A good headline... for a piece in The Atlantic by Jonathan Haidt.
Excerpt:
By 2013, social media had become a new game, with dynamics unlike those in 2008. If you were skillful or lucky, you might create a post that would “go viral” and make you “internet famous” for a few days. If you blundered, you could find yourself buried in hateful comments. Your posts rode to fame or ignominy based on the clicks of thousands of strangers, and you in turn contributed thousands of clicks to the game.
This new game encouraged dishonesty and mob dynamics: Users were guided not just by their true preferences but by their past experiences of reward and punishment, and their prediction of how others would react to each new action. One of the engineers at Twitter who had worked on the “Retweet” button later revealed that he regretted his contribution because it had made Twitter a nastier place. As he watched Twitter mobs forming through the use of the new tool, he thought to himself, “We might have just handed a 4-year-old a loaded weapon.”
As a social psychologist who studies emotion, morality, and politics, I saw this happening too. The newly tweaked platforms were almost perfectly designed to bring out our most moralistic and least reflective selves. The volume of outrage was shocking. It was just this kind of twitchy and explosive spread of anger that James Madison had tried to protect us from as he was drafting the U.S. Constitution....
[In “Federalist No. 10”] Madison notes that people are so prone to factionalism that “where no substantial occasion presents itself, the most frivolous and fanciful distinctions have been sufficient to kindle their unfriendly passions and excite their most violent conflicts.” Social media has both magnified and weaponized the frivolous....
Posts
62 comments:
Good thing I only had social media accounts for a work presence.
Never posted on them and deleted them the day I retired.
: )
"We are disoriented, unable to speak the same language or recognize the same truth."
For a disturbingly high proportion of the population, truth means allowing 5 year-old boys and girls to chop their breasts and penises off.
Many of us recognize the 'truth' about truth, and we have come to the conclusion we do not speak the same language, do not want to, and have anything in common.
It has an acronym, TWANLOC - Those Who Are No Longer Our Countrymen.
"Social media has both magnified and weaponized the frivolous."
But it weaponized prog mobs more. In fact, the social media platforms as a whole served the prog cause. Progs ain't stupid.
Haidt's fault is to psychologize politics. He doesn't want to lose his prog audience entirely, so prog oppression on campus becomes "cuddling," and prog culture war maneuvers become "stupid." Even his Heterodox Academy pulls punches.
As academics go, I like him. But it's stupid to focus on stupidity.
Why are we stupid?
Start with Jeffrey Goldberg and Anne Applebaum saying that everything they disagree with and all the facts they find inconvenient are disinformation or irrelevant.
Work your way down from there.
The Atlantic is a leading source of unique stupidity. See, e.g. The Atlantic's Disinformation conference at the University of Chicago.
Most people are not playing the social media gotcha game. The stupidity is believing the tail wags the dog.
I'm sure there's a chart out there that shows the coarsening of our society increasing with the rise of social media. We used to assume everyone was a good person unless proven otherwise. Now, social media permits total strangers to make comments one would never make to anther's face. Get off Facebook. Get off Twitter.
the reason "life has been so stupid" is the refusal of the power elite to recognize the legitimate concerns of the American people. The refusal to address issues thought importaint lead to trump, which in turn led to 6 years of hysteria and lies by the Media/Democrats/RINOs. The Power elite refused to recognized Trump as POTUS. Refused to address border wall, illegal immigration, outsourcing, etc. etc.
Then we got CV-19 and more lockdown hysteria. Then Jan 6th hysteria. 25,000 NG troops to defend against phantoms. And now runaway spending, inflation, and hysteria over Ukraine.
Endless war against the majority of the American People.
That's a whole lotta words to say: we are animals with large brains and act like it.
Plus, I am suspicious that the author thinks this is an American problem. Plenty of social media around the world and not all of it Twitter.
@Sebastian "Haidt's fault is to psychologize politics. He doesn't want to lose his prog audience entirely, so prog oppression on campus becomes "cuddling," and prog culture war maneuvers become "stupid." Even his Heterodox Academy pulls punches."
@Dave Begley "The Atlantic is a leading source of unique stupidity. See, e.g. The Atlantic's Disinformation conference at the University of Chicago."
I concur that Haidt is probably the softest, least threatening academic to speak up. But he does speak up and has lamented the increasing fragility of incoming students for a long time. It's very hard for academics who've only ever worked in school/government and who've never learned how to effectively rock the boat or cause real change [routine campus protests don't count, as tools of the local establishment.]
Haidt and Steven Pinker have a lot of political blind spots and narrowness, but they take science seriously and work to the best of their ability. Althouse (here) and Jordan Peterson are academics who've become relatively more aware of outside perspectives.
[Note to Althouse: I found this blog years ago by searching for a similar heretical academic type.] Tag: Althouse-like ???
It wound up ridiculous, not dangerous. The problem is morons in charge reacting to it.
Without social media, I wouldn’t be reading Glenn Greenwald, Matt Taibbi, Bjorn Lomborg, Mike Shellenberger, Abigail Shrier and Scott Adams (to name just a few) every day.
We’re in the formative stages of psychoanalyzing this new global consciousness. If we’re fortunate, we won’t commit suicide before we calm ourselves down and come to terms with our new power.
The sabotage of the 2020 election is being revealed one step at a time on social media. By the time the 2024 election rolls around, there will be very few people left who don’t understand how that was carried out. We’re in the midst of what appears to be a global genocide to reduce human population, a conspiracy launched by the climate change fanatics.
Read the good stuff. Discard the bad. It’s up to you.
The Atlantic is a leading source of unique stupidity.
The Atlantic is just weird. When "Jane Galt" (actually, Megan McArdle) was blogging, she was brilliant. Well grounded in economics and business and law, and able to create or follow or refute any logical (or illogical) line of thought touching on those foundations.
Then, she got a gig writing for The Atlantic.
How does a brilliant person become SO unmoored from reality that she so quickly becomes attractive to the fantasy artists of the Washington Post?
Is there any topic where you people won't highlight your obsession with pedophilia?
The Atlantic?? The host of the Progressive left Media Disinformation, where they ALL got called out by College freshman as being the party of disinformation?? They should hang their heads in shame. God Bless those College students. They give me hope for America that has been SORELY lacking coming from colleges lately.
I've been talking about this in my classroom for over twenty years. I call it "otherism". Humans have been practicing it for 300,000 years. Another name is tribalism. For the vast majority of our existence, it was about protecting resources needed for your tribe's survival.
Today the most visible manifestation is sports. Dodger fans hare Giants fans. USC fans hate UCLA fans etc.
As our standard of living improves, and simple survival is no longer an issue, these differences are magnified.
Didn't recall that sentence in Federalist 10, but it sounds as though Madison was familiar with Jonathan Swift's "Gulliver's Travels" and his description of the Big-Endian vs. Little-Endian dispute in Lilliput.
Sebastian is on the nose about Haight. His game is to feign sympathy for the victims of the mob, then feign objectivity, then feign concern ... while it's just a more sophisticated game of cancel culture -- medicalizing the victims.
Yet he's also not sophisticated, or more likely willfully blind to half his purported speciality. He has no understanding of the power politics at play, beyond realizing he can rake in twice as much dough by throwing a bone from the stage to the desperately careerist "conservative academic" types at 10K a pop, as well as getting fat checks from the completely amoral centrists who like to quote him to keep their pseudo-contrarian credibility fat and well-paid too.
Academia. A good racket that only get better the more you can lie about everything.
Howard is probably right--most people on twitter are basically decent and responsible. The problem is what is rewarded. The two easiest ways to get a lot of followers on twitter is to pretend to be a beautiful woman posting pictures of yourself in various states of undress and making incendiary political comments that get people's dander up.
Twitter is a cesspool not because so many of its users are bad, but because it promotes emotional responses.
The users of social media give an alternative meaning to the old phrase "power without responsibility", which was famously applied to the press lords Beaverbrook and Rothermere by Stanley Baldwin in 1931. A social media mob may have power but accepts no responsibility for the consequences.
Only the means of communication have changed. Read an old Time magazine from the 1970s and the biases, prejudices, political division and class warfare haven't changed a bit. Go back to the late 1930s and realize how close this country came to revolution, under much more difficult situations than exist today.
That I can scream on social media and others can notice doesn't mean I am screaming anything valid, nor that their notice matters at all.
Something that would have been insightful 3 decades ago (and, as quoted, several hundred years go).
The civilized Romans, prior to their downfall, had gladiatorial arenas to keep the proletariat middle class entertained and distracted from the rot.
Blogger Howard said...
Is there any topic where you people won't highlight your obsession with pedophilia?
OK, Groomer. Why not ask Disney about it ?
Is there any topic where you people won't highlight your obsession with pedophilia?
Fucking Rightwing conservatives and their obsession with protecting children.
'OK, Groomer. Why not ask Disney about it ?'
Exactly.
Sane people are trying to prevent it not promote it.
Haidt is a pillar of the establishment bemoaning its destruction. He is disappointed that no longer are people forced to divine the truth based on the story put out by three networks and a few large newspapers and magazines. Social media is certainly problematic, but it is most problematic for those who would like to be gatekeepers.
One example from within Haidt's article. He writes, "[t]he many analysts, including me, who had argued that Trump could not win the general election were relying on pre-Babel intuitions, which said that scandals such as the Access Hollywood tape (in which Trump boasted about committing sexual assault) are fatal to a presidential campaign." Haidt's assertion that Trump boasted about sexual assault in the Access Hollywood tape can easily be shown to be a lie. The Access Hollywood tape shows Trump talking in a disgusting way about women during what he must have thought was a private conversation with Billy Bush. The New York Times has helpfully provided a transcript of that awful conversation. Nowhere does Trump boast about sexual assault. Haidt is likely referring to Trump's "Grab ’em by the p****" comment, but, as the transcript makes clear, Trump was talking hypothetically about what he believes women will allow celebrity men to do to them.
That Haidt is able to casually brand Trump as an admitted sex criminal in the Atlantic -- an uber-establishment magazine -- could be tagged as Exhibit A in a brief explaining why social media has been a necessary evil in the effort to prevent the establishment from controlling the truth.
You're the one Pedo-curious, Doc. I'll leave that "research" to you and your comrades.
The addiction began with the Like button.
I was reminded of
"This is a test of lower order thinking for the lower orders." - Frederick J. Kelly, the inventor of multiple choice tests, commenting on them.
And I would proffer that social media brings out the best of the lower order thinking. I will leave it to you to ponder as to why many of the worst on social media are graduates of our finest status universities.
But intentional or not, Twitter comes from the root "twit". Perhaps they meant the common modern definition referring to a person, but the older definition of "twit" is a verb meaning to "To vex by bringing to notice, or reminding of, a fault, defect, misfortune, or the like; to revile; to reproach; to upbraid; to taunt" [Webster 1913]. And on the whole, users of Twitter twit each other constantly.
"The sabotage of the 2020 election is being revealed one step at a time on social media. By the time the 2024 election rolls around, there will be very few people left who don’t understand how that was carried out. We’re in the midst of what appears to be a global genocide to reduce human population, a conspiracy launched by the climate change fanatics."
A good example of the damage wrought by social media on reason and public discourse .
The left's war on children.
Instead of growing up feeling safe and protected, leftist children are traumatized at an early age by being forced to think of the world as a dangerous and evil place their parents can’t protect them from, but that they must take on the responsibility to change or else everyone will die.
The “parentification” of children began as Baby Boomer despair in the wake of the end of “Camelot”, the death of leftist culture heroes, and the collapse of the counterculture, followed by the conviction that the next generation had to take over and fix things. Adults who acted like children insisted that children had to become adults. And these days the precocious children and the immature adults are all around us. They’re also two halves of the same tarnished coin.
Worth reading.
Groomer Enabler Howard: "Is there any topic where you people won't highlight your obsession with pedophilia?"
Our obsession with your desire for sexualizing and grooming young children will continue until you and your pro-grooming allies are defeated.
Get used to it, groomer.
Howard said...Is there any topic where you people won't highlight your obsession with pedophilia?
So much wrong with this statement. What bugs me most is the lazy assumption that everyone not Howard is of a single related unit, with everyone responsible for the behavior of anyone.
But ok, I went back over the comments to see what he's referring to and...nuthin. Howard's was the first comment to even mention pedophilia. Dumbass.
There is much at play here. I suspect I'm about to illustrate our fracturing.
Haidt seems to not realize the extent of the far Left's madness when he claims that 'often the moderates win'. I don't see that in my world. I don't think he sees how it is destroying the Democratic Party. I don't see moderates winning in the streets, in the schools, in the media, in Hollywood, in Big Tech- all of whom have put their stamp of approval on uniform censorship. No, indeed- let's not forget that the Progs were welcomed in, given mics and office spaces all over America. Now that the country is actually coalescing around stopping Wokeness, some Democrats are suddenly finding their voices. But it is midterm time.
The battles between Conservatives and Liberals has, over the years, mostly been a fight about change. Conservatives are not opposed to change. (Emancipation, voting rights, education, etc.) But it has to be carefully considered, thought out, and made able to correct if it goes off the rails. Liberals at first were all about Change. Any change. Lots of change. Change for the sake of change. In fact, Barack Himself used that word in his famous tagline, Change you can believe in, as if all other change was harder to believe in, or just not the right kind. This fight for change, or slow-to-no change got a strong dose of Super Vitamins when Social Media hit their stride. Now it's not just change, it's Change of the Day, the hour, the moment. The goal is to throw so much at a weary society that the people just throw up their hands and say, "OK, OK...we'll take your changes, but can we please put a hold on things for now?"
And of course the answer is 'No!'. There is no rest, no shortage of changes being thrown at you. Don't want men who view themselves as women in your daughter's locker room or taking her scholarship on the women's team? Tough. If you complain we're going to teach your kids to reconsider their gender...and not tell you about it. You OK with that?
Of course you're not. And it's not because you're a gay-basher or anti-Trans. It's because you love your kids and where were the slow, considered discussions about any of this? Do I need more pronouns to declare when I introduce myself these days? When did I get to vote on that? Who made up that rule and when did it become part of the social pact? Did I get a say in that?
Haidt points out that "Social scientists have identified at least three major forces that collectively bind together successful democracies: social capital (extensive social networks with high levels of trust), strong institutions, and shared stories."
We've no more social capital between ourselves. We don't even listen, let alone trust that each of us has good intentions. Our strong institutions have made themselves weak, corrupt, and have clearly taken a stance against it's own citizens. We no longer feel connected to our institutions and in fact view them as antagonistic. And our shared stories have gone off the rails. Patriotism and national allegiance is now considered a sure sign of White Supremacists. And that's coming from our own Government. What? If our own government considers a patriotic citizen, who might display the flag, celebrate Independence Day, and desire policies that favor our own country first, as someone to be monitored, we have lost our bond.
So much fracturing, so little space to write about it all.
One last note, another blind spot from Jonathan Haidt. He suggests that "Mark Zuckerberg may not have wished for any of that.", meaning the fracturing of our institutions and our social bonds. I would say that based on the evidence of our senses (and the evidence of his election engineering), just the opposite seems apparent.
Ten years, 40 trimesters of bad, worse, and wicked choices in progress.
I think it is botox. 1) injecting paralytic poison near brain seems... Darwinian. 2) paralyze the many muscles in th face almost certainly leads to a lack of connection both ways - people don't connect with the lizard person and the lizard person has inhibited emotional response. I an 99% serious. You can adjust your mood by smiling or frowning. Now, botox ossifies the face and thus the emotional response.
Change my mind.
People aren't skeptical about opinions and views that come from their own side. No more than they check over what autocorrect does to their postings. You can assume that about 80% of what comes from the other side is fake, but at least 20% of what comes from ones own side is probably fake as well.
Also, don't write off sites and sources just because you disagree with them. And don't ignore foreign sources. How many idiots voted for Biden because they didn't realize that COVID was a global problem, not something that could be wholly blamed on Trump.
Even that buffoon Scarborough sees the danger to dems from following the Howard's Heroes Woke-y sexualization of young children:
Scarborough: "Let me say it slowly for my Democratic friends in Washington D.C. Black voters are more conservative than you are, white woke leaders in Washington D.C. Hispanic voters are more conservative than you are, white woke leaders in Washington D.C. Asian American voters are more conservative than you are, white woke voters in Washington D.C. and they’re more conservative on crime, they’re more conservative on education, they’re more conservative on ‘these woke issues.’ Get off of Twitter!"
Blogger Howard said...
You're the one Pedo-curious, Doc. I'll leave that "research" to you and your comrades.
No, Howard. You are the one who keeps bringing it up. Is there anything you would like to tell us ?
Tim Maguire at 1:25 beat me to it. I reviewed the comments and the first mention of "pedophilia" was...Howard's.
To paraphrase our hostess, stick to the subject.
"And don't ignore foreign sources."
That's a big one. Foreign sources tend not to have the excess baggage of having to shill for Team Red or Team Blue. I have found them particularly useful on the topic of the war in the Ukraine.
I understand that the titillating effects helps you people forget your new found felity to the Union of Stalinist Putin.
Howard seems worried. Too close to home Howard??
Taking a page from Putin's playbook, Howard fires a long-range missile into a crowd and is pleased with the populace recoiling. Howard? Howard??
"Is there any topic where you people won't highlight your obsession with pedophilia?"
What are you talking about? You are the one raising the topic. You are the one with the problem.
You should you put yourself under the care of a qualified, expert therapist. If you have to pay for it yourself, you will make progress faster. If your resources are limited, perhaps you could start a GoFundMe campaign for your therapy. Maybe your healthcare plan will cover it. Employers are always reluctant to see employees show up with mental health issues, though, because the rarely get better. Watch out, though. Plans often have a maximum payout limit. Did Obamacare take that out?
You may eventually become well enough adjusted so that you can re-enter "normal" life. Well, normality is relative, isn't it? But maybe you can turn your obsessions into productive channels. Look at how well Joe Biden, even with his limited intellect, has done.
It's a small leap from neutering trans-kids in the second comment to pedophobia.
"Worth reading."
Yes...it is an excellent example of unsupported twaddle, broad condemnations and accusations, and zero citations or specifics. The author, no doubt, would have decried as "extreme leftists" the reformers he applauds for taking children out of the factories had he been writing in that era. (Many of the reformers were leftists, as trade unions were a large segment of those calling for the abolition of child labor.)
Robert Cook said...
"Worth reading."
Yes...it is an excellent example of unsupported twaddle, broad condemnations and accusations, and zero citations or specifics.
In other words, not leftist. Got it. You're a little old to be a child.
I dunno, but seems like "social media stupidity" is like COVID-19.
A novel virus arises and infects some fraction of the population. It runs wild for a time, months or years, may be recurring. Initially vulnerable individuals are most affected, then the infection spreads to healthier people who show less severe effects. Eventually serious infection declines to marginal/background levels. IOW people learn to live with it, the rate of infection is tolerable as it affects only the most susceptible.
So, the recent Musk/Twitter episode, does it signify "social antibodies" rising to fight off "social media infection"?
Howard's favorite teacher.
A teacher at a Boston-area charter school revealed to young children she identifies as a male and claimed that when babies are born, doctors can only “guess” if the baby is a boy or a girl, but “sometimes the doctor is wrong.”
It's even Boston. Did you go to that school, Howard?
"Why Past 10 Years.... Uniquely Stupid"
Those three little words.
The Federal Reserve.
And it's actually 20 years, not 10. But the last 10 years of Bernanke, Bernanke, and Bernanke have been unique in their extremism.
Time to pay up?
Michael K said...
Blogger Howard said...
You're the one Pedo-curious, Doc. I'll leave that "research" to you and your comrades.
No, Howard. You are the one who keeps bringing it up. Is there anything you would like to tell us ?
*****************
What's the over-under on whether Howard---while typing to accuse us of prurient interests with one hand---is abusing himself with the other?
But it WAS just a phase. We are already in the Next Thing. Which is probably not going to be another mindless Fun n Games Thing with ribbons and booby prizes.
PS Twitter did allow demonstrators under tyrannical boot heels to get themselves marching, marching. The good side of the American dopeyness.
The Federal Reserve.
At Congress's pleasure. If anything, the Reserve has mitigated the progress, as much as possible, without controlling the profligate single/central/monopolistic redistributive change schemes.
Another tip (inspired by Anne Applebaum): innocent until proven guilty is a great maxim, but by all that is holy, don't tell me that somebody who has spent 50 years in politics (or business for that matter) is "fundamentally decent" unless you can prove it. Don't say every flimflam artist coming down the pike is deeply compassionate. Stop falling for politicians. They'll only break your heart (if you still have one).
"The author, no doubt, would have decried as "extreme leftists" the reformers he applauds for taking children out of the factories had he been writing in that era."
Not only can you read minds, you can do it for alternate timelines. Awesome.
---If anything, the Reserve has mitigated the progress, as much as possible, without controlling the profligate single/central/monopolistic redistributive change schemes. [n.n]
Mitigate is not the word I'd use. The Federal Reserve rewarded capital at the expense of labor. Its machinations produced the most extreme disparity of wealth in the nation's history. It monopolized the bond market and made pension funds start betting their clients' future payments on alternative investments, illiquid real estate, pre-public corporate fantasies, and probably bitcoinies.
The Fed suppressed interest rates for so long that many got addicted to the low carrying cost of debt, especially the government. Now they are just starting to see what debt will begin to cost in coming months and years. At 7-8% inflation, the Fed is talking like it will take vigorous action but it hasn't even stopped QE-ing yet! It is still tapering...!
But... but it's almost done. Almost done. And then, um, well, then! Then they'll raise rates by a half a percent! Whoa Nellie. And then again.... they say. And again, bud! And then they'll only be 5% behind the curve instead of 7% or 8%.
Bernanke et al applied unprecedented emergency financial formulas to first one emergency -- 2008-09 -- and then emergency 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 .... 12 long years of stock market records and other very scary emergencies.
When debt costs crowd discretionary spending out of the budget, what will happen? Big tax increases? Stock market selloffs? Pension failures? Student loan cancellations? Inflation inflation inflation? Or is this really a deflationary scenario in some respects?
Who knows? Meanwhile, more than one Fed governor was trading his own portfolio around their meetings and announcements. Corruption seems too modest a word for this kind of behavior. Well, they've resigned now, what's the big deal.
The big deal is that hardly anyone can imagine what unwinding this blissfully insane overstimulation will mean. Where will it leave us? Its blissfulness, especially in its market results, is the single biggest cause of all the craziness in our society, IMO, as I've said before. If we can make wealth out of nothing, we can do anything. Make men women, defund the police, give everyone free cash, find numerous new genders, you name it. There is no end to Other People's Money when the Fed has the controls.
Or so it seemed.
I have always considered Twitter the online version of the high school slam book. Time has shown that to be true. Sadly, it is even nastier.
I joined twitter long ago, but have really done nothing but look at what is linked to by articles.
I have always considered Twitter the online version of the high school slam book. Time has shown that to be true. Sadly, it is even nastier.
I joined twitter long ago, but have really done nothing but look at what is linked to by articles.
Why does media have to be "social"? That is, why does every statement of opinion or of a slant on a public issue have to invite us, the uninformed, to post our dissenting opinions?
The internet allows us to find and read current commentaries on the issues of the day from a wide variety of persepectives. Presumably we continue to read such commentaries if we think they're either right, or interesting; otherwise, we stop visiting them. Why do we have to shout our disagreement with what someone says on their own website/blog?
Why do we need "comments" on websites?
Now, let me confess. I read Althouse IN PART for the comments. The comments on Althouse over the years have been the most informative overall of any blog I've read. I was distressed when Prof. A ended comments, but the current regime of light-handed moderation is fine with me. But still, there's a lot of garbage in the comments -- and if you don't believe me, read the comments on this post: some are valuable, and a lot are entertaining, but a lot are garbage.
Ignore Twitter, and all the other sites that invite/encourage/incite uninformed and stupid controversial comments.
Twitter keeps suspending any accounts that aren’t either full on cult programming, or mind guard stuff, or simple mind numbed robots like Howard. It’s distressing, and btw, politicians are pressuring Twitter, which makes it a first amendment issue, per SCOTUS in other cases.
Post a Comment