Social Media: Making Us Dumber? • Hacker News Board

Re: Social Media: Making Us Dumber?

#111

Post by gaius » Fri, Jan 12, 2018, 8:25 PM UTC

vannevar wrote: post #107

Quarrelsome wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

exactly that but less so "extremist" more so "common". We've managed to forget about what the "common" sort of opinion is like. An opinion poll about the death penalty or immigration is a quick way of seeing that society at large is somewhat detached from what people assume is the "norm" from the world of edited media circa 1990 - 2010. When the internet exploded that "average" was still glued to the TV and nerdy was…

If anything, we are the extremists: I suspect that 90% of the readership of HN was in the top 10% of their high school class, or above. Everything in our daily lives filters out the voices of the other 90% of the world, because for the most part, our friends and the friends of our friends resemble us. This is the social bubble everyone talks about. I just think we consistently underestimate just how powerful that bub…

Indeed. Earlier today I replied to a comment that said

Perceiving white males to be hard done by is amusing

I guess the poster of that never even considered the white males in former industrial regions. Or worse, considered that they deserved to lose their livelihoods because of their race and gender being "wrong". It's that kind of smug attitude that lead directly to Trump and Brexit.

Re: Social Media: Making Us Dumber?

#112

Post by mikestew » Fri, Jan 12, 2018, 10:09 PM UTC

zingmars wrote: post #46

cbcoutinho wrote: post #17

This is great time to mention one of my favorite books on the media and public discourse: Amusing Ourselves to Death - Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, by Neil Postman. In the book, the two infamous dystopian novels of the 20th century (1984 and Brave New World) are compared to determine which one our world most closely resembles. The two books differ in how they describe the source of the dystopia. It's…

Thanks for the recommendation, I will take a look at it. This kind of reminds me how I felt when I was reading both those books. I had already seen all the memes about 1984 not being an instruction manual, and it left me kind of confused, because the direction the west is moving towards doesn't really resemble what was described in the book (at least, not yet). Then I read Brave New World and it certainly read like s…

I had already seen all the memes about 1984 not being an instruction manual, and it left me kind of confused, because the direction the west is moving towards doesn't really resemble what was described in the book (at least, not yet).

I have often wondered if we aren't a bit inoculated by 1984. "Red scare" and all that, and much of Orwell's work (1984, Animal Farm) was an obvious swipe at the Soviet Union and the like. Apple's first TV ad played on it. We're on the lookout for Orwellian things because we wouldn't want that, now, would we?

Poor ol' Brave New World, OTOH, never got much press. I mean, amongst my middle-aged crowd I don't know too many that have actually read it, but we all read 1984 in high school. So whereas we're all on the lookout for oppressive government actions, we kind of ignore the influences of other aspects of our lives.

Re: Social Media: Making Us Dumber?

#113

Post by Consultant32452 » Fri, Jan 12, 2018, 10:20 PM UTC

asabjorn wrote: post #102

Consultant32452 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you feel that the majority of our national media with its treatment of DaMore, Twitter, and Google are extreme elements of the left? Or did you only mean to refer to DaMore and the banned people on various social media outlets are extreme elements? Of course some of the things in Damore's memo are easily questioned. But that's not the problem. The problem is that his memo, which is well within the mainstream of ac…

I think being inclusive of viewpoints is incredibly important, even if they contain something factually incorrect, so I am not advocating some sort of thought police. There will always be some fringe elements, everyone has a crazy uncle/aunt, but I do not believe for a second that anything close to the majority is crazy so the desired way to advocate an action is through agreement in the democratic process. If you ca…

I'm not sure we're disagreeing, but perhaps talking around each other. The point I was trying to get at is that I don't believe Google represents the extreme left, nor does DaMore represent the extreme right. And that's the problem. Google and the national media are not fringe elements which we might dismiss the way we do with people toting swastikas or hammer and sickles.

Re: Social Media: Making Us Dumber?

#114

Post by smacktoward » Fri, Jan 12, 2018, 10:24 PM UTC

base698 wrote: post #53

cbcoutinho wrote: post #17

This is great time to mention one of my favorite books on the media and public discourse: Amusing Ourselves to Death - Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, by Neil Postman. In the book, the two infamous dystopian novels of the 20th century (1984 and Brave New World) are compared to determine which one our world most closely resembles. The two books differ in how they describe the source of the dystopia. It's…

May want to check out "Technopoly" by Postman as well. It's got some of the same points but goes deeper into technology in general. It opens with a story from Phaedrus by Plato where a king is arguing with a god over the utility of writing. The god says it's amazing and allows all knowledge to be stored, etc. But the king says the god is too enamored with his invention and can't see downsides like knowledge being dec…

The problem is that the up sides of new technologies are typically immediately obvious, while the down sides are subtle and can take a very long time to make themselves evident.

Example: let's make watch faces that glow in the dark by painting them on with radium-based paint! (Which was a real thing: see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radium_Girls)

Up side: everyone can now read their watches in the dark! Hooray! An instantly clear improvement.

Down side: radium is, well, radioactive, so the workers painting the watch faces slowly start having their bones rot and their jaws fall off. It takes a decade for the link to be recognized between these symptoms and unsafe procedures for handling radium-based paint. Nobody really knows how many of the workers employed handling such paint eventually died from related illnesses.

Re: Social Media: Making Us Dumber?

#115

Post by daodedickinson » Sat, Jan 13, 2018, 1:50 AM UTC

mikestew wrote: post #112

zingmars wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the recommendation, I will take a look at it. This kind of reminds me how I felt when I was reading both those books. I had already seen all the memes about 1984 not being an instruction manual, and it left me kind of confused, because the direction the west is moving towards doesn't really resemble what was described in the book (at least, not yet). Then I read Brave New World and it certainly read like s…

I had already seen all the memes about 1984 not being an instruction manual, and it left me kind of confused, because the direction the west is moving towards doesn't really resemble what was described in the book (at least, not yet). I have often wondered if we aren't a bit inoculated by 1984 . "Red scare" and all that, and much of Orwell's work ( 1984 , Animal Farm ) was an obvious swipe at the Soviet Union and the…

Memory holing is easier now than in the book.

Re: Social Media: Making Us Dumber?

#116

Post by daodedickinson » Sat, Jan 13, 2018, 1:51 AM UTC

asabjorn wrote: post #3

As a liberal that subscribe to The NY Times I wonder why they always have to make these issues so politicized, even when they are making a good observation. The problem they describe, violent reaction to opposing views, seem present amongst all sides of the political spectrum and it does not seem limited to extreme opinions. The article seems in a very indirect way to make argument that violent reaction to and ostrac…

Because the editor think it aids the agenda of the paper.

Re: Social Media: Making Us Dumber?

#117

Post by ralusek » Sat, Jan 13, 2018, 2:20 AM UTC

asabjorn wrote: post #37

empraptor wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The article seems in a very indirect way to make argument that violent reaction to and ostracizing of people that hold opposing opinions is ok when you hold the correct opinions and not when you don’t I'm having trouble seeing how you got this impression.

In a case study like this I was hoping for an understanding of how we on the left contribute to a climate where it is ok to be non-factual, as it is much easier to change yourself than others and NY Times audience is clearly the left. Especially since it concludes that everyone "rushes for the safety of their ideological battlements". What are those embattlements? What are the factual nature on each side? My question…

How the left contributes to a climate where it's ok to be non-factual?

- When people on the left suggest that a black (or any other) individual has anything other than a statistically non-zero percent chance of being shot unarmed by a police officer. When people on the left say that there is a racial disparity in police shootings, when an honest evaluation of population size, population representation in violent crime, and population representation in police fatalities indicates that is not at all the case.

- When people on the left accuse industries such as engineering for having racist/sexist hiring practices, simply by evaluating the demographics of the workforce...completely ignoring the available pool of applicants.

- When people on the left accuse individuals like Jordan Peterson for "denying trans people's right to humanity," simply for his questioning the prospect of a government-mandated, forced usage of desired pronouns (what would be the first instance of government compelled speech in the western world).

- When people on the left claim that 1 out of 3 women get raped on college campuses by constantly attempting to redefine rape, and that our entire societal structure is set up in such a manner that can be described as a "rape culture."

- When people on the left can talk about a 23% disparity in pay between men and women when the countless studies controlling for job type and performance bring the pay gap to non-existence.

I absolutely despise conservatism, and I have never voted Republican, but to say that the American Left cannot be represented by a climate where it's okay to be "non-factual" is insane. The American Left is increasingly dominated by emotionally charged statements about privilege and marginalized communities, rape cultures, toxic masculinity, cultural appropriation, micro aggressions, safe spaces, victimization and outrage. It's no coincidence that "facts don't care about your feelings" is literally the tagline of the outspoken figure on the right, Ben Shapiro.

Re: Social Media: Making Us Dumber?

#118

Post by wastewaste » Sat, Jan 13, 2018, 3:00 AM UTC

mikestew wrote: post #112

zingmars wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the recommendation, I will take a look at it. This kind of reminds me how I felt when I was reading both those books. I had already seen all the memes about 1984 not being an instruction manual, and it left me kind of confused, because the direction the west is moving towards doesn't really resemble what was described in the book (at least, not yet). Then I read Brave New World and it certainly read like s…

I had already seen all the memes about 1984 not being an instruction manual, and it left me kind of confused, because the direction the west is moving towards doesn't really resemble what was described in the book (at least, not yet). I have often wondered if we aren't a bit inoculated by 1984 . "Red scare" and all that, and much of Orwell's work ( 1984 , Animal Farm ) was an obvious swipe at the Soviet Union and the…

Brave new world is not comparable to 1984, quite simply, because ... one is about lack of empathy, the other lack of information.

Re: Social Media: Making Us Dumber?

#119

Post by wastewaste » Sat, Jan 13, 2018, 3:28 AM UTC

nwah1 wrote: post #108

afpx wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Feel free to present your argument, which I welcome. I could be wrong and often am. However, as an Anthropology major at a top tier university during the 90s, I can say for a fact that Pinker challenged convention (at my university, at least) and pushed the humanities toward a view that a person’s attributes were more the result of biology than social conditions. He also pushed against the prevailing postmodernist an…

>Feel free to present your argument, which I welcome. Sure. You could define a liberal in a number of ways. One possible definition is someone who is "center-left", generally votes for democrats, supports public provisioning of education, healthcare, welfare, and so forth. Pinker posted regularly on Twitter during the elections, generally supporting Hillary Clinton and opposing Trump. https://twitter.com/sapinker/sta…

You answered to a strawman argument, supporting it even. But its a loosing game for you, because you submit to a dogmatized interpretation that is easy to refute saying nothing would be as black and white as implied by the argument. Parent pretty much implied media presented someone as a strawman, you concord that someone was exemplary for the reduction of an idea, seemingly with the intent to discuss it further, while the parent pretty much suggested to be tired of the discussion.

And you weasel out of the discussion when you suddenly shift to put human nature as a whole into question, just to then shift the goal post to an indefinite plurality of 'humans'.