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> technological implementation of a sort of "bad faith" ethos Indeed, that's what the parent commenter said. What I do is look at all those historical "slippe

> technological implementation of a sort of "bad faith" ethos Indeed, that's what the parent commenter said. What I do is look at all those historical "slippery slopes of bad faith" that didn't survive, and ask "Why not?". What changed in society and stopped that? Child labour was set to explode in the industrial revolution. Kids as young as 7 or 8 worked in factories. At the time it would have been reasonable to extrapolate that in a few decades all children would need to be employed in mills and mines. And we can talk about slavery, and disenfranchisement of women, and many more things in the same way. To take a counter-example, the proliferation of cars on the roads is something we have not been able to stem through reason alone. I think this sets up a sense of "technological exceptionalism" in which theories of determinism currently dominate. In my opinion this is a very immature (Level 1 civilisation) view of things. But when we look at all the malevolent trajectories that were corrected, it always begins when we name it. Naming a problem (acknowledging it as undesirable) sets in motion the progress towards overcoming it. I think we are living through precisely that age with digital technology. We are in a process of naming, qualifying and understanding new harms. We are starting to apply the same progressive models we have for race, gender and public health, to technology. The course is set. It might seem time is not be on our side, but the industrialists of today are no more powerful than those of yesterday against the tides of society.

zaphar 4y ago
You are looking at the last 200 to 300 years and extrapolating. I think however that if you expand the horizon to several thousand years what you see is a very different cycle. A cycle where progress is made over a few hundred years and then is all lost. Every time progress is made everyone thinks, this time is different and then they are wrong. There are substantive differences to this time around. We had a technological explosion for one which meant in terms of technology we jumped much farther forward than we had before. However the same cultural and civil failings are still there and still proceeding in much the same cycle. I don't think Social Media is evil per-se. I do think that it is an extremely effective Mob amplifier. We used to have mobs form at a local level and their effects rarely managed to expand to a national level. Now we get global mobs via social media. Mob's have been around forever in human society. They are rarely rational. Even when they are motivated by real problems they often tear down or destroy as much or more of the good as they do the bad. They tend to be indiscriminate and I don't think we are really prepared for the types of Mobs that Social Media enables. Maybe we'll be able to name this for what it is and find a counter to it. But I haven't seen any effective attempts to name the phenomena for what is. Instead I just see yet another Mob forming with a complaint about how companies are getting away with exploiting people. In this case I think it's less exploitation and more just amplification, intended or otherwise. How do you limit the amplification without limiting free speech?

zaphar 4y ago

You are looking at the last 200 to 300 years and extrapolating. I think however that if you expand the horizon to several thousand years what you see is a very different cycle. A cycle where progress is made over a few hundred years and then is all lost. Every time progress is made everyone thinks, this time is different and then they are wrong. There are substantive differences to this time around. We had a technological explosion for one which meant in terms of technology we jumped much farther forward than we had before. However the same cultural and civil failings are still there and still proceeding in much the same cycle. I don't think Social Media is evil per-se. I do think that it is an extremely effective Mob amplifier. We used to have mobs form at a local level and their effects rarely managed to expand to a national level. Now we get global mobs via social media. Mob's have been around forever in human society. They are rarely rational. Even when they are motivated by real problems they often tear down or destroy as much or more of the good as they do the bad. They tend to be indiscriminate and I don't think we are really prepared for the types of Mobs that Social Media enables. Maybe we'll be able to name this for what it is and find a counter to it. But I haven't seen any effective attempts to name the phenomena for what is. Instead I just see yet another Mob forming with a complaint about how companies are getting away with exploiting people. In this case I think it's less exploitation and more just amplification, intended or otherwise. How do you limit the amplification without limiting free speech?