3 ms·

Or a dead society theory. The less people need each other for creating value, the more of their communication goes down to attention seeking and identity pander

Or a dead society theory. The less people need each other for creating value, the more of their communication goes down to attention seeking and identity pandering.

lacrimacida 3y ago
I think attention seeking is either pathological or for making money. The great majority of people continue to need eachother to create value but that is mostly hijacked by venture capital trying to monetize, extract value, etc
- rewmie 3y ago
  > I think attention seeking is either pathological or for making money. For a few decades we've been bombarded with the idea that our career depends mostly on our visibility instead of our qualifications and experience, that our next job will certainly be dictated by our social graph, and that getting ourselves known is key to have a good career. Consequently, we see a whole universe of self-promoting loudmouths generating noise just to get themselves out there. Perhaps this is a US thing that's leaking.
  - hospitalJail 3y ago
    >Perhaps this is a US thing that's leaking. This is a human thing. The US culture is less shameless about it.
  - idiotsecant 3y ago
    Ah yes that wonderful time more than a few decades ago where ... Knowing people didn't help you get better jobs?
    - rewmie 3y ago
      > Knowing people didn't help you get better jobs? I'm not sure you got the point. It really is not about your connections not leading to job opportunities. It's about the belief your job prospects are tied to the number of people you're connected in social network apps, and this belief leading people to try to attract followers by continuously generating noise in social networking services. Also, some of the most sought after jobs in tech, such as the covetted FANG positions, are not achieved by the depth and width of your social graph. How does knowing people help you with that?
hospitalJail 3y ago
Wow this hits home. I quit reddit a few times, but kept coming back to ask engineering questions. Now with chatgpt, I've found myself not using it for engineering, but rather to talk politics that would benefit me.
araes 3y ago
Its what society promotes. Social media just happens to be very fast and visible. Almost all signalling from society says the most important people are the attention seekers. In my view, a lot of society only want to win, and don't especially care how. Society signals and says, "those people are winners." They attention seek relentlessly. They say anything, as long as it's said confidently. If there's some scandal or controversy, its probably better, cause everybody wants to watch catfights and trainwrecks anyways (see Trump). Its like that Goodhart quote everybody likes recently, "when we use a measure to reward performance, we provide an incentive to manipulate the measure." I've talked to music artists recently that were also very blunt about music making these days. "What do you make?" "We make what gets more views on streams." Its not "they don't need each other for creating value", its that what society has determined "valuable" represents is effectively paradoxical. Another issue is Productivity Punishment. See this article on "loyal work punishing" [1]. Short abstract. If we have John, in Loyal and Disloyal versions, with reputations for those behaviors. And management wants extra work with no pay. We give the scenario to 1000's of managers and then see who they try to exploit for extra work repeatedly. Uniformly try to get extra work with no pay out of guy with Loyal reputation. Nearly everybody says, "you're Loyal, that means we can exploit you. You're valuable in the sense that a mine is valuable." And if they're punishing Loyal John, then who are they rewarding? "Wanna go play some golf?" See my previous comment on 'what society has determined "valuable" represents is effectively paradoxical.' [1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0022103122001615?via%3Dihub https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00221...

Or a dead society theory. The less people need each other for creating value, the more of their communication goes down to attention seeking and identity pandering.

lacrimacida 3y ago

I think attention seeking is either pathological or for making money. The great majority of people continue to need eachother to create value but that is mostly hijacked by venture capital trying to monetize, extract value, etc

rewmie 3y ago
> I think attention seeking is either pathological or for making money. For a few decades we've been bombarded with the idea that our career depends mostly on our visibility instead of our qualifications and experience, that our next job will certainly be dictated by our social graph, and that getting ourselves known is key to have a good career. Consequently, we see a whole universe of self-promoting loudmouths generating noise just to get themselves out there. Perhaps this is a US thing that's leaking.
- hospitalJail 3y ago
  >Perhaps this is a US thing that's leaking. This is a human thing. The US culture is less shameless about it.
- idiotsecant 3y ago
  Ah yes that wonderful time more than a few decades ago where ... Knowing people didn't help you get better jobs?
  - rewmie 3y ago
    > Knowing people didn't help you get better jobs? I'm not sure you got the point. It really is not about your connections not leading to job opportunities. It's about the belief your job prospects are tied to the number of people you're connected in social network apps, and this belief leading people to try to attract followers by continuously generating noise in social networking services. Also, some of the most sought after jobs in tech, such as the covetted FANG positions, are not achieved by the depth and width of your social graph. How does knowing people help you with that?

hospitalJail 3y ago

Wow this hits home. I quit reddit a few times, but kept coming back to ask engineering questions. Now with chatgpt, I've found myself not using it for engineering, but rather to talk politics that would benefit me.

araes 3y ago

Its what society promotes. Social media just happens to be very fast and visible. Almost all signalling from society says the most important people are the attention seekers. In my view, a lot of society only want to win, and don't especially care how. Society signals and says, "those people are winners." They attention seek relentlessly. They say anything, as long as it's said confidently. If there's some scandal or controversy, its probably better, cause everybody wants to watch catfights and trainwrecks anyways (see Trump). Its like that Goodhart quote everybody likes recently, "when we use a measure to reward performance, we provide an incentive to manipulate the measure." I've talked to music artists recently that were also very blunt about music making these days. "What do you make?" "We make what gets more views on streams." Its not "they don't need each other for creating value", its that what society has determined "valuable" represents is effectively paradoxical. Another issue is Productivity Punishment. See this article on "loyal work punishing" [1]. Short abstract. If we have John, in Loyal and Disloyal versions, with reputations for those behaviors. And management wants extra work with no pay. We give the scenario to 1000's of managers and then see who they try to exploit for extra work repeatedly. Uniformly try to get extra work with no pay out of guy with Loyal reputation. Nearly everybody says, "you're Loyal, that means we can exploit you. You're valuable in the sense that a mine is valuable." And if they're punishing Loyal John, then who are they rewarding? "Wanna go play some golf?" See my previous comment on 'what society has determined "valuable" represents is effectively paradoxical.' [1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0022103122001615?via%3Dihub https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00221...