Isn't this a modern version of Plato's Cave Allegory[1]?
People being deprived of the truth and free information have no alternative but to blindly believe whatever you(the government) will tell them, North Korea style.
Faith in government declines when mobile internet arrives
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Re: Faith in government declines when mobile internet arrives
#12Dont we see this with open source?
More people show up. More people can find issues. Many more people can find issues than can fix them. The bug tracker bloats. Core team members get called incompetent every 2 hrs. As a counter reaction some core team members get it into their head, to share less or react in unhelpful ways that have long term costs and things go back and forth in waves.
We have a few rules at work.
1. Focus on solutions over reactions.
2. It becomes easy to take advantage of weaknesses in people and squander their strengths, so try as much to do the opposite.
3. Have a plan to handle highly ambitious people before they show up. Don't start wondering what to do after someone with more energy/drive/talent/resource shows up and wants to take over everything, which will keep happening as networks expand. For this we treat things like sports teams, which have to deal with a whole spectrum of highly driven people and get them to work in sync. Works out some days and blows up in our face on others.
There is no free lunch with transparency and growing networks. Just lot of tradeoffs.
Re: Faith in government declines when mobile internet arrives
#13Alternate headline: "People With Access to More Information Less Likely to Trust Blindly" The article references a paper that hasn't yet been peer reviewed either. This isn't much. "In general, people’s confidence in their leaders declined after getting 3g. However, the size of this effect varied. It was smaller in countries that allow a free press than in ones where traditional media are muzzled, and bigger in count…
“People With Access to More Information Less Likely to Trust Blindly“ seems like an odd takeaway without also talking about the firehose of misinformation that is social media.
I think the agrument is against slanting the conclusion as creating distrust without significant evidence. Voting out incumbents does not necessarily equate to lack of faith. Less people voting would indicate lack of faith, yes?
Perhaps the better headline is: "Status quo incumbents (who have lost track of market forces) more likely to lose to internet savvy challengers when internet is introduced"?
Re: Faith in government declines when mobile internet arrives
#14Alternate headline: "People With Access to More Information Less Likely to Trust Blindly" The article references a paper that hasn't yet been peer reviewed either. This isn't much. "In general, people’s confidence in their leaders declined after getting 3g. However, the size of this effect varied. It was smaller in countries that allow a free press than in ones where traditional media are muzzled, and bigger in count…
I will call this a "Elzin Effect": — When Boris Yeltsin went grocery shopping in Clear Lake — Yes, that Boris Yeltsin. In 1989 the future first president of post-Soviet Russia visited Houston, and what most impressed him wasn’t NASA. — It was a Randall’s grocery store, where the Houston Chronicle saw him “nodding his head in amazement” at the fish, produce and frozen pudding pops: — “He commented that if the Soviet p…
At least Yeltsin's (why Elzin?) observations are probably quite accurate. But nowadays it seems like people are getting mad based on partial information (sometimes just 140 characters) or lies and misinformation. For example the paranoia against Muslims is based on incorrect perceptions of how many Muslims there are: https://www.statista.com/statistics/952909/perceptions-on-re... , and this on top of the perception that having Muslims in the community is a negative thing.
Maybe it's also a lot of the "grass is greener on the other side" or "in the future". US voters heard Obama's message of hope and attached to it everything they wanted to be better in their lives. And the same with Trump's message of "Great Again".
Re: Faith in government declines when mobile internet arrives
#15Alternate headline: "People With Access to More Information Less Likely to Trust Blindly" The article references a paper that hasn't yet been peer reviewed either. This isn't much. "In general, people’s confidence in their leaders declined after getting 3g. However, the size of this effect varied. It was smaller in countries that allow a free press than in ones where traditional media are muzzled, and bigger in count…
I will call this a "Elzin Effect": — When Boris Yeltsin went grocery shopping in Clear Lake — Yes, that Boris Yeltsin. In 1989 the future first president of post-Soviet Russia visited Houston, and what most impressed him wasn’t NASA. — It was a Randall’s grocery store, where the Houston Chronicle saw him “nodding his head in amazement” at the fish, produce and frozen pudding pops: — “He commented that if the Soviet p…
Yeah that’s cool I’m just here to collect transactions fees, you want that treasury going to a UBS in Switzerland or a Wells Fargo in USA
Re: Faith in government declines when mobile internet arrives
#16Alternate headline: "People With Access to More Information Less Likely to Trust Blindly" The article references a paper that hasn't yet been peer reviewed either. This isn't much. "In general, people’s confidence in their leaders declined after getting 3g. However, the size of this effect varied. It was smaller in countries that allow a free press than in ones where traditional media are muzzled, and bigger in count…
I will call this a "Elzin Effect": — When Boris Yeltsin went grocery shopping in Clear Lake — Yes, that Boris Yeltsin. In 1989 the future first president of post-Soviet Russia visited Houston, and what most impressed him wasn’t NASA. — It was a Randall’s grocery store, where the Houston Chronicle saw him “nodding his head in amazement” at the fish, produce and frozen pudding pops: — “He commented that if the Soviet p…
> and in fact, there are revolutions happening.
it would be interesting to know who's benefiting from these revolutions
it would also be interesting to understand if they really are revolutions or not
I am more inclined to call them riots and I am afraid that a number of them are steered by people with very bad intentions
Internet simply made propaganda easier and more effective, for the good but also for he bad
p.s: It's a good story, but Yeltsin went to Texas less than two months before the Berlin wall was taken down, people in USSR already knew about supermarkets at that time. Especially in East Germany. That's not the reason why they teared the wall down.
We in Italy knew about American malls and supermarkets, we had them but we usually didn't use them as much as we do today to buy groceries because our culture was based on local smaller shops selling fresh food.
Re: Faith in government declines when mobile internet arrives
#17Isn't this a modern version of Plato's Cave Allegory[1]? People being deprived of the truth and free information have no alternative but to blindly believe whatever you(the government) will tell them, North Korea style. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegory_of_the_cave
Doesn’t seem like it, no.
The allegory of the cave is about having choice and ignoring it. This is about obtaining choice and everyone seeing the folly of their masters. The people that don’t would be closer to that allegory.
Re: Faith in government declines when mobile internet arrives
#18Alternate headline: "People With Access to More Information Less Likely to Trust Blindly" The article references a paper that hasn't yet been peer reviewed either. This isn't much. "In general, people’s confidence in their leaders declined after getting 3g. However, the size of this effect varied. It was smaller in countries that allow a free press than in ones where traditional media are muzzled, and bigger in count…
It is also possible that people in rural areas tend to have less contact with the government in general - after all, most government activity takes place in the capital and other big cities. And in absence of contact, people do not really have strong opinions. But once information arrives, things change. Prior to mass media, few Americans would be strongly opinionated on the internal dealings of Washington D.C. Simpl…
>"With the contemporary news cycle, Washington D.C. feels very close and familiar, even to me, a Czech residing an ocean away from it."
Problem with this is that modern reporting is so f..d up that the picture they paint often has little to do with reality. Instead of trying to adequately address the reality media is trying create one and / or doing plain propaganda.
Re: Faith in government declines when mobile internet arrives
#19Isn't this a modern version of Plato's Cave Allegory[1]? People being deprived of the truth and free information have no alternative but to blindly believe whatever you(the government) will tell them, North Korea style. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegory_of_the_cave
except in North Korea they are forced to believe.
With the use of force.
Re: Faith in government declines when mobile internet arrives
#20It's kind of ironic that people educated in social science tend to have idealistic or just legible, few factor theories about something this complex. I mean complex in the strong sense.
Early theories were about "access to information unleashing a wave of democratisation." Current theories are about foreign and domestic intelligence manipulating social media.
The internet is an era. Eras have a lot going on.
The way we should (IMO) be thinking about this stuff is as complex systems, where the mechanisms can't really be understood to the point of predictiveness. Just like printing presses, mass literacy, radio and television broke political equilibriums... the internet breaks political equilibriums, for better or worse.
The internet is, OTOH, obviously structurally inclined to being an agent of chaos. Despite all the centralisation, the facebook, twitter, google and such use extremism like an exploitation film uses sex and violence. If something is dangerous, sexy and naked... people are going to look.