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> (1) The availability of digital streaming increases the political 'temperature'. I see points like this made a lot, and it seems to fail to my mind for Occam

> (1) The availability of digital streaming increases the political 'temperature'. I see points like this made a lot, and it seems to fail to my mind for Occam's razor reasons. Media makes a difference at the margins, sure, but clearly the reason for the higher "temperature" is the more extreme rhetoric from our leaders. Trump led his followers into the pit of a Big Lie about evil people stealing an election, and much of the republican party and its media ecosystem followed him there. (And this was just the final expression of a rhetorical style and relationship with the truth that he had applied through the whole administration.) Why can't that be the primary reason for the high "temperature" and not some abstract idea about media? If we want people to behave like grownups we need to put grownups in charge, basically. If you tell people that the presidency is being stolen they're going to try to steal it back.

mistermann 6y ago
> If we want people to behave like grownups we need to put grownups in charge, basically. This seems to be a very popular idea, I hear it recommended quite regularly. But what does it really mean? The word "grownup" in this context, if we were to unpack that into extremely high dimensionality (attributes, behaviors, etc), what would that look like? And, would the description have no objective flaws?
- newacct583 6y ago
  In this case, it "really means" picking candidates who will not lie to their supporters and inspire a violent uprising against congress in an attempt to stay in office. I'm not proposing a rigorous test here which all candidates must pass. I'm pointing out that attempts to finger "digital media" as the root cause of the problem are flawed, and the much simpler reason (albeit less palatable to half the electorate) is simply that we failed to choose a grownup for a leader.
  - mistermann 6y ago
    > In this case, it "really means" picking candidates who will not lie to their supporters and inspire a violent uprising against congress in an attempt to stay in office. Donald Trump passed this rather modest standard prior to this event at the Capitol, did he not? Or if that's too logically rigorous for you: do you think it is generally quite true that people "behaved like grownups" prior to Donald Trump's presidency? > I'm not proposing a rigorous test here which all candidates must pass. Fair enough. But I often wonder: might thinking in such terms provide some value? Let's say that just for fun, us brainiacs here at HN decided to start some sort of an open source collaborative effort where we would crowd source the consideration and documentation of things like a rigorous, highly-dimensional test upon which political candidates could be scored, the scoring of which would be backed up by citations, and all of this would then add to the collective information in our memeplex ecosystem. The author touches upon this general notion: > Last summer I argued that, in the context of information superabundance, the Database now precedes the Narrative. Digitization has made possible the dissemination and storage of information at unprecedented scale and speed. To the degree that your view of the world is mediated by digitized information, to that same degree your encounter with the world will be more like an encounter with a Database of unfathomable size than with a coherent narrative of what has happened. The freedom, if we wish to call it that, of confronting the world in this way also implies the possibility that any two people will make their way through the Database along wildly divergent paths. Do you think such an initiative could possibly provide at least some value to overall humanity? > I'm pointing out that attempts to finger "digital media" as the root cause of the problem are flawed, and the much simpler reason (albeit less palatable to half the electorate) is simply that we failed to choose a grownup for a leader. At the risk of coming off as "snarky"....does something not seem even a little bit "off" when you write such things? The "offness" I refer to is the excessive simplicity and incorrectness, and the corresponding irony. a) I've noted my take on the excessive simplicity and incorrectness of your "grownup" heuristic above. b) "attempts to finger "digital media" as the root cause of the problem are flawed" - does the author actually make the claim that digital media is "the(!) root cause"? By my reading, they went to some lengths to establish that they were not thinking in these terms: >> It’s hard to know where to begin, of course; the situation has many interlocking layers. The most notable and disturbing elements have been well covered, and we continue to learn more about the event each day. The picture, it seems, only grows darker. For my part, I’ve been especially interested in thinking through the role of digital media in these events and what it portends for the future. Here, then, are a few reflections for your consideration along those lines. >> In light of the complexity and gravity of the situation, which transpired just days ago (although it may already seem like weeks), I feel obliged to stress that this is a tentative exercise in thinking out loud. I’ll begin with a few comments about the labels and categories we use to think about digital media before turning to a more direct analysis of last week’s events and what they reveal about our media environment. More than is usually the case, the following discussion lacks a tight, well-ordered structure, so I’ve supplied the numbering to provide some sense of how my thoughts were grouped together. Think of what follows not so much as an argument but as a series of interlocking perspectives on the same phenomenon. - you criticize flaws in the author's thinking/ideas, while seeming to have little regard or awareness of the flaws in your own. A constant theme that I perceive in internet discussions on these sorts of topics (the Capitol incident is just the latest example) is the large quantities of supreme confidence and certainty that people ~project when writing, and the near total absence of concern for precise, pedantic, objective correctness. Now, one might just write this off as "excess pedantry", or people "speaking casually" - however, if one is to engage with such people, rare will the person be willing and able to "up their game" to a standard where they can and do exert effort to speaking correctly, or even acknowledge the simplest of indisputable first-principle truths. I find these conversations particularly interesting on HN, due to the plentiful evidence that not only are HN folks capable of such precision and attention to detail, but that they often insist upon it - however, this only seems to occur when the discussion is regarding determinate domains, like programming or various other more technical topics. When the discussion is regarding indeterminate domains (generally, "culture war" topics), something very interesting seems to happen: this "precision and attention to detail" that can be observed in discussions of determinate domains seems to vanish, and is replaced by an insistence to discuss matters with imprecision (or, precision but not comprehensiveness), and rejections of attention to detail. Furthermore, if one is to then draw attention to this curious abstract behavior of human beings, the passion and interest in the conversation that existed just moments before, seems to vanish into thin air. And, this seems to be a fairly easily reproducible pattern, perhaps suggesting that it is derives from something fundamental/omnipresent. I have a very strong intuition that this "paradoxical" behavior, which can be observed (but perhaps not easily, in more ways than one) is pointing to something extremely important, but unseen. I think another commenter in this thread might be on to the general path of the solution: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25802246 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25802246 > Fascinating points. > I hope people will also put this in the broader context of human psychology. > Check out this book: The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion by Jonathan Haidt. To me, it is utterly clear as day that the Capitol incident, and all incidents of this type, are fundamentally matters of human psychology/neurology. I am so certain of this that I will even include a bold and confident claim: Human psychology/neurology is the(!) root case of all these problems, and as long as we "refuse(!)" to address them from that perspective, humanity will be plagued with such problems indefinitely. Or in a more artistic form: We have met the enemy, and he is us.
dredmorbius 6y ago
it seems to fail to my mind But historically there is ample evidence that changes in media and communications have profound effects on societies. This is the premise of Elizabeth Eisenstein's The Printing Press as an Agent of Change (https://www.worldcat.org/title/printing-press-as-an-agent-of-change-communications-and-cultural-transformations-in-early-modern-europe-volumes-i-and-ii/oclc/838139921 https://www.worldcat.org/title/printing-press-as-an-agent-of...), much of Hanna Arendt's work, that of the Frankfurt School. Changes in writing, mathematics, printing, accounting, distribution and computation have had profound effects, often directly tied to periods of conflict: the Reformation, revolutions of 1776--1848 (widespread literacy), the Boer, Spanish-America, and First World wars (yellow journalism), the Second World War and cold wars of Jim Crow, the Red Scare, McCarthyism, and Father Coughlan, as well as the more recent Rwandan civil war (radio and audio recording, playback, and amplification). Television, Internet, social media, and adtech delivered the "Twitter Revolutions" --- fine when they were in Egypt, Tunisia, and Ukraine, less so in Washington, DC. The Big Lie cannot exist without mass media.
- newacct583 6y ago
  True enough, but the notion of the "Big Lie" itself, and the archetype for which it was named, were driven by the age of radio. The idea that social media is uniquely to blame here seems laughable to me.
  - dredmorbius 6y ago
    The operational concept here is not the specific technology, but the relationship of that technology to others of its time. Radio was the most engaging and direct medium of its age. Paired with magnetic tape recording, a speech or address could be simultaneously broadcast through multiple stations simmultaneously to an entire country (of at least European scale) at high fidelity on a few hours' notice. The allies marvelled at this ability, as their own capabilities were either restricted to single-studio live broadcasts, or vastly lower-fidelity recordings on wire or shellac disks. Mobile-device-delivered, datacentre adtech-targeted, computational propaganda social media are now, as was radio in 1935, the pinacle of mass media. And similarly destructive.

mistermann 6y ago

> If we want people to behave like grownups we need to put grownups in charge, basically. This seems to be a very popular idea, I hear it recommended quite regularly. But what does it really mean? The word "grownup" in this context, if we were to unpack that into extremely high dimensionality (attributes, behaviors, etc), what would that look like? And, would the description have no objective flaws?

newacct583 6y ago
In this case, it "really means" picking candidates who will not lie to their supporters and inspire a violent uprising against congress in an attempt to stay in office. I'm not proposing a rigorous test here which all candidates must pass. I'm pointing out that attempts to finger "digital media" as the root cause of the problem are flawed, and the much simpler reason (albeit less palatable to half the electorate) is simply that we failed to choose a grownup for a leader.
- mistermann 6y ago
  > In this case, it "really means" picking candidates who will not lie to their supporters and inspire a violent uprising against congress in an attempt to stay in office. Donald Trump passed this rather modest standard prior to this event at the Capitol, did he not? Or if that's too logically rigorous for you: do you think it is generally quite true that people "behaved like grownups" prior to Donald Trump's presidency? > I'm not proposing a rigorous test here which all candidates must pass. Fair enough. But I often wonder: might thinking in such terms provide some value? Let's say that just for fun, us brainiacs here at HN decided to start some sort of an open source collaborative effort where we would crowd source the consideration and documentation of things like a rigorous, highly-dimensional test upon which political candidates could be scored, the scoring of which would be backed up by citations, and all of this would then add to the collective information in our memeplex ecosystem. The author touches upon this general notion: > Last summer I argued that, in the context of information superabundance, the Database now precedes the Narrative. Digitization has made possible the dissemination and storage of information at unprecedented scale and speed. To the degree that your view of the world is mediated by digitized information, to that same degree your encounter with the world will be more like an encounter with a Database of unfathomable size than with a coherent narrative of what has happened. The freedom, if we wish to call it that, of confronting the world in this way also implies the possibility that any two people will make their way through the Database along wildly divergent paths. Do you think such an initiative could possibly provide at least some value to overall humanity? > I'm pointing out that attempts to finger "digital media" as the root cause of the problem are flawed, and the much simpler reason (albeit less palatable to half the electorate) is simply that we failed to choose a grownup for a leader. At the risk of coming off as "snarky"....does something not seem even a little bit "off" when you write such things? The "offness" I refer to is the excessive simplicity and incorrectness, and the corresponding irony. a) I've noted my take on the excessive simplicity and incorrectness of your "grownup" heuristic above. b) "attempts to finger "digital media" as the root cause of the problem are flawed" - does the author actually make the claim that digital media is "the(!) root cause"? By my reading, they went to some lengths to establish that they were not thinking in these terms: >> It’s hard to know where to begin, of course; the situation has many interlocking layers. The most notable and disturbing elements have been well covered, and we continue to learn more about the event each day. The picture, it seems, only grows darker. For my part, I’ve been especially interested in thinking through the role of digital media in these events and what it portends for the future. Here, then, are a few reflections for your consideration along those lines. >> In light of the complexity and gravity of the situation, which transpired just days ago (although it may already seem like weeks), I feel obliged to stress that this is a tentative exercise in thinking out loud. I’ll begin with a few comments about the labels and categories we use to think about digital media before turning to a more direct analysis of last week’s events and what they reveal about our media environment. More than is usually the case, the following discussion lacks a tight, well-ordered structure, so I’ve supplied the numbering to provide some sense of how my thoughts were grouped together. Think of what follows not so much as an argument but as a series of interlocking perspectives on the same phenomenon. - you criticize flaws in the author's thinking/ideas, while seeming to have little regard or awareness of the flaws in your own. A constant theme that I perceive in internet discussions on these sorts of topics (the Capitol incident is just the latest example) is the large quantities of supreme confidence and certainty that people ~project when writing, and the near total absence of concern for precise, pedantic, objective correctness. Now, one might just write this off as "excess pedantry", or people "speaking casually" - however, if one is to engage with such people, rare will the person be willing and able to "up their game" to a standard where they can and do exert effort to speaking correctly, or even acknowledge the simplest of indisputable first-principle truths. I find these conversations particularly interesting on HN, due to the plentiful evidence that not only are HN folks capable of such precision and attention to detail, but that they often insist upon it - however, this only seems to occur when the discussion is regarding determinate domains, like programming or various other more technical topics. When the discussion is regarding indeterminate domains (generally, "culture war" topics), something very interesting seems to happen: this "precision and attention to detail" that can be observed in discussions of determinate domains seems to vanish, and is replaced by an insistence to discuss matters with imprecision (or, precision but not comprehensiveness), and rejections of attention to detail. Furthermore, if one is to then draw attention to this curious abstract behavior of human beings, the passion and interest in the conversation that existed just moments before, seems to vanish into thin air. And, this seems to be a fairly easily reproducible pattern, perhaps suggesting that it is derives from something fundamental/omnipresent. I have a very strong intuition that this "paradoxical" behavior, which can be observed (but perhaps not easily, in more ways than one) is pointing to something extremely important, but unseen. I think another commenter in this thread might be on to the general path of the solution: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25802246 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25802246 > Fascinating points. > I hope people will also put this in the broader context of human psychology. > Check out this book: The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion by Jonathan Haidt. To me, it is utterly clear as day that the Capitol incident, and all incidents of this type, are fundamentally matters of human psychology/neurology. I am so certain of this that I will even include a bold and confident claim: Human psychology/neurology is the(!) root case of all these problems, and as long as we "refuse(!)" to address them from that perspective, humanity will be plagued with such problems indefinitely. Or in a more artistic form: We have met the enemy, and he is us.

dredmorbius 6y ago

it seems to fail to my mind But historically there is ample evidence that changes in media and communications have profound effects on societies. This is the premise of Elizabeth Eisenstein's The Printing Press as an Agent of Change (https://www.worldcat.org/title/printing-press-as-an-agent-of-change-communications-and-cultural-transformations-in-early-modern-europe-volumes-i-and-ii/oclc/838139921 https://www.worldcat.org/title/printing-press-as-an-agent-of...), much of Hanna Arendt's work, that of the Frankfurt School. Changes in writing, mathematics, printing, accounting, distribution and computation have had profound effects, often directly tied to periods of conflict: the Reformation, revolutions of 1776--1848 (widespread literacy), the Boer, Spanish-America, and First World wars (yellow journalism), the Second World War and cold wars of Jim Crow, the Red Scare, McCarthyism, and Father Coughlan, as well as the more recent Rwandan civil war (radio and audio recording, playback, and amplification). Television, Internet, social media, and adtech delivered the "Twitter Revolutions" --- fine when they were in Egypt, Tunisia, and Ukraine, less so in Washington, DC. The Big Lie cannot exist without mass media.

newacct583 6y ago
True enough, but the notion of the "Big Lie" itself, and the archetype for which it was named, were driven by the age of radio. The idea that social media is uniquely to blame here seems laughable to me.
- dredmorbius 6y ago
  The operational concept here is not the specific technology, but the relationship of that technology to others of its time. Radio was the most engaging and direct medium of its age. Paired with magnetic tape recording, a speech or address could be simultaneously broadcast through multiple stations simmultaneously to an entire country (of at least European scale) at high fidelity on a few hours' notice. The allies marvelled at this ability, as their own capabilities were either restricted to single-studio live broadcasts, or vastly lower-fidelity recordings on wire or shellac disks. Mobile-device-delivered, datacentre adtech-targeted, computational propaganda social media are now, as was radio in 1935, the pinacle of mass media. And similarly destructive.