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Faith in government declines when mobile internet arrives

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Re: Faith in government declines when mobile internet arrives

#151

Post by zepearl »

cujo wrote: post #2

Alternate 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…

> Alternate headline: "People With Access to More Information Less Likely to Trust Blindly"

I agree. I think as well that nowadays we're at a crossroads:

we get many more informations than in the past AND at the same time we can dedicate less time to evaluate those informations (because we have to dedicate more time to digest all those extra inbound informations => circular cause/effect?).

Interesting times & theme (& complicated discussion) - going to be interesting to see how this turns out, if people will find a good way to deal with this. I just hope that humanity won't fall into any kind of extremes.

Re: Faith in government declines when mobile internet arrives

#152

Post by romanoderoma »

082349872349872 wrote: post #132
romanoderoma wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

War in Afghanistan was a proxy for the cold war where primarily US and UK (but also China, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia) backed the mujahideen (including Taliban) to keep USSR spending a vast amount of money in the region while also cutting their income. They succeeded in their intent and the fall of the USSR was so sudden that hundreds of soviet tanks were abandoned on the field http://www.artificialowl.net/2008/08/uss…

The russian is closer to Walter White than you may think. As I heard the story, he was a practicing MD for years before his mixtapes became popular, then switched to performing full time. If you're really motivated try looking up офицеры текст песни ("officers text of-the-song") and use machine translation from there. Afghan war songs is a major genre.

Fascinating

I will look it up

Thanks

Re: Faith in government declines when mobile internet arrives

#153

Post by NoSorryCannot »

war1025 wrote: post #116
classified wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's very insightful. He practically predicted The Donald and his wrestling with social media over how much he can lie and spread hatred online unchallenged (although that latter part is very much explicit).

I would flip it the other way and say he predicted the mainstream media's need to discredit his use of social media since social media is threatening their position as the dominate communication channel with the masses. Trump lies, but I have seen very little evidence that he lies more than any previous president. The things he lies about are precisely the "Great Leader" style attempts to improve his image. To me, th…

Considering that there are many compilations of the evidence that Trump lies more than past presidents and that he lies about matters of national security, public health, climate science, and election security, I find your position absurd.

Re: Faith in government declines when mobile internet arrives

#154

Post by ardy42 »

refurb wrote: post #40
baybal2 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This story reminds me of when the Soviets fought their way into Germany in 1945, and eventually Berlin. The Red Army soldiers saw the wealth that Germany possessed and it pissed them off even more. They thought "why would a country this rich invade a poor country like ours?". The theory is that it was a contribution to the brutal treatment of Germans immediately before and after the end of the war (beyond the retribu…

> The theory is that it was a contribution to the brutal treatment of Germans immediately before and after the end of the war (beyond the retribution for the German atrocities in the East).

IIRC, the Germans also treated Soviet POWs far more badly than they did Western POWs.

Re: Faith in government declines when mobile internet arrives

#155

Post by thaumasiotes »

romanoderoma wrote: post #147
thaumasiotes wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The idea that people in charge cannot understand them it's as old as modern humanity (hence 5-6 thousands years old) There isn't great evidence for authority structures that would justify the label "person in charge" 6 thousand years ago. History generally starts around 5 thousand years ago, with the development of writing. (Were there people in charge of other people 6 thousand years ago? Sure, it's not unlikely.…

AFAIK the Sumerian king Enmerkar was ruling the city of Uruk around 4500 BC That's where my estimate comes from, but I'm not archeologist, I might well be wrong

Enmerkar appears to be known from the Sumerian king lists, where he is one of the pre-flood monarchs who reigned for hundreds of years.

I wouldn't put much weight on any estimate of when he ruled.

Re: Faith in government declines when mobile internet arrives

#156

Post by mistermann »

jkarneges wrote: post #148
mistermann wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The meme war between the two camps on either side of the conspiracy theory divide is quite interesting if you're able to view it from a truly disinterested (disable your priors) and abstract (observe the nature of the discussions, not the topic) third party perspective. The anti-conspiracy-theory camp can read an individual conspiracy theory and identify erroneous assertions and logic, with ease. Similarly, the pro-c…

> could we maybe usher in an era of more calm, reasoned, cooperation between various parties who disagree on a few specific details, but largely agree [...] on the vast majority of issues [...] ? Looking at US politics, there has been some suggestion by progressive libertarian politicians (such as Bill Weld) that the majority of americans are simultaneously tolerant of socially progressive and fiscally conservative p…

Agreed, singular instances of instances of calm, reasoned, cooperation can in fact be identified. Studying such instances and seeing if they have unique characteristics that could be incorporated into a model or practice that is reliable and scalable seems like a fine idea, anyone who undertook that task would have my full support.

However, I am interested in the opposite: scenarios where human beings cannot cooperate (reliably, consistently, and at scale), and more fundamentally: where it seems not possible to achieve this cooperation (even though it is in both party's best interests), why is it not possible? Is there an underlying cause, and if so, what is it?

I happen to subscribe to the theory that the problem is innate (in some manner), neurological/psychological in nature, and I think there is plenty of evidence to support this type of theory. As a thought experiment, imagine it like this....let's assume that there are certain things that the human mind simply can not do (the reasons are irrelevant for now), certain ideas that the human mind simply will not compute - full stop.

Now, imagine if one of these ideas was a pre-requisite for achieving reliable, consistent, at-scale cooperation (perhaps not in all instances, as your example demonstrates, but sometimes/often, which seems to be the case). Also imagine that there is another one of these "neurological cannot do's", and this one just so happens to be a pre-requisite for the cognitive processing required for identifying the first one. But because CannotDo #2 cannot execute, CannotDo #1 cannot be discovered.

If this was the case, you would then have yourself a situation where a fundamentally important problem can be identified, that all/most parties support fixing, there appear to be no impassible blocking barriers to fixing it, and yet it cannot ever be achieved. You are stuck in an unsolvable problem, blocked by something that you cannot see.

So now that you have this theory, is it possible to find some real world examples of unusual/illogical human behavior that plausibly matches this theory (which would represent a sanity check, not a proof)?

Re: Faith in government declines when mobile internet arrives

#157

Post by srtjstjsj »

baybal2 wrote: post #93
082349872349872 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've also run across a few major US cities in filmstrips on https://diafilmy.su , were those censored as well?

I never saw USSR myself, but for few very blurry memories of my first years of life I barely recall. But from my lifelong interest studying how countries work, and fail, I would tell that an average union's citizen would be given a chance to see such inoculatory dosages of "truths" a dozen or so times in his life, the more the higher the rank the person has in the society. And that for most, the exposure to it will p…

> . USA is probably less corrupt than USSR, or at least their bosses don't steal more than half of worker's salary.

The US is working hard to close that gap.

Re: Faith in government declines when mobile internet arrives

#158

Post by srtjstjsj »

refurb wrote: post #113
uzakov wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The Red Army soldiers saw the wealth that Germany possessed and it pissed them off even more. They thought "why would a country this rich invade a poor country like ours?". Can you please share the story? This is the first time I hear of this

Oh man, I've read too many books to remember where that came from. Might have been one of Antony Beevor's books. It wasn't described as a main motivation, just another contributing factor for revenge. Which seems entirely understandable - someone with a better life than you decides to invade your country and massacre your fellow country man.

Shades of Osama bin Laden there.

Re: Faith in government declines when mobile internet arrives

#159

Post by baybal2 »

082349872349872 wrote: post #133
baybal2 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They suffered enormously in the 90s - quality of life and life expectancies declined enormously. If you lived in the Potemkin village №1 — Moscow, then yes. Having myself lived in a part of Russia where light wasn't shining back in soviet times, nineties were such a giant breath of fresh air, and opportunity. For most of people there, it was a never before seen opportunity to change their predicament to live in the…

Vladivostok? I guess it could've been worse in soviet times. At least your father wasn't in Magadan. It sounds like you're a generation or so too young, but do you have any opinions on КИНО? Any recommendations for Vladivostok (or general Pacific) music groups I should look up?

No music, tv,radio, or anything there. The city was closed back in the union, no exit, or entry without a blessing from KGB, partcom, and the pope roman.

People were living alone along with their boredom, and their hatred.

Re: Faith in government declines when mobile internet arrives

#160

Post by EliRivers »

cujo wrote: post #2

Alternate 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"

Is that true? I see a lot more people trusting blindly in batshit crazy nonsense than I used to, and they seem to be getting it through constant feeds on their phones.

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