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> Then on top of that giving people independent, client-based, advanced AI powered tools en masse, and making sure they know how to use them and why, for accura

> Then on top of that giving people independent, client-based, advanced AI powered tools en masse, and making sure they know how to use them and why, for accurate elected censorship on their own devices of things they personally find detrimental to their mental health. Basically, do what you can to allow for the censorship of the influence of the people with money, onto the people without it. I lay blame for a lot of the bipolarism of modern discourse on the ability of people to filter the ideas to which they are exposed to a great degree. Combine that with the ability to create larger audiences than ever before, and that's exactly how the us/them dualism takes root. Echo-chamber was a big buzz word not that long ago.

ReactiveJelly 5y ago
I wonder if this is true. Is there any guide to finding these ideas that I might be sheltering myself from, that I should not be sheltering myself from?
- JetAlone 5y ago
  I believe we have a responsibility to find and trust guides on our own, and make or revise them... I experience, visible in my recent post history on here, many times in recent memory, where I get driven by rage cycles to a point where I'm not who I know I ought to be and could have been. I laugh about it to myself, but I know I love a good verbal joust, which if not handled carefully can be very bad for me and the other person. Some of those "censorship" tools are in my own mind, or accessible to it where I can ignore what riles me up. I'm not omnipotent in that way, but there's work that can be done, and helped, to be appropriately dispassionate.
- sdenton4 5y ago
  Human content moderators pretty regularly develop PTSD from dealing with the absolute worst humanity finds to put on the internet. So, you could go get one of those jobs for a while. But I don't recommend it.
- mLuby 5y ago
  Figure out who your tribe considers "the enemy" and then sneak over to the "enemy's camp" to see what they're talking about. 3 tactics, from trivial to dangerous: 1) Use a private or different browser, VPN, or Tor to exit your personal filter bubble, then search for news or trends and see what the algorithms serve to fresh faces. 2) US-specific example: If you're a Democrat/Republican, read the Fox News/NY Times politics or opinion section. If you know some big names on the "enemy side" go consume some of their content. It'd also be a good idea to read some news stories from outside the US; they don't have much stake in the fight and have some distance, so it's good for perspective. 3) Ask that family member (the one your other family members proudly blocked on Facebook) what their news sources are. Just a word of warning: they may take this as a sign you're "defecting" and talk your ear off, so try to come up with a way to time-limit it, like "it's for a school paper."
  - jimmygrapes 5y ago
    I would add that when doing this recon, steelman their ideas. Try to justify them, however horrible they seem to you. Drop your guard and prejudices enough to understand why they have those ideas. You don't have to accept them in the end, but you'll never know how to make amends or talk to somebody you refuse to understand.
    - pjc50 5y ago
      I used to do this. Over the 20 years I've been doing "discourse" on the internet. In recent years I've seen a marked collapse in the willingness of the other side to do the same - or even, in many cases, to make an argument that I could actually understand. For example, back in the days of campaigning against gay marriage there were people claiming that it would be bad for straight marriage, none of whom bothered to articulate why, and of course it's turned out that wasn't the case at all.
      - dTal 5y ago
        I can pinpoint when I gave up on this. It was 2016. In that year I made many frustrated attempts to communicate with an ideology whose contradictions I no longer felt I understood. It was made uncomfortably and repeatedly clear to me that communication, compromise, dialog, and indeed principles were no longer on the menu - that concession of any sort was regarded as a sucker's game, and the only consistent terminal value amongst the lot of them was "liberal tears". They didn't care if I understood. They just wanted me to be unhappy. I realized then that the civil war - a culture war - had already begun.
phs318u 5y ago
> the ability of people to filter the ideas to which they are exposed I'd say its the reverse. The inability of people to apply a reasonable filter on the stuff they are exposed to (and I mean mental filter, not technical filter). I've seen people go full-on down the rabbit hole of conspiracism to their own detriment purely on the basis of following YouTube's recommendations (without actively seeking specific topics).
vba616 5y ago
>I lay blame for a lot of the bipolarism of modern discourse on the ability of people to filter the ideas to which they are exposed to a great degree. The ability? I think the lack of ability. I think it's wrong to assign agency to people over what they see just because they provide inputs to the algorithms.
- BobbyJo 5y ago
  Its not just the black boxes though. You pick who you follow and hear from as well. Someone who is all in on Bernie probably isn't following many right wing publications and vice-versa. Not many people out there are interested in even being exposed to the other side of things. When public discourse was a physical event, you were forced to hear both sides as they exist in your neighborhood. Now you can choose to ignore your entire state and, instead, listen to a small cult on the other side of the planet if it so suits you. Take, for instance, those few who have left the west to join ISIS. It's the picking and choosing that allows people to leave their reality behind, for better or worse.
  - vba616 5y ago
    >When public discourse was a physical event, you were forced to hear both sides as they exist in your neighborhood. Were you alive during the 20th century? If so, can you maybe go into more context for what you're referring to, because this was not my experience in my neighborhood. >instead, listen to a small cult on the other side of the planet if it so suits you. Take, for instance, those few who have left the west to join ISIS There were cults and converts before the Internet. Some were very famous. You haven't heard of any of them? People...uh...found a way.
    - BobbyJo 5y ago
      > Were you alive during the 20th century? If so, can you maybe go into more context for what you're referring to, because this was not my experience in my neighborhood. I'm only in my 30's, but my adolescence was essentially pre-internet. My grandfather, who I lived with, was a very politically involved person. He essentially parroted whatever was on TV, which, since this was pre-internet, was pretty centrist in order to appeal to the most people. The internet had yet to break them into inflammatory niches for what little ad revenue was left. I remember he'd go and picket with various groups, argue on the street with Bill Clinton supporters and stuff like that. He's an extremely nice and polite guy, so talking with people in real life always kept him apprised of the humanity of the people he was disagreeing with. Hell, he had to see them afterwards in the grocery store on occasion. Now he just sits on the computer and parrots whatever spam non-sense made it into his email inbox. The other side is no longer a set of people living much the same life as him, it's a cabal of rich people hell bent on murdering babies and they'll hand out all the money necessary to get whatever power they want. I've watched pretty much my entire family slide from center-right to nonsense-right over the last 20 years. There was a small reprieve recently. He was working with a Black man who was his antithesis, and they got along OK enough. My grandpa seemed to settle down for a time. He's no longer able to work now though, and he's definitely back in the mode of spinning out over non-sense. > There were cults and converts before the Internet. Some were very famous. You haven't heard of any of them? People...uh...found a way. I don't think the internet created the phenomenon, but it, both, enabled more elaborate and large scale lies, and gave people a lot more options for which lies they want to be told. Before, you were limited to who you ran into, or word of mouth from a friend. Now, any kid feeling cast out from their peers can run to a dark haven of any sort, any religion, and political leaning, any take on violence, whether they live in rural Kentucky or a condo in Seattle.

ReactiveJelly 5y ago

I wonder if this is true. Is there any guide to finding these ideas that I might be sheltering myself from, that I should not be sheltering myself from?

JetAlone 5y ago
I believe we have a responsibility to find and trust guides on our own, and make or revise them... I experience, visible in my recent post history on here, many times in recent memory, where I get driven by rage cycles to a point where I'm not who I know I ought to be and could have been. I laugh about it to myself, but I know I love a good verbal joust, which if not handled carefully can be very bad for me and the other person. Some of those "censorship" tools are in my own mind, or accessible to it where I can ignore what riles me up. I'm not omnipotent in that way, but there's work that can be done, and helped, to be appropriately dispassionate.
sdenton4 5y ago
Human content moderators pretty regularly develop PTSD from dealing with the absolute worst humanity finds to put on the internet. So, you could go get one of those jobs for a while. But I don't recommend it.
mLuby 5y ago
Figure out who your tribe considers "the enemy" and then sneak over to the "enemy's camp" to see what they're talking about. 3 tactics, from trivial to dangerous: 1) Use a private or different browser, VPN, or Tor to exit your personal filter bubble, then search for news or trends and see what the algorithms serve to fresh faces. 2) US-specific example: If you're a Democrat/Republican, read the Fox News/NY Times politics or opinion section. If you know some big names on the "enemy side" go consume some of their content. It'd also be a good idea to read some news stories from outside the US; they don't have much stake in the fight and have some distance, so it's good for perspective. 3) Ask that family member (the one your other family members proudly blocked on Facebook) what their news sources are. Just a word of warning: they may take this as a sign you're "defecting" and talk your ear off, so try to come up with a way to time-limit it, like "it's for a school paper."
- jimmygrapes 5y ago
  I would add that when doing this recon, steelman their ideas. Try to justify them, however horrible they seem to you. Drop your guard and prejudices enough to understand why they have those ideas. You don't have to accept them in the end, but you'll never know how to make amends or talk to somebody you refuse to understand.
  - pjc50 5y ago
    I used to do this. Over the 20 years I've been doing "discourse" on the internet. In recent years I've seen a marked collapse in the willingness of the other side to do the same - or even, in many cases, to make an argument that I could actually understand. For example, back in the days of campaigning against gay marriage there were people claiming that it would be bad for straight marriage, none of whom bothered to articulate why, and of course it's turned out that wasn't the case at all.
    - dTal 5y ago
      I can pinpoint when I gave up on this. It was 2016. In that year I made many frustrated attempts to communicate with an ideology whose contradictions I no longer felt I understood. It was made uncomfortably and repeatedly clear to me that communication, compromise, dialog, and indeed principles were no longer on the menu - that concession of any sort was regarded as a sucker's game, and the only consistent terminal value amongst the lot of them was "liberal tears". They didn't care if I understood. They just wanted me to be unhappy. I realized then that the civil war - a culture war - had already begun.

phs318u 5y ago

> the ability of people to filter the ideas to which they are exposed I'd say its the reverse. The inability of people to apply a reasonable filter on the stuff they are exposed to (and I mean mental filter, not technical filter). I've seen people go full-on down the rabbit hole of conspiracism to their own detriment purely on the basis of following YouTube's recommendations (without actively seeking specific topics).

vba616 5y ago

>I lay blame for a lot of the bipolarism of modern discourse on the ability of people to filter the ideas to which they are exposed to a great degree. The ability? I think the lack of ability. I think it's wrong to assign agency to people over what they see just because they provide inputs to the algorithms.

BobbyJo 5y ago
Its not just the black boxes though. You pick who you follow and hear from as well. Someone who is all in on Bernie probably isn't following many right wing publications and vice-versa. Not many people out there are interested in even being exposed to the other side of things. When public discourse was a physical event, you were forced to hear both sides as they exist in your neighborhood. Now you can choose to ignore your entire state and, instead, listen to a small cult on the other side of the planet if it so suits you. Take, for instance, those few who have left the west to join ISIS. It's the picking and choosing that allows people to leave their reality behind, for better or worse.
- vba616 5y ago
  >When public discourse was a physical event, you were forced to hear both sides as they exist in your neighborhood. Were you alive during the 20th century? If so, can you maybe go into more context for what you're referring to, because this was not my experience in my neighborhood. >instead, listen to a small cult on the other side of the planet if it so suits you. Take, for instance, those few who have left the west to join ISIS There were cults and converts before the Internet. Some were very famous. You haven't heard of any of them? People...uh...found a way.
  - BobbyJo 5y ago
    > Were you alive during the 20th century? If so, can you maybe go into more context for what you're referring to, because this was not my experience in my neighborhood. I'm only in my 30's, but my adolescence was essentially pre-internet. My grandfather, who I lived with, was a very politically involved person. He essentially parroted whatever was on TV, which, since this was pre-internet, was pretty centrist in order to appeal to the most people. The internet had yet to break them into inflammatory niches for what little ad revenue was left. I remember he'd go and picket with various groups, argue on the street with Bill Clinton supporters and stuff like that. He's an extremely nice and polite guy, so talking with people in real life always kept him apprised of the humanity of the people he was disagreeing with. Hell, he had to see them afterwards in the grocery store on occasion. Now he just sits on the computer and parrots whatever spam non-sense made it into his email inbox. The other side is no longer a set of people living much the same life as him, it's a cabal of rich people hell bent on murdering babies and they'll hand out all the money necessary to get whatever power they want. I've watched pretty much my entire family slide from center-right to nonsense-right over the last 20 years. There was a small reprieve recently. He was working with a Black man who was his antithesis, and they got along OK enough. My grandpa seemed to settle down for a time. He's no longer able to work now though, and he's definitely back in the mode of spinning out over non-sense. > There were cults and converts before the Internet. Some were very famous. You haven't heard of any of them? People...uh...found a way. I don't think the internet created the phenomenon, but it, both, enabled more elaborate and large scale lies, and gave people a lot more options for which lies they want to be told. Before, you were limited to who you ran into, or word of mouth from a friend. Now, any kid feeling cast out from their peers can run to a dark haven of any sort, any religion, and political leaning, any take on violence, whether they live in rural Kentucky or a condo in Seattle.