4 ms·

There Is No 'Them'

24 points by mellosouls 5y ago

throwaway_2009 5y ago
edit: after reading footnote 2 my comment seems completely superfluous, so meh. There definitely exists a group of people who see the endless pursuit of technology without consideration of its' effect as being the solution to all issues we face in the world.
dusted 5y ago
This is a good and insightful read even if the beginning is a bit terse. It is very easy to fall into the them-fallacy, the less informed you are on a topic, the simpler it seem to you and the more easy it is to think of some group as "them". Many people understand their own group, field or organization well enough that don't apply the "them" mentality, or even the "us" mentality on it, for instance, well-informed citizens of a country wouldn't say "us" or "we" about that whole group, as they know well that _A_LOT_ of people within that country have opposing opinions to their own.
doomrobo 5y ago
Why is "Twitter" a stand-in for "tech" as a whole. Tech definitely is a tool as the author says. But Twitter is a company with a tech stack and a website and incentives to feed people content that keeps them looking at ads. If I had to argue this I'd say that Twitter is the "monopoly that should be blown sky high", not the New York Times
ZeroGravitas 5y ago
> A true Valley technologist has never met a monopoly they didn’t want to detonate sky-high with technology (thereby reaping gargantuan sums). I'm assuming we're making an exception for their own monopolies? I think most people are in the "would like to get rid of monopolies that abuse them but keep or ones that reward them personally" camp. It's only really noble if you're against them as a general principle and demonstrate that by giving up the ones you have the power over.
max002 5y ago
I tend to get very vary/suspicious of people who tend to use term "them" without specifing who (exactly) them is :) im (so called in my country) "lefty", but i do have some collegeus that are opposite. Ive noticed that when they start to introduce term "them" into discussion the whole thing goes from standard conversion into talking with paranoics :D very nice article, thank you
jhbadger 5y ago
The author makes a good point in regard to comparing the Internet and social media to the dawn of printing and mass literacy. We tend to see books and literacy as inherently good, but pretty much the first thing people did with printing technology in the West was to start a bunch of new versions of Christianity which often fought bloody wars among themselves. So the upheavals caused by social media aren't really unexpected.
zaptheimpaler 5y ago
why read post when meme do trick? https://pics.onsizzle.com/their-barbarous-wastes-our-blessed-homeland-our-gloaious-their-wicked-6065816.png https://pics.onsizzle.com/their-barbarous-wastes-our-blessed...

24 points by mellosouls 5y ago

throwaway_2009 5y ago

edit: after reading footnote 2 my comment seems completely superfluous, so meh. There definitely exists a group of people who see the endless pursuit of technology without consideration of its' effect as being the solution to all issues we face in the world.

dusted 5y ago

This is a good and insightful read even if the beginning is a bit terse. It is very easy to fall into the them-fallacy, the less informed you are on a topic, the simpler it seem to you and the more easy it is to think of some group as "them". Many people understand their own group, field or organization well enough that don't apply the "them" mentality, or even the "us" mentality on it, for instance, well-informed citizens of a country wouldn't say "us" or "we" about that whole group, as they know well that _A_LOT_ of people within that country have opposing opinions to their own.

doomrobo 5y ago

Why is "Twitter" a stand-in for "tech" as a whole. Tech definitely is a tool as the author says. But Twitter is a company with a tech stack and a website and incentives to feed people content that keeps them looking at ads. If I had to argue this I'd say that Twitter is the "monopoly that should be blown sky high", not the New York Times

ZeroGravitas 5y ago

> A true Valley technologist has never met a monopoly they didn’t want to detonate sky-high with technology (thereby reaping gargantuan sums). I'm assuming we're making an exception for their own monopolies? I think most people are in the "would like to get rid of monopolies that abuse them but keep or ones that reward them personally" camp. It's only really noble if you're against them as a general principle and demonstrate that by giving up the ones you have the power over.

max002 5y ago

I tend to get very vary/suspicious of people who tend to use term "them" without specifing who (exactly) them is :) im (so called in my country) "lefty", but i do have some collegeus that are opposite. Ive noticed that when they start to introduce term "them" into discussion the whole thing goes from standard conversion into talking with paranoics :D very nice article, thank you

jhbadger 5y ago

The author makes a good point in regard to comparing the Internet and social media to the dawn of printing and mass literacy. We tend to see books and literacy as inherently good, but pretty much the first thing people did with printing technology in the West was to start a bunch of new versions of Christianity which often fought bloody wars among themselves. So the upheavals caused by social media aren't really unexpected.

zaptheimpaler 5y ago

why read post when meme do trick? https://pics.onsizzle.com/their-barbarous-wastes-our-blessed-homeland-our-gloaious-their-wicked-6065816.png https://pics.onsizzle.com/their-barbarous-wastes-our-blessed...