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The Cargo Cult of the Ennui Engine

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Re: The Cargo Cult of the Ennui Engine

#31

Post by nehal3m »

klik99 wrote: post #14
pipo234 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I, for one, learned a new word: Ennui. And I believe I finally understand what people mean when referring to a cargo cult. A tweet most definitely would not have sufficed. Thanks for the long read, interesting an well written. (And: true, I'm probably living under a rock for being so ignorant) :-)

Everyone learns these things from different places! I used to get annoyed at content explaining things I already knew well until I realized that I once learned it from somewhere that wasn't the "original place". I forget who said it, but someone said good writing isn't about writing something new, it's about saying existing truths in interesting ways. This piece didn't really land for me, but glad it did for you.

There's a scene in the movie 'Flash of Genius'. The movie tells the story of a guy who invents the mechanism for intermittent windshield wipers and has the design stolen from him by Detroit auto makers.

In a court scene the main character is on the stand, and he reads the first few words from 'A Tale of Two Cities' and asks the lawyer for the other side if Dickens had invented any of those individual words.

That always stuck with me; it's the configuration of over-the-counter parts or ideas that makes something novel. Sometimes articles explain ideas with a twist, a different order or a different interpretation, and furthermore, when you yourself reconfigure a set of ideas under the shower or in a comment section, you should realise that you're doing worthwhile creative work.

I see the two ironies here: I might be explaining things that you already knew, and this comment will probably be skimmed over (as the article puts it) as another pull of the slot machine. :-)

Re: The Cargo Cult of the Ennui Engine

#32

Post by uoaei »

tester457 wrote: post #24
Animats wrote: post #7

"There is a solution to all of this...When we scroll through our various feeds, we need to remain consciously aware of what we’re doing and what messages we’re silently sending.' That's not likely to help. The author is asking for people to devote more attention to something trivial.

So it is an unsolvable problem afterall.

Hardly. I think the point is that you don't even have to play the game: the signals you send could be null as much as they could be something that you dedicate a lot of time and effort toward.

Re: The Cargo Cult of the Ennui Engine

#33

Post by Aeolun »

kayo_20211030 wrote: post #21
Animats wrote: post #7

"There is a solution to all of this...When we scroll through our various feeds, we need to remain consciously aware of what we’re doing and what messages we’re silently sending.' That's not likely to help. The author is asking for people to devote more attention to something trivial.

I think the operative word is "consciously". I think the author's wish is that we devote conscious thought, not merely emotional reaction, to whatever it is we're consuming. Not just what makes me feel good or bad; but rather, whether it is IMO good, or bad, or neither. If it's neither, move on; don't respond, reply, upvote, downvote, or anything else. Just move along. Let it atrophy and don't come back.

If people could do this conciously, we wouldn’t need this article.

Re: The Cargo Cult of the Ennui Engine

#34

Post by rcktmrtn »

I liked most of this article and found it interesting. Maybe a bit long-winded, but like many people I've been thinking a lot about the same topic in recent years, struggling to break free of a certain mindset. Hearing the images and language how someone else feels when they describe that "machine" that keeps them captive is interesting -- a very "blind men and the elephant" experience. The cargo cult aspect is a new connection to me and something I'll think about more.

That said, like many tech critiques, I found the conclusion underwhelming. In particular, the idea that how we manage our "upvotes, likes, shares, and retweets" is important strikes me as foolish. These are the master's tools and they won't unmake the master's house. Sites like reddit and twitter have long put their thumbs on the scale to rewrite these metrics. Plus, just like with democracy, institutions and norms that encourage uninformed frivolous voting will drown out the meaningful signal. Not to say these forms of engagement are all bad, but they aren't a solution in and of themselves.

The real commodity to regulate is attention, of which "upvotes" are only a simulacrum. It should never be forgotten that this means often means disengaging from certain sites and systems entirely.

edit: on the note of attention being the real metric -- another thing I thought the author could have done well drawing attention to is the trend of watching/listening at 2x speed. It increases our tolerance for drawn out drivel. Maybe an alternative would be to shun media that we don't think would be worth playing 2x times at normal speed.

Re: The Cargo Cult of the Ennui Engine

#35

Post by worrycue »

Aeolun wrote: post #33
kayo_20211030 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the operative word is "consciously". I think the author's wish is that we devote conscious thought, not merely emotional reaction, to whatever it is we're consuming. Not just what makes me feel good or bad; but rather, whether it is IMO good, or bad, or neither. If it's neither, move on; don't respond, reply, upvote, downvote, or anything else. Just move along. Let it atrophy and don't come back.

If people could do this conciously, we wouldn’t need this article.

I think the author is just asking us to vote more thoughtfully.

Currently, especially on sites like Reddit, the upvote/downvote buttons are abused as agree/disagree buttons and are clicked with little thought.

The recent troubles on Reddit have people talking about alternatives. An old site - one of the first voting based forums - was brought up, Slashdot.

It has an interesting voting system. Only some people can vote - I forgot the requirements. Each post maxes out at 5 points. Often/almost always the post has a label next to it saying why it was upvoted - e.g. Informative, Insightful, Interesting, ... I can't remember the details of the system as I mostly lurked back then as a kid.

Anyway, I think a shift to a more deliberate form of voting might be what the article is advocating.

Re: The Cargo Cult of the Ennui Engine

#36

Post by worrycue »

RegW wrote: post #6

> Our upvotes, likes, shares, and retweets need to be reserved for only those things which truly deserve to be amplified, not just because we personally appreciate them, but because they’re of exceptional quality. Sounds great, but with all the morons reacting prolifically to every piece of trash, will my one carefully allotted upvote be valued? I like the idea of Quadratic Voting: https://www.economist.com/interacti…

> Sounds great, but with all the morons reacting prolifically to every piece of trash, will my one carefully allotted upvote be valued?

At least you aren't adding to the problem.

Re: The Cargo Cult of the Ennui Engine

#37

Post by nehal3m »

guy98238710 wrote: post #18

I think the main error of the author is to assume that short content equals low quality content. There's value in conciseness.

Attributed to a whole bunch of people so I'm gonna say quote by unknown: If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter.

Re: The Cargo Cult of the Ennui Engine

#38

Post by swiftcoder »

The author appears to have fundamentally misunderstood the nature of the so-called "cargo cults" in the pacific. Our best understanding is that these cults amounted to scams conducted on a vulnerable population by their own leaders - leaders who had suffered irreparable damage to their ability to control the local economy when the US army briefly thrust their culture into post-scarcity.

The infinite scroll of mindless content generated by the big social networks is also about creating (a shallow facsimile of) post-scarcity. An endless stream of hobbies and lifestyles that could be yours - much like late night TV offered your parents the same promises for the low, low price of $14.95 excl. shipping and handling.

You can spot this in the way these companies constalty try and undermine the livelihoods of the content creators whose labour they rely on, or try and replace creators wholesale with AIs. If there was a genuine desire to push the social aspects of these systems, they'd be considerably more invested in creating a viable living for creators who participate in the system - instead these networks are just a tool for profit and power.

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