A more concise term for “follows discourse in crappy filter-bubbles” is “widely read”. If you want to live inside a Zvi Mowshowitz filter bubble because Mowshowitz offers a good signal-to-noise ratio, that makes sense if you’re super-busy and don’t have much time to read, but that should be a mere time-saving optimization on your part. If you actually think that non-ingroup information sources are “awful” and “crappy” because “[t]hey do truth-seeking far worse there”, then you probably could stand to read more widely!
Do you believe that, because a rational agent should never do worse with more information, that a human should be able to expose itself to any social environment on the internet and do better? I don’t, I think that many environments, while occasionally containing novel bits of information, can mostly make you less sane and seeing the world through lenses that are ungrounded. And I think many sources of news have been adversarially pursued and optimized to make the consumers of it be corrupted and controlled.
I expect you agree with this so I am not sure exactly what you’re objecting to. You are pointing out that some environments have valuable info? That’s right, but I would say that most environments talking about ”current events” in government/politics are not.
This is such a bizarre reply. Part of the time-honored ideal of being widely read (that I didn’t think I needed to explicitly spell out) is that you’re not supposed to believe everything you read.
Right? I don’t think this is special “rationalist” wisdom. I think this is, like, liberal arts. Like, when 11th grade English teachers assign their students to read Huckleberry Finn, the idea is that being able to see the world through the ungrounded lenses of 19th-century racists makes them more sane, because they can contrast the view through those particular ungrounded lenses with everything else they’ve read.
many sources of news have been adversarially pursued and optimized to make the consumers of it be corrupted and controlled.
I mean, yes, but the way they pull that off is by convincing the consumers that they shouldn’t want to read any of those awful corners of the internet where they do truthseeking far worse than here. (Pravda means “truth”; Donald Trump’s platform is called Truth Social.)
some environments have valuable info [...] but I would say that most environments talking about “current events” in government/politics are not.
Given finite reading time, you definitely need to prioritize ruthlessly to manage the signal-to-noise ratio. If you don’t have time to read anything but Mowshowitz, that’s fine; most things aren’t worth your time. But if you’re skeptical that a human can expose itself to any social environment on the internet and do better, that doesn’t sound like a signal-to-noise ratio concern. That sounds like a contamination concern.
Not the main point here, but Huckleberry Finn is (rather famously) an anti-slavery work and not a good representation of the nineteenth-century racist worldview. A better example would be that a lot of college history classes assign parts of Mein Kampf.
A more concise term for “follows discourse in crappy filter-bubbles” is “widely read”. If you want to live inside a Zvi Mowshowitz filter bubble because Mowshowitz offers a good signal-to-noise ratio, that makes sense if you’re super-busy and don’t have much time to read, but that should be a mere time-saving optimization on your part. If you actually think that non-ingroup information sources are “awful” and “crappy” because “[t]hey do truth-seeking far worse there”, then you probably could stand to read more widely!
Do you believe that, because a rational agent should never do worse with more information, that a human should be able to expose itself to any social environment on the internet and do better? I don’t, I think that many environments, while occasionally containing novel bits of information, can mostly make you less sane and seeing the world through lenses that are ungrounded. And I think many sources of news have been adversarially pursued and optimized to make the consumers of it be corrupted and controlled.
I expect you agree with this so I am not sure exactly what you’re objecting to. You are pointing out that some environments have valuable info? That’s right, but I would say that most environments talking about ”current events” in government/politics are not.
This is such a bizarre reply. Part of the time-honored ideal of being widely read (that I didn’t think I needed to explicitly spell out) is that you’re not supposed to believe everything you read.
Right? I don’t think this is special “rationalist” wisdom. I think this is, like, liberal arts. Like, when 11th grade English teachers assign their students to read Huckleberry Finn, the idea is that being able to see the world through the ungrounded lenses of 19th-century racists makes them more sane, because they can contrast the view through those particular ungrounded lenses with everything else they’ve read.
I mean, yes, but the way they pull that off is by convincing the consumers that they shouldn’t want to read any of those awful corners of the internet where they do truthseeking far worse than here. (Pravda means “truth”; Donald Trump’s platform is called Truth Social.)
Given finite reading time, you definitely need to prioritize ruthlessly to manage the signal-to-noise ratio. If you don’t have time to read anything but Mowshowitz, that’s fine; most things aren’t worth your time. But if you’re skeptical that a human can expose itself to any social environment on the internet and do better, that doesn’t sound like a signal-to-noise ratio concern. That sounds like a contamination concern.
Not the main point here, but Huckleberry Finn is (rather famously) an anti-slavery work and not a good representation of the nineteenth-century racist worldview. A better example would be that a lot of college history classes assign parts of Mein Kampf.