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The Collapse of Self-Worth in the Digital Age

thewalrus.ca

61–70 of 200 posts

Re: The Collapse of Self-Worth in the Digital Age

#61
post #8

Call me unempathetic, but how would this be any different in a non-digital era? You’ll still have a market (albeit significantly smaller, IE: lets say a small locale or village). But you could have easily said the same thing in a non-digital age, with just more rudimentary metrics and a market that is a community that either values or doesn’t value your work. Much like the proverbial school playground (which could al…

> She may as well have complained about the printing press being problematic.

Technology isn't always fractal, but you seem to be assuming it is. The internet is not just "a really efficient printing press", in the same way that New York is City is not "a little town or village made bigger".

Re: The Collapse of Self-Worth in the Digital Age

#62
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I agree with the main point you're making, I have to note that likening school playgrounds to markets is a questionable analogy. Schools are far closer to prisons than markets - in fact, I can't come up with a single way that school playgrounds are similar to markets other than the fact that they both involve humans.

how are schools any close to prisons, other than both involving humans?

Involuntary confinenent?

Re: The Collapse of Self-Worth in the Digital Age

#63
post #8

Call me unempathetic, but how would this be any different in a non-digital era? You’ll still have a market (albeit significantly smaller, IE: lets say a small locale or village). But you could have easily said the same thing in a non-digital age, with just more rudimentary metrics and a market that is a community that either values or doesn’t value your work. Much like the proverbial school playground (which could al…

I think your notion of "the truth" is heavily influenced by exactly the context she's pointing at. Google and Meta's algorithmic rankings aren't "the truth", and "the truth" doesn't change on each regular parameter rebalancing. Those algorithms were built by a relatively small number of people from a narrow set of backgrounds who were focused on maximizing usage and revenue, and the bulk of "the truth" they contain is about that.

One thing importantly different about our age is context collapse. With communication costs and marginal costs near zero, a global service is easier and cheaper to build than local ones with equivalent coverage. It's as if we've taken every ecosystem in the world and dumped it onto the San Francisco peninsula to fight it out to discover "the truth" about what plants and animals are "best".

What's different about those small locales and villages is that each one of them naturally had its own values. Skills and tastes co-evolved. Schools of thought were born and elaborated. Communication and movement between locales gave useful exchange and inspiration, but generally weren't enough to swamp variation.

In the pre-web era, the question of, say, whether Irish music was better than Spanish music would be seen as kind of a dumb question to take any more seriously than for an entertaining argument. But having put everything in Meta's global blender and reduced it to counting updoots, the ever-present metrics purport to provide "the truth" to questions like that.

They don't, of course. But they do place a much larger burden on us to recognize that not everything that goes up and to the right is an unalloyed good.

Re: The Collapse of Self-Worth in the Digital Age

#64

Every user on HN has a score (up votes vs down votes) based on reactions to comments and submissions. How many of us will not be our authentic selves in a comment because of fear of how others might react? I know that I have done this.

Of course. I feel more comfortable speaking my mind under a more anonymous account. Even then I'm pretty measured, I just don't want to deal with potential headaches in my professional career.

I don't owe the world my true self

Re: The Collapse of Self-Worth in the Digital Age

#65
post #50
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is definitely related to self-worth, because the contract you make is not with another person, it's with yourself. And when you respect it, it increases your self respect and worth.

I don't see how that's the case at all. A sense of obligation (how much you value someone else) has nothing to do with self worth (how much you value yourself). If this was the case at all, a great treatment for low self esteem would be to commit to stuff for others, since that'd automatically make you valuate your own self more

[deleted]

Re: The Collapse of Self-Worth in the Digital Age

#66
post #54

I guess i am orthogonal to this article because: (A) i don't visit sites that have "Followers" which i can probably afford to do because: (B) unlike writing or waitservice, where one's market is huge numbers of people who each are only willing to pay a little, my skills interest few, but those few are willing to pay a lot.

This is an odd thing to say on a site that depends so heavily on the upvote.

It only depends heavily on the up vote if you depend on the up vote. Sometimes it's nice just to formulate thoughts in writing. If others see it, great. If not, no big deal.

Re: The Collapse of Self-Worth in the Digital Age

#67
post #46
post #8

Call me unempathetic, but how would this be any different in a non-digital era? You’ll still have a market (albeit significantly smaller, IE: lets say a small locale or village). But you could have easily said the same thing in a non-digital age, with just more rudimentary metrics and a market that is a community that either values or doesn’t value your work. Much like the proverbial school playground (which could al…

> how would this be any different in a non-digital era? You’ll still have a market (albeit significantly smaller you answered it yourself. What's harder, to become the best tennis player of your neighborhood or the best tennis player on the planet? What if you base your self on something that's fringe at a global scale, but acceptable in your local culture? What if all your human interactions are on the internet (wit…

This is a great point.

In one of Nassim Nicholas Taleb's books, he talks about the emotional impact of looking at one's portfolio performance. If you do it rarely, like quarterly or annually, it'll generally be a positive experience. If you do it day by day, you'll have quite a lot of negative experiences. Because we're wired for loss aversion, we'll weight those negative experiences more highly. The same facts, presented differently, have very different impacts.

If I'm doing my own thing, like the author was with roller skating, my basis for comparison is me. There will be ups and downs, but more of the former, because we can't help but learn. But as you say, the bigger group I rank myself against, the more those experiences will be negative. I also think the bigger groups discourage camaraderie, because the declining chance of future interaction means smaller rewards for collaboration and support.

Re: The Collapse of Self-Worth in the Digital Age

#68
post #4

The other day I was talking to a psychologist about [difficult personal situation which I am unable to discuss publicly] and she said to me “This must be really damaging to your self-worth.” And, my honest internal reaction to her statement (although I didn’t say it out loud to her) was “Self-worth, what is that?” Because I’m not sure if I have any? I don’t mean that in the negative sense that I think I am worthless…

I'm the same way. I could dispassionately talk about either my strengths or my weaknesses. But I don't see the world as measuring myself in an overall way, nor other people. We all have so many dimensions that are always in so much flux, how could you ever reduce that to something meaningfully quantifiable?

Re: The Collapse of Self-Worth in the Digital Age

#69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the idea is that "people" tend to be attracted towards things that they think will increase their self worth and avoid things that decreases their self worth. Though from a stoic perspective the only thing that can affect your self worth are your own actions, not external events which you have no control over.

And of course from a Buddhist perspective the self is an illusion, making all this 'self-worth' chasing akin to tilting at windmills.

True, but it’s harder to run around with a begging bowl in Western cultures. Even though self worth is an illusion, right livelihood is part of the Noble Eightfold Path.

Re: The Collapse of Self-Worth in the Digital Age

#70
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an odd thing to say on a site that depends so heavily on the upvote.

It only depends heavily on the up vote if you depend on the up vote. Sometimes it's nice just to formulate thoughts in writing. If others see it, great. If not, no big deal.

Because upvotes control visibility, you are still describing a reward function that depends on the upvote.
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