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Interesting little read. "Engagement-based ranking, use by many social networks, is even worse. It concentrates attention on controversy, outrage, and out-grou

Interesting little read. "Engagement-based ranking, use by many social networks, is even worse. It concentrates attention on controversy, outrage, and out-group animosity." It does concentrate on those things! Perhaps a sad fact for humanity is that "our collective participation in public discourse produces the shared values and narrative that enables collective action toward common goals" - and maybe unconsciously, those common goals are controversy, outrage and out-group animosity. Maybe social media really just exemplifies a really ugly side to human's that has been enabled by the internet. Perhaps, through the evolution of our species, we have been hardwired for negativity, and the internet just makes it a lot worse. Just a thought.

travisporter 3y ago
But why would we be hardwired for negativity? As a social species shouldn’t that be a disadvantage?
- Quinzel 3y ago
  We are wired for negativity because being on the watch for bad things was a way to improve our chances of survival a long long time ago before the Internet. A little bit of anxiety is good for survival, a little bit of anxiety improves performance. However, now we are bombarded by anxiety provoking news every single day. A lot of anxiety is disabling. Being hardwired for negativity was once advantageous, but in the age of computers, internet and AI that seem to evolve much faster than we do, it does indeed seem to be a disadvantage of the negativity bias. My above comment however was just a thought I had. I am not an authority on the topic.
- GTP 3y ago
  It is a fact that we tend to imagine what's the worst that can happen, and as a species it served us well back when we had to survive by escaping from other predators and hunt out own food. Now it doesn't serve us so well anymore, but evolution is a slow process.
- richk449 3y ago
  The world is changing much faster than humans evolve. The last ice age wiped out many large mammals in North America. The right mix of traits in warm weather wasn’t right when the cold weather hit. So maybe social media winter is coming?
- JieJie 3y ago
  I find that most of my questions about humanity are answered if I watch videos of primates tweaking each other just to cause commotion, which seems to be a source of entertainment and community cohesion. In humans, this manifests as community building during stressful times, and we band together. I remember after 9/11 happened, a significant portion of the world seemed to coalesce emotionally in support of America (outliers notwithstanding). Same thing with all the other mass tragedies around the world that we seek to turn toward the useful purpose of building community and a collective empathy. I have many friends who will create chaos in their lives so that they can feel, even for a moment, the brief-but-beautiful reunion after a bitter fight. Personally, I see this behavior building towards something on a very long timescale, but in the short term, it is incredibly disruptive. The disruptiveness is essential to break up habits, good and bad. We long for better ways, and slowly but surely, we develop them. There can be no change, even positive change, without disruption and discomfort.
  - eep_social 3y ago
    “Never waste a good crisis.”
- ethanbond 3y ago
  The primates who didn’t worry at all about the rustling in the bushes all got eaten by lions
- fmajid 3y ago
  Tribalism is not inconsistent with a social species. Defend the in-group aginst outsiders. It predates humanity, other apes like chimpanzees also have wars.
- Enginerrrd 3y ago
  I think its a way of addressing black-swans. Hearing about bad things that have happened to others allowed people to make changes to avoid those things when they came for your tribe. Whether it was raiders, pests/famine, disease, drought, etc. These things were good to know and the smart ones definitely made efforts to prepare by stock-piling food, building up arms and armies, avoiding contact with new people when disease was about, etc. I've noticed in myself that my dopamine circuits aren't activated much by working for rewards. But they fire up a lot to get me to do a tremendous amount of work to avoid potential negative consequences. It's not in an anxious way per se... it's just that's what seems to fire up my reward circuits with respect to long-term planning/thinking. There's an interesting and somewhat related saying I learned from one of the Indian tribes near me: "If you don't believe the rumors, you'll surely perish... but if you believe ALL the rumors, you'll perish even faster."
jorisg 3y ago
I feel like a good way of seeing internet, and a lot of the global systems (fast food, porn, addictive video games, drugs etc.) we've created is that they amplify - the good and the bad - human nature. Too much of anything is unhealthy. Many of these things are concentrated, always-available versions of an "important thing" - food, relationships, novelty, power fantasies. These systems we've created aren't revealing anything new, they are just taking advantage of what triggers our brains the most. I completely disagree with "controversy, outrage and out-group animosity" are our common goals. They are just some, among many, items effective at grabbing our attention.

travisporter 3y ago

But why would we be hardwired for negativity? As a social species shouldn’t that be a disadvantage?

Quinzel 3y ago
We are wired for negativity because being on the watch for bad things was a way to improve our chances of survival a long long time ago before the Internet. A little bit of anxiety is good for survival, a little bit of anxiety improves performance. However, now we are bombarded by anxiety provoking news every single day. A lot of anxiety is disabling. Being hardwired for negativity was once advantageous, but in the age of computers, internet and AI that seem to evolve much faster than we do, it does indeed seem to be a disadvantage of the negativity bias. My above comment however was just a thought I had. I am not an authority on the topic.
GTP 3y ago
It is a fact that we tend to imagine what's the worst that can happen, and as a species it served us well back when we had to survive by escaping from other predators and hunt out own food. Now it doesn't serve us so well anymore, but evolution is a slow process.
richk449 3y ago
The world is changing much faster than humans evolve. The last ice age wiped out many large mammals in North America. The right mix of traits in warm weather wasn’t right when the cold weather hit. So maybe social media winter is coming?
JieJie 3y ago
I find that most of my questions about humanity are answered if I watch videos of primates tweaking each other just to cause commotion, which seems to be a source of entertainment and community cohesion. In humans, this manifests as community building during stressful times, and we band together. I remember after 9/11 happened, a significant portion of the world seemed to coalesce emotionally in support of America (outliers notwithstanding). Same thing with all the other mass tragedies around the world that we seek to turn toward the useful purpose of building community and a collective empathy. I have many friends who will create chaos in their lives so that they can feel, even for a moment, the brief-but-beautiful reunion after a bitter fight. Personally, I see this behavior building towards something on a very long timescale, but in the short term, it is incredibly disruptive. The disruptiveness is essential to break up habits, good and bad. We long for better ways, and slowly but surely, we develop them. There can be no change, even positive change, without disruption and discomfort.
- eep_social 3y ago
  “Never waste a good crisis.”
ethanbond 3y ago
The primates who didn’t worry at all about the rustling in the bushes all got eaten by lions
fmajid 3y ago
Tribalism is not inconsistent with a social species. Defend the in-group aginst outsiders. It predates humanity, other apes like chimpanzees also have wars.
Enginerrrd 3y ago
I think its a way of addressing black-swans. Hearing about bad things that have happened to others allowed people to make changes to avoid those things when they came for your tribe. Whether it was raiders, pests/famine, disease, drought, etc. These things were good to know and the smart ones definitely made efforts to prepare by stock-piling food, building up arms and armies, avoiding contact with new people when disease was about, etc. I've noticed in myself that my dopamine circuits aren't activated much by working for rewards. But they fire up a lot to get me to do a tremendous amount of work to avoid potential negative consequences. It's not in an anxious way per se... it's just that's what seems to fire up my reward circuits with respect to long-term planning/thinking. There's an interesting and somewhat related saying I learned from one of the Indian tribes near me: "If you don't believe the rumors, you'll surely perish... but if you believe ALL the rumors, you'll perish even faster."

jorisg 3y ago

I feel like a good way of seeing internet, and a lot of the global systems (fast food, porn, addictive video games, drugs etc.) we've created is that they amplify - the good and the bad - human nature. Too much of anything is unhealthy. Many of these things are concentrated, always-available versions of an "important thing" - food, relationships, novelty, power fantasies. These systems we've created aren't revealing anything new, they are just taking advantage of what triggers our brains the most. I completely disagree with "controversy, outrage and out-group animosity" are our common goals. They are just some, among many, items effective at grabbing our attention.