The ones telling you not to ‘do your own research’ are probably the baddies.
Also applies to the ones telling you to ‘trust us and Trust the Science
’ and calling you an idiot or racist or calling for you to be censored if you disagree.
It’s bad enough to use the same epistemology habits for in-person communication and social media (lesswrong is a third category, not social media). But implying that people should run the exact same bayesian algorithms on social media and in-person communication, without distinguishing between the two at all, without implying there is a distinction, is really a serious issue.
Like, there are no baddies in person. Given that you’re in person, you’re probably talking with them, and given that you’re talking with them, you’re probably at least a little invested in that particular conversation being not awful. On social media, basically nothing is worth doing, and everyone is only there because they’ve vastly overestimated the value that social media gives them.
The impact of social media discussion depends a lot on who you are talking to.
One of the most impactful things I did in the last years was how I reacted to a social media conversation where someone from RaDVaC participated and I asked them whether they have room for funding. Having established that this is the case, I complained a few times on LessWrong that they don’t have funding and that got someone to look into providing them funding and now they are decently funded.
I definitely agree that there are exceptional cases where it turns out that you had a lot more control over your environment than you thought. But it seems like the vast majority of the influence is in the opposite direction, where the system goodharts them into vastly overestimating how much control they have.
On social media, basically nothing is worth doing, and everyone is only there because they’ve vastly overestimated the value that social media gives them.
Mostly correct and strong upvoted, although one aspect of it is that it’s also a pyramid scheme, like every other social phenomenon nowadays. The way it works is, social media companies
Hand out a relatively small amount of influence and prestige to an absurdly small fraction of users, the “influencers”
These “influencers” encourage their followers to see Twitter as a path to status, by dropping very occasional stories about how, as a top 0.01% Twitter user, they got introduced to ${high_status_user} once, or maybe a story about how they landed a job
Their unfunny readers think to themselves not “wow, I care about these hot takes so much”, but “wow, everyone else seems to care so much about this Twitter thing”, and also “man, I bet I could be as famous as ${high_profile_twitter_user}, his posts don’t look so hard to replicate”
Convinced that the shortest path to success is crafting viral content for FaceGoog (other paths, like earning a Nobel Prize or becoming President, being legibly difficult instead of illegibly difficult), the “grunt users” inadvertently contribute to the meme that everybody in their social circle cares about Twitter, and on it goes
In this sense you could compare it to, say, joining the mafia during the 70s and 80s. The mafia may in fact have provided an avenue to comfortable wealth and microfame for like, a dozen or so people. It was still one of the worst life decisions you could ever make.
It’s bad enough to use the same epistemology habits for in-person communication and social media (lesswrong is a third category, not social media). But implying that people should run the exact same bayesian algorithms on social media and in-person communication, without distinguishing between the two at all, without implying there is a distinction, is really a serious issue.
Like, there are no baddies in person. Given that you’re in person, you’re probably talking with them, and given that you’re talking with them, you’re probably at least a little invested in that particular conversation being not awful. On social media, basically nothing is worth doing, and everyone is only there because they’ve vastly overestimated the value that social media gives them.
The impact of social media discussion depends a lot on who you are talking to.
One of the most impactful things I did in the last years was how I reacted to a social media conversation where someone from RaDVaC participated and I asked them whether they have room for funding. Having established that this is the case, I complained a few times on LessWrong that they don’t have funding and that got someone to look into providing them funding and now they are decently funded.
I definitely agree that there are exceptional cases where it turns out that you had a lot more control over your environment than you thought. But it seems like the vast majority of the influence is in the opposite direction, where the system goodharts them into vastly overestimating how much control they have.
Mostly correct and strong upvoted, although one aspect of it is that it’s also a pyramid scheme, like every other social phenomenon nowadays. The way it works is, social media companies
Hand out a relatively small amount of influence and prestige to an absurdly small fraction of users, the “influencers”
These “influencers” encourage their followers to see Twitter as a path to status, by dropping very occasional stories about how, as a top 0.01% Twitter user, they got introduced to ${high_status_user} once, or maybe a story about how they landed a job
Their unfunny readers think to themselves not “wow, I care about these hot takes so much”, but “wow, everyone else seems to care so much about this Twitter thing”, and also “man, I bet I could be as famous as ${high_profile_twitter_user}, his posts don’t look so hard to replicate”
Convinced that the shortest path to success is crafting viral content for FaceGoog (other paths, like earning a Nobel Prize or becoming President, being legibly difficult instead of illegibly difficult), the “grunt users” inadvertently contribute to the meme that everybody in their social circle cares about Twitter, and on it goes
In this sense you could compare it to, say, joining the mafia during the 70s and 80s. The mafia may in fact have provided an avenue to comfortable wealth and microfame for like, a dozen or so people. It was still one of the worst life decisions you could ever make.
This is actually not what I was referring to, but it’s very close and it’s also very helpful.