3 ms·
I’ll be more blunt: how do you then undermine the claim that such a bill is necessary due to the irrationality of humans which can be more easily leveraged in t
by bumby 4y ago
I’ll be more blunt: how do you then undermine the claim that such a bill is necessary due to the irrationality of humans which can be more easily leveraged in the age of social media for bad outcomes?
It seems like you either need to make the case that:
1) humans aren’t irrational or
2) the risk of such irrationality at scale is not really a major risk or
3) social media isn’t uniquely poised to capitalize on that risk or
4) we already have tools capable of mitigating that risk
It sounds like you’re debating 3) but there seems to be some evidence that social media tends to spread “bad” information faster and farther than “good” information by hijacking innate human psychological traits more easily.
- pclmulqdq 4y agoI'm suggesting primarily that 3 is true, and we (as individuals in a society which is and has always been full of misinformation) have developed pretty good BS detectors to compensate. Bad information has always been faster to spread than good information. The only difference today is that all information is faster. Also, to some degree, 1 is fairly true. You see this in economics, for example, where individuals are generally irrational about their choices, but modeling populations as a whole by treating them as 100% rational individuals gives pretty similar results to real life.
- bumby 4y ago>only difference today is that all information is faster. This is exactly the point being made (although I’m not sure I am completely convinced). The analogy could be “people have always killed each other. Nuclear weapons just make it faster to kill lots of people. Hence there no need to ban nuclear weapons.” The idea being there is a tipping point where the scalability of technology outpaces our biologically evolved innate sense to control it. I agree with #1 but only in some domains. You can see it with guessing the weight of a bull at a fair or the number of jelly beans in a jar. But there’s other examples where it breaks down. In economics we have bubbles that are destructive when corrected. I’m not sure we want that short term extreme volatility in something like governance.
- pclmulqdq 4y agoThe alternative to that short-term volatility is long-term tyranny. No thank you. I'll take the volatility.
- bumby 4y agoI think that’s a false dichotomy and not particularly helpful. The question is more about what level of volatility can be tolerate while still maintaining a stable society.