web?
#653Encourage people to participate in physical social gatherings that center around non-political issues, like hobbies. We need to start emphasizing what we have in common, help people see that ultimately we're really not all that different from each other. The internet lets people hide behind this isolating veneer that makes it too easy to just shout at each other and behave in extreme ways that would never be socially…
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Re: Ask HN: How do we stop the polarization/toxicicity filling the web?
#654Discussions like this are frustrating to me because they always seem to skip over what feels like a crucial element: Do you know _why_ this uptick has happened? Does anyone? I get the feeling, in general, when people talk about wanting to "Do Something" about this sort of thing, they are always focused on managing the symptom and never focused on addressing the cause. Frequently, when I try to bring this up, the caus…
> Do you know _why_ this uptick has happened? Does anyone?
Controversy drives engagement, engagement drives profits.
Re: Ask HN: How do we stop the polarization/toxicicity filling the web?
#655It's worse than the Eternal September. It's definitely more toxic than it's ever been, and people are definitely more polarized. The 2016 election news cycle got a lot of otherwise normal people really radicalized and hostile. Sure most of the old-timers among us remember, often fondly, the constructive insanity of usenet. And the younger generation remembers the torrent of pure id that was 4chan in the early days, a…
I think people are over-emphasizing the anonymity aspect of it. If the only think causing someone to behave morally is the idea that they are being watched by other people who know who they are, then their parents/religion/society has failed them.
>If the only think causing someone to behave morally is the idea that they are being watched by other people who know who they are, then their parents/religion/society has failed them.
what do you think the function of parents, religion and society is if not to observe people and watch them? That's what socialization is. Stake in a community and incentive to adjust to social norms, because the consequence of anti-social behaviour is loss of status or punishment.
It's completely rational for individuals to behave selfishly under conditions of anonymity because they face no social consequences. The way humans are conditioned to behave what we perceive to be reasonable is through social interaction and peers, that is to say, to be watched.
The model many people seem to have is that 95% of people under conditions of internet anonymity are good citizens and that the trolls are the aberration. But actually the trolls are just the example of what essentially happens to everyone if they're taken out of what is the natural human condition, which is social interaction including persistent identity and stakeholdership in some community.
Re: Ask HN: How do we stop the polarization/toxicicity filling the web?
#656Improve the economy.
Humans confronted with scarcity (real or imagined) react with rational self-interest. They react more easily and strongly to perceived threats, become selfish for themselves and their in-group, and over-demonstrate their allegiance to that in-group.
Make people feel (economically) safe, that they have opportunities to accumulate wealth, and can generally do what they want. They'll be less fearful, and less afraid to see Others getting ahead as well.
Re: Ask HN: How do we stop the polarization/toxicicity filling the web?
#657Earlier quoted context omitted.
Besides, what we're talking about here is more akin to autoimmune disfunction, and not healthy immune function. No it isn't. Responding to toxicity or an external insult is precisely what the immune system does. An autoimmune disorder would be an activation of the immune system against some other bodily system that is healthy and functioning.
An autoimmune disease is a condition arising from an abnormal immune response to a normal body part. People having different opinions is normal.
People having different opinions is normal, but not all opinions are thereby valid. Promoting genocide or child abuse have a deleterious effect on people in the in the respective target groups and so we sanction such opinions because of their demonstrated harms that result from their implementation.
Re: Ask HN: How do we stop the polarization/toxicicity filling the web?
#658Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think it's fair to call this phenomenon "leftwing". My perception is that those who advocate deplatforming/censorship are centrists who call themselves "progressives". They do this mostly in order to support existing power structures that they fear are threatened by free speech. Very few actual leftists in the American context are against free speech.
I wanted to stress that I didn't mean it as a leftwing phenomenon. It's just that the GP seemed to describe it as a peculiarly rightwing one, and I think we've seen instances on the left as well (particularly recently). And while the left is generally much more averse to physical violence than the right, it's also more socially accepted and mainstream, so the outrage storms are more pronounced and the calls for censo…
Sorry, I misunderstood you.
Re: Ask HN: How do we stop the polarization/toxicicity filling the web?
#659Encourage people to participate in physical social gatherings that center around non-political issues, like hobbies. We need to start emphasizing what we have in common, help people see that ultimately we're really not all that different from each other. The internet lets people hide behind this isolating veneer that makes it too easy to just shout at each other and behave in extreme ways that would never be socially…
Encourage people to participate in physical social gatherings that center around non-political issues, like hobbies. I think there is a lot more to this than many people think. If more people participated in hobbies, then they would spend less time on the internet. The time they do spend would be more targeted and focused instead of mindlessly scrolling and scrolling and getting baited and agitated. They would also f…
"... start hobbies. And be bad at them." Love it. The reasoning sounds like Chestertonian "common sense."
Re: Ask HN: How do we stop the polarization/toxicicity filling the web?
#660Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, and for truly horrendous viewpoints it's ok to ban them outright. But society isn't black and white, and when you start lumping non-extremists into the same bucket and banning them all you end up where we are today: distrust of MSM but a big chunk of society.
You keep talking about "non-extremists" but you are not telling us what you mean by that.
I don't want to get political, but do you think Joe Rogan is an extremist? Jeanine Cummins? What about Ben Shapiro?
These are people that the MSM is trying to cancel quite literally right now.