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Shame Storm

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Re: Shame Storm

#141

Post by api »

int_19h wrote: post #128
matt4077 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The mere existence of the emotion of „shame“ shows that this mechanism is old, probably older than Homo sapiens. It’s simply a way to get people to behave in a society, without invoking the heavier tools such as the law.

Conversely, that the mechanism is so old indicates that it evolved to work in groups of the size humans (or their ape ancestors even) formed back when it first appeared - i.e. dozens, not millions. It's not a given that the way we scale it is optimal, or even good.

That's sort of what bothers me. This stuff evolved to work in small tribes, not global societies. When you don't actually know the person the behavior is very different.

Re: Shame Storm

#142

Post by AcerbicZero »

BryantD wrote: post #37

I have a pretty simple algorithm for articles about the dangers of public shaming. If they fail to catalog GamerGate and the online shaming of Zoe Quinn as an example of the problem, they are probably not a balanced look at the phenomenon. I find Justine Sacco's case is a reasonable metric for the other half of the equation.

My understanding of the GG drama was that it started fairly unsavory, but rapidly became about something entirely unrelated to Zoe and her relationships.

The reaction from the gaming media organizations being accused of serious (if video games can be serious) lapses of journalistic integrity, complete with multiple examples of it just poured fuel onto the fire. After that, I stopped following it, but it does seem that more gaming media organizations put effort into disclosing conflicts, so perhaps some good came out of it in the end.

Re: Shame Storm

#143

Post by woolvalley »

zestyping wrote: post #82
jerf wrote: post #47

As I've mentioned before, one of the interesting things I like to study in a casual way is the effect of social community structures on behavior. At this point it is not terribly controversial that modern social media systems encourage shame storms, via things like easy "viral" sharing, the existence of moderation systems that can be used to nuke any attempt to defend oneself out of existence, and the way modern soci…

It's weird to me that almost all posting/commenting platforms are about the same. You get a series of small boxes with text in them and a small box to type into, usually too small to fit more than a couple of sentences, perhaps a button to promote, a button to reshare, and that's it. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Medium, Disqus... all the same. We've explored so little of the design space. If I had to hazard in extrapo…

I like your list of ideas, but I just want to bring up one point:

Sometimes the only way to get an insight to the thought processes of the busy & insightful people of the world is through something like twitter, because they don't have time for anything else. Certain subcultures of twitter can be fairly positive despite the lack of moderation tools because the community is small and not a current political hot potato.

That is something I wouldn't want to lose.

Re: Shame Storm

#144

Post by BryantD »

manfredo wrote: post #48
perfmode wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His attitude while defending himself on the stand is the basis for which I would rescind his nomination. His behavior was not befitting of someone who is about to be conferred lifetime appointment to the highest court in the country. I don’t want him crafting laws and making decisions that impact huge groups of people.

Behavior such as? Most people who I've seen criticize his behavior essentially boil down to criticizing him for not admitting guilt, or because he tried to discredit Ford - neither of which are valid points in my view. Defending oneself from an accusation inherently entails discrediting the accuser, to criticize defendants for doing so is essentially saying it should be socially unacceptable to defend oneself from an…

> Defending oneself from an accusation inherently entails discrediting the accuser

This reduces the question to a black and white decision, which is unreasonable. I see two major flaws here:

1. You're eliding the difference between discrediting the accuser's claim and discrediting the accuser themselves. There is a significant difference between saying "that's not accurate" and saying "the person who said that is a drunken loser who has been out to get me for years."

2. You're likewise removing any distinction between true and untrue responses! Surely it's acceptable to criticize a defendant for lying?

Now, we have not established whether or not Kavanaugh was lying, and I'm not saying he was -- but your response completely skips over that entire facet of the question. You are assuming a conclusion which has not been reached.

Re: Shame Storm

#145

Post by cabalamat »

zestyping wrote: post #82
jerf wrote: post #47

As I've mentioned before, one of the interesting things I like to study in a casual way is the effect of social community structures on behavior. At this point it is not terribly controversial that modern social media systems encourage shame storms, via things like easy "viral" sharing, the existence of moderation systems that can be used to nuke any attempt to defend oneself out of existence, and the way modern soci…

It's weird to me that almost all posting/commenting platforms are about the same. You get a series of small boxes with text in them and a small box to type into, usually too small to fit more than a couple of sentences, perhaps a button to promote, a button to reshare, and that's it. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Medium, Disqus... all the same. We've explored so little of the design space. If I had to hazard in extrapo…

> Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Medium, Disqus... all the same.

Of the ones I've used I like Reddit the most. It allows long posts, uses Markdown, and is threaded.

> We've explored so little of the design space.

I've recently started writing a federated blogging platform which will use the ActivityPub protocol. One nice advantage of federated platforms, is they can share each others' messages meaning it's easier for them to get lots of users (you can piggyback on the rest of the federation), so there can be more experiments on doing things different ways.

> You have to wait at least 30 seconds before you can hit the reply or reshare button.

Or the message isn't sent until a cooling down period.

> Short or low-information comments are discouraged; if your comment is short or an exact duplicate of something previously written (e.g. a common insult), it's blocked or you have to wait longer before posting it.

Sometimes a post can be short because a short post is all that is needed. E.g someone might ask me a question that the answer might simply be "yes". I would find it annoying to have to artificially pad the length.

But longer posts should always be possible and the user interface shouldn't discourage them.

> You must listen to your comment read back to you aloud before you can post it.

That's an interesting one. The way I'm going is posts will be edited in Markdown and will then appear as marked-up text.

> Even when reshared, your comment is always presented together with, and close to, the content of the original source article so it's hard to ignore the source.

What I call the "context" of a post is the post its a reply to and that post's context. This could all be stored in a data-structure (such as JSON) when the post is transferred across the network, so the context would always be there. Also the id of a post could be a hash of its contents, making it tamper-evident.

Re: Shame Storm

#146

Post by cabalamat »

NathanKP wrote: post #135
zestyping wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's weird to me that almost all posting/commenting platforms are about the same. You get a series of small boxes with text in them and a small box to type into, usually too small to fit more than a couple of sentences, perhaps a button to promote, a button to reshare, and that's it. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Medium, Disqus... all the same. We've explored so little of the design space. If I had to hazard in extrapo…

> We've explored so little of the design space. The design space that we are willing to explore is limited by the fundamental evolutionary drive of social media platforms to hold your attention as long as possible by feeding you little hits of dopamine for minimal effort. Social media platforms thrive on size and activity and neither can be established by raising the bar, only by lowering it to new depths.

> Social media platforms thrive on size

Yes. This means federated social networks might long-term have the edge, since someone can launch a new one, and by being part of the federation it automatically starts with lots of users.

Re: Shame Storm

#147

Post by jstewartmobile »

gknoy wrote: post #109
jstewartmobile wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not joking. That, and it doesn't require toughness so much as good aim: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Hudson#Duel_and_disast... I'd much rather roll the dice with duelling again than introduce some new, elaborate, and untested form of social engineering.

Dueling implies that someone who is _better at one thing_ (hurting others) is inherently Right. It also means that someone who is sufficiently good at such things can act as a bully. Dueling introduces personal risk for libelous claims, but it _also_ introduces the same risk for those who are making true claims. People already fear the people that hurt them; giving them a legally supported way of hurting them even mo…

> Dueling implies that someone who is _better at one thing_ (hurting others) is inherently Right

I don't think it does. Revisit the story of Jeffrey Hudson, and how winning a duel changed his life. What it does imply is some personal risk in making unsubstantiated claims against people.

Try looking at the glass as half-full. Under the present system, true claims are suppressed well enough by the pay-to-play nature of mass media. Re-introducing some aspect of personal risk--one that couldn't be mitigated by mere cash--would, hopefully, let the air out of entire industries of manufactured controversy, which fuel everything from needless wars to societal decay.

As for the challenge, there are worse things than death.

Re: Shame Storm

#148

Post by AcerbicZero »

lifeformed wrote: post #105
perfmode wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That office is so important that I’m happy to wait until the right candidate shows up. And I don’t want republicans or Democrats. I want scientists of law with integrity. And there are plenty competent people with integrity. It is people who lack integrity that marginalize them.

Well there was one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merrick_Garland A bipartisan moderate that everyone loved, recommended by both parties, poised to take the nomination, then blocked for years by the Republican party just as a total partisan f-you to Obama.

Garland would have made an excellent choice instead of Kagan, or even Sotomayor, if there was a desire for a more balanced, more centrist SCOTUS. However after those two nominations replacing Scalia with Garland was obviously a bridge too far which the R's could not accept. As unpopular as it may have been, In a way, I don't really blame them, and it seems to have paid off for them in the long run.

Re: Shame Storm

#149

Post by beat »

jstewartmobile wrote: post #86
tlb wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know you're being facetious, but dueling wasn't such a great thing for society. It gave tough people an advantage in life over smart or conscientious people. You wouldn't like living in a society where toughness won. It was one of Queen Victoria's great contributions to make dueling socially unacceptable.

Not joking. That, and it doesn't require toughness so much as good aim: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Hudson#Duel_and_disast... I'd much rather roll the dice with duelling again than introduce some new, elaborate, and untested form of social engineering.

You should read Steven Pinker, then, if you think going back to a Golden Age of murder over social slights is a good idea.

Re: Shame Storm

#150

Post by prepend »

notahacker wrote: post #63
hopefulengineer wrote: post #34

progressives have taken us back in time to the days of the inquisition where heretics must be removed from society. These beliefs have absolutely taken on a religious fervor James watson, the man who discovered DNA structure, has been excommunicated for saying intelligence could be genetic and that would ruin the equality movement so he had to be removed It reminds me of galileo and his imprisonment related to helioc…

I'm not sure that Watson's expressed views that the inequality of races is demonstrated by the experiences of "people who have to deal with black employees" is a high water mark for scientific enquiry, or that his related comments on being particularly cautious about promoting black people were likely to have a neutral or positive impact on science. What I find curious is people who argue that unlike the progressives…

I think that it’s worth paying attention to, but doesn’t outweigh other achievements. Firing him over such comments was the wrong reaction, especially since the goal is to improve people’s viewpoints on equality. Not create some Galt’s Gulch of geniuses who are also flawed in a substantial way.
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