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Social Cooling (2017)

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Re: Social Cooling (2017)

#81

Post by jacquesm »

baxtr wrote: post #69
arthurofbabylon wrote: post #34

The Americans (†) who grew up with constant surveillance (social media, cameras everywhere) aim for ordinariness. The entire generation is less likely to express a non-consensus opinion than prior generations. For good reason: with everything being recorded and broadcast, personal errors are both accentuated and persist longer with no corresponding rise in upside. Bold opinions and creative ideas are simply too risky…

My best friend from school days has a son who’s now in 7th grade. Recently, when we were talking about him, we realised his school years are far less dramatic than ours. We had drama, lots of bullying, tears, fights, and mean things were done. In contrast, his son’s school days are absolutely harmless and benign. I know it’s n = 1 and maybe we were very unlucky back then. But it also makes me wonder if any chaotic ex…

This massively depends on where you are located and on the school itself. A 5 km difference can be a completely different world. When we moved in 2018 one of my kids could not immediately go to the school we favored. But the other one could and then in the next year the fact that he already had a brother in that school would give him preferred access. Those two schools could not have been different. The one was an endless list of tragedies, fights and other crap, the other was on a completely different level, never a problem and this seemed to hold true for different classes in that same school as well. I think the cumulative effect of that one year was such that he ended up going to a different level of secondary education, even though cognitively the two brothers are not all that different.

So that's n=2, not quite n=1, still anecdata but maybe it will help someone who thinks that all schools are equal and good.

Re: Social Cooling (2017)

#82

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

That's been featured several times on HN.

I feel both bad and good about the concept of "social cooling."

It's nothing new. Societal pressure is as old as humanity. Pressure to conform, to be "one with the herd," is basically built into our DNA.

Constant surveillance is simply a new feature of an old pattern. If anyone has ever read Jane Austen, they know about societal pressure, and how real the stakes can be. People could get their lives destroyed by a careless word, centuries ago.

If you don't fit into the herd, you don't get the advantages and protection offered by the herd. The outliers get picked off by the predators.

But we need to give up quite a bit, to fit in. For some, the cost is too high.

Even the "outliers" get commoditized. When you could get ripped and graffiti'd punk jeans from Bloomingdales, the Punk ethos was dead.

Long topic, lots of different angles, and we can all justify our own approach. Not sure there's any answer that would make everyone satisfied.

Re: Social Cooling (2017)

#83

Post by phaser »

This idea is old, but today it conveys a much bigger meaning. There are two new developments since then that are very scary. The first is that artificial intelligence is supposedly replacing some jobs, but not only that, it is also being used to select jobs, and the latter is something that I have seen firsthand. The other phenomenon is the advance, in places of the world that classically were liberal, of political ideas that will hinder or directly eliminate the right to private communication over the Internet.

Combine these three factors: data brokerage, the use of AI to replace and select jobs, and the political landscape around the right to encryption, and we get a recipe for a future where the word dystopian falls short.

Re: Social Cooling (2017)

#84

Post by dimal »

KaiserPro wrote: post #30

As other people have noted, this is an old site, they also note that genz have partially learnt from our mistakes, and turned to ephemeral media, amongst other things. The rise of AR glasses will of course kneecap anonymity in "real life" But I look at the general collapse of "civility" in the USA and cant help but think of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_sink

Interesting. We’re not dealing with actual overcrowding now, but with the constant din of social media and news, society feels overcrowded. You used to be able to live in blissful ignorance of what was happening in other areas, but now you can only do that if you avoid news and social media completely.

Re: Social Cooling (2017)

#85

Post by eastbound »

rkomorn wrote: post #55
eastbound wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s easy to say “The other camp is extreme, so we have to”, but you’re welcome if you have any proposal. My proposal is: I think an extreme lot of my camp would switch if there was an ethical left, with strong ethics but also not prone to degrading whites. What’s your proposal?

My proposal is that you drop the holier than thou attitude.

And what will it do?

Re: Social Cooling (2017)

#86

Post by komali2 »

krets wrote: post #57
komali2 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

{ concerned_with_privacy: true, online_usernames: ['kachapopopow', ...] } ;) As someone else mentioned, most likely you've been fingerprinted. But at least yes you can't be looked up directly, only if someone uses a databroker.

True, you don’t need to be impossible to be fingerprinted. If someone really wanted to track you manually using databrokers, be my guest :) But for most people here I think it’s about not being the easiest prey. And make the automatic and general algorithms hard to track you.

The "my bike lock is better than yours" strategy of personal information security :p

Re: Social Cooling (2017)

#87

Post by harvey9 »

BlueTemplar wrote: post #62
presentation wrote: post #27

You don’t need some kind of “social score” to have the chilling effect, if anything I think people self censor more because of the fear of getting berated by others for their beliefs—both by those they know and don’t. Interestingly I don’t think it’s really “cooling” that happened - if anything it’s been some people becoming extremely hot, and then the majority of people, myself included, are experiencing cooling. Un…

If you have a better solution to the paradox of tolerance, I'm all ears. (People still using platforms : the likes of Facebook, Discord, LinkedIn, Github, or ChatGPT being amongst the ones that undermine democratic ideals and that ought to be socially shamed, and, in some cases, beaten up.)

Do you mean you want to metaphorically beat up a website, or literally beat up people whose views you disagree with?

Re: Social Cooling (2017)

#88

Post by 01HNNWZ0MV43FF »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #82

That's been featured several times on HN. I feel both bad and good about the concept of "social cooling." It's nothing new. Societal pressure is as old as humanity. Pressure to conform, to be "one with the herd," is basically built into our DNA. Constant surveillance is simply a new feature of an old pattern. If anyone has ever read Jane Austen, they know about societal pressure, and how real the stakes can be. Peopl…

It worries me that "the herd" is not anyone I know in person, not anyone I respect, not anyone who loves me, but an abstraction that helps someone else make money, or helps someone else win an election.

I think that is an obvious bad thing.

It is one thing to say like "I won't call my friends' political beliefs stupid when we're hanging out" versus "If I want to criticize my government, I should use a ULID and not my legal name."

Re: Social Cooling (2017)

#89

Post by harvey9 »

BlueTemplar wrote: post #66
rTX5CMRXIfFG wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s a variant of “cancel culture” that’s actually just trial by publicity and I think that’s objectively a bad thing. But often, people in social media are just looking for attention by deliberately inciting outrage, posting their “hot takes” and making controversial statements—and then when other people with opposing views reply to disagree, the original posters start crying about “cancel culture” when, in fact,…

It's probably better to just stop using social media. (And stop tolerating people that do.) I doubt that even something as 'light' on that spectrum as Hacker News is worthwhile enough compared to the non-social-media alternatives. (As a reminder, you can have a tree-like discussion structure without an upvote system.)

Have an ironic upvote. HN's system of not explicitly showing post scores and using accumulated score to give access to downvote buttons etc is the least bad that I have encountered.

Re: Social Cooling (2017)

#90

Post by Jensson »

cluckindan wrote: post #65
kachapopopow wrote: post #3

I honestly love this as someone who never has a consistent identity in terms of the name I use online and not keeping a long history such as re-creating accounts whenever it is convenient. This is especially relevant on social media platforms where I don't want to feel like someone can just dig up something I've said or shared 5 years ago and use that against me. It also helps me stay myself without changing my behav…

Unless you rotate IPs and browser fingerprints for each identity and alter your visited sites, usage patterns, typing speed and style, mouse movements etc. etc. the data brokers will be able to connect your ”inconsistent” identities.

Most attacks on people are done by those who just google your name and see what comes up so some very minor privacy work helps a lot. Its a lot of work to be completely safe but its very little work to be basically safe.
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