There will always be something dictating what you think until you really feel interested in actually thinking yourself and develop a critical and exploratory mindset. The active audience of this website probably is predominantly blessed with having this kind of mindset already but the general population probably lacks any incentive for developing it.
Kill your Feeds – Stop letting algorithms dictate what you think
21–30 of 332 posts
Re: Kill your Feeds – Stop letting algorithms dictate what you think
#22Yes totally! I like Reddit because you can pick your own subreddits but even that can be flooded by ragebait/clickbait
Even so, reddit is a huge echo chamber. The moderation is completely opaque so if a subreddit moderator doesn't like something you've said they can remove it at will, and they often do. And the upvote system encourages groupthink. Votes being hidden on HN I think is excellent.
Re: Kill your Feeds – Stop letting algorithms dictate what you think
#23Glad to see Bluesky mentioned. I look forward to trading custom feed algorithms like Pokémon: https://stronglytyped.uk/articles/bluesky-firehose-meet-hack...
Re: Kill your Feeds – Stop letting algorithms dictate what you think
#24I can't help thinking that those receptive to the message would have drawn consequences long since. The feeds themselves would have chased them away. Can you wean a crack addict by telling them to stop using? Maybe, but I don't see a high probability of success. I sure hope I'm wrong.
Sure, but it's nice to be reaffirmed, and maybe this is handy grist for discussions with friends, family, and colleagues.
Re: Kill your Feeds – Stop letting algorithms dictate what you think
#25This advice is missing something crucial which is how to discover new creators sans feeds. Not saying it's impossible, but it's something they excel at and they've extinguished a lot of the old ways.
Re: Kill your Feeds – Stop letting algorithms dictate what you think
#26Social media has really proven that phrase that "the medium is the message", which I remember long ago thinking was a little odd and not obviously true. With all the new stuff coming out in the LLM field, I've taken a cynically mechanistic view to this: We're basically being conditioned by (the currently popular crop of) social media to work in very short context windows, which aren't sufficient for advanced reasonin…
> So yes, totally. Turn it off and go read a book. For what its worth, 500 years ago people were just as worried about books as we are today about newsfeeds. But it took a long time for books to ultimately decentralize enough to become a more egalitarian, community knowledge. But even that's not entirely the case now. Books can be propaganda just like everything else.
Books can be terrible, but they can be good to a level that (most popular) social media can't, due to the limitations of the medium.
Without long text, to a good approximation, you just can't convey long, multi-step reasoning chains at the limit of human intellectual capacity.
Personally I've started reading again much more recently, and it's done wonders for what's going on inside my head. I was feeling so dull! I can only recommend it.
Re: Kill your Feeds – Stop letting algorithms dictate what you think
#27I can't help thinking that those receptive to the message would have drawn consequences long since. The feeds themselves would have chased them away. Can you wean a crack addict by telling them to stop using? Maybe, but I don't see a high probability of success. I sure hope I'm wrong.
> 5. Talk about it - if you’re reading this you a already know this is a problem. Your friends and family may not be aware of how their feeds are manipulating their attention and beliefs. Without intervention, the radicalisation of opinions, and the consequences we’re already seeing, will only escalate.
This is not Crack fortunately.
Physical dependence -> dopamine -> euphoria, escape, coping with stress + anxiety -> cannot feel pleasure without the drug -> craving for the drug / dependence. Recovery includes confronting the physical feeling that the drug is essential for perceived well-being.
Psychological dependence (TikTok / Insta Feed) -> sense of belonging, validation, purpose -> sense of identity via subculture, especially for "marginalized" or "insecure" individuals -> (side-note, some TikTok / Insta / MAGA+Dem / feeds CREATE+encourage the sense of marginalization / insecurity) -> us versus them -> isolation, only valuing subculture views, promoted distorted beliefs, detachment -> dependence (again). Recovery includes depression, anxiety, and feelings of loss.
WEANING
- Drug: medical intervention, therapy, support, relapse prevention
- Social: therapy, reconnection, critical thinking development, finding alt purpose, gradual separation
Re: Kill your Feeds – Stop letting algorithms dictate what you think
#28Social media has really proven that phrase that "the medium is the message", which I remember long ago thinking was a little odd and not obviously true. With all the new stuff coming out in the LLM field, I've taken a cynically mechanistic view to this: We're basically being conditioned by (the currently popular crop of) social media to work in very short context windows, which aren't sufficient for advanced reasonin…
> So yes, totally. Turn it off and go read a book. For what its worth, 500 years ago people were just as worried about books as we are today about newsfeeds. But it took a long time for books to ultimately decentralize enough to become a more egalitarian, community knowledge. But even that's not entirely the case now. Books can be propaganda just like everything else.
Books can be propaganda, certainly. However, books promote long attention span. Social media generally removes that aspect and focuses on dopamine hits. It’s hard to condition critical thinking when jumping from one truth sentence to another truth sentence without context.
Re: Kill your Feeds – Stop letting algorithms dictate what you think
#29I’m surprised there is never more acknowledgement of this. Just look around at the other people you see in public. If they aren’t actively walking, the phone is out, sometimes even while walking. You can’t really think deeply about your life and situation if every waking second is spent looking at brainrot social media. Even people with a nose buried in a book are trading precious time in their own mind developing their own thoughts for that to instead be filled with others words and ideas.
Socrates was even complaining about this, and it’s arguably far worse what is happening today than what he was seeing.
Re: Kill your Feeds – Stop letting algorithms dictate what you think
#30I can't help thinking that those receptive to the message would have drawn consequences long since. The feeds themselves would have chased them away. Can you wean a crack addict by telling them to stop using? Maybe, but I don't see a high probability of success. I sure hope I'm wrong.
https://xkcd.com/1053/
Cute.
Learning how to think critically, I think that's the intersection of this cartoon and this blog post.