The author writes, “You end up in a world where changing your mind becomes impossible because you've built your entire identity around being right”. Yet social-media personalities regularly do a 180° turn on some issue (e.g. pro-Ukraine to anti-Ukraine or vice versa) and still keep their following and ability to monetize it.
Social media is full of parasocial relationships; followers are in love with an influencer’s personality, not their views or factual content. So, the influencer can completely change his mind about stuff, as long as he still has the engaging presentation that people have come to like. Followers are also often in love with the brand relationships that the influencers flog, because people love being told what stuff they should buy.
the words we use matter a lot. the "pro" and "anti" anything is a pretty large reason why all discourse has become so stupid sounding and talking with people about any issue is enraging. nuance is dead. the cultural zeitgeist is being controlled by algorithmic feeds that create neuroticism (i am definitely affected), general anxiety, and anger.
People are also more isolated than ever, positioning them poorly for having robust real relationships. This makes them vulnerable to mistaking "influencers" as their friends.
> But exposing yourself to articulate versions of positions you oppose does something valuable: it makes you realize that intelligent people can disagree with you without being monsters or morons.
The idea that being articulate implies intelligence and/or sanity is very common, but really a bit weird. You can find plenty of articulate defences of, say, flat earth theory.
Ezra Klein's book why we're polarized cover this a bit and basically studies show that intelligence level has little to do with what people believe and more so just affects their ability to defend whichever position they already hold.
Indeed, and an articulate, confident defense can also be that much more insidious. I never found it hard to ignore obviously bad-faith talking heads on cable news, but when someone is on a podcast conversation with a host I like, it's much easier to nod along until that moment where they say something demonstrably false and I have to rewind my brain a minute or two to be like... wait a sec, what? How did you get to that position?
>The idea that being articulate implies intelligence and/or sanity is very common, but really a bit weird. You can find plenty of articulate defences of, say, flat earth theory.
The author has to say this because the consumers of the author's content would stop being right if the author was constantly dropping truth bombs like "being articulate doesn't make you right" they wouldn't get liked, retweeted, shared, and circle jerked about in the comment section on the front page of HN.
Literally every content creating person or company with an established fan base is in this quandary. If Alex Jones said "hey guys the government is right about this one" or Regular Car Reviews said "this Toyota product is not the second coming of christ" they'd hemorrhage viewers and money so they cant say those things no matter how much they personally want to. Someone peddling platitudes to people who fancy themselves intellectuals can't stop any more than a guy who's family business is concrete plants can't just decide one day to do roofing.
Alex Jones literally did this though starting around 2016.
This is a strong argument probably but strangely aimed here. Reading the article, it does seem like you and the author agree about everything in this regard? You are kind of just rearticulating one part of their argument as critique about them. Why?
Or where do we place the reflex here? What triggered: this author is BS, is pseudointellectual, is bad. We jump here from a small note about articulation and intelligence, to what seems like this massive opportunity to attack not only that argument, but the author, the readers, everyone. Why? Does the particular point here feel like a massive structural weakness?
What was the trigger here for you, for lack of better word? Why such a strong feeling?
Not every internet comment is a disagreement with what it's replying to.
The entire "media intended for voluntary casual consumption" industry is rife with these sorts of "gotta keep doing what you're known for" traps. Pretty much every industry with minimal product differentiation is like this to varying extents. Sorry my examples weren't completely devoid of exceptions <eyeroll>.
Anyway, two can play this stupid game. Why is it such a problem that I'm alleging this content is basically scratching the same itch in the same way as tabloids but for different demographics? Why do you feel the need to make this out to be an attack on everyone rather than a narrowly targeted "the world do be the way it is" criticism?
Even with the number of articulate examples like this are far out numbered by the number of inarticulate arguments that the rule still has merit. Exceptions do not make the rule bad.
That's true, but if you want one, you can find one. If you've conditioned yourself to think that articulate==credible, then sometimes it only takes one.
We are at this point where we need to “Turn on, tune in, drop out” again. This mass media circus of social media and influencers doesn’t help anyone except their own self centred interests.
Fair to say this is easier in Europe where we don’t have the propaganda firehose but I think it’s time to switch off US friends
The main issue for me is the size of our platforms.
If the owner of a platform tries to enforce a set of virtues, it will always be seen as censorship by a fraction of its users. That fraction will increase as the user base increases, as the alternatives diminish, and as the owners govern with more impunity.
I personally think these loud users are immature, disrespectful, anonymous cowards, but my opinions are irrelevant — the important thing is that large platforms are politically unstable.
The solution to this is to fragment the internet. Unfortunately, this is incompatible with the information economies of scale that underpin the US economy. In my opinion, our insanity is an externality of the information sector, much like obesity for staple goods or carbon dioxide for energy.
I don’t agree with these individualized how-to guides. I can turn my phone off and go outside, but I still have to live in a world informed by social-media sentiment.
"enforce a set of virtues" is a weird way of saying "enforcing basic decency". Let's be clear here, people who are rightfully banned are always going to complain. Our opinions as the majority who DO want decent conversations online are not irrelevant. We should not give those people equal weight to those facing actual censorship. Fragmenting the internet will never get rid of the problem that moderation needs to happen.
What is basic decency? Is it indecent to advocate for atheism or if a women posts a picture of herself not wearing a burka? Many people in certain countries would say so. Personally I think those people are insane, and that maximal freedom of expression is the most important human right, but the fundamental problem is that there is no consensus on what constitutes basic decency.
I'm not talking about cultural differences. I'm talking about people simply being assholes online. You will always have a group of people complaining about the rules, that is inevitable.
To be clear, if I were in charge, there would be significantly more banning and moderation on all platforms. I am arguing moderation is more politically feasible in small communities, not that is any more or less ethical.
A better solution to this would be to fragment within social media platforms. Allow users to post any content that's legal within their local jurisdiction. And give other users easy tools to create their own "filter bubbles" so that they don't see content which they personally consider insane or offensive. This would allow the social media platforms to sidestep political debates about censorship.
Facebook has a real name policy and is a prime example of internet-fueled insanity. Why does deanonymization not help Facebook be a more positive place?
To tie it to my own view, I don’t think deanonymization has any effect if the name is meaningless to 99.9% of the community. For every person fired for posts, there are 10000 others who are not.
Does that also apply to people living under oppressive governments? Anonymity can be a useful tool for sharing information that those in power don't want released, for example whistle blowing.
A woman wearing anything but a burqa in an extremist Islamic society would be popularly categorized as one of the "people with no shame, and with strong anti-social tendencies". So according to you liberal women in Iran, Pakistan, Sudan etc should not be given a safe space, is it?
Nobody can vouch for their own sanity. Attempting to do so only make you sound insane. Incentives to be insane? Sure, but.... it is timing the stock market of ideas. Some will get rich but most will not. And sanity either has to return or insanity will destroy many lives and the society in which it is allowed free reign. In any case if you promoted insanity when sanity returns and people regain their ability to have a memory you may reap what you seeded.
The real grift has been in echo chambers changing peoples vocabulary such that we can use the same words but talk right past eachother, allowing extremely moderate positions to be reframed as extreme and making what ought to be minor disagreements unresolvable. People making an "I can see both sides" argument are completely missing the point - the issue is that most people can't see both sides, and even when they go out of their way to look at the other side's argument, they come away even more convinced that the other side's argument is dumb because it is dumb, if it is assumed everyone is speaking the same language. People haven't all suddenly become insane, or dumb, or unreasonable; we've just taken for granted that people geographically close to us using the same vocabulary would mean the same things, and thus we never developed the skills to translate between people who are in fact living in wildly different worlds possibly in the same household. And much of this is by design - pointing out how dumb someone else is, and complaining about the burden of dealing with these dumb people, takes so much less effort than actually doing the work to build consensus and make changes.
I don't quite get the connection between the premise and the conclusion. Sure, influencers get rewarded by social media algorithms for polarising content, but most people are not influencers.
i found it weird that this person has multiple friends that were able to "make bank" by having polarizing opinions. i know a ton of folks with polarizing opinions and none of them are monetizing it.
what kind of world is this author living in where their social circle includes so many influencers that are cashing in on social media?
And the influenced are rewarded by the influencer that is validating their polarized views.
You also might be putting too fine a point on "influencer". A relative of mine on Facebook might be a kind of "influencer"—at least with regard to his small cadre of family and friends that follow him.
I have a hard time taking this kind of enlightened-centrist both-sides gruel very seriously. Calling every strong position "extreme" is a classic sleight-of-hand maneuver by people who want to mask their own wrong-side-of-history beliefs that they know they should feel ashamed of expressing.
Yes, yes, look for truth beyond labeled groups, but pretending that the "sides" are equal is some utterly moronic "Fair and Balanced" bullshit.
> it makes you realize that intelligent people can disagree with you without being monsters or morons.
Many issues really do have a bright dividing line. I mean, for fuck's sake, there are people who are currently fighting against releasing the Epstein files, documents that clearly incriminate pedophilic rape and sex trafficking.
> One friend became “convinced” that every major news story was manufactured consent.
I think the author here doesn't actually understand what manufactured consent is, because believing otherwise demonstrates media illiteracy. Talking about our extreme filter bubbles (community/information homogeneity) in one breath and then denying the pervasiveness of manufactured consent in the next is otherwise a perfect demonstration of Gell-Mann amnesia.
Agreed. The world is made of nuance, that's true. And, there are plenty of issues abounding right now where there is simply no nuance to be had. The Epstein files should be released, and every person named in them should go to prison. Israel is actively engaged in war crimes. Vaccines work. Transpeople are the people they say they are. Climate change is real, and caused by humans. Whatever "debate" is meant to be occurring on these and a variety of others is manufactured by people in power working with complicit, privately owned media to create that debate, and more often than not, monetize it.
Let's just poke this one a little bit. Does this standard apply to all people or just trans people? Why or why not? Do you think this[1] individual is who they say they are? Why or why not?
> Does this standard apply to all people or just trans people?
All.
> Why or why not?
Because the self as a concept only exists within the mind of the individual and it's sole source for determination is what that individual says. It's non-falsifiable so taking people at their word is simply the only option.
> Do you think this[1] individual is who they say they are?
Sure. There are shitty transpeople too.
> Why or why not?
See above.
And if you're asking how you prevent that person from being a threat to other people in the prison, well, there's a lot to unpack there.
For immediate solutions, solitary confinement. I don't like it as a policy but the neo-nazi movement is openly male-supremacist and this person, woman or not, is a threat to other women. If she wants to be sent to a women's prison it's the prison's duty to see that incarceration pass with as few incidents as possible, so the only logical path forward is isolation from other inmates.
For broader solutions: the fact that we segregate prisons along sex lines is going to always be a problem for trans offenders, but I also understand why that segregation exists and it's obvious. If we assume those same risks are valid, then any transwoman in a woman's prison is a threat, and any transmasculine person in a men's prison is threatened, and nonbinary folk are going to be all kinds of lost in that system. So, logically, we should expand the range of available prison facilities to account for this. Transwomen would go to a transwoman's prison, which would be identical to a woman's prison, apart from not having ciswomen in it, and vice-versa. And I guess you'd also need enby-jails too.
Though if you want my personal opinion, I think there's a much easier solution to this particular offender, and it's the same solution I'd prescribe for any Nazi, regardless of their gender identity.
Ok, so then transracial individuals[1] should be believed as well? What about those that identify as inanimate objects[2] or animals? If we accept self-identification as an inanimate object should others be allowed to treat that person as such?
> Ok, so then transracial individuals[1] should be believed as well?
I mean, "race" is a social construct too. There's nothing biologically different about a black man from a white man. It's a collection of cultural, historical and visual cues society imbues with meaning. So... in a way, it's got a lot in common with gender.
> What about those that identify as inanimate objects[2] or animals?
Yep.
> If we accept self-identification as an inanimate object should others be allowed to treat that person as such?
If someone earnestly identifies as an object, that's their prerogative. But no, others don;t get to treat them like furniture or property because consent and dignity still apply to them. Identity doesn't override someone's right to safety, and it doesn't give others license to dehumanize, even in a twisted manner of affirming them.
And, as someone with an occasional spirit for some BDSM play, I am familiar with treating people like objects in a way that is edifying without being harmful to them.
I think disengaging from social media is a big part of this. These advertiser and engagement fueled algorithms promote all of the insane takes as well. You find much more fulfillment engaging with people locally or people in your close circles.
I’m not on social media unless you consider HN social media (I don’t) and the world is still totally as insane as it was before the internet.
For your average city person:
The food you’re offered is sugar + preservatives, the water is either non-existent (Tehran) or poisoned with fracking gas (Flint), almost all local communities have collapsed into extreme versions of themselves, the rich and poor still don’t mingle, men fear women and women want nothing to do with men, there is no upside to having a family or children.
I just spoke at a HBS event in DC last night about robotics and on one side of the room were people starting AI companion services and in the other side people were saying AI was causing the rise of Tradwives. It was like looking at 50 “deer in headlights” when explaining how thoroughly they have already integrated third party algorithmic logic into their decision processes - and are totally unaware of it.
The real world is absurd and getting less coherent with more information available. Humans aren’t biologically equipped for the world we collectively built.
Your disconnect from Social Media and "the world still totally insane"—the latter is of course not dependent on the former. Perhaps we need to get the rest of the world also off Social Media? Off the internet?
Given that we can't do that, I choose then to continue my hobbies, take more walks, try to declutter my place, improve my health, lose weight, look for comfortable chats with my daughters, wife, friends…
I'm not sure where you see men and women not trusting one another. If I had to guess it would be that you perceive this from things you have seen on the internet?
I find the internet is kind of like that silly cave in "The Empire Strikes Back"—where you find only what you bring with you. Try looking for positive things and people and see if you are not rewarded. (And if you cannot, just drop the internet completely. I have a friend that I think checks online for about 30 minutes in the morning and then he's done for the day.)
Both are significantly different but still fail to provide the most basic service: access to clean water
I can trivially get access to plenty of clean drinking water in most “wild” places in the world, in fact that’s like the third core thing you learn in survival schools (of which I’ve attended many).
I felt the same thing when i was 22--kids aren't for me, this world sucks, etc etc. Eventually I "grew up," toned down short term hedonistic pleasures, read books that deepened my connection to humanity and realized family is extremely meaningful.
First off, there's nothing new about interviewing people who are in their early 20s and hearing moaning and groaning about how this world sucks and it's not worth bringing anyone into it. I'm not religious whatsoever, but there's something deeply spiritual about the human experience of family/kids. It's certainly not for everyone if you're mature enough to understand the downsides and decide not to--but the secondary point I want to make is that I think most people are naive/immature. They follow trends and take a lot of direction from social media. The endless short term dopamine hits from every corner of your life will definitely have anybody questioning -- "why would i make my life harder when i can live only for myself and continue tiktoking in the evenings for 3 hours" -- our society is fundamentally broken, and that's not just the USA. I've traveled to other places and have bumped into the social media zombies everywhere.
Being reasonable is basicaly the core requirement of civilization. If your culture is incapable of tolerance or variation it's also incapable of growth. It gets locked in a cyclical purity test and collapse.
Not sure what the point of this is other than to complain about being out of touch with the world. Too many people think "diversifying your information" means subscribing to whatever drivel they find on substack instead of, you know, following a diverse set of _actual journalists_.
Over the last many years, newspapers have slashed actual journalists in a number of areas: investigative reporting, arts, local news. A lot of those actual journalists have moved to Substack in order to maintain some kind of career writing about the subject they love.
For me, the tragedy of Substack isn’t that it consists of purely unserious people. It’s that fine journalists go there because, with the death of open-web blogging, there’s a feeling that there is no where else to go. And then, once there, they start to pick up all kinds of bad behaviors that both Substack the for-profit corporate owner and its culture of writers and commenters encourage.
That's true, the point I was making was that it's about you decide to trust with sending you news not just the outlet. The problem is that many people who are rightfully distrustful of traditional media end up following cranks. And Substack seems to be the place where the cranks hang out.
>A third began using the word "liberal" as if it was a personality disorder rather than loose coalitions of sometimes contradictory beliefs.
I'm a long time Jon Stewart fan and if I'm being honest, looked at the "other side" as if it was a bunch of retarded people isn't new and predate 2016. No doubt Trump and social media got conservative to embrace condescending and extreme rhetoric and pushed it to another level but let's not pretend they invented anything.
A lot of this goes away when you stop spending so much time on social media, which is a very poor reflection of "reality." Part of the problem is that there are a number of people who can't really look away, because they've built their livelihoods on it. Traditional media in many ways has come to rely on it too. Unfortunate mistake.
Prominent figures on social media change their minds all the time, but they'll re-sculpt their reality around the basis that they were always right anyway. Just take a look at how the story around the Epstein files changes with the way the wind blows. It feels very familiar to the "Narcissist's Prayer."
> The returns on reasonableness have almost entirely collapsed
If you measure returns by others' approval, then you are doomed as the world is fickle. Unfortunately, as a writer or journalist you are forced to depend on approval of others.
The alternative is to sculpt a framework or scorecard largely independent of what others think - but this is hard, as we are social creatures.
> as a writer or journalist you are forced to depend on approval of others
and sometimes the disapproval of others, as we've seen with the sort of rage-baiting headlines many blogs, social media accounts, and even traditional media outlets, are writing
and the thing is... this approval/disapproval reaction isn't elicited to necessarily build coalitions, make friends, or change minds, it's often built to sell eyes-on-ads which is a completely perverse incentive that has eaten the mainstream internet
The challenge is that short-term incentives can easily lead to long-term problems, as the short-term min/maxing can leave you stuck in a particular global minimum, with no clear way out.
This person doesn't seem aware of their contradictions in both complaining about people not following diverse viewpoints and also downright dismissing any amount of self-reflection that might be coming from people to their left.
The author might want to admit that 'moderate reasonable' positions are also branded and incentivized, and can lead to lucrative jobs in the corporate media and think tank worlds and even in the social media influencer space.
What really smells bad here is the 'stupid and insane' theme - everyone who disagrees with my moderate position is living in stupid-world or lacks sanity is itself an extremist fundamentalist position held by many so-called centrists and institutional bureaucrats whose impartiality is questionable as they are economic beneficiaries of the status quo.
Relatedly, extremist positions arise from extreme conditions - a well-paid experienced factory employee who loses their job due to the corporation outsourcing manufacturing to India will likely adopt an extreme position of opposition to shareholder or venture capital control of corporate decisions, and start advocating for worker control of corporations. Does that make them stupid and insane? Or is that just the spin the shareholders and venture capitalists are trying to put on their reasonable moderate position about sharing wealth and power in a more democratic fashion?
> The writer who says "this issue has nuance and I can see valid concerns on multiple sides" gets a pat on the head and zero retweets.
Because I think at this point ‘both sides ism’ Is easily recognizable as a dead end rhetorical strategy. At best it’s an ignorant position, at worst it’s low effort engagement bait / concern trolling that actively sabotages progress.
The phrase/concept "both side ism" is a very clever bait and switch that, so far as I can tell, was designed to marginalize/discredit people who are trying to actually engage with the issues (instead of just toxically emoting), and it was avidly adopted and weaponized as such. By both sides.
In my opinion, the problem is that journalists in general used “both sides” rhetoric where it wasn’t warranted to avoid accusations of bias. It feels that nuance is used out of cowardice more often than not.
There’s also the fact that not all positions are equally valid or evidence based. Nuance doesn’t mean treating each position as equally valid, but evaluating each on the evidence. Journalists almost uniformly mistake “both sides” for nuance. There’s nuance in discussions about global warming, but treating “global warming is not man made” as a valid position is not an example of that.
Nuance is definitely something we need more of, but we also need to call a spade a spade more often.
If all your relationships fail in the same manner, it is likely that the problem is you.
> One friend became “convinced” that every major news story was manufactured consent. Another started treating political disagreement as evidence of moral corruption. A third began using the word "liberal" as if it was a personality disorder rather than loose coalitions of sometimes contradictory beliefs.
Manufactured consent is a real thing, with mounting evidence that it's becoming increasingly prevalent. The ownership structures around major news outlets are worrisome and what many considered 'reliable' for years are now showing seriously problematic habits (like genocide erasure - lookin' at you, NYT.)
Liberalism has come under completely valid scrutiny as we've seen fiscal policies implemented by Clinton and Obama blow up in our faces. No, we don't think Reaganomics is anything but a grift, but many of us see the grift in NAFTA and the ACA and Gramm-Leach-Bliley and have begun to question the honesty of centrist liberal economic policies because we are seeing them fail catastrophically.
> The incentive gradient was clear: sanity was expensive, and extremism paid dividends.
Author is doing something subtle here - without making a defense or interrogation of the statement, they are saying "Not being liberal / centrist is extremism, and thus invalid". I call bullshit.
I have not profited or benefited from my "extreme" leftist views. If anything, I take a risk every time I talk about them out in the open. My comment history is going to be visible to all future employers. Should the government continue it's rightward slide I'll have a target painted on my back that I put there. I don't believe the things I believe because it's convenient, I believe them because in my estimation, we are operating on a set of failed systems and it's important that we fix them because they present a real and present danger.
We have Trump because Biden was utterly incapable of facing the actual problems people are having with the economic prosperity gap. If you don't address the actual hardship in people's lives, you leave the door open for a huckster to make those promises for you. Most will take the unreliable promise of a better tomorrow over being lied to about whether they even have a problem. You don't need a PhD in economics to know that whatever the GDP might be you're still broke and you can't afford to feed your kids.
As a long time proponent of reasonable-ism I disagree with a lot of this. The assumption that a lot of our problems stem from 2 sides just seeing an issue differently is just nonsense in this day and age.
The big Problem, is that one side has slid heavily into authoritarianism, and the other side is completely ill-equipped to fight it.
On any particular issue, the right will say whatever gets them more Power, and the left will bring out some sort of philosophy professor to try and pick apart the nuances of the conversation.
The article is an indictment on hackernews itself. I'm sure that won't be well received here, because of what the article says, specifically: "Start by diversifying your information diet in ways that feel actively uncomfortable."
There is almost no diversity of thought here, simply due to the algorithm. The basis of acceptance is agreeing with the main ideology here.
When the algorithm of the platform is to banish those who disagree, tribal unity is the outcome.
The algorithm doesn't allow disagreement. The algorithm is wrong and part of the algorithm is to disallow commenting on the algorithm.
The author writes, “You end up in a world where changing your mind becomes impossible because you've built your entire identity around being right”. Yet social-media personalities regularly do a 180° turn on some issue (e.g. pro-Ukraine to anti-Ukraine or vice versa) and still keep their following and ability to monetize it.
Social media is full of parasocial relationships; followers are in love with an influencer’s personality, not their views or factual content. So, the influencer can completely change his mind about stuff, as long as he still has the engaging presentation that people have come to like. Followers are also often in love with the brand relationships that the influencers flog, because people love being told what stuff they should buy.
> Yet social-media personalities regularly do a 180° turn on some issue ... and still keep their following and ability to monetize it.
And they asserted that they were totally right the entire time. That's how. And the sheep kept on following them.
the words we use matter a lot. the "pro" and "anti" anything is a pretty large reason why all discourse has become so stupid sounding and talking with people about any issue is enraging. nuance is dead. the cultural zeitgeist is being controlled by algorithmic feeds that create neuroticism (i am definitely affected), general anxiety, and anger.
People are also more isolated than ever, positioning them poorly for having robust real relationships. This makes them vulnerable to mistaking "influencers" as their friends.
> But exposing yourself to articulate versions of positions you oppose does something valuable: it makes you realize that intelligent people can disagree with you without being monsters or morons.
The idea that being articulate implies intelligence and/or sanity is very common, but really a bit weird. You can find plenty of articulate defences of, say, flat earth theory.
Ezra Klein's book why we're polarized cover this a bit and basically studies show that intelligence level has little to do with what people believe and more so just affects their ability to defend whichever position they already hold.
Indeed, and an articulate, confident defense can also be that much more insidious. I never found it hard to ignore obviously bad-faith talking heads on cable news, but when someone is on a podcast conversation with a host I like, it's much easier to nod along until that moment where they say something demonstrably false and I have to rewind my brain a minute or two to be like... wait a sec, what? How did you get to that position?
Speaking of people who are very articulate and also very wrong.
in general, maybe - In not a fan of how sycophantic he's gotten... but this was just the citing of outside studies, not his personal opinion.
>The idea that being articulate implies intelligence and/or sanity is very common, but really a bit weird. You can find plenty of articulate defences of, say, flat earth theory.
The author has to say this because the consumers of the author's content would stop being right if the author was constantly dropping truth bombs like "being articulate doesn't make you right" they wouldn't get liked, retweeted, shared, and circle jerked about in the comment section on the front page of HN.
Literally every content creating person or company with an established fan base is in this quandary. If Alex Jones said "hey guys the government is right about this one" or Regular Car Reviews said "this Toyota product is not the second coming of christ" they'd hemorrhage viewers and money so they cant say those things no matter how much they personally want to. Someone peddling platitudes to people who fancy themselves intellectuals can't stop any more than a guy who's family business is concrete plants can't just decide one day to do roofing.
Alex Jones literally did this though starting around 2016.
This is a strong argument probably but strangely aimed here. Reading the article, it does seem like you and the author agree about everything in this regard? You are kind of just rearticulating one part of their argument as critique about them. Why?
Or where do we place the reflex here? What triggered: this author is BS, is pseudointellectual, is bad. We jump here from a small note about articulation and intelligence, to what seems like this massive opportunity to attack not only that argument, but the author, the readers, everyone. Why? Does the particular point here feel like a massive structural weakness?
What was the trigger here for you, for lack of better word? Why such a strong feeling?
Not every internet comment is a disagreement with what it's replying to.
The entire "media intended for voluntary casual consumption" industry is rife with these sorts of "gotta keep doing what you're known for" traps. Pretty much every industry with minimal product differentiation is like this to varying extents. Sorry my examples weren't completely devoid of exceptions <eyeroll>.
Anyway, two can play this stupid game. Why is it such a problem that I'm alleging this content is basically scratching the same itch in the same way as tabloids but for different demographics? Why do you feel the need to make this out to be an attack on everyone rather than a narrowly targeted "the world do be the way it is" criticism?
Not all the flat earthers are true believers. Some are there just for the attention or other motives.
Even with the number of articulate examples like this are far out numbered by the number of inarticulate arguments that the rule still has merit. Exceptions do not make the rule bad.
However, there are fewer articulate (and internally consistent) defenses of flat earth theory, than say… particle physics. In my experience.
Plenty of timecube style ones, however.
That's true, but if you want one, you can find one. If you've conditioned yourself to think that articulate==credible, then sometimes it only takes one.
We are at this point where we need to “Turn on, tune in, drop out” again. This mass media circus of social media and influencers doesn’t help anyone except their own self centred interests. Fair to say this is easier in Europe where we don’t have the propaganda firehose but I think it’s time to switch off US friends
The main issue for me is the size of our platforms.
If the owner of a platform tries to enforce a set of virtues, it will always be seen as censorship by a fraction of its users. That fraction will increase as the user base increases, as the alternatives diminish, and as the owners govern with more impunity.
I personally think these loud users are immature, disrespectful, anonymous cowards, but my opinions are irrelevant — the important thing is that large platforms are politically unstable.
The solution to this is to fragment the internet. Unfortunately, this is incompatible with the information economies of scale that underpin the US economy. In my opinion, our insanity is an externality of the information sector, much like obesity for staple goods or carbon dioxide for energy.
I don’t agree with these individualized how-to guides. I can turn my phone off and go outside, but I still have to live in a world informed by social-media sentiment.
"enforce a set of virtues" is a weird way of saying "enforcing basic decency". Let's be clear here, people who are rightfully banned are always going to complain. Our opinions as the majority who DO want decent conversations online are not irrelevant. We should not give those people equal weight to those facing actual censorship. Fragmenting the internet will never get rid of the problem that moderation needs to happen.
What is basic decency? Is it indecent to advocate for atheism or if a women posts a picture of herself not wearing a burka? Many people in certain countries would say so. Personally I think those people are insane, and that maximal freedom of expression is the most important human right, but the fundamental problem is that there is no consensus on what constitutes basic decency.
I'm not talking about cultural differences. I'm talking about people simply being assholes online. You will always have a group of people complaining about the rules, that is inevitable.
To be clear, if I were in charge, there would be significantly more banning and moderation on all platforms. I am arguing moderation is more politically feasible in small communities, not that is any more or less ethical.
"virtues" is just a loaded word now unfortunately.
A better solution to this would be to fragment within social media platforms. Allow users to post any content that's legal within their local jurisdiction. And give other users easy tools to create their own "filter bubbles" so that they don't see content which they personally consider insane or offensive. This would allow the social media platforms to sidestep political debates about censorship.
Nah, the solution is deanonymization.
People with no shame, and with strong anti-social tendencies should not be given a safe space.
Facebook has a real name policy and is a prime example of internet-fueled insanity. Why does deanonymization not help Facebook be a more positive place?
To tie it to my own view, I don’t think deanonymization has any effect if the name is meaningless to 99.9% of the community. For every person fired for posts, there are 10000 others who are not.
For every person fired for posts, there's a lucrative Fox News commentator gig.
Because Facebook monetizes the engagement of its formerly reasonable users by selling that engagement to spam bot farms?
If anyone should be given a safe space, then everyone should be given a safe space.
So that people with no shame, and with strong anti-social tendencies who are in power can come back at the de-anonymized people. Yeah, thanks.
Does that also apply to people living under oppressive governments? Anonymity can be a useful tool for sharing information that those in power don't want released, for example whistle blowing.
A woman wearing anything but a burqa in an extremist Islamic society would be popularly categorized as one of the "people with no shame, and with strong anti-social tendencies". So according to you liberal women in Iran, Pakistan, Sudan etc should not be given a safe space, is it?
Nobody can vouch for their own sanity. Attempting to do so only make you sound insane. Incentives to be insane? Sure, but.... it is timing the stock market of ideas. Some will get rich but most will not. And sanity either has to return or insanity will destroy many lives and the society in which it is allowed free reign. In any case if you promoted insanity when sanity returns and people regain their ability to have a memory you may reap what you seeded.
The real grift has been in echo chambers changing peoples vocabulary such that we can use the same words but talk right past eachother, allowing extremely moderate positions to be reframed as extreme and making what ought to be minor disagreements unresolvable. People making an "I can see both sides" argument are completely missing the point - the issue is that most people can't see both sides, and even when they go out of their way to look at the other side's argument, they come away even more convinced that the other side's argument is dumb because it is dumb, if it is assumed everyone is speaking the same language. People haven't all suddenly become insane, or dumb, or unreasonable; we've just taken for granted that people geographically close to us using the same vocabulary would mean the same things, and thus we never developed the skills to translate between people who are in fact living in wildly different worlds possibly in the same household. And much of this is by design - pointing out how dumb someone else is, and complaining about the burden of dealing with these dumb people, takes so much less effort than actually doing the work to build consensus and make changes.
It's easier said than done. I simply observe everything and try not to react unless I absolutely need to.
This summer I started to write my thoughts an observations. Maybe you will find it helpful.
https://www.immaculateconstellation.info/the-middle-path-a-m...
I don't quite get the connection between the premise and the conclusion. Sure, influencers get rewarded by social media algorithms for polarising content, but most people are not influencers.
i found it weird that this person has multiple friends that were able to "make bank" by having polarizing opinions. i know a ton of folks with polarizing opinions and none of them are monetizing it.
what kind of world is this author living in where their social circle includes so many influencers that are cashing in on social media?
And the influenced are rewarded by the influencer that is validating their polarized views.
You also might be putting too fine a point on "influencer". A relative of mine on Facebook might be a kind of "influencer"—at least with regard to his small cadre of family and friends that follow him.
>most people are not influencers.
Perhaps, but many are. They just don't have much reach or don't use a digital platform.
> but most people are not influencers.
they either get elected or appointment to the government
I have a hard time taking this kind of enlightened-centrist both-sides gruel very seriously. Calling every strong position "extreme" is a classic sleight-of-hand maneuver by people who want to mask their own wrong-side-of-history beliefs that they know they should feel ashamed of expressing.
Yes, yes, look for truth beyond labeled groups, but pretending that the "sides" are equal is some utterly moronic "Fair and Balanced" bullshit.
> it makes you realize that intelligent people can disagree with you without being monsters or morons.
Many issues really do have a bright dividing line. I mean, for fuck's sake, there are people who are currently fighting against releasing the Epstein files, documents that clearly incriminate pedophilic rape and sex trafficking.
> One friend became “convinced” that every major news story was manufactured consent.
I think the author here doesn't actually understand what manufactured consent is, because believing otherwise demonstrates media illiteracy. Talking about our extreme filter bubbles (community/information homogeneity) in one breath and then denying the pervasiveness of manufactured consent in the next is otherwise a perfect demonstration of Gell-Mann amnesia.
Agreed. The world is made of nuance, that's true. And, there are plenty of issues abounding right now where there is simply no nuance to be had. The Epstein files should be released, and every person named in them should go to prison. Israel is actively engaged in war crimes. Vaccines work. Transpeople are the people they say they are. Climate change is real, and caused by humans. Whatever "debate" is meant to be occurring on these and a variety of others is manufactured by people in power working with complicit, privately owned media to create that debate, and more often than not, monetize it.
> Transpeople are the people they say they are.
Let's just poke this one a little bit. Does this standard apply to all people or just trans people? Why or why not? Do you think this[1] individual is who they say they are? Why or why not?
[1] https://www.dw.com/en/germany-extremist-trans-neo-nazi-gende...
> Does this standard apply to all people or just trans people?
All.
> Why or why not?
Because the self as a concept only exists within the mind of the individual and it's sole source for determination is what that individual says. It's non-falsifiable so taking people at their word is simply the only option.
> Do you think this[1] individual is who they say they are?
Sure. There are shitty transpeople too.
> Why or why not?
See above.
And if you're asking how you prevent that person from being a threat to other people in the prison, well, there's a lot to unpack there.
For immediate solutions, solitary confinement. I don't like it as a policy but the neo-nazi movement is openly male-supremacist and this person, woman or not, is a threat to other women. If she wants to be sent to a women's prison it's the prison's duty to see that incarceration pass with as few incidents as possible, so the only logical path forward is isolation from other inmates.
For broader solutions: the fact that we segregate prisons along sex lines is going to always be a problem for trans offenders, but I also understand why that segregation exists and it's obvious. If we assume those same risks are valid, then any transwoman in a woman's prison is a threat, and any transmasculine person in a men's prison is threatened, and nonbinary folk are going to be all kinds of lost in that system. So, logically, we should expand the range of available prison facilities to account for this. Transwomen would go to a transwoman's prison, which would be identical to a woman's prison, apart from not having ciswomen in it, and vice-versa. And I guess you'd also need enby-jails too.
Though if you want my personal opinion, I think there's a much easier solution to this particular offender, and it's the same solution I'd prescribe for any Nazi, regardless of their gender identity.
> All.
Ok, so then transracial individuals[1] should be believed as well? What about those that identify as inanimate objects[2] or animals? If we accept self-identification as an inanimate object should others be allowed to treat that person as such?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachel_Dolezal
[2] https://old.reddit.com/r/asktransgender/comments/swjdjp/tree...
> Ok, so then transracial individuals[1] should be believed as well?
I mean, "race" is a social construct too. There's nothing biologically different about a black man from a white man. It's a collection of cultural, historical and visual cues society imbues with meaning. So... in a way, it's got a lot in common with gender.
> What about those that identify as inanimate objects[2] or animals?
Yep.
> If we accept self-identification as an inanimate object should others be allowed to treat that person as such?
If someone earnestly identifies as an object, that's their prerogative. But no, others don;t get to treat them like furniture or property because consent and dignity still apply to them. Identity doesn't override someone's right to safety, and it doesn't give others license to dehumanize, even in a twisted manner of affirming them.
And, as someone with an occasional spirit for some BDSM play, I am familiar with treating people like objects in a way that is edifying without being harmful to them.
I think disengaging from social media is a big part of this. These advertiser and engagement fueled algorithms promote all of the insane takes as well. You find much more fulfillment engaging with people locally or people in your close circles.
I’m not on social media unless you consider HN social media (I don’t) and the world is still totally as insane as it was before the internet.
For your average city person:
The food you’re offered is sugar + preservatives, the water is either non-existent (Tehran) or poisoned with fracking gas (Flint), almost all local communities have collapsed into extreme versions of themselves, the rich and poor still don’t mingle, men fear women and women want nothing to do with men, there is no upside to having a family or children.
I just spoke at a HBS event in DC last night about robotics and on one side of the room were people starting AI companion services and in the other side people were saying AI was causing the rise of Tradwives. It was like looking at 50 “deer in headlights” when explaining how thoroughly they have already integrated third party algorithmic logic into their decision processes - and are totally unaware of it.
The real world is absurd and getting less coherent with more information available. Humans aren’t biologically equipped for the world we collectively built.
Your disconnect from Social Media and "the world still totally insane"—the latter is of course not dependent on the former. Perhaps we need to get the rest of the world also off Social Media? Off the internet?
Given that we can't do that, I choose then to continue my hobbies, take more walks, try to declutter my place, improve my health, lose weight, look for comfortable chats with my daughters, wife, friends…
I'm not sure where you see men and women not trusting one another. If I had to guess it would be that you perceive this from things you have seen on the internet?
I find the internet is kind of like that silly cave in "The Empire Strikes Back"—where you find only what you bring with you. Try looking for positive things and people and see if you are not rewarded. (And if you cannot, just drop the internet completely. I have a friend that I think checks online for about 30 minutes in the morning and then he's done for the day.)
You think Tehran and Flint are good cases for 'average city'?
Yes
Both are significantly different but still fail to provide the most basic service: access to clean water
I can trivially get access to plenty of clean drinking water in most “wild” places in the world, in fact that’s like the third core thing you learn in survival schools (of which I’ve attended many).
Man, I’d love to hear that talk.
> there is no upside to having a family or children
what exactly does this even mean?
Search: Gen Z explains why they don’t want a family and kids
All are rational arguments
https://youtu.be/fHpgIvuETx0?si=zWIqJvQMeDcSD223
I felt the same thing when i was 22--kids aren't for me, this world sucks, etc etc. Eventually I "grew up," toned down short term hedonistic pleasures, read books that deepened my connection to humanity and realized family is extremely meaningful.
First off, there's nothing new about interviewing people who are in their early 20s and hearing moaning and groaning about how this world sucks and it's not worth bringing anyone into it. I'm not religious whatsoever, but there's something deeply spiritual about the human experience of family/kids. It's certainly not for everyone if you're mature enough to understand the downsides and decide not to--but the secondary point I want to make is that I think most people are naive/immature. They follow trends and take a lot of direction from social media. The endless short term dopamine hits from every corner of your life will definitely have anybody questioning -- "why would i make my life harder when i can live only for myself and continue tiktoking in the evenings for 3 hours" -- our society is fundamentally broken, and that's not just the USA. I've traveled to other places and have bumped into the social media zombies everywhere.
Being reasonable is basicaly the core requirement of civilization. If your culture is incapable of tolerance or variation it's also incapable of growth. It gets locked in a cyclical purity test and collapse.
Not sure what the point of this is other than to complain about being out of touch with the world. Too many people think "diversifying your information" means subscribing to whatever drivel they find on substack instead of, you know, following a diverse set of _actual journalists_.
Over the last many years, newspapers have slashed actual journalists in a number of areas: investigative reporting, arts, local news. A lot of those actual journalists have moved to Substack in order to maintain some kind of career writing about the subject they love.
For me, the tragedy of Substack isn’t that it consists of purely unserious people. It’s that fine journalists go there because, with the death of open-web blogging, there’s a feeling that there is no where else to go. And then, once there, they start to pick up all kinds of bad behaviors that both Substack the for-profit corporate owner and its culture of writers and commenters encourage.
That's true, the point I was making was that it's about you decide to trust with sending you news not just the outlet. The problem is that many people who are rightfully distrustful of traditional media end up following cranks. And Substack seems to be the place where the cranks hang out.
>A third began using the word "liberal" as if it was a personality disorder rather than loose coalitions of sometimes contradictory beliefs.
I'm a long time Jon Stewart fan and if I'm being honest, looked at the "other side" as if it was a bunch of retarded people isn't new and predate 2016. No doubt Trump and social media got conservative to embrace condescending and extreme rhetoric and pushed it to another level but let's not pretend they invented anything.
A lot of this goes away when you stop spending so much time on social media, which is a very poor reflection of "reality." Part of the problem is that there are a number of people who can't really look away, because they've built their livelihoods on it. Traditional media in many ways has come to rely on it too. Unfortunate mistake.
Prominent figures on social media change their minds all the time, but they'll re-sculpt their reality around the basis that they were always right anyway. Just take a look at how the story around the Epstein files changes with the way the wind blows. It feels very familiar to the "Narcissist's Prayer."
from the article.
> The returns on reasonableness have almost entirely collapsed
If you measure returns by others' approval, then you are doomed as the world is fickle. Unfortunately, as a writer or journalist you are forced to depend on approval of others.
The alternative is to sculpt a framework or scorecard largely independent of what others think - but this is hard, as we are social creatures.
> as a writer or journalist you are forced to depend on approval of others
and sometimes the disapproval of others, as we've seen with the sort of rage-baiting headlines many blogs, social media accounts, and even traditional media outlets, are writing
and the thing is... this approval/disapproval reaction isn't elicited to necessarily build coalitions, make friends, or change minds, it's often built to sell eyes-on-ads which is a completely perverse incentive that has eaten the mainstream internet
The challenge is that short-term incentives can easily lead to long-term problems, as the short-term min/maxing can leave you stuck in a particular global minimum, with no clear way out.
>the short-term min/maxing can leave you stuck in a particular global minimum, with no clear way out.
Short term min/maxing leaves you in a local maximum (the opposite of what you said)
> One friend became “convinced” that every major news story was manufactured consent
Where's the lie in that? Hasn't this lady read her Gramsci? Seems like she didn't.
> Tech writer (Wired, TIME, TNW), angel investor, CMO
I see now, for sure she hasn't read her Gramsci.
This person doesn't seem aware of their contradictions in both complaining about people not following diverse viewpoints and also downright dismissing any amount of self-reflection that might be coming from people to their left.
The author might want to admit that 'moderate reasonable' positions are also branded and incentivized, and can lead to lucrative jobs in the corporate media and think tank worlds and even in the social media influencer space.
What really smells bad here is the 'stupid and insane' theme - everyone who disagrees with my moderate position is living in stupid-world or lacks sanity is itself an extremist fundamentalist position held by many so-called centrists and institutional bureaucrats whose impartiality is questionable as they are economic beneficiaries of the status quo.
Relatedly, extremist positions arise from extreme conditions - a well-paid experienced factory employee who loses their job due to the corporation outsourcing manufacturing to India will likely adopt an extreme position of opposition to shareholder or venture capital control of corporate decisions, and start advocating for worker control of corporations. Does that make them stupid and insane? Or is that just the spin the shareholders and venture capitalists are trying to put on their reasonable moderate position about sharing wealth and power in a more democratic fashion?
> The writer who says "this issue has nuance and I can see valid concerns on multiple sides" gets a pat on the head and zero retweets.
Because I think at this point ‘both sides ism’ Is easily recognizable as a dead end rhetorical strategy. At best it’s an ignorant position, at worst it’s low effort engagement bait / concern trolling that actively sabotages progress.
The phrase/concept "both side ism" is a very clever bait and switch that, so far as I can tell, was designed to marginalize/discredit people who are trying to actually engage with the issues (instead of just toxically emoting), and it was avidly adopted and weaponized as such. By both sides.
In my opinion, the problem is that journalists in general used “both sides” rhetoric where it wasn’t warranted to avoid accusations of bias. It feels that nuance is used out of cowardice more often than not.
There’s also the fact that not all positions are equally valid or evidence based. Nuance doesn’t mean treating each position as equally valid, but evaluating each on the evidence. Journalists almost uniformly mistake “both sides” for nuance. There’s nuance in discussions about global warming, but treating “global warming is not man made” as a valid position is not an example of that.
Nuance is definitely something we need more of, but we also need to call a spade a spade more often.
If all your relationships fail in the same manner, it is likely that the problem is you.
> One friend became “convinced” that every major news story was manufactured consent. Another started treating political disagreement as evidence of moral corruption. A third began using the word "liberal" as if it was a personality disorder rather than loose coalitions of sometimes contradictory beliefs.
Manufactured consent is a real thing, with mounting evidence that it's becoming increasingly prevalent. The ownership structures around major news outlets are worrisome and what many considered 'reliable' for years are now showing seriously problematic habits (like genocide erasure - lookin' at you, NYT.)
Liberalism has come under completely valid scrutiny as we've seen fiscal policies implemented by Clinton and Obama blow up in our faces. No, we don't think Reaganomics is anything but a grift, but many of us see the grift in NAFTA and the ACA and Gramm-Leach-Bliley and have begun to question the honesty of centrist liberal economic policies because we are seeing them fail catastrophically.
> The incentive gradient was clear: sanity was expensive, and extremism paid dividends.
Author is doing something subtle here - without making a defense or interrogation of the statement, they are saying "Not being liberal / centrist is extremism, and thus invalid". I call bullshit.
I have not profited or benefited from my "extreme" leftist views. If anything, I take a risk every time I talk about them out in the open. My comment history is going to be visible to all future employers. Should the government continue it's rightward slide I'll have a target painted on my back that I put there. I don't believe the things I believe because it's convenient, I believe them because in my estimation, we are operating on a set of failed systems and it's important that we fix them because they present a real and present danger.
We have Trump because Biden was utterly incapable of facing the actual problems people are having with the economic prosperity gap. If you don't address the actual hardship in people's lives, you leave the door open for a huckster to make those promises for you. Most will take the unreliable promise of a better tomorrow over being lied to about whether they even have a problem. You don't need a PhD in economics to know that whatever the GDP might be you're still broke and you can't afford to feed your kids.
As a long time proponent of reasonable-ism I disagree with a lot of this. The assumption that a lot of our problems stem from 2 sides just seeing an issue differently is just nonsense in this day and age.
The big Problem, is that one side has slid heavily into authoritarianism, and the other side is completely ill-equipped to fight it.
On any particular issue, the right will say whatever gets them more Power, and the left will bring out some sort of philosophy professor to try and pick apart the nuances of the conversation.
The article is an indictment on hackernews itself. I'm sure that won't be well received here, because of what the article says, specifically: "Start by diversifying your information diet in ways that feel actively uncomfortable."
There is almost no diversity of thought here, simply due to the algorithm. The basis of acceptance is agreeing with the main ideology here.
When the algorithm of the platform is to banish those who disagree, tribal unity is the outcome.
The algorithm doesn't allow disagreement. The algorithm is wrong and part of the algorithm is to disallow commenting on the algorithm.