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I like that people write about this kind of things, as it shows they care about the direction they are walking towards. The essay is more an exposition of uncer
by slx26 6y ago
I like that people write about this kind of things, as it shows they care about the direction they are walking towards. The essay is more an exposition of uncertainty and personal preference than actual arguments, but it's a good start to get more people talking about it. So let's do that.
I'd like to focus on one point: when you have millions of people interconnected, even "radical" ideas can find a place and resonate with others, and even become amplified. Gwern's "the melancholy of subculture society" [0] might be a good introduction to the topic. This is not inherently good or bad. We might be afraid of nazis of whatever, but the same dynamics also benefit oppressed groups and minorities for whom anonymity and this opportunity to connect with other people in similar situations is highly beneficial. I recently watched a video where Diana Fleischman presented this argument in favor of anonymity: without it, there might be no escape from certain totalitarian and manipulative regimes. Now, you might pick a side if you want. The truth is that we see examples of both in today's world. You might say that education could help with extremist views, so we shouldn't give up on decentralized, anonymous, uncensorable networks. You might say the same about totalitarian regimes or centralized monopolistic powers.
From a practical perspective, I think a good start is to acknowledge that decentralized and uncensorable networks already have good proofs of concept, and that in the future they will indeed become accessible to everyone. The question is not whether they will become mainstream or not, but what are the challenges we have to prepare ourselves for in case they do become mainstream. And to do that we need a deeper understanding of the dynamics of these small groups, and, in general, of online interaction. And again, this is already happening, even if decentralized networks could make this even more common. So I think the best path forward is to start educating people on the "dark sides" of online interaction: how the lack of eye contact and physical presence allows you to express yourself with less consideration of others (they can't punch you back even if you are rude), how echo chambers work, how extremist views are amplificated online because it's almost the only medium where they can expand through (and how that's not an accurate reflection of the average perspective on a topic), how conversation is highly decontextualized, how addiction, FOMO and infinite scroll impair our attention and might even induce a feeling or sense of detemporalization in our lives, etc. Summarizing, how online conditioning makes us act as different creatures than in real life, and the need to be able to tell those creatures appart, both in others and ourselves. Of course, real life has its own share of conditioning too. What's even the real you. Have fun.
[0] https://www.gwern.net/The-Melancholy-of-Subculture-Society https://www.gwern.net/The-Melancholy-of-Subculture-Society
- rablackburn 6y agoNow this is the kind of comment I was hoping to find in this thread. I'd like to highlight what I think is one of the more insidious "challenges we have to prepare ourselves for": bad-faith communicators. I have faith in the ability of people to have a meaningful discussion given that all participants are taking part in "good faith". That is, I am trying to convey an honestly held idea or question using language to you, and you are trying to parse that communication in a manner to grasp my intended meaning. This is the hard problem in all communication as language is inexact and none of us perfect. But if we all buy in to this system, it's amazing at how well it works at building consensus and fostering useful debate. This good faith buy-in lies at the heart of functional democracy. We all know that it's harder to communicate over the web. As OP mentioned, lack of eye contact and physical presence reduces the available bandwidth we have to get our point across. But the fact that we can talk to so many more people than before seems to make up for the deficiencies. But we're seeing more and more bad-faith actors abusing this system. They don't want to explain a point so that it can be discussed and debated. They want to implant a thought or idea in an audience in order to alter behaviour in a way that benefits them. We're seeing nation states conducting manipulative campaigns against their rivals' (or their own) population. If you're a democratic nation this kind of campaign is tantamount to an attack against you (it's degrading your nation's capability to make the best decisions it can, doing real harm). But even if you're not a democracy, having a foreign nation convince your population something like COVID isn't real causes real-world harm to you. Combined with our highly connected social media networks these attacks are growing increasingly effective. How does anyone fight this? I'm somewhat cynical that education will turn out to be the solution. Is there really any way to train a population to spot and negate bad-faith communication with such proficiency that these attacks are nullified? When nations start hitting each other hard enough to do real damage, but not enough to unilaterally wipe each other out, my bet is that they're going to fall back to the historical solution for balancing power: demarcating zones of control, ie "borders". ...and this is why, despite sharing the same concerns as the author of the article, I think I still come down on supporting the decentralized web. We're in a unique point of human history where we can communicate irrespective of borders, and I would hate to lose that capability because of hordes of trolls. Maybe if we just keep the UX real shit we can avoid another eternal September? (only half joking)