Some biologists and ecologists think social media is a risk to humanity • Hacker News Board

Re: Some biologists and ecologists think social media is a risk to humanity

#101

Post by freebuju » Sat, Jun 26, 2021, 9:11 PM UTC

Misinformation and scarcity of quality information on social media platforms was bound to happen when these platforms hit critical mass. Moderating SM is damn near impossible to do effectively. It is also easy to game SM. From fake clicks/views (bots) to old accounts used for astroturfing etc, the information market is not at a level playing field.

And since they are all run on some form of hyper-intelligent ML algorithm, none of it from a user perspective is intuitive anymore.

The bigger risk in my opinion is how SM and use of it on digital devices has impacted human behavior. More specifically, psychologically. Dopamine hits and instant gratification must have rewired our brains in the past ~2 decades.

Re: Some biologists and ecologists think social media is a risk to humanity

#102

Post by DoreenMichele » Sat, Jun 26, 2021, 9:12 PM UTC

Long before social media, most movies, TV shows and the like in the US came out of California and New York. These are very urban places and I spent a lot of my life feeling kind of like "I must be doing it wrong" because my life didn't seem to match up with what I was seeing in popular media.

I eventually concluded that for most of America, what we see on TV and in movies doesn't match our lives.

I think the internet is actually an opportunity to give push back against that and better develop local or regional identifies elsewhere and give them a voice.

Re: Some biologists and ecologists think social media is a risk to humanity

#103

Post by slipframe » Sat, Jun 26, 2021, 9:12 PM UTC

nitrogen wrote: post #17

slipframe wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm thinking that if you sent a dozen people to Alpha Centari, it wouldn't make any difference because that is under the threshold of people that would be required to establish a self-sustaining colony that, in turn, sends out similar expeditions in the future. Do that sort of stunt as much as you like, it won't become something more. It's like trying to jump over a building by hopping a bunch. You can hop one time o…

under the threshold of people that would be required to establish a self-sustaining colony Such a small group of people, armed with current genetic engineering and future artificial means of reproduction, could bring with them enough genetic diversity and reproductive capacity to reach colonizing scale. You can hop one time or one billion times, you won't clear the building because after each failed hop you're back t…

I think genetics is actually the easy part. A few dozen or so people, selected for strong health, probably contain enough genetic material in their groins to start a colony. More would doubtlessly be better, but I think such things have been done by humans on earth before. Frozen eggs/sperm and women willing to be surrogate mothers help a lot too; you wouldn't need artificial womb technology, necessarily.

The hard part I think is "playing factorio IRL" on a planet we weren't evolved to cope with. Bootstrapping industry sufficient even to create additional shelters would be very challenging. Maybe we could practice this on Mars.

Re: Some biologists and ecologists think social media is a risk to humanity

#104

Post by ben_w » Sat, Jun 26, 2021, 9:21 PM UTC

throwaaskjdfh wrote: post #11

slipframe wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that ubiquitous global communication is the "Great Filter" that prevents intelligent civilizations from colonizing the universe. Before any intelligent species can hope to tackle a problem like that, they invent something like the internet. And once they've invented an internet, they become addicted to low latency communication and will never stray far from it, at least not in significant numbers. Even one ye…

I suspect the Great Filter is that sufficiently intelligent life has no interest in expansion, and doesn't communicate at all.

Only stable if the whole society can force itself to not even want to expand.

If 1 per billion wants to expand, out of a population of 8 billion, you have 8 expansionists. If each of them breaks the social conventions and have twice as many offspring as the sustainers (and if the desire is heritable), after 30 generations they’re now equal in number to the sustainers. Cambridge University is in the order of 30 generations old.

https://isogg.org/wiki/How_long_is_a_generation%3F_Science_p...

Re: Some biologists and ecologists think social media is a risk to humanity

#105

Post by WillDaSilva » Sat, Jun 26, 2021, 9:22 PM UTC

ko29 wrote: post #57

electrondood wrote: post #27

I 100% think that social media is shrinking our collective attention spans, and the cumulative effects of this are unpredictable. Infinitely scrolling through flashy, zero-effort "snackable" content is the equivalent of mental junk food.

Like HN.

Definitely true to some extent. I think the degree to which it applies corresponds to how deeply a person engages with an individual post/thread. Having long conversations in the comments of a post is probably not conductive to shortening attention spans. Ideally we could mimic the sorts of deep conversations that can be had with small groups of people/friends in-person. Maybe Hacker News would benefit from live updating comment threads so that people wouldn't have to refresh the page frequently to have a back-and-forth conversation.

Re: Some biologists and ecologists think social media is a risk to humanity

#106

Post by ElViajero » Sat, Jun 26, 2021, 9:22 PM UTC

cortesoft wrote: post #83

docdeek wrote: post #67

There's a quote in a Michael Crichton novel (The Lost World) that seems relevant here. As part of a rant connecting the idea of the internet and evolution, a character opines: "This idea that the whole world is wired together is mass death. Every biologist knows that small groups in isolation evolve fastest. You put a thousand birds on an ocean island and they'll evolve very fast. You put ten thousand on a big contin…

I get the sentiment, and there might be nuggets of truth to the idea, but there are some fundamental aspects of biological evolution that make it different. Biology evolves through mutation propagation, and larger populations tend to regress mutations to the mean more than smaller populations. Behavior changes don't require any mutations, and they can be shared in all directions (unlike mutations, which can only be s…

> Second, if this were true, the number of innovations would have decreased after we became globally connected.

It is not only about "innovation" but about cultural diversity. For good or bad, a globalized world is standardizing culture around the world. Hollywood was a very powerful starting point as allowed everyone to see what the USA produces.

> innovations spread very quickly

That is the point. There are less and less pockets of different approaches. In one side of the world someone invents a new app and people is using it in the other side of the world 3 days later. Innovation may be fast, but it is not diverse but there is a convergence of ideas and ways of thinking. If we get it right it is fantastic, if we get it wrong there are no alternatives.

A good example, hot topic, is cryptocurrencies. If it is something good they are everywhere, if it is a mistake then it is consuming an incredible amount of resources for no use. If you had pockets of innovation the impact would be smaller and it will take more time to copy it if it becomes successful.

Re: Some biologists and ecologists think social media is a risk to humanity

#107

Post by coopierez » Sat, Jun 26, 2021, 9:23 PM UTC

v_london wrote: post #99

grawprog wrote: post #16

I think social media needs to be redefined. What the average person thinks social media is is very different than what it actually is. I think a lot of people think big social media platforms are actually communication platforms, they're not. They're designed intentionally to be difficult to communicate on. That the not the purpose of them, it's in the name 'social media' they are the media, you are the social. They…

These are some very good points. For me the biggest problem with existing social networks is how difficult it is to get to know new people through the applications. Despite us spending more time online than being present on the physical world (this is probably also a problem, but one for another time), we get remarkably little real social interaction out of these hours spent. Good news is that the seeds of better soc…

That looks interesting. How do you plan on moderating the platform?

Re: Some biologists and ecologists think social media is a risk to humanity

#108

Post by meh99 » Sat, Jun 26, 2021, 9:27 PM UTC

cortesoft wrote: post #83

docdeek wrote: post #67

There's a quote in a Michael Crichton novel (The Lost World) that seems relevant here. As part of a rant connecting the idea of the internet and evolution, a character opines: "This idea that the whole world is wired together is mass death. Every biologist knows that small groups in isolation evolve fastest. You put a thousand birds on an ocean island and they'll evolve very fast. You put ten thousand on a big contin…

I get the sentiment, and there might be nuggets of truth to the idea, but there are some fundamental aspects of biological evolution that make it different. Biology evolves through mutation propagation, and larger populations tend to regress mutations to the mean more than smaller populations. Behavior changes don't require any mutations, and they can be shared in all directions (unlike mutations, which can only be s…

They don’t require a biological mutation but they do require a change in agency, social state.

Take society as an organism in the abstract and it definitely needs to mutate.

Crichton was a pop science author, right-wing believer in America. His idea small groups get things done was lost on this guy who watched entire corporations publish his books and movies. I’d take his philosophy and science creds with a grain of salt.

The masses were too busy collectively validating his banal artistic efforts, so of course he would balk at collectivism philosophically while ignoring it took a village to lift him up.

Those folks are scared that if everyone can have time to write mediocre sci fi they’d have to get real jobs.

Re: Some biologists and ecologists think social media is a risk to humanity

#109

Post by FooBarBizBazz » Sat, Jun 26, 2021, 9:28 PM UTC

docdeek wrote: post #67

There's a quote in a Michael Crichton novel (The Lost World) that seems relevant here. As part of a rant connecting the idea of the internet and evolution, a character opines: "This idea that the whole world is wired together is mass death. Every biologist knows that small groups in isolation evolve fastest. You put a thousand birds on an ocean island and they'll evolve very fast. You put ten thousand on a big contin…

I dunno. Every time species from that big Eurasian land mass -- say, house cats -- showed up on an island, there was an extinction event. Every time an isolated tribe meets "civilization", 90% of the tribe drops dead from unfamiliar pathogens. Being wired in to the big Evolution Chamber seems to forge a kind of strength (not that it's peaceful). Evolution has more dice to roll.

Re: Some biologists and ecologists think social media is a risk to humanity

#110

Post by prox » Sat, Jun 26, 2021, 9:29 PM UTC

docdeek wrote: post #67

There's a quote in a Michael Crichton novel (The Lost World) that seems relevant here. As part of a rant connecting the idea of the internet and evolution, a character opines: "This idea that the whole world is wired together is mass death. Every biologist knows that small groups in isolation evolve fastest. You put a thousand birds on an ocean island and they'll evolve very fast. You put ten thousand on a big contin…

Nicholas Taleb puts forth the same ideas, where he believes in fractalistic localities, in order to improve anti fragility.