To a first approximation, nothing is verified, people see a number on social media as a proxy for accuracy. Even if it's completely wrong, it doesn't matter because you're among friends.
Memes let insane ideas spread like a virus, the only criterion is whether they can survive against other memes. Grounding in reality is an idea's death sentence, because of the bullshit asymmetry principle.
And now the tools are there for anyone to generate bullshit at a scale commensurate to their wallet.
I shudder to think what this means for elections. At least I appreciate that the article attaches some numbers to it.
Mass printed pamphlets was the original meme. The more things change the more they stay the same.
Susan Blackmore. “Dangerous Memes; or, What the Pandorans Let Loose” (Cosmos & Culture p297) https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/607104main_c...
If people are lost to the Algorithm then we get what we deserve. Should have loved your family more
Though one bit of hope is that for me politics has never been that much different. My first foray into real political discussion was people in high school trying to convince me global warming wasn't real or that allowing gay marriage was a slippery slope to bestiality. Even back in 2008, before social media was what it is today, there was still tons of misinformation.
Democratizing propaganda. Not sure the previous state of affairs where propaganda was accessible to the ruling class and their media corporations was better, it might have just seemed that way because there appeared to be less conflict when it came to them telling you what was in "your own best interest".
I do have to say though, I certainly am enjoying watching the wailing and gnashing of teeth from the prior monopoly holders on propaganda though, lashing out desperately in the face of their waning influence. They want so desperately to censor the commoners (for our own good, naturally).
Not really. A lot of the disinformation is generated by authoritarian state actors.
As if people who fantasize about putting people in virtual pens (thinking of Yarvin here) give one singular fuck about you or anyone you care about.
> They want so desperately to censor the commoners (for our own good, naturally).
"the commoners", i.e. Peter Thiel gushing to Epstein about balkanization... you're getting played like a piano.
edit: I should have phrased that last bit differently, we are all getting played like a piano. Factual reality itself, which "normal" people need to survive and defend themselves against sociopaths and assorted groups, is under attack, and I suspect by many parties who don't even like each other. What they all hate honesty and open discussion.
Hence the bubbles. We're all in dimly lit clubs and just repeat stuff that originates from who knows where. We never ask. But it's just us, sticking it to "the man" who cannot possibly have his fingers in it. I'm so tired of it, and I really want that to come across :P
Conversing about politics has been a fool’s errand for a very long time in the US, practically this whole century so far. It has zero benefit except solidifying that you have the same the value system as people that already agree with you, or who can pretend to.
The parties have failed in their primary goal of winning friends and influencing people, only rapidly losing affiliation in favor of partyless while the actual partisans think there is going to be a koolaid colored wave of support for a decade straight, seemingly mentally incapable of noticing absolutely nothing has changed or will change in the composition of seats.
Focus on what you can control, if your view of reality is more accurate, whether you want the accurate view or not, don't worry about discussing, just trade it.
Why? Insiders are rich enough as it is.
> Conversing about politics has been a fool’s errand for a very long time in the US, practically this whole century so far.
Other people sharing their perspectives and stories is a big reason I'm no longer a Republican.
> ...if your view of reality is more accurate, whether you want the accurate view or not, don't worry about discussing, just trade it.
This assumes markets are fair.
wow a developed pre-frontal lobe level of empathy, amazing. that isn't even a counterpoint without knowing what your affiliation became, because the whole point is that the crowd is leaving the parties. but thanks for sharing your journey.
> This assumes markets are fair.
doesn't assume that at all, it assumes I can extract value from them
In early 2017 I changed from Republican to Democrat.
> seemingly mentally incapable of noticing absolutely nothing has changed or will change in the composition of seats.
US Senate and House majorities have tipped over to the other party repeatedly over the past 20y. Surely that's more than 'nothing', even if not some overwhelming wave.
> wow a developed pre-frontal lobe level of empathy, amazing
Being condescending and suggesting folks are mentally incapable (in any sense) won't help you make friends or encourage readers to take your ideas more seriously. Unless perhaps your only goal is pumping prediction markets.
partisans are loud, berating the unaffiliated for not adding power to their cause-du-jour as if the unaffiliated are the one other side themselves. loud enough that the unaffiliated may not actually know that they are in the majority now because most people are independently having the same reaction to partisans.
my goal is pointing out that its the majority opinion now.
but you might be on to something, both partisans and non-partisans don’t notice that partisans blocs are minority voting blocs now.
This was always true, right? With enough $, you can employ N writers. But the constant factor is smaller than it once was.
You could not employ N writers even if you had the money, because there were not enough good writers. And they needed to care about remaining adjacent to reality, or their reputation would (rightfully) be ruined as a fraud. Things were slow enough that the average person could see that they were being bullshat. These were the golden ages of human progress.
It's not the world we live in today.
Historically you’d quickly reach a point where each additional writer was more expensive than the last.
As long as you can use those writers to operate a business near profitably then they are really cheap, but FOX can’t profitably employ 100,000 writers.
>Supreme Court allows Biden administration to remove border razor wire
>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GK3uo7MOZvU
Local Dallas News:
>Biden Used Forklifts To Remove Razor Wire, Open The Border & Allow Millions To Enter
>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDqbVgX5TZA
CBS Miami:
>Arizona To Remove Makeshift Border Wall After Lawsuit From Biden Administration
>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7nEW1Pqvd8
I can link you hundreds more videos, but I think anyone on this site is capable of doing a basic search to see the evidence themselves.
Heck even Dr Phil went to the border to show what was happening first hand:
>Dr. Phil: The Border Crisis | The Government Is Failing At Border Security | Dr. Phil Primetime
I’m therefore unsure who to credit with the assemblage or arching themes. Nevertheless, one is about the internet. I perceived in his words a duality—-the internet is “limitless memory” as well as “lost memory”. And not just the immediate connotation of repository of lost ideas, but in the sense we as human beings, with the Internet at our fingertips, are losing our memory to it.
Turning this idea around in my mind I imagined such a thing as _Instagram Brain_, where your memory contains only the last “bird on a branch”. (Reflecting, I watch a lot of woodworking and furniture making videos, and I can only remember the last one.)
Now some of my intellectual interests intrude on this infinite semiotic chain. Adding M.Eco’s imaginary conditions, where more information than we’ve ever had access to somehow becomes less useful, the image of the internet as a “complete graph” of knowledge comes to my mind’s eye. What a tangle. Everything connected to everything else—-numinous and beyond comprehension. (I wonder what M. Eco would have made of Chat technology? More’s the pity.)
And finally I get to the political point. By comparison the film gave my imagination a sidelong image of politics. What if, in this stage of the digital revolution, we are all striving to find some mental refuge from the mass-complete-graph (and Instagram Brain): a little corner of HN where colleagues warn each other about this or that dangerous virus or zero-day. A daytime dose of enervating 24h news for the 65+ crowd.
Like this. And more. I wonder at the American two party system and today’s political divide. (The president is literally calling the Democratic Party “traitors”. What a cockup.)
A hypothesis forms: partisanship (as a “function”) makes a tearing bifurcation of the “complete graph” of social knowledge and culture. This is our nations’s social immunity in action. We’ve reached some limit of the social-mind’s capacity to be so highly interconnected, and a function is tearing through everything faster than we can comprehend the individual parts.
Sure, It’s just a fanciful idea. The furthest extent of a Chain of Semiotic reasoning before I’m bored. Maybe the result is a false idea (short of “belief” since I know it’s hypothetical). Still, some people walk away from the computer (read internet, or whatever mass media which produces “Instagram Brain” effects) in full faith, belief and without a doubt, because they “did their research”.
Scientists and other learned individuals might balk at my subjects and turns of reason. Don’t take it literally, but poetically. If I have been at all successful your mind’s eye might glimpse a vision where we Americans, as a people, are not so far apart as it might seem. We are suffering through a black turn of the Digital Revolution, and rather than, as a group, dividing into a million opinions we have split only in two. LOL.
The internet blew that illusion up. Rather than dispelling stereotypes, transparency confirmed them, to an even greater extent than everyone thought. Urban people got to see first hand that rural areas were full of deranged bigots who are perfectly primed to believe wild lies about foreigners eating people's pets, and the rural people saw that the urbanites really dismissed them out of hand as speed bumps on the path of progress. Paradoxically, both sides had been imagining that the political divide was smaller than it really was.
Is this something you’ve read about? Is there a general consensus in some circles the more we learn, the less we like each other?
I think of social media in some ways like costume; I’m putting on the social costume of the group i want to belong to. Opposed to how you might address someone at the grocery store or fellow neighbor in a chance encounter. Then it’s the relationship of sharing mundane life together with the politeness or grace (dignity?) you afford to people when you meet them in person.
The classic advertising gambit has the Goth helping the Soccer Mom with her groceries to the car. Under the hairspray and makeup is the child who has a notion of helping mom, and is therefore only wearing a costume (which, in my networked idea, becomes another node we all already expect and a condition that seems to paralyze teenagers).
Are there any live examples out there? Similar to how I like to look at scam/phishing emails to see how they work, I'm interested in seeing how sophisticated these are/are not.
That URL is linked from https://assets.recordedfuture.com/insikt-report-pdfs/2023/ta...
Which is linked from https://www.recordedfuture.com/research/russian-influence-ne...
...but im also mostly certain that sub is heavily gamed/botted and i suppose i'd be zero percent surprised if it was moderated by some hostile annoying nation state. your comment on the types of urls that get posted there is something ive noticed too. the entire subs entire history is weird and it feels like it exists on reddit so other redditors can say "i just checked in /r/conservative and ...". effectively reinforcing political division in the same internet environment in a very weird/unnatural way.
i worked a blue collar job for a decade. worked 10 hour days with a lot of conservatives, magas even before i finally left boeing in 2021. met the whole variety of them. the ones who actually were insane, the ones who didnt want to associate with the current flavor of maga unhinged, but still wanted to disassociate from the woke left, and somehow accidentally tripped and fell and started listening to joe rogan... and also the usual middle class suburban parents who have just been conned by sinclaire owned local news. that was a ..... long decade of my life. i don't miss it, i never felt like i was among good company. but one thing i can say, is i never met a single one that used reddit back then & /r/conservative was allegedly popping off in those years. most of them called reddit idk like a "liberal shithole" or something and that was that. just seems kinda weird. above a certain age you're going to be glued to facebook/nextdoor, under that age you're probably financing a dodge ram and listening to joe rogan.. but rarely if ever were these people on reddit.
https://edmo.eu/publications/ai-political-influencers-the-ne...
https://dfrlab.org/2024/09/18/doppelganger-us-election/
With a few preserved/archived stories e.g. from FoxNews.top:
https://web.archive.org/web/20230922135430/https:/www.fox-ne...
https://youtu.be/8bG7J3mjH5s?t=71 (I linked directly to the interview, skipping the news anchor's intro.)
I can see the elderly and the tech illiterate falling for similar schemes with mirrors of the NYT, CNN, FOX, etc.
The idea is that authenticated employees see the company logo but scrapers get an IIS welcome page. Prevents cloned content from showing up on squatted domains.
If you want to fix the average Americans low information media digest we need to start by banning the "algorithm".
To be impactful you have to be a politician and that's a full-time job which lives off donations. We need more politicans, but we don't have a reward structure to support them so we have too few politicians which means the few are funded by powerful people making even fewer make the decisions.
Just to make myself clear, when I say politicians I mean someone who tries to bring politican change, not someone who works in the government making decisions.
Democracy sounds nice, but it assumes people want to participate in it: actively validate facts, find truthful information not just vote whoever promises more of what you like.
Of course on the other hand you have the european federation: they are able to make unpopular choices, but at a steep cost which ends up hurting the member states and making the general population pretty hateful of the european central government.
Governments are too big to change, but what we have doesn't work and we're probably going to be in a world of hurt as the american type democracy(japan, australia, etc) is being manipulated from all sides, federations are uncompetitive and dictatorships becoming the strongest government there is being able to accelerate faster than anyone else and becoming the defacto world power.
Thank you for putting the reason at the top to disregard the rest of your post-hoc justification. Your prescriptions literally don't matter because you will never engage with the political system.
Moreover, it should be acceptable to be fustrated with the political system and bring broader change, something I don't have the energy to do myself since I generally don't believe I'll stay where I am in the forseeable future as I "vote" by simply leaving my country.
Of course when you're talking about superpowers such as United States the story is different as your vote can impact the global state of the world, but that is a whole different conversation and I am luckily not apart of it.
This is an opinionated take, but voting just to vote is pointless and does more harm than good. I guess I should have positioned that at the end instead of making that the opening statement.
I'm going to tell you a secret it doesn't tell you on the ballot: You don't have to fill in all the bubbles like you're being graded in middle school. You can chose to only vote for things you are opinionated on.
Just kidding, every ballot already explains this. Next time just admit you're lazy to cast a ballot and lead with that. Its the same outcome, no reason for anyone to read the next 10 paragraphs.
Saying you're uneducated in local politics is just an excuse you're making to justify your actions.
Local politics isn't filled with much drama, and probably isn't that entertaining, but that exactly the problem with global and national politics - it's all driven by dopamine.
You shouldn't vote just to vote, you should vote to make some sort of change (or not), and it's ok to be wrong in this decision. That's why democracy is great, it renews itself every X years.
Seems like you identified the problem. I'm definitely the type that thinks there is nothing salvageable from the current U.S. system that was dreamt up by a bunch of racists who thought owning other human beings was acceptable, but I also believe that voting is a form of harm reduction. The people who want to do harm vote, and they do it reliably.
Completely unrelated of course to the growing popularity of abolitionism in Great Britain which banned the atlantic slave trade in 1807 and formally banned slavery in 1833, long before that brand new country which supposedly had so much influence from "anti slavery" folks eventually found cause to ban slavery decades later, and only made black people equal members of the country over a century later.
Good job people opposed to slavery. Great work!
People like Morris tried to get rid of the 3/5 compromise and get rid of the protection of slavery. He was one of the most vocal against slavery. He called out the hypocrisy and wanted to slow the import of slaves by taxing the import. He and others like him tried their hardest, but were at least able to set things up to allow the eventual ban.
I don't get people like you who can never see that while things weren't perfect, moving in a better direction is good. You let perfect be the enemy of good.
Politicians are relatively low paid for the expertise we want and so many of the folks running are people looking to supplement their income with influence peddling and grift.
No. It's always been that you get to choose the least bad option. Unless you fall for the personality cults that sometimes develop around politicians.