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Taleb wrote a book called "Anti-fragile," which comments on three kinds of systems: * Fragile systems try to avoid disorder, disruption and/or shocks. * Robus
by Digory 6y ago
Taleb wrote a book called "Anti-fragile," which comments on three kinds of systems:
* Fragile systems try to avoid disorder, disruption and/or shocks.
* Robust systems stand up to shocks, but don't change.
* Anti-fragile systems respond to shocks and disruptions to improve, to become stronger or more creative. It's close to the idea of "eustress."
The human body can avoid all exercise and stress, but it becomes sickly and fragile. Ideally, humans regularly seek out more and more stress to grow stronger.
It seems we're in a loop of responding to stressful speech by squelching it and avoiding it -- admittedly, through free choice, and not government action. But, like people trying to get healthy by avoiding exercise, we're getting sick in our silos.
(The silos, to be fair, aren't stress-free. There is a lot of anger and sadness in them. But shutting out all the unwelcome voices seems to be making people more fragile in the real world, not less.)
- sjg007 6y agoI am aware of how Taleb defines antifragile... I've read the book. >"What we don't have is a Taleb-like model for anti-fragile speech under new tech." What do you mean here? And how does it relate to "trans" speech in particular?
- Digory 6y agoIt doesn't relate specially to trans speech; KixiQu's comment above observed that fediverse instances seem to moderate out transphobia more than Twitter. Then JL6 asked if fediverse is moderating itself into a silo. I'm saying moderation and exclusion are traditional tools in responding to offensive speech in private fora. But moderation and exclusion can become too good. We've seen right and left choose into bubbles big enough to sway elections with outrageous false claims. The Twitter and AWS response to bad speech generated by free-choice silos is to enforce their own, bigger silencing or moderation policy. I'd like to find ways where people can grow, adapt, and cooperate more when they encounter hostile, offensive, or untrue beliefs or speech online.
- sjg007 6y agoAh I see that you responded to a different thread in this one! That requires someone to read an entire tree of comments instead of the family stack. This branching problem is also the curse of slack btw... I'm not sure anyone has solved the context dependency problem especially well except maybe with hyperlinks.. :) Anyway... I see a similar outcome in both the fediverse and the conglomerate with respect to consensus. In one aspect you have downvotes and in the other you have downvotes. The ties that bind are friends maintaining connections and then, well interests. I'm not sure how antifragility fits in here or if it is relevant and what it actually means in this context. Do you mean "the body politic"? It's an interesting hypothesis but I don't see an evidence for it. The bigger question is the "tyranny of the majority", "the tyranny of the minority" and "the loudest voice and the squeaky wheel of appeasing". To jump to a sibling thread, the fediverse does solve the authoritarian problem which seems to be a good thing which was analogous to the decentralized internet. In the fediverse Trump tweets would still exist.. but would they have the same impact? Anyway, lots of PhDs will be written on this subject. If you are so inspired cite this comment one day and all of my HN posts will have been worth it!
- x86_64Ubuntu 6y agoSo in your "fragile" framework, black Americans should routinely deal with Jim Crow supporters on the basis of should their humanity be acknowledged? It seems like, true to HN form, that people are trying to make new buzzwords to describe systems that we've already seen in a bid to concern-troll certain viewpoints back into the discussion.