Modern Media Is a DoS Attack on Free Will
m.nautil.us
Modern Media Is a DoS Attack on Free Will
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Re: Modern Media Is a DoS Attack on Free Will
#2Knowledge is the food of the soul. Problem is we are all binge eating.
Edit : Good TED talk on this topic https://www.ted.com/talks/jp_rangaswami_information_is_food [2012]
Re: Modern Media Is a DoS Attack on Free Will
#3Knowledge is the food of the soul. Problem is we are all binge eating. Edit : Good TED talk on this topic https://www.ted.com/talks/jp_rangaswami_information_is_food [2012]
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Re: Modern Media Is a DoS Attack on Free Will
#4Knowledge is the food of the soul. Problem is we are all binge eating. Edit : Good TED talk on this topic https://www.ted.com/talks/jp_rangaswami_information_is_food [2012]
Bullshit != Knowledge. Worse, bullshit benefits from the sharp end of Brandolini’s Law.
Re: Modern Media Is a DoS Attack on Free Will
#5Knowledge is the food of the soul. Problem is we are all binge eating. Edit : Good TED talk on this topic https://www.ted.com/talks/jp_rangaswami_information_is_food [2012]
I wouldn't put it that way. The problem is that a ton of the stuff impinging on us is not knowledge. It's propaganda, fluff, stupid memes, click bait, and systems with interfaces designed to be addictive and to act like Skinner boxes.
What I really see happening is a "part 2" repeat of the spam apocalypse that hit e-mail, Usenet, and other federated systems on the early Internet. In the late 1990s spam destroyed most of these systems. E-mail was so valuable it had to be saved, but saving it has mostly involved delegating it to a small oligopoly of vertically integrated e-mail providers with the resources to fight spam. Usenet and other less well known federated systems were destroyed.
I think we are now seeing a similar kind of spam assault against the open web, social media, and the news. The latter with the whole "fake news" phenomenon really resembles a Sybil attack. In recent years I've seen an avalanche of totally fake news sites that look like legitimate newspapers popped up (apparently from templates) and used to spam social media with a whole slew of unfounded allegations and other assorted bullshit. The role they've had in the election has gained a lot of press but it's in no way limited to that or even to politics. A lot of it seems to be shilling for quack medical products and other traditional mainstays of... spam!
I've started calling this whole phenomenon "spam 2.0." I'd define spam 2.0 as the semi-automated bulk creation of fake news outlets, fake social media profiles, and hoaxes and their use to engage in the coordinated manipulation of opinion.
I'm also anticipating the rise of spam 3.0. Spam 3.0 will be fully automated and AI-powered, with AI being used to create an individual "persuasive agent" for each human target. Think of it as massively parallel individual con artistry and/or "spear phishing" at scale. Social media companies are already pioneering this tech, but the spam apocalypse will really hit when it goes public and you can do it with readily available tools.
I find it rather depressing but for a while I've been predicting that the first use of AI that can (even borderline) pass the Turing test will be con artistry, cult indoctrination techniques, and demagoguery at scale. It's really pretty scary to the point that I'm wondering if the use of AI to persuade humans should be outlawed. Of course then you get the "then only criminals will have guns" effect. This is particularly true on the borderless Internet where it's unlikely to be outlawed everywhere. Users of this tech would just go offshore.
An alternative to outlawing might be to disseminate the tools as widely as possible to eliminate any comparative advantage and render the whole thing moot. If this destroys social media in the process then so be it. Going to happen anyway.
Edit: the bottom line is that "cognitive self-defense" is going to become a thing. These "warning signs for tomorrow" are becoming relevant:
http://www.aleph.se/andart/archives/images/warning4.png
We are living in a cyberpunk novel.
Re: Modern Media Is a DoS Attack on Free Will
#6One can argue that this isn't really anything new - look back at the media hype for war surrounding an explosion of a certain U.S. warship. In 1898. Amusing, how the most vaunted prize in journalism is named for one of the most famous perpetrators of yellow journalism.
Social media is merely a slimmer middle man in that frenzied feedback loop, and the legacy media is upset that their slice of the pie is shrinking.
Re: Modern Media Is a DoS Attack on Free Will
#7Knowledge is the food of the soul. Problem is we are all binge eating. Edit : Good TED talk on this topic https://www.ted.com/talks/jp_rangaswami_information_is_food [2012]
Bullshit != Knowledge. Worse, bullshit benefits from the sharp end of Brandolini’s Law.
“The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it.”
A blog entry on Brandolini's Law: https://real-psychiatry.blogspot.com/2016/12/brandolinis-law...
Re: Modern Media Is a DoS Attack on Free Will
#8Knowledge is the food of the soul. Problem is we are all binge eating. Edit : Good TED talk on this topic https://www.ted.com/talks/jp_rangaswami_information_is_food [2012]
Bullshit != Knowledge. Worse, bullshit benefits from the sharp end of Brandolini’s Law.
There's the old adage: If you can't beat 'em, join 'em! Let's take that seriously. It has always been much easier to imitate the semblance of meaning than it was to find the substantively meaningful. Things with only the semblance of meaning have always proliferated. Idle talk, children's rhymes, songs, music, myths... all of these have always proliferated. Why did they not drown out actual meaning?
I think the above is one of the key questions for the survival of humanity. A part of the answer is that there has never been a clear demarcation between the meaningful and meaningless. There is valuable information in the structure of myth, songs, and idle talk.
It is clear that something in human beings acts as an effective filter for meaning and value. It is also clear that rationality isn't the totality of whatever this is, though it might be a part of it.
Re: Modern Media Is a DoS Attack on Free Will
#9As someone who works in tech, I like the analogy of a DoS attack. The root of the issue is attention capitalism. Our attention is essentially a resource being exploited for profit. In that scenario, we're effectivley no longer in control of our own free will as long as someone else can profit by controlling it. On an individual scale, we can give it relatively benign labels like "distraction". But when you look at it from macro scale it's effectively a DDoS attack on our free will perpetrated by all of the companies trying to get a slice of the pie of our attention.
Re: Modern Media Is a DoS Attack on Free Will
#10Knowledge is the food of the soul. Problem is we are all binge eating. Edit : Good TED talk on this topic https://www.ted.com/talks/jp_rangaswami_information_is_food [2012]
I don't think "knowledge" is necessarily what we're getting. I learn a lot more reading a single nonfiction book than I do in an equivalent amount of time spent on Twitter and Facebook.