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Why people believe that they could outsource the responsibility of living their own life? Internet is an amazing thing, but also is a terrible thing. You can u
by pipio21 10y ago
Why people believe that they could outsource the responsibility of living their own life?
Internet is an amazing thing, but also is a terrible thing. You can use it to improve yourself and your life or you can use it to foster addictions like watching porn all day or gamble or gossiping.
Internet did not invented cognitive bubbles. When I was a child I was member of a Church, it was a bubble. Then I met atheists in Reddit, another bubble. A country is a bubble, with their media only giving people one view. I have traveled a lot around the world and every country is a bubble.
For example, how many Americans have a strong opinion on Putin without understanding Russian or Ukranian, having traveled to Ukraine or talked to the people there. Their opinion is not their own, it has been implanted by the media from people with strong economic interest in the region but they believe their opinion is valid because everybody(there) agrees with each other.
I have Ukrainian friends on both sides, traveled the country, and what is told in Western media is totally deceiving. But in Europe lots of people speak those languages, know people and understand the region. It is way harder to deceive them.
It is like North Korea media telling the people that West society is poor(like they say) or Florida is a desert with no water. Koreans will believe it, but a lot of Americans will not.
It is your personal decision to cultivate yourself and use the tools you have at your disposal for good and not for bad.
If you don't like the tools at your disposal, as a programmer lots of people here could do something about it. HN itself it such a tool, or example, when reddit diluted his great content in order to gain popularity-money.
- yomism 10y agoImplying Hackernews us not a bubble... Ok
- dang 10y agoWhen people say this, they usually mean that HN is all in favor of X where X is something they personally disagree with. In fact, though, the community is divided on most issues. There are a few exceptions (anti-Snowden doesn't do well here, pro-CFAA worse) but not as many as it seems. I think this impression of 'the community lined up against my view' happens because when you read HN threads on any divisive topic you're inevitably confronted with comments you dislike and disagree with. That follows simply from the community being divided while the threads are all in common (i.e. no subreddits into which people silo themselves). Such comments are unpleasant—indeed painful—to read, and therefore more memorable, so we notice them more. These impressions accrete into a mental model of the community all being on the opposite side. But this is actually a side effect of the community not being homogeneous—of the fact that for most X, everyone who feels strongly about X has anti-X comments in their face, and vice versa.
- CaptSpify 10y agoWhere did the parent comment imply that?
- zaphar 10y agoNo amount of technology or code can correct or fix our human predisposition to live in bubbles. Who we choose to follow and listen to or avoid and ignore is a personal choice. Facebook can't fix it. Twitter can't fix it. Reddit can't fix it. Only an individual can fix it.
- vkou 10y agoIf technology can exacerbate our predisposition to live in bubbles, then surely technology can inhibit that same predisposition. Defaults matter, tools are not neutral, etc.
- zaphar 10y agoI'm not so sure that technology does exacerbate the problem any more than a living without the internet does. This is far from a settled question in my mind.
- gkoz 10y agoThe notion that speaking Ukrainian is pertinent to the opinion on Putin, the very existence of two sides and a certain annexed region, all indicate that yes the western opinion is quite correct.