I mostly agree with what you wrote (especially the “all real thinking on the internet gets done in essay form” is very interesting, though I might push back against that a bit and point to really good comments, podcasts & forecasting platforms). I do endorse the negative sentiment around privately owned social media companies (as in me wishing them to burn in hell) for any purpose other than the most inane shitposting, and would prefer everyone interested in making intellectual progress to abandon them (yes, that also includes substacks).
Ahem.
I guess you approach the tweets by judging whether their content is useful to engage with qua content (“is it true or interesting what those people are saying?”, which, I agree with you, is not the case), as opposed to approaching it sociologically (“what does the things those people are saying predict about how they will vote & especially act in the future?”). Similarly, I might not care about how a barometer works, but I’d still want to use it to predict storms (I, in fact, care about knowing how barometers work, and just spend 15 minutes reading the Wikipedia article). The latter still strikes me as important, though I get the “ick” and “ugh” reaction against engaging in public relations, and I’m happy I’m obscure enough to not have to bother about it. But in the unlikely case a big newspaper would run a huge smear campaign against me, I’d want to know!
And then think hard about next steps: maybe hiring public relations people to deal with it? Or gracefully responding with a public clarification?
I mostly agree with what you wrote (especially the “all real thinking on the internet gets done in essay form” is very interesting, though I might push back against that a bit and point to really good comments, podcasts & forecasting platforms). I do endorse the negative sentiment around privately owned social media companies (as in me wishing them to burn in hell) for any purpose other than the most inane shitposting, and would prefer everyone interested in making intellectual progress to abandon them (yes, that also includes substacks).
Ahem.
I guess you approach the tweets by judging whether their content is useful to engage with qua content (“is it true or interesting what those people are saying?”, which, I agree with you, is not the case), as opposed to approaching it sociologically (“what does the things those people are saying predict about how they will vote & especially act in the future?”). Similarly, I might not care about how a barometer works, but I’d still want to use it to predict storms (I, in fact, care about knowing how barometers work, and just spend 15 minutes reading the Wikipedia article). The latter still strikes me as important, though I get the “ick” and “ugh” reaction against engaging in public relations, and I’m happy I’m obscure enough to not have to bother about it. But in the unlikely case a big newspaper would run a huge smear campaign against me, I’d want to know!
And then think hard about next steps: maybe hiring public relations people to deal with it? Or gracefully responding with a public clarification?