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> now, everyone has a voice, even if they shouldn't Can you elaborate on this? I mean the part that someone shouldn't have a voice. By what mechanism should we

> now, everyone has a voice, even if they shouldn't Can you elaborate on this? I mean the part that someone shouldn't have a voice. By what mechanism should we take or deny someone a voice? Perhaps you meant it as nothing more than a casual remark, in a "I just wish the world was somehow magically different" way. But I think it's really important to think about what actual mechanisms are we desiring be implemented in that world, and what such a world would look like.

kuzimoto 8y ago
Not OP so I can only speculate, but perhaps something like in order to get content online you had to either have the ability and know-how to run a website yourself, or work for an organization like newspaper, journal, etc. I think traditionally, news organisations are able to output higher quality of information backed by research, reputable sources, etc. Today anyone can post any random thought on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc and have that viewed and shared anywhere from dozens to millions of times regardless of how accurate, insightful, truthful it really is. Now the onus is more on the reader to double-check and verify what they are reading since there is simply so much garbage. Certainly there are benefits as well, where people who have something important to share can do so easily, unfortunately I think it's easy to be drowned out by all the noise. It's certainly hard to argue that you should take away any "one" voice as that would be unconstitutional, but maybe there should be better ways of filtering information for each individual so they don't have to see stuff they don't want to.
- balfirevic 8y ago
  > It's certainly hard to argue that you should take away any "one" voice as that would be unconstitutional, but maybe there should be better ways of filtering information for each individual so they don't have to see stuff they don't want to. Yeah, I think it's hopeless (at best) or totalitarian (at worst) to try to stop people from putting stuff online. You mention that the filter used to exist before (such as working for news organization or being able to run a website), but that's an unstable state of affairs - as soon as someone creates Twitter you have to either accept it's existence or take it down. So only possible way to improve things is to create tools and know-how on information consumer side - filtering tools, easy way to check references and a habit to actually do it, good discussion platforms, etc. Anything else is a cure far worse than disease.
  - AstralStorm 8y ago
    The thing is, how do you prevent stagnation? People equate good platforms to ones where they have a degree of control, which results in atomic communities. Self reinforcing if you let them.
    - balfirevic 8y ago
      When you say atomic communities, do you mean something like echo chambers? Yeah, it happens. It's OK for it to happen to some degree - there needs to be some amount of shared common understanding between participants to have a useful discussion [0]. But if common ground is only thing that's left, you have an echo chamber. How to dial this in? I have no idea. HN seems to do this better than most, although some topics fare better than others. [0] - https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/HLqWn5LASfhhArZ7w/expecting-short-inferential-distances https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/HLqWn5LASfhhArZ7w/expecting-...
- hopler 8y ago
  "has IT skills" is a terrible proxy for "has ideas worth spreading".
  - kuzimoto 8y ago
    I don't disagree, and I never meant to imply that was the case.
tomc1985 8y ago
Then we are in disagreement. For every worthy, previously unvoiced opinion, there are five more that would not spread beyond a room full of kooks had the internet (Twitter, Facebook) not given then a global platform. You had to work a lot harder to encounter those sorts of fringe; now every idea, good or bad, is shoved in our faces regardless of its merit. Algorithmic curation is doing a terrible job of containing that I'm not mentioning names since I'm sure everyone's list of "ideas that should have stayed dead" is different, but you get the idea. The commonalities amongst that list between different people can form the basis for a metric for which ideas should be rebroadcast and which should be allowed to die To rephrase my point, we are denying ourselves a beneficial natural selection by giving everyone a potentially global voice
- balfirevic 8y ago
  > Then we are in disagreement What disagreement? I did not even make any statements or expressed opinion on whether it's good (whatever that might mean) that everyone has a voice (at least in my reply to you). I simply asked: > By what mechanism should we take or deny someone a voice? Without that we are simply daydreaming about how everything would be better if only things were better. Which is OK, just not very useful if you stop there.

kuzimoto 8y ago

Not OP so I can only speculate, but perhaps something like in order to get content online you had to either have the ability and know-how to run a website yourself, or work for an organization like newspaper, journal, etc. I think traditionally, news organisations are able to output higher quality of information backed by research, reputable sources, etc. Today anyone can post any random thought on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc and have that viewed and shared anywhere from dozens to millions of times regardless of how accurate, insightful, truthful it really is. Now the onus is more on the reader to double-check and verify what they are reading since there is simply so much garbage. Certainly there are benefits as well, where people who have something important to share can do so easily, unfortunately I think it's easy to be drowned out by all the noise. It's certainly hard to argue that you should take away any "one" voice as that would be unconstitutional, but maybe there should be better ways of filtering information for each individual so they don't have to see stuff they don't want to.

balfirevic 8y ago
> It's certainly hard to argue that you should take away any "one" voice as that would be unconstitutional, but maybe there should be better ways of filtering information for each individual so they don't have to see stuff they don't want to. Yeah, I think it's hopeless (at best) or totalitarian (at worst) to try to stop people from putting stuff online. You mention that the filter used to exist before (such as working for news organization or being able to run a website), but that's an unstable state of affairs - as soon as someone creates Twitter you have to either accept it's existence or take it down. So only possible way to improve things is to create tools and know-how on information consumer side - filtering tools, easy way to check references and a habit to actually do it, good discussion platforms, etc. Anything else is a cure far worse than disease.
- AstralStorm 8y ago
  The thing is, how do you prevent stagnation? People equate good platforms to ones where they have a degree of control, which results in atomic communities. Self reinforcing if you let them.
  - balfirevic 8y ago
    When you say atomic communities, do you mean something like echo chambers? Yeah, it happens. It's OK for it to happen to some degree - there needs to be some amount of shared common understanding between participants to have a useful discussion [0]. But if common ground is only thing that's left, you have an echo chamber. How to dial this in? I have no idea. HN seems to do this better than most, although some topics fare better than others. [0] - https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/HLqWn5LASfhhArZ7w/expecting-short-inferential-distances https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/HLqWn5LASfhhArZ7w/expecting-...
hopler 8y ago
"has IT skills" is a terrible proxy for "has ideas worth spreading".
- kuzimoto 8y ago
  I don't disagree, and I never meant to imply that was the case.

tomc1985 8y ago

Then we are in disagreement. For every worthy, previously unvoiced opinion, there are five more that would not spread beyond a room full of kooks had the internet (Twitter, Facebook) not given then a global platform. You had to work a lot harder to encounter those sorts of fringe; now every idea, good or bad, is shoved in our faces regardless of its merit. Algorithmic curation is doing a terrible job of containing that I'm not mentioning names since I'm sure everyone's list of "ideas that should have stayed dead" is different, but you get the idea. The commonalities amongst that list between different people can form the basis for a metric for which ideas should be rebroadcast and which should be allowed to die To rephrase my point, we are denying ourselves a beneficial natural selection by giving everyone a potentially global voice

balfirevic 8y ago
> Then we are in disagreement What disagreement? I did not even make any statements or expressed opinion on whether it's good (whatever that might mean) that everyone has a voice (at least in my reply to you). I simply asked: > By what mechanism should we take or deny someone a voice? Without that we are simply daydreaming about how everything would be better if only things were better. Which is OK, just not very useful if you stop there.