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Some biologists and ecologists think social media is a risk to humanity

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Re: Some biologists and ecologists think social media is a risk to humanity

#181

Post by lambdaphagy »

meristohm wrote: post #180
lambdaphagy wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cooling costs 1/3 the energy of heating per degree day, but comes in for more hate because it seems decadent.

What is the cost of freon on earth’s ability to radiate heat? Even if the cooling cost is less power degree than heating, there’s still a cost, scaled by number and size of units. Do enough of us have the discipline to only use the decadent, luxurious things for the outlying cases?

The substance you're talking about is already essentially banned in the developed world.

Re: Some biologists and ecologists think social media is a risk to humanity

#182

Post by tomjen3 »

v_london wrote: post #99
grawprog wrote: post #16

I think social media needs to be redefined. What the average person thinks social media is is very different than what it actually is. I think a lot of people think big social media platforms are actually communication platforms, they're not. They're designed intentionally to be difficult to communicate on. That the not the purpose of them, it's in the name 'social media' they are the media, you are the social. They…

These are some very good points. For me the biggest problem with existing social networks is how difficult it is to get to know new people through the applications. Despite us spending more time online than being present on the physical world (this is probably also a problem, but one for another time), we get remarkably little real social interaction out of these hours spent. Good news is that the seeds of better soc…

Monitorisation isn't necessarily going to be that big an issue. If you have a common theme for the group, you can serve ads around that theme and you don't need to track anything.

In addition to that, meetup.com makes its money by charging people who want to setup a group.

Re: Some biologists and ecologists think social media is a risk to humanity

#183

Post by tomjen3 »

marcosdumay wrote: post #10
slipframe wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that ubiquitous global communication is the "Great Filter" that prevents intelligent civilizations from colonizing the universe. Before any intelligent species can hope to tackle a problem like that, they invent something like the internet. And once they've invented an internet, they become addicted to low latency communication and will never stray far from it, at least not in significant numbers. Even one ye…

> at least not in significant numbers That's ok. Insignificant numbers are more than enough to colonize an entire galaxy on geologic timescales. The thing about the "Great Filter" is that it is great. If you can even imagine an exception for your candidate filter, then it's not great enough.

>The thing about the "Great Filter" is that it is great. If you can even imagine an exception for your candidate filter, then it's not great enough.

I don't mean this as a personal attack, but that gets the idea dangerously close to the theory of unfalsifiability.

Personally I am more inclined to the believe that we haven't heard any radio signals from space because you don't run a multi-galaxy civilisation on light-limited transmissions.

Invent the ansible and then maybe we will find the galaxy theming with life.

Re: Some biologists and ecologists think social media is a risk to humanity

#184

Post by bart_spoon »

lamontcg wrote: post #157
klipt wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think echo chambers are part of the problem. Previously you'd love in your village and have to get along with other villagers (or move, which took a lot of effort) so people had to learn to compromise more. Now everyone can live in virtual echo chambers where everyone agrees with them and they never need to compromise. So they start viewing anyone who disagrees with them as pure evil.

"Every biologist knows that small groups in isolation evolve fastest."

Small groups that are isolated aren’t necessarily echo chambers devoid of diversity. The point is the existence of disconnect between small groups, not the homogeneity within groups.

Re: Some biologists and ecologists think social media is a risk to humanity

#185

Post by antifa »

bumby wrote: post #143
jkhdigital wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know how to solve this: no more democracy, just put the “smart policy” wonks in charge. What could possibly go wrong

I know you’re being sarcastic, but in a representative democracy the people are largely the ones charged with assigning the “smart policy wonks” to their roles

Feels more like choosing your ISP than it does democracy...

Re: Some biologists and ecologists think social media is a risk to humanity

#186

Post by JoshTko »

JoshTko wrote: post #46

There is simply too much noise/signal. We truly need a protected class of speech/news that cannot lie by law. This is similar to standardizing currency in order to facilitate trade without risk, except for information.

Quixotic devotion to the ideal of free speech is messing up the world since wealthy interests have many ways to sway public opinion as desired. Free speech only works with an educated population - and most countries do not have one.

Re: Some biologists and ecologists think social media is a risk to humanity

#188

Post by thethethethe »

cratermoon wrote: post #133
thethethethe wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be interested too if they wrote a paper about it instead of repeating mainstream talking points in a Vox article

Good news! Bergstrom wrote a paper, titled "Stewardship of global collective behavior"[1], see also https://twitter.com/CT_Bergstrom/status/1408262388533456904 1 https://www.pnas.org/content/118/27/e2025764118

Thanks. I read it this morning, as I am interested, and my opinion hasn't really changed to be honest. It appears to be a reaction to covid response/the capitol riot and they have identified the dissemination of information online as the problem and some form of "stewardship" is the solution. I disagree with this assessment as I believe the actual problem is people's material conditions and information flow online is just a conduit, not a cause. The whole thing strikes me as good-intentioned authoritarianism

Re: Some biologists and ecologists think social media is a risk to humanity

#189

Post by thethethethe »

anigbrowl wrote: post #172
thethethethe wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be interested too if they wrote a paper about it instead of repeating mainstream talking points in a Vox article

If you had read the article you'd have noticed it's citing a paper publisher in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

I didn't notice, thanks for pointing this out

Re: Some biologists and ecologists think social media is a risk to humanity

#190

Post by thethethethe »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #149
thethethethe wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Im not saying that it is, that is just the perspective that I believe this article is being written from. American conservatives are concerned about censorship, American liberals are concerned about "misinformation and disinformation". This article is firmly on the diss/misinformation side of the debate

I feel certain you could find plenty of people who self identify as liberals and are concerned about free speech issues, just as you can find folks who self identify as conservatives who are concerned about the spread of misinformation and conspiracy theories. Dividing people into groups and setting them against each other like this isn’t helping.

Yeah it's a spectrum and there will be many exceptions but I still think it is useful categorize political groups by their political beliefs in a discussion
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