4 ms·

This is the case if the participants are well informed. If they are not, there is no reason to believe they will interrupt themselves.

pclmulqdq 4y ago
Then the solution is to inform them, not to attempt to police information.
- shadowgovt 4y ago
  How does one inform them if one cannot address the signal-noise ratio?
  - pclmulqdq 4y ago
    You add signal. You don't try to remove noise. Also you adjust the algorithms of your content feeds away from "maximize engagement," because that tends toward feeding people lots of videos that confirm their biases (no matter what those biases are).
    - shadowgovt 4y ago
      Noise is cheaper than signal. For every piece of signal that can be added, more noise can be added. That is not an arms race one wins. Consider how education is done. We do it in classrooms, not in the street. Controlled environment where noise can be down-filtered. How do we handle it if the problem is we need to educate everyone? (I do agree with changing incentives off "maximize engagement". How, I do not know; it is the nature of capitalism in the interest economy to chase that brass ring. May problems, no obvious solutions...)
      - P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
        There is nothing this person can say that will satisfy you because you're not interested in being satisfied. This does not invalidate their point. What you're pointing out are risks, are those risks worth being free? Most people would say yes.
        shadowgovt 4y ago
        Oh, I'm very interested in being satisfied, but I think the problem is way harder than people assume it is. We had the luxury, for decades, of a de-facto mechanism of tamping the noise in the SNR culturally: the press was free, but only some people could afford it (and, at least over the airwaves, the press wasn't even technically free, as the AM / FM bands were considered shared natural resources that were parceled up by the FCC; break their rules, and your privilege of throwing signal through America's finite bandwidth was curtailed by law). This is no longer the case. The modern, dominant, massively-distributed, massively-parallel peer-to-peer communications media doesn't follow any of those old rules. IP addresses are a constrained resource, but not enough to actually care. Anyone who can get a peering agreement with an internet carrier can communicate. As a result, we are freer than ever to speak our minds to every corner of the Earth at near lightspeed... But a lot of old assumptions that were implicitly baked into the question of how mass communication technology was used no longer apply. It is not guaranteed that democratic society survives in this new normal. That is the interesting question. So when people assert, unexplored, that you just "inform" people by "adding signal," it's worth raising the question of how that signal cuts through the noise. In the old days, it'd cut through because various broadcast comms organs, from NBC down to individual stations, refused to carry the noise (either by their own standards or by implicit threat of loss of broadcast license). What makes it cut through now? It isn't whether it's true (we have observed how easily people can be deceived if someone spends enough money to culture-jam them with an alternate narrative of reality). It isn't whether it's important (we've observed people turn to triviality to disengage from painful reality going on outside their window). We should think hard about these aspects of the new normal. > are those risks worth being free I don't think freedom is guaranteed by maximizing everyone's ability to speak at all times, unfettered, to everyone. Trivially, you could assert the one kind of freedom (the freedom to say anything, at any time, unfettered, to anyone)... But if nobody's listening, if you're just screaming into the void, what is the value of that freedom? And what if that freedom is used to deprive you of other freedoms? That freedom can be used by the wealthy and connected to craft narrative that says people like you and me don't deserve to be treated as equal members of society (and, more importantly, say it loudly enough and often enough to drown out counter-narratives by simple weight and the finite nature of human attention... Unfettered freedom of speech means a billionaire can buy up every billboard and ad slot in your town to push the narrative that you belong in jail). Do we just trust that some cosmic justice undermines that narrative? And if it doesn't, what happens to all our freedoms?
- colinmhayes 4y ago
  Not necessarily possible, but I’m certainly open to ideas

pclmulqdq 4y ago

Then the solution is to inform them, not to attempt to police information.

shadowgovt 4y ago
How does one inform them if one cannot address the signal-noise ratio?
- pclmulqdq 4y ago
  You add signal. You don't try to remove noise. Also you adjust the algorithms of your content feeds away from "maximize engagement," because that tends toward feeding people lots of videos that confirm their biases (no matter what those biases are).
  - shadowgovt 4y ago
    Noise is cheaper than signal. For every piece of signal that can be added, more noise can be added. That is not an arms race one wins. Consider how education is done. We do it in classrooms, not in the street. Controlled environment where noise can be down-filtered. How do we handle it if the problem is we need to educate everyone? (I do agree with changing incentives off "maximize engagement". How, I do not know; it is the nature of capitalism in the interest economy to chase that brass ring. May problems, no obvious solutions...)
    - P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
      There is nothing this person can say that will satisfy you because you're not interested in being satisfied. This does not invalidate their point. What you're pointing out are risks, are those risks worth being free? Most people would say yes.
      - shadowgovt 4y ago
        Oh, I'm very interested in being satisfied, but I think the problem is way harder than people assume it is. We had the luxury, for decades, of a de-facto mechanism of tamping the noise in the SNR culturally: the press was free, but only some people could afford it (and, at least over the airwaves, the press wasn't even technically free, as the AM / FM bands were considered shared natural resources that were parceled up by the FCC; break their rules, and your privilege of throwing signal through America's finite bandwidth was curtailed by law). This is no longer the case. The modern, dominant, massively-distributed, massively-parallel peer-to-peer communications media doesn't follow any of those old rules. IP addresses are a constrained resource, but not enough to actually care. Anyone who can get a peering agreement with an internet carrier can communicate. As a result, we are freer than ever to speak our minds to every corner of the Earth at near lightspeed... But a lot of old assumptions that were implicitly baked into the question of how mass communication technology was used no longer apply. It is not guaranteed that democratic society survives in this new normal. That is the interesting question. So when people assert, unexplored, that you just "inform" people by "adding signal," it's worth raising the question of how that signal cuts through the noise. In the old days, it'd cut through because various broadcast comms organs, from NBC down to individual stations, refused to carry the noise (either by their own standards or by implicit threat of loss of broadcast license). What makes it cut through now? It isn't whether it's true (we have observed how easily people can be deceived if someone spends enough money to culture-jam them with an alternate narrative of reality). It isn't whether it's important (we've observed people turn to triviality to disengage from painful reality going on outside their window). We should think hard about these aspects of the new normal. > are those risks worth being free I don't think freedom is guaranteed by maximizing everyone's ability to speak at all times, unfettered, to everyone. Trivially, you could assert the one kind of freedom (the freedom to say anything, at any time, unfettered, to anyone)... But if nobody's listening, if you're just screaming into the void, what is the value of that freedom? And what if that freedom is used to deprive you of other freedoms? That freedom can be used by the wealthy and connected to craft narrative that says people like you and me don't deserve to be treated as equal members of society (and, more importantly, say it loudly enough and often enough to drown out counter-narratives by simple weight and the finite nature of human attention... Unfettered freedom of speech means a billionaire can buy up every billboard and ad slot in your town to push the narrative that you belong in jail). Do we just trust that some cosmic justice undermines that narrative? And if it doesn't, what happens to all our freedoms?
colinmhayes 4y ago
Not necessarily possible, but I’m certainly open to ideas