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Kill your Feeds – Stop letting algorithms dictate what you think

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Re: Kill your Feeds – Stop letting algorithms dictate what you think

#51

Post by timewizard »

svara wrote: post #13

Social 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…

I don't understand this regression to the binary.

Your social media tools allow you to block content. I use this feature on youtube all the time. If I see a channel that's posting garbage or propaganda or flat out lies I just click the three dots and say 'Don't Recommend Channel.'

My youtube feed is a pleasant experience every day. There's no CNN or Fox news, no yelling talking heads trying to convince each other in existential terms, no jingoistic propaganda trying to influence me.

It's like what it was meant to be 20 years ago. Why do people not do this?

Re: Kill your Feeds – Stop letting algorithms dictate what you think

#52

Post by thuanao »

stego-tech wrote: post #40
lysace wrote: post #31

Reddit is unfortunately a major thing in my life. There's an eternal battle between left and right politics in my small European country's relevant subreddits. Not very healthy - it's like a never ending feed of "someone is wrong on the Internet". For the record: "right" here is roughly equivalent with the political position of the US Democratic party. Unfortunately these subreddits are not very balanced, so when I d…

What finally helped me break out of those bad habits was reframing who I was trying to convince of an argument. Let's face it, it's highly unlikely you're going to ever convince someone you're directly arguing with online just by the simple fact you're arguing, which often suggests some sort of impasse . Instead, argue as if you're trying to convince the bored reader who has climbed down through the comments (for som…

Huh that’s a perspective I hadn’t thought about before. Thanks for sharing.

Re: Kill your Feeds – Stop letting algorithms dictate what you think

#53

Post by grumpy-de-sre »

In a lot of ways I really like recommendation algorithms, regularly I've had youtube recommend a video that's converted into new sub (eg. LiamTronix and his electric tractor conversion).

What we really need is "responsible" recommendation systems (that allow the joy of discovery while aggressively damping rage bait and extreme view points). They'd need to be trained with some kind of socially beneficial reward function rather than pure engagement or advertiser dollars.

Could such a recommendation systems operate on top of existing social graphs?

Re: Kill your Feeds – Stop letting algorithms dictate what you think

#54

Post by lawn »

svara wrote: post #26
williamtrask wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 c…

It's also common to think that you should only read non-fiction and that fiction is a waste of time, but I absolutely don't agree. Fiction is amazing and it'll help your reasoning, creativity, helps give perspective on things, and improves your outlook on life in a way that non-fiction has a very hard time to do.

Non-fiction is very good for other reasons and it's good to aim for a healthy mix of the too I think.

Re: Kill your Feeds – Stop letting algorithms dictate what you think

#55

Post by hooverd »

lolinder wrote: post #19

The author sort of (but not really) acknowledges this midway through, but this is basically a summary of the most recent Technology Connections video, Algorithms are breaking how we think : https://youtu.be/QEJpZjg8GuA I'd rather they acknowledge Alec as the inspiration/source for this post at the beginning and explicitly, rather than just mentioning the video in passing midway through, but at least they do link to i…

Technology connections is great. I've never been more excited to listen to a man talk about dishwashers for 20 minutes.

Re: Kill your Feeds – Stop letting algorithms dictate what you think

#56

Post by YZF »

grumpy-de-sre wrote: post #53

In a lot of ways I really like recommendation algorithms, regularly I've had youtube recommend a video that's converted into new sub (eg. LiamTronix and his electric tractor conversion). What we really need is "responsible" recommendation systems (that allow the joy of discovery while aggressively damping rage bait and extreme view points). They'd need to be trained with some kind of socially beneficial reward functi…

Maybe we need a client side rather than server side recommendation system. I.e. one that's under our control.

Re: Kill your Feeds – Stop letting algorithms dictate what you think

#57

Post by bravoetch »

Exuma wrote: post #41

Why do people really need to be told this? This is fundamentally obvious at the most extreme basic of levels. It's as obvious as a red cube being red.

I will extend your analogy, and offer than many people do not understand why a red cube came to be red, and why it might be a bad thing.

Suggest to someone that they turn off their phone and leave it at home, and watch them have an almost painful physical reaction.

Re: Kill your Feeds – Stop letting algorithms dictate what you think

#58

Post by AndyKelley »

lolinder wrote: post #19

The author sort of (but not really) acknowledges this midway through, but this is basically a summary of the most recent Technology Connections video, Algorithms are breaking how we think : https://youtu.be/QEJpZjg8GuA I'd rather they acknowledge Alec as the inspiration/source for this post at the beginning and explicitly, rather than just mentioning the video in passing midway through, but at least they do link to i…

I'm sure Alec would celebrate that his ideology, which is also not original, is spreading.

Re: Kill your Feeds – Stop letting algorithms dictate what you think

#60

Post by dharmab »

YZF wrote: post #56
grumpy-de-sre wrote: post #53

In a lot of ways I really like recommendation algorithms, regularly I've had youtube recommend a video that's converted into new sub (eg. LiamTronix and his electric tractor conversion). What we really need is "responsible" recommendation systems (that allow the joy of discovery while aggressively damping rage bait and extreme view points). They'd need to be trained with some kind of socially beneficial reward functi…

Maybe we need a client side rather than server side recommendation system. I.e. one that's under our control.

Isn't this the concept behind BlueSkye? https://docs.bsky.app/docs/starter-templates/custom-feeds
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