8 ms·

Naval Ravikant: “The Internet lowers the returns to distributing facts”

105 points by lenilsonjr 9y ago

throwanem 9y ago
"Want to escape? Avoid Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat. Avoid venues and media built around group signaling and conspicuous consumption." Ironically, this only works well if ~everyone does it; if ~nobody does, it isolates those who do.
- binarymax 9y ago
  I found more irony in that it was posted on twitter.
  - kumartanmay 9y ago
    I agree to almost everything he said and I am also avoiding all the social media. It's surprising that he didn't use his blog to share, instead a social media. He has intentionally not mentioned Twitter. Was/ Is he an investor in Twitter?
    - kinkrtyavimoodh 9y ago
      Because the unfortunate and harsh truth is that if he had posted it on his blog, hardly anyone would have read it.
      - deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
      - throwanem 9y ago
        POSSE (Post on Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere) is a thing. I don't think you can turn off replies on Twitter at least, though, so you'd still potentially end up with fragmented conversation, although you could just choose not to care about the Twitter side of it.
    - lenilsonjr 9y ago
      Yes, he is/was an investor in Twitter (according to his AngelList profile). Although, I find Twitter the simplest social media platform to control the information stream that you consume. Actually, because of that, it is the only social media site that I usually visit.
- golemotron 9y ago
  "Want to escape? Avoid Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat. Avoid venues and media built around group signaling and conspicuous consumption." There won't be any escape, just a move toward smaller more focused online groups each with their own mores. The future looks more like a world of Slacks than a Facebook. It's fascinating that this is happening in both social media and the world (Brexit and the fragmentation of Europe) at the same time.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - throwanem 9y ago
    > smaller more focused online groups each with their own mores So, more what the Internet looked like before 2007 or so. I was there for that, and won't say it was without its drawbacks - but it is starting to look as though the drawbacks of the current fashion outweigh them. > It's fascinating that this is happening in both social media and the world (Brexit and the fragmentation of Europe) at the same time Indeed it is. Perhaps there's a larger lesson to be drawn.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
iovrthoughtthis 9y ago
I see this as more of a cost / benefit thing. Finding and distributing facts has a lower cost / benefit than finding and distributing opinions. I feel this similarly for constructive debate online. The cost of creating constructive comments is much more than the cost of creative "destructive" (not sure it's the right word) comments. So more comments are "destructive" than constructive. Unless the value of constructive comments is larger than the perceived cost (hn might be an example?).
- naravara 9y ago
  >So more comments are "destructive" than constructive. Tell me about it! It’s gotten so bad that many times I would respond to someone’s comment to expand on what they’re saying or provide context for readers who might not have it and they will reply back to me with something like “I already know this. That’s what I was talking about.” I know that’s what you were talking about! I’m just further reinforcing what you were trying to say! I think I probably fall into this sometimes myself. Online comments are just so reflexively argumentative sometimes it's hard to switch gears into discussing things.
tlb 9y ago
It's amazing how much the end-user cost of facts has dropped. I used to ride my bike across town to a library and spend an hour finding a fact. Now I can have them on my screen in seconds. One might have thought that as the cost of obtaining facts dropped by 100x, people would consume higher-quality facts. But consuming higher-quality facts requires more effort, so in the end people consume more low-quality facts, like listicles of celeb gossip. As a thought experiment, what is the cost per-fact that would make people consume the maximum quantity of high-quality facts? Too high and they consume less facts overall. Too low and they consume crap.
- mindslight 9y ago
  I don't agree with this framework. Even inside of it, there is obviously difference between the fixed cost of obtaining one fact, and the marginal cost of each additional fact. Riding to the library took time, but once you were there each additional fact cost less due to curation. In fact, the traditional library seems close to optimal for encouraging consumption of facts in volume (modulo institutional/cultural biases like the winners writing history). Furthermore, while being able to look up a fact quickly ostensibly reduces the work to obtain that fact, it also discourages one's ability to perform educated guesses, reason from first principles, operate with uncertainty, etc. Intellectual effort/ability isn't zero sum.
  - ashark 9y ago
    It never even occurred to me to look up 99% of the useless facts I now can't help but look up on the Internet. The questions slipped out of my mind before they were fully formed, but now I think "who was that one guy in that one show?" and because I know I can find out in 30 seconds or less, I look it up. This ability adds almost no actual value to my life, while taking time. But each individual thing is so quick to find. It's also much easier to get lost trying to find the very best resource(s) for something, wasting time on that rather than digging into what's at hand. Because it's possible to refine one's selection now, it's so tempting to do so, even if a few hours' head start on lesser works would have been a better use of time. The same extends to entertainment. What's lost is peace of mind, focus, serendipity, and contentment. I'm not sure the benefit's really been worth it, for me. Libraries were actually a pretty good solution for finding useful-enough information, fast enough, in most cases. How much would I pay for a mini-OED-style IMDB? TVtropes? Zero dollars, probably. I might not even keep them around if I received them for free. Not worth the fraction of a cubic foot each takes up. But I've got this Internet connection and all these devices anyway, so.... [EDIT] OECD corrected to OED. I've clearly wasted too much time arguing politics on the Internet.
ksk 9y ago
While I agree with all that is said here, I feel like its far more easier to observe existing systems and explain them, than to prescribe a solution that is practical and workable.
s17n 9y ago
The internet has definitely killed the profitability of distributing facts, if it ever existed. The rest of the tweets about "signaling goods" are the type of hogwash you end up with when you confuse Ted talks with actual intellectual activity.
- alexandercrohde 9y ago
  Oversimplified. Largely, the internet has reduced the profitability of distributing facts because it gives them all away for free (how much can you learn online that you used to have to pay for? encyclopedia, years of video, stanford courses, books, scihub) The problem isn't an absence of facts. It's whether the layperson is both capable and motivated to seek out correct facts vs incorrect facts or unfalsifiable narratives.
ksikka 9y ago
Do FB/GOOG distribute facts? They have some pretty good returns.
SandersAK 9y ago
This idea that "truth" and "facts" was ever a profitable business comes from a very naive place. With the exception of encyclopedias (and even then...), newspapers (owned by robber barons since day one, and then later mega-corps), text books (read "lies my teacher told me") etc have always been about profit. Newspapers historically were not driven by facts but by classified ads and cartoons. TV, even in its golden age, was always about advertisement. And as much as we pine for the days of Walter Cronkite etc, the truth perpetuated in media has always skewed white (fear of the minorities), status quo (fear of a revolution), and capitalist (fear of commies). Tweet storms and pontifications like these are grand standing but devoid of any real grounded perspective. Just because you're 40 now, and realizing that there's a bunch of bad shit that you don't have control over (and maybe even contributed to) doesn't mean that "tech" or "media" has "gone away from truth."
- cirgue 9y ago
  > With the exception of encyclopedias (and even then...), newspapers (owned by robber barons since day one, and then later mega-corps), text books (read "lies my teacher told me") etc have always been about profit. This is a profoundly naive view of how media works. In the past, advertisers made ad buying decisions based in part on the reputation of the outlet, and circulation of media was dependent on public consensus that something was a reliable source of fact. Tabloids were a niche market that people did not take seriously. Newspapers might make their money on ads and cartoons, but the only reason they were able to command money for their ad space was because people bought and trusted the paper. Now, the profit motive for content creation relies far less on reputation effects. It is possible to make enormous amounts of money even when most people think your content is complete bullshit.
  - FilterSweep 9y ago
    > It is possible to make enormous amounts of money even when most people think your content is complete bullshit. most people is far more anecdotal than you might imagine.
  - djshgakdfdh 9y ago
    > based in part on the reputation of the outlet The reputation is where the bias lies. Consider the new york times: you probably respect it if you agree with it. If you don’t, it’s crappy narrative journalism. This certainly aligns with the parent comment’s claim that “facts” have never been the forte of any media; they simply need to agree with their readers. There’s simply little need to get 100% accuracy when 70% suffices to continue subscriptions. Also, note that you can only see the issues in reporting if you’re closer to the story than the reporter is.
dandare 9y ago
tl;dr - Twitter is not the medium for essays
- tbirrell 9y ago
  This is not the actual tl;dr
0xbear 9y ago
The press has never been about distributing facts. It’s mostly about manufacturing consent, with small, and quickly corrected deviations from its main purpose.
peterwwillis 9y ago
A gentle reminder that society's decay will continue without your quiet protest of it.
colinmegill 9y ago
Make it stop
dmitrygr 9y ago
> Want to escape? Avoid Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat. Avoid venues and media built around group signaling and conspicuous consumption. Said a guy...on Twitter...
barrkel 9y ago
Newspapers haven't been about facts in decades. Newspapers are vehicles for opinion on yesterday's news, not facts. But, the point still stands if you replace "fact" with "opinion".
mjburgess 9y ago
This is a massive signally piece from the Hacker News socially-naive cynicism clique peddling its myths about how society works. Half-baked unempirical soap-boxing with your Headline Hits from "College Campuses Arent What They Used to Be" to Oh! Think of the Children! and the New York Times Best Seller: "STOP LABELLING YOURSELF PEOPLE!?!?!" Ugh. It's a parody of itself. If you want to make this point then you need to do so by presenting an actual analysis of social dynamics on the internet, their changes, and so on. Not this pseudo-intellectual apocalypticism that was once phoned-in to broadsheet Op-Eds and now fills 20 tweets.

105 points by lenilsonjr 9y ago

"Want to escape? Avoid Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat. Avoid venues and media built around group signaling and conspicuous consumption." Ironically, this only works well if ~everyone does it; if ~nobody does, it isolates those who do.

binarymax 9y ago
I found more irony in that it was posted on twitter.
- kumartanmay 9y ago
  I agree to almost everything he said and I am also avoiding all the social media. It's surprising that he didn't use his blog to share, instead a social media. He has intentionally not mentioned Twitter. Was/ Is he an investor in Twitter?
  - kinkrtyavimoodh 9y ago
    Because the unfortunate and harsh truth is that if he had posted it on his blog, hardly anyone would have read it.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - throwanem 9y ago
      POSSE (Post on Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere) is a thing. I don't think you can turn off replies on Twitter at least, though, so you'd still potentially end up with fragmented conversation, although you could just choose not to care about the Twitter side of it.
  - lenilsonjr 9y ago
    Yes, he is/was an investor in Twitter (according to his AngelList profile). Although, I find Twitter the simplest social media platform to control the information stream that you consume. Actually, because of that, it is the only social media site that I usually visit.
golemotron 9y ago
"Want to escape? Avoid Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat. Avoid venues and media built around group signaling and conspicuous consumption." There won't be any escape, just a move toward smaller more focused online groups each with their own mores. The future looks more like a world of Slacks than a Facebook. It's fascinating that this is happening in both social media and the world (Brexit and the fragmentation of Europe) at the same time.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- throwanem 9y ago
  > smaller more focused online groups each with their own mores So, more what the Internet looked like before 2007 or so. I was there for that, and won't say it was without its drawbacks - but it is starting to look as though the drawbacks of the current fashion outweigh them. > It's fascinating that this is happening in both social media and the world (Brexit and the fragmentation of Europe) at the same time Indeed it is. Perhaps there's a larger lesson to be drawn.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

iovrthoughtthis 9y ago

I see this as more of a cost / benefit thing. Finding and distributing facts has a lower cost / benefit than finding and distributing opinions. I feel this similarly for constructive debate online. The cost of creating constructive comments is much more than the cost of creative "destructive" (not sure it's the right word) comments. So more comments are "destructive" than constructive. Unless the value of constructive comments is larger than the perceived cost (hn might be an example?).

naravara 9y ago
>So more comments are "destructive" than constructive. Tell me about it! It’s gotten so bad that many times I would respond to someone’s comment to expand on what they’re saying or provide context for readers who might not have it and they will reply back to me with something like “I already know this. That’s what I was talking about.” I know that’s what you were talking about! I’m just further reinforcing what you were trying to say! I think I probably fall into this sometimes myself. Online comments are just so reflexively argumentative sometimes it's hard to switch gears into discussing things.

tlb 9y ago

It's amazing how much the end-user cost of facts has dropped. I used to ride my bike across town to a library and spend an hour finding a fact. Now I can have them on my screen in seconds. One might have thought that as the cost of obtaining facts dropped by 100x, people would consume higher-quality facts. But consuming higher-quality facts requires more effort, so in the end people consume more low-quality facts, like listicles of celeb gossip. As a thought experiment, what is the cost per-fact that would make people consume the maximum quantity of high-quality facts? Too high and they consume less facts overall. Too low and they consume crap.

mindslight 9y ago
I don't agree with this framework. Even inside of it, there is obviously difference between the fixed cost of obtaining one fact, and the marginal cost of each additional fact. Riding to the library took time, but once you were there each additional fact cost less due to curation. In fact, the traditional library seems close to optimal for encouraging consumption of facts in volume (modulo institutional/cultural biases like the winners writing history). Furthermore, while being able to look up a fact quickly ostensibly reduces the work to obtain that fact, it also discourages one's ability to perform educated guesses, reason from first principles, operate with uncertainty, etc. Intellectual effort/ability isn't zero sum.
- ashark 9y ago
  It never even occurred to me to look up 99% of the useless facts I now can't help but look up on the Internet. The questions slipped out of my mind before they were fully formed, but now I think "who was that one guy in that one show?" and because I know I can find out in 30 seconds or less, I look it up. This ability adds almost no actual value to my life, while taking time. But each individual thing is so quick to find. It's also much easier to get lost trying to find the very best resource(s) for something, wasting time on that rather than digging into what's at hand. Because it's possible to refine one's selection now, it's so tempting to do so, even if a few hours' head start on lesser works would have been a better use of time. The same extends to entertainment. What's lost is peace of mind, focus, serendipity, and contentment. I'm not sure the benefit's really been worth it, for me. Libraries were actually a pretty good solution for finding useful-enough information, fast enough, in most cases. How much would I pay for a mini-OED-style IMDB? TVtropes? Zero dollars, probably. I might not even keep them around if I received them for free. Not worth the fraction of a cubic foot each takes up. But I've got this Internet connection and all these devices anyway, so.... [EDIT] OECD corrected to OED. I've clearly wasted too much time arguing politics on the Internet.

ksk 9y ago

While I agree with all that is said here, I feel like its far more easier to observe existing systems and explain them, than to prescribe a solution that is practical and workable.

s17n 9y ago

The internet has definitely killed the profitability of distributing facts, if it ever existed. The rest of the tweets about "signaling goods" are the type of hogwash you end up with when you confuse Ted talks with actual intellectual activity.

alexandercrohde 9y ago
Oversimplified. Largely, the internet has reduced the profitability of distributing facts because it gives them all away for free (how much can you learn online that you used to have to pay for? encyclopedia, years of video, stanford courses, books, scihub) The problem isn't an absence of facts. It's whether the layperson is both capable and motivated to seek out correct facts vs incorrect facts or unfalsifiable narratives.

ksikka 9y ago

Do FB/GOOG distribute facts? They have some pretty good returns.

SandersAK 9y ago

This idea that "truth" and "facts" was ever a profitable business comes from a very naive place. With the exception of encyclopedias (and even then...), newspapers (owned by robber barons since day one, and then later mega-corps), text books (read "lies my teacher told me") etc have always been about profit. Newspapers historically were not driven by facts but by classified ads and cartoons. TV, even in its golden age, was always about advertisement. And as much as we pine for the days of Walter Cronkite etc, the truth perpetuated in media has always skewed white (fear of the minorities), status quo (fear of a revolution), and capitalist (fear of commies). Tweet storms and pontifications like these are grand standing but devoid of any real grounded perspective. Just because you're 40 now, and realizing that there's a bunch of bad shit that you don't have control over (and maybe even contributed to) doesn't mean that "tech" or "media" has "gone away from truth."

cirgue 9y ago
> With the exception of encyclopedias (and even then...), newspapers (owned by robber barons since day one, and then later mega-corps), text books (read "lies my teacher told me") etc have always been about profit. This is a profoundly naive view of how media works. In the past, advertisers made ad buying decisions based in part on the reputation of the outlet, and circulation of media was dependent on public consensus that something was a reliable source of fact. Tabloids were a niche market that people did not take seriously. Newspapers might make their money on ads and cartoons, but the only reason they were able to command money for their ad space was because people bought and trusted the paper. Now, the profit motive for content creation relies far less on reputation effects. It is possible to make enormous amounts of money even when most people think your content is complete bullshit.
- FilterSweep 9y ago
  > It is possible to make enormous amounts of money even when most people think your content is complete bullshit. most people is far more anecdotal than you might imagine.
- djshgakdfdh 9y ago
  > based in part on the reputation of the outlet The reputation is where the bias lies. Consider the new york times: you probably respect it if you agree with it. If you don’t, it’s crappy narrative journalism. This certainly aligns with the parent comment’s claim that “facts” have never been the forte of any media; they simply need to agree with their readers. There’s simply little need to get 100% accuracy when 70% suffices to continue subscriptions. Also, note that you can only see the issues in reporting if you’re closer to the story than the reporter is.

dandare 9y ago

tl;dr - Twitter is not the medium for essays

tbirrell 9y ago
This is not the actual tl;dr

0xbear 9y ago

The press has never been about distributing facts. It’s mostly about manufacturing consent, with small, and quickly corrected deviations from its main purpose.

peterwwillis 9y ago

A gentle reminder that society's decay will continue without your quiet protest of it.

colinmegill 9y ago

Make it stop

dmitrygr 9y ago

> Want to escape? Avoid Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat. Avoid venues and media built around group signaling and conspicuous consumption. Said a guy...on Twitter...

barrkel 9y ago

Newspapers haven't been about facts in decades. Newspapers are vehicles for opinion on yesterday's news, not facts. But, the point still stands if you replace "fact" with "opinion".

mjburgess 9y ago

This is a massive signally piece from the Hacker News socially-naive cynicism clique peddling its myths about how society works. Half-baked unempirical soap-boxing with your Headline Hits from "College Campuses Arent What They Used to Be" to Oh! Think of the Children! and the New York Times Best Seller: "STOP LABELLING YOURSELF PEOPLE!?!?!" Ugh. It's a parody of itself. If you want to make this point then you need to do so by presenting an actual analysis of social dynamics on the internet, their changes, and so on. Not this pseudo-intellectual apocalypticism that was once phoned-in to broadsheet Op-Eds and now fills 20 tweets.