This is plausibly good advice, but none of it makes the case for social media algorithms not sucking in the way I care about (and which I think is what most people intuitively will read the title as saying): having a net societal effect towards social media addiction, polarization, and outrage.
Edited this response. Previous version didn’t convey all of what I meant and felt vague to me upon re-reading it.
Yeah, the main thing people care about at a far/large scale isn’t what their feeds are like. And that’s a big part of any discourse about social media. But wrt. the near/small scale, I think people mainly care about “why am I getting so much slop/engagement bait?” That latter perspective is what I was focused on.
Nonetheless, many people must’ve read the title and (reasonably) assumed I meant the far/large scale. So the title was misleading. My bad.
my antidote for this is to consume a lot of media from the opposite side. and spend a lot of time in “enemy” territory trying to find the wisdom of people i disagree with. consider the trained up ideologies to be a form of compression over true people’s desires. what you call polarization, i call specialization.
i also think this is a very uh news thinkpeice eternal-september way of looking at social media. by and large interaction on social media is wholesome entertainment and commerce. that people get in vitriolic fights is just the nature of the agora. i really don’t take “disinformation” seriously either. in a state of nature everyone is wrong about everything and only on modern internet do people regularly encounter whole other lives and worldviews.
it is good and right for you lesswrongers to continue doin research and longposting here. this place is something special. i feel like twitter is kind of the street epistemology of rationalism. could be good. could get you hurt. not for everyone. not every place should be like it.
This is plausibly good advice, but none of it makes the case for social media algorithms not sucking in the way I care about (and which I think is what most people intuitively will read the title as saying): having a net societal effect towards social media addiction, polarization, and outrage.
Edited this response. Previous version didn’t convey all of what I meant and felt vague to me upon re-reading it.
Yeah, the main thing people care about at a far/large scale isn’t what their feeds are like. And that’s a big part of any discourse about social media. But wrt. the near/small scale, I think people mainly care about “why am I getting so much slop/engagement bait?” That latter perspective is what I was focused on.
Nonetheless, many people must’ve read the title and (reasonably) assumed I meant the far/large scale. So the title was misleading. My bad.
my antidote for this is to consume a lot of media from the opposite side. and spend a lot of time in “enemy” territory trying to find the wisdom of people i disagree with. consider the trained up ideologies to be a form of compression over true people’s desires. what you call polarization, i call specialization.
i also think this is a very uh news thinkpeice eternal-september way of looking at social media. by and large interaction on social media is wholesome entertainment and commerce. that people get in vitriolic fights is just the nature of the agora. i really don’t take “disinformation” seriously either. in a state of nature everyone is wrong about everything and only on modern internet do people regularly encounter whole other lives and worldviews.
it is good and right for you lesswrongers to continue doin research and longposting here. this place is something special. i feel like twitter is kind of the street epistemology of rationalism. could be good. could get you hurt. not for everyone. not every place should be like it.
the addiction is real tho.