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Goodbye Facebook.

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Re: Goodbye Facebook.

#121

Post by calinet6 »

cs702 wrote: post #109
calinet6 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Her point still stands. I've been Facebooking since the start, so I don't necessarily alter my behavior much, I just use it to keep up with friends, post interesting tidbits about my life, and try to have real conversations happen. I still see the same problems. When I talk to people, it's always "oh yeah, I saw on Facebook that you got a new job," etc. etc. I went back and looked through my old e-mails from right be…

calinet6: the fact that you're no longer sending 'broadcast' emails, nor consciously updating people about the changes in your life, and that "no one cares where you work or what you're doing anymore" are just more examples of gradual but dramatic changes in behavior resulting from the use of Facebook. Unless Facebook has made some truly ground-breaking advances in AI, the company's algorithms cannot anticipate how u…

I think you may have mashed up 12 different parts of my response and randomized the order... anyway. Yes, you have a point, but there's no algorithm at play here, it's simply that people are changing their behavior based on the fundamental and uncomplicated premise behind facebook itself: the sharing of personal information among a group. There's no need for an AI to anticipate that or guess behaviors. The simple fact that the information is shared as intended is enough to elicit the result I described. It's very simple. Complexity arisen from simple beginnings.

I think the behavior change that you were talking about originally is a bit of a stretch—most people have integrated Facebook and the like into their social fabric. It has become another level of communication, and at all levels and at all times we present a version of ourselves to others, whether facebook or not.

I don't believe the "social algorithm" needs to anticipate this natural human behavior any more than a telephone needs to anticipate it and change your conversation to feel more personal. Facebook is simply the format we're communicating through. I think it has to do more with the audience the format involves than anything else, and with Facebook, it's simply the self you present in the public non-anonymous space. This space has existed before, and Facebook is just a digital version. If people want something different from this that compensates for this behavior change, they won't use an AI algorithm; they'll just use a different platform. They'll chat, pick up the phone, or visit in person. Simple as that.

I think most people do this just fine. Like I said, my conversations with friends change because they know more details about my life, but they don't necessarily get worse or more impersonal. In fact they may be better since we're less focused on the trivial. The writer of this article may not have that perspective, and that's fine, but I think she's ignoring many advantages of the communication format that Facebook provides while emphasizing all of the disadvantages.

Re: Goodbye Facebook.

#122

Post by andreasvc »

cs702 wrote: post #55

As I see it, the seeds of this user's disappointment were planted as soon as she starting gaming the system: "my posts became more and more filtered as the 'Friend' list increased. Now, they were getting the facade, the highlights because I donned the 'happy' mask. My closer friends were still catching the true story through instant messaging, text messaging and phone calls..." The faint echoes of Gödel and Turing in…

I would just like to say that that has absolutely nothing to do with anything by Gödel or Turing. There definitely can exist machine learning algorithms which continually adapt, and I see no technical reason why you couldn't try and model human agency as well. The work by Gödel and Turing you're thinking of is about _formal_ systems such as logic or computer programs, and while it is very common for people to turn (i.e., abuse) their results into a metaphor with seemingly broader implications, this is actually a mistake; their proofs simply don't hold under those more general circumstances.

Re: Goodbye Facebook.

#123

Post by andreasvc »

cs702 wrote: post #109
calinet6 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Her point still stands. I've been Facebooking since the start, so I don't necessarily alter my behavior much, I just use it to keep up with friends, post interesting tidbits about my life, and try to have real conversations happen. I still see the same problems. When I talk to people, it's always "oh yeah, I saw on Facebook that you got a new job," etc. etc. I went back and looked through my old e-mails from right be…

calinet6: the fact that you're no longer sending 'broadcast' emails, nor consciously updating people about the changes in your life, and that "no one cares where you work or what you're doing anymore" are just more examples of gradual but dramatic changes in behavior resulting from the use of Facebook. Unless Facebook has made some truly ground-breaking advances in AI, the company's algorithms cannot anticipate how u…

Unintended consequences are a fact of life. What the "company's algorithms cannot anticipate" is simply a specific instance of the more general problem that we cannot predict the future, nor can we run a simulation of the universe to see what the consequences of something will be. This is not at all specific to facebook, designing and adjusting systems like this will probably remain a task for humans for the foreseeable future.

Re: Goodbye Facebook.

#125

Post by vijayr »

Karunamon wrote: post #116
peterwwillis wrote: post #111

For all of you wondering "Can I really give up Facebook?" the answer is an emphatic "Of course, stupid." You got along fine before it existed and you'll forget about it once you're not refreshing your feed every 10 minutes. The other day someone sent me an e-mail or text (I forget) to invite me to an event. They knew I had abandoned Facebook and wanted to make sure I was included. I felt slightly honored that they wo…

>the answer is an emphatic "Of course, stupid ." Ignoring your patronizing, insulting tone for a bit, somehow I doubt it's that easy for most. If you're addicted to something (and I mean really, truly addicted), and it has negative consequences on your life, the answer is always "Well just stop it doing it, then". However, people do not work that way, and it's at the very least naive to assume it's that simple. >You…

What would you call it then!? It's a platform where you share and talk with friends. How is that not communication?

When one sends a email newsletter to 50K people, that is also communication. When one blogs, that is also communication. But these are not replacements for actual "conversations" which you have with one person at a time, or very small groups (2-3 people?) - which is very engaged, where everyone is interested in everyone else and emotionally involved.

Facebook news feed is like a giant scrolling billboard of "announcements" - sure it is communication in the sense our friends are telling us what they were upto - that is pretty much it.

May be I am wrong, but I think GP meant the difference between real conversations and broadcasting announcements.

Re: Goodbye Facebook.

#126

Post by [deleted] »

andreasvc wrote: post #122
cs702 wrote: post #55

As I see it, the seeds of this user's disappointment were planted as soon as she starting gaming the system: "my posts became more and more filtered as the 'Friend' list increased. Now, they were getting the facade, the highlights because I donned the 'happy' mask. My closer friends were still catching the true story through instant messaging, text messaging and phone calls..." The faint echoes of Gödel and Turing in…

I would just like to say that that has absolutely nothing to do with anything by Gödel or Turing. There definitely can exist machine learning algorithms which continually adapt, and I see no technical reason why you couldn't try and model human agency as well. The work by Gödel and Turing you're thinking of is about _formal_ systems such as logic or computer programs, and while it is very common for people to turn (i…

[deleted]

Re: Goodbye Facebook.

#127

Post by pnathan »

peterwwillis wrote: post #111

For all of you wondering "Can I really give up Facebook?" the answer is an emphatic "Of course, stupid." You got along fine before it existed and you'll forget about it once you're not refreshing your feed every 10 minutes. The other day someone sent me an e-mail or text (I forget) to invite me to an event. They knew I had abandoned Facebook and wanted to make sure I was included. I felt slightly honored that they wo…

There's a place for thin-band broadcast-based human interaction. Me, I think that's Twitter.

Facebook tries to pretend its more. Its not.

If I want to hold private dialogues with people from across the country - long, intense, and thoughtful - I prefer email.

Re: Goodbye Facebook.

#128

Post by cs702 »

andreasvc wrote: post #122
cs702 wrote: post #55

As I see it, the seeds of this user's disappointment were planted as soon as she starting gaming the system: "my posts became more and more filtered as the 'Friend' list increased. Now, they were getting the facade, the highlights because I donned the 'happy' mask. My closer friends were still catching the true story through instant messaging, text messaging and phone calls..." The faint echoes of Gödel and Turing in…

I would just like to say that that has absolutely nothing to do with anything by Gödel or Turing. There definitely can exist machine learning algorithms which continually adapt, and I see no technical reason why you couldn't try and model human agency as well. The work by Gödel and Turing you're thinking of is about _formal_ systems such as logic or computer programs, and while it is very common for people to turn (i…

andreasvc: AFAIK, there is no program in existence today that can successfully model "human agency" (as you put it). Wouldn't that require major breakthroughs in AI?

And my understanding from chatting with friends in the fraud-detection space is that, while current state-of-the-art machine-learning systems can successfully adapt to the data they obtain from users, they cannot adapt to users learning to game or 'route around' the system -- at least not without programmer intervention 'from above.'

The link to Gödel and Turing I saw is that solving this problem without intervention 'from above' would require a computer program that can successfully model itself as it interacts with humans, but then we run into those two guys, no?

Re: Goodbye Facebook.

#129

Post by Karunamon »

vijayr wrote: post #125
Karunamon wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>the answer is an emphatic "Of course, stupid ." Ignoring your patronizing, insulting tone for a bit, somehow I doubt it's that easy for most. If you're addicted to something (and I mean really, truly addicted), and it has negative consequences on your life, the answer is always "Well just stop it doing it, then". However, people do not work that way, and it's at the very least naive to assume it's that simple. >You…

What would you call it then!? It's a platform where you share and talk with friends. How is that not communication? When one sends a email newsletter to 50K people, that is also communication. When one blogs, that is also communication. But these are not replacements for actual "conversations" which you have with one person at a time, or very small groups (2-3 people?) - which is very engaged, where everyone is inter…

>Facebook news feed is like a giant scrolling billboard of "announcements"

Agreed, but that is not Facebook's only function.

Re: Goodbye Facebook.

#130

Post by Kliment »

lathamcity wrote: post #29
Kliment wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wrote something about this several years ago, when I got tired of repeating the reasons I wasn't on Facebook. Here it is if you're interested: http://everything2.com/title/Facebook+destroys+real+relation...

I didn't make it through two paragraphs. Can't I read a sentence without being linked to three other web pages?

everything2 is weird like that. Ignore the links. They are a semantic graph pointer, not hypertext.
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