8 ms·

Someone with a phone camera just happened to record a video of the ideal case: a police officer obviously murdering a black man. It's brutal and pointless, with

by api 6y ago

Someone with a phone camera just happened to record a video of the ideal case: a police officer obviously murdering a black man. It's brutal and pointless, with racism being the most obvious and likely explanation. The thesis of this article has a lot of validity though. There is an escalating "PAY ATTENTION TO ME!!!" arms race that has no interest whatsoever in solving problems, only in getting attention.

afarrell 6y ago
Do you ever worry that we are building Superhuman Artificial Intelligences with the goal of maximizing the amount of attention paid to advertisements? I'm concerned that they might accidentally either turn the world into paperclips or turn journalists into maximally conflict-driven-story finders.
- NateEag 6y ago
  The AI can't do that to journalists, because journalists have already done that to themselves.
  - paulie_a 6y ago
    While I don't know of I would call it journalism, computer generated articles are becoming increasingly prevelant
  - ethbro 6y ago
    There have been good and bad journalists since the beginning of journalism.
    - marcus_holmes 6y ago
      This is not about good/bad journalism. A great journalist will turn in a fantastic story, get it approved and even on the front page, only to have it get few clicks because it can't compete for attention with the sensationalist crap. This is about how humans first discovered that, given an infinite amount of reading material, we choose to read things that give us an emotional reaction. Any emotional reaction.
  - afarrell 6y ago
    Who pays journalists? Companies that depend on ad revenue. Individuals have agency. A set of persons responds to incentives.
- paulie_a 6y ago
  On the flip side we are training humanity to be less susceptible to advertising. Hence the increase in noise as humans naturally and unknowingly filter it out.
  - thinkingemote 6y ago
    We really are not training humanity to resist advertising at all. If anything its quite the opposite and at the very least no change from before. We should try individually and we might get some success. We might try at a societal level but I have not see this occuring (apart from things like bans for things like cigarettes or products aimed at children). There's no fundamental human change occuring. Additionally the vast majority of HN users are dependent on advertising. Advertisments are core to the western life. It's deep in our psychology, and requires more than just an ad blocker.
    - neutronicus 6y ago
      Yeah, if anything, we're training people to aspire to be living advertisements, since the reward for success on Instagram is luxury brands subsidizing your lifestyle in-kind and perhaps even in money.
    - paulie_a 6y ago
      Is advertising in the 50s more or less successful than now? I do not know the answer but I am curious. Does the more in your face advertising actually make a difference or is the bar simply raised?
- tenuousemphasis 6y ago
  I don't know about superhuman AI, but that system already exists and it's called capitalism.
- BenoitEssiambre 6y ago
  Scott Alexander has a (Halloween) short story sort of about that: https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/10/30/sort-by-controversial/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/10/30/sort-by-controversial/
makomk 6y ago
As far as I can tell, someone actually happened to record a video of a slightly different ideal case: it was obviously a police officer murdering a black man when carefully framed and portrayed that way, the most clear, vivid, brutal and unambigious demonstration of police racism and brutality - but only for people who already believed this. Basically, a cross between what this blog post describes and a maximum-strength scissor statement [1] The most vivid demonstration of this is that one phrase: "I can't breathe". It really is the most vivid image of racist police murder imaginable: a white officer kneeling on a black man's neck, slowly cutting off his air as he begs for mercy. It's appeared again and again in protests and news coverage worldwide. There's only one slight complication: Floyd started repeating that he "couldn't breathe" before he was down on the ground at all https://www.fox9.com/news/transcript-of-officers-body-camera-shows-george-floyd-told-officers-i-cant-breathe-before-being-restrained https://www.fox9.com/news/transcript-of-officers-body-camera... All of a sudden, things get a lot more fuzzy in terms of cause and effect and what the officers should've realized, and naturally one idelogical side has been claiming it debunks the whole thing whilst the other is using a different framing to claim this shows the police were even more depraved cold-hearted murderers than previously thought: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jul/08/george-floyd-police-killing-transcript-i-cant-breathe https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jul/08/george-floyd... It's almost the perfect scissor. Even if it had been the most clear-cut case imaginable, one of the first things that happened was to turn it into something divisive and effective for signalling by - for instance - demanding charges against the other officers present that seem extremely hard to justify legally speaking, and calling for Minneapolis to burn until that happened. There is no escape from the process described in this blog post. [1] https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/10/30/sort-by-controversial/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/10/30/sort-by-controversial/
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- polytely 6y ago
  Kneeling on someone's neck for 9 minutes is inexcusable no matter what was said. In my opinion the most important aspect of the murder of George Floyd is the other cops who stood by and watched while their colleague committed murder. That was the thing that directly contradicted the prevailing 'it's just a few bad apples' narrative among the general populace, because it showed as clear as day that if a 'bad apple' feels like murdering you, their supposedly good colleagues will do nothing to stop it. The apathy to the suffering is staggering.
thinkingemote 6y ago
The reason why this case fits in with the cases as described in the article is because it also an ambiguous case but it's also a good example because those on both sides hold concrete views about it. We must be cautious when we notice ourselves saying "the outgroup is bigoted"
marcus_holmes 6y ago
That "pay attention to me" screaming is because of the advertising business model. I'm not saying it wouldn't happen without advertising. But advertising forces otherwise rational people (e.g. newspaper editors) to do ridiculous things to compete for attention, because attention is money. And because there are more people screaming for attention, everyone has to scream louder. ...While the people who are supposed to be paying attention find it abhorrent and start deleting their social media accounts and finding ways of paying less attention. ...So the people who need the attention to pay their salaries have to scream louder. And so it goes around and around, while cities burn and lives are ruined because (as TFA says) nothing gets attention like a controversy that splits the audience into two halves.
- specialist 6y ago
  Agree that advertising business model is the root cause. This complaint predates social media. What are the force multipliers? What makes this new medium different? My provisional list is: targeting, algorithmic recommenders, bots, anonymity, gamification. Those are things we can fix, mitigate.
stronglikedan 6y ago
> with racism being the most obvious and likely explanation Is it though? Even after all this time, I've yet to hear how racism had anything to do with the incident, other than rampant speculation. Tragic? Yes. Brutal? Yes. Murder? Yes. Racism? How?
- hairofadog 6y ago
  I can't speak to what the parent commenter thinks, but I think it's less the idea that these specific police were racist (maybe they were, maybe they weren't) than it is systemic, institutional racism. Black people are statistically way more likely to be killed by police, and police appear to be largely immune from consequences when they misbehave even egregiously as in this case, the Breonna Taylor case, or many many others. While these killings were obviously tragic and unnecessary, nonchalant acceptance of police brutality and abuse of power remains at the core of the problem that needs to be solved.

by api 6y ago

afarrell 6y ago

Do you ever worry that we are building Superhuman Artificial Intelligences with the goal of maximizing the amount of attention paid to advertisements? I'm concerned that they might accidentally either turn the world into paperclips or turn journalists into maximally conflict-driven-story finders.

NateEag 6y ago
The AI can't do that to journalists, because journalists have already done that to themselves.
- paulie_a 6y ago
  While I don't know of I would call it journalism, computer generated articles are becoming increasingly prevelant
- ethbro 6y ago
  There have been good and bad journalists since the beginning of journalism.
  - marcus_holmes 6y ago
    This is not about good/bad journalism. A great journalist will turn in a fantastic story, get it approved and even on the front page, only to have it get few clicks because it can't compete for attention with the sensationalist crap. This is about how humans first discovered that, given an infinite amount of reading material, we choose to read things that give us an emotional reaction. Any emotional reaction.
- afarrell 6y ago
  Who pays journalists? Companies that depend on ad revenue. Individuals have agency. A set of persons responds to incentives.
paulie_a 6y ago
On the flip side we are training humanity to be less susceptible to advertising. Hence the increase in noise as humans naturally and unknowingly filter it out.
- thinkingemote 6y ago
  We really are not training humanity to resist advertising at all. If anything its quite the opposite and at the very least no change from before. We should try individually and we might get some success. We might try at a societal level but I have not see this occuring (apart from things like bans for things like cigarettes or products aimed at children). There's no fundamental human change occuring. Additionally the vast majority of HN users are dependent on advertising. Advertisments are core to the western life. It's deep in our psychology, and requires more than just an ad blocker.
  - neutronicus 6y ago
    Yeah, if anything, we're training people to aspire to be living advertisements, since the reward for success on Instagram is luxury brands subsidizing your lifestyle in-kind and perhaps even in money.
  - paulie_a 6y ago
    Is advertising in the 50s more or less successful than now? I do not know the answer but I am curious. Does the more in your face advertising actually make a difference or is the bar simply raised?
tenuousemphasis 6y ago
I don't know about superhuman AI, but that system already exists and it's called capitalism.
BenoitEssiambre 6y ago
Scott Alexander has a (Halloween) short story sort of about that: https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/10/30/sort-by-controversial/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/10/30/sort-by-controversial/

makomk 6y ago

As far as I can tell, someone actually happened to record a video of a slightly different ideal case: it was obviously a police officer murdering a black man when carefully framed and portrayed that way, the most clear, vivid, brutal and unambigious demonstration of police racism and brutality - but only for people who already believed this. Basically, a cross between what this blog post describes and a maximum-strength scissor statement [1] The most vivid demonstration of this is that one phrase: "I can't breathe". It really is the most vivid image of racist police murder imaginable: a white officer kneeling on a black man's neck, slowly cutting off his air as he begs for mercy. It's appeared again and again in protests and news coverage worldwide. There's only one slight complication: Floyd started repeating that he "couldn't breathe" before he was down on the ground at all https://www.fox9.com/news/transcript-of-officers-body-camera-shows-george-floyd-told-officers-i-cant-breathe-before-being-restrained https://www.fox9.com/news/transcript-of-officers-body-camera... All of a sudden, things get a lot more fuzzy in terms of cause and effect and what the officers should've realized, and naturally one idelogical side has been claiming it debunks the whole thing whilst the other is using a different framing to claim this shows the police were even more depraved cold-hearted murderers than previously thought: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jul/08/george-floyd-police-killing-transcript-i-cant-breathe https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jul/08/george-floyd... It's almost the perfect scissor. Even if it had been the most clear-cut case imaginable, one of the first things that happened was to turn it into something divisive and effective for signalling by - for instance - demanding charges against the other officers present that seem extremely hard to justify legally speaking, and calling for Minneapolis to burn until that happened. There is no escape from the process described in this blog post. [1] https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/10/30/sort-by-controversial/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/10/30/sort-by-controversial/

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
polytely 6y ago
Kneeling on someone's neck for 9 minutes is inexcusable no matter what was said. In my opinion the most important aspect of the murder of George Floyd is the other cops who stood by and watched while their colleague committed murder. That was the thing that directly contradicted the prevailing 'it's just a few bad apples' narrative among the general populace, because it showed as clear as day that if a 'bad apple' feels like murdering you, their supposedly good colleagues will do nothing to stop it. The apathy to the suffering is staggering.

thinkingemote 6y ago

The reason why this case fits in with the cases as described in the article is because it also an ambiguous case but it's also a good example because those on both sides hold concrete views about it. We must be cautious when we notice ourselves saying "the outgroup is bigoted"

marcus_holmes 6y ago

That "pay attention to me" screaming is because of the advertising business model. I'm not saying it wouldn't happen without advertising. But advertising forces otherwise rational people (e.g. newspaper editors) to do ridiculous things to compete for attention, because attention is money. And because there are more people screaming for attention, everyone has to scream louder. ...While the people who are supposed to be paying attention find it abhorrent and start deleting their social media accounts and finding ways of paying less attention. ...So the people who need the attention to pay their salaries have to scream louder. And so it goes around and around, while cities burn and lives are ruined because (as TFA says) nothing gets attention like a controversy that splits the audience into two halves.

specialist 6y ago
Agree that advertising business model is the root cause. This complaint predates social media. What are the force multipliers? What makes this new medium different? My provisional list is: targeting, algorithmic recommenders, bots, anonymity, gamification. Those are things we can fix, mitigate.

stronglikedan 6y ago

> with racism being the most obvious and likely explanation Is it though? Even after all this time, I've yet to hear how racism had anything to do with the incident, other than rampant speculation. Tragic? Yes. Brutal? Yes. Murder? Yes. Racism? How?

hairofadog 6y ago
I can't speak to what the parent commenter thinks, but I think it's less the idea that these specific police were racist (maybe they were, maybe they weren't) than it is systemic, institutional racism. Black people are statistically way more likely to be killed by police, and police appear to be largely immune from consequences when they misbehave even egregiously as in this case, the Breonna Taylor case, or many many others. While these killings were obviously tragic and unnecessary, nonchalant acceptance of police brutality and abuse of power remains at the core of the problem that needs to be solved.