4 ms·

One issue with social media not scaling is that ~5% of the population is insane. In day to day real life, you don't notice 95% of the time, and when you do, yo

One issue with social media not scaling is that ~5% of the population is insane. In day to day real life, you don't notice 95% of the time, and when you do, you avoid that person in your life going forward. Online, the 5% insane are over-represented, and a constant presence in any social media interaction beyond a few eyeballs.

Kosirich 3y ago
Well put. I think the 5% is a combo of "low IQ psychopaths", narcissist and just assholes ("bad people"). The word insane IMO points perhaps to much to inability for rational judgment, while a certain % of 5% is very much aware of their impact. The most dangerous among the bunch are obviously high IQ psychopaths...
- steveBK123 3y ago
  Anyone who has worked a retail job, sat on a condo board, worked in a medical office, etc .. dealt with general public, basically understands this principle. Someone will inevitable nitpick my particular choice of word, but "insane" is the general non-clinical description of the category. Points to high value in making your kids work a bad retail job in high school to build some character & experience this first hand early.
  - specialist 3y ago
    For reasons, I had to learn about actual insanity. 5% is spot on (filed under believe but cannot prove). The kicker is when someone is high functioning, as in can pass for sane, in most contexts. But then unpredictably acts totally out of bounds, sometimes in very scary ways. Start thinking about insanity and you'll get pulled down the sinkhole of "what is sane?", "am I insane?", "would I know if I wasn't?" IMHO, the takeaway point isn't "insane" or "sane". It's more like "Do I have a theory of mind for the person(s) I'm interacing with?" and "How do I have compassion for people who are suffering in ways that I don't understand?" YMMV.
  - maccard 3y ago
    Indeed. This [0] compilation from Parks & Rec is obviously an exaggaration, but if you've ever spent any time with the public as a representative of something, you'll recognise most of these people. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=areUGfOHkMA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=areUGfOHkMA
    - amelius 3y ago
      These people really deserve to interface with an LLM!
      - toofy 3y ago
        i suspect this is one of driving fears many people have with LLMs.
      - NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
        These people will end up training the LLMs. And there's nothing you can do about it.
  - Kosirich 3y ago
    Points to high value in making your kids work a bad retail job in high school to build some character & experience this first hand early. It also points that banning access to social networks is a right call until kids get to a (mental/educational) stage where they can judge these things in a similar manner.
    - BobaFloutist 3y ago
      You thinking like 30s? 60s? Maybe once humans turn 100 they're emotionally capable of being normal on the internet?
  - dredmorbius 3y ago
    I'd met an old friend who runs a high street business, walking into their shop and chatting briefly before a random walked in off the street and said random stuff, then walked out. My friend shrugged, turned to me, and said, "Welcome to retail". I've related that to a few people over the years. It's a useful lesson to keep in mind. Much better to recognise this for what it is than attempt to fix, fight, or rationalise it.
    - pixl97 3y ago
      With an ever increasing amount of cameras and AI, I would expect that fighting it will start to look like facial identification blocking people from entering businesses for their past transgressions, online or off.
      - dredmorbius 3y ago
        What I'd meant was attempting intervention in the one-on-one case. It's simply not productive, you're better off generally either letting the wave roll over you, or making a quiet exit. The mass-surveillance / access denial approach is a different tactic. One that has some advantages, but also very clear disadvantages and inequities.
    - gglitch 3y ago
      > Much better to recognise this for what it is than attempt to fix, fight, or rationalise it. This is a morally and emotionally sophisticated position, and though I agree with it, it's a bitter pill.
spacecadet 3y ago
Only 5%? While most of us in the US been drinking lead filled water for the last 70 years.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
beefield 3y ago
I have a feeling that it is more like 99% of people are insane 5% of time. Or if not insane, at least forgetting the principle of charity. And given that a typical social media text does not contain all nuances, someone is interpreting the text in an absurd way almost guaranteed. And downhill from there it goes.
- Retric 3y ago
  I’m sure there’s quite a bit of variety here but having crazy ideas in one area seems to correlate with having crazy ideas in another area. Separating separating fact from fiction is a skill and people don’t all end up making the same number of mistakes. Similarly, people who enjoy trolling flat earth ideas are going to enjoy tweaking people with other bizarre ideas.
  - BobaFloutist 3y ago
    The second you decide you're not prone to being irrational is the same second you give up any hope of policing your own rationality. It's actually pretty common for extremely intelligent, methodical scientists in one field to have somewhat bananas thoughts/opinions in unrelated fields.
    - Retric 3y ago
      Nobody is going to be completely correct across the full breath of human knowledge. However, people can be wrong without their ideas being crazy. If I was going to pick my most controversial idea it would be something like, humanity was like a ring species going back thousands of years with people somewhat regularly crossing the Baring Sea without realizing anything particularly unusual was going on. That’s a somewhat wacky idea because diseases didn’t make the jump etc. But it’s wildly more reasonable than ancient aliens. So as long as we are talking crazy rather than simply incorrect, crazy isn’t evenly distributed.
- twh270 3y ago
  There's both. There's the "I have persistent trouble coping with what we generally accept as 'reality' in a healthy, functional fashion" and "I've just had a moment of completely stupid/delusional/reactionary thinking". (The previous is completely my own wording and not intended to be precise.) I 100% agree with the overall idea that we aren't able to deal well with the consequences of what we've created with social media.
bsenftner 3y ago
While that ~5% may be insane, it also appears that around 30% are hopelessly gullible, and herded into voting blocks by power hungry manipulators. I think this post is almost there: what does not scale is humanity, our current constitution of largely selfish, immature adults operating as our leaders. In order for our civilization to scale, we need more real adults, and not these immature adult-babies running things.
- another2another 3y ago
  Alas they don't always get voted in, or even get involved in modern day politics. That just leaves the attention seekers, and people with a burning agenda. Saying that, what would make a good national politician and leader is probably quite a rare combination of traits. Good understanding of politics (natch), law, history, economics and statistics (as well as possibly industry, marketing, PR, the money markets), and have a degree of personal charisma. If the healthy ongoing survival of democracy needs that, we'd better get better at producing these people. England (sorry Scotland, but there is a bit of a gap there) and the US try to solve this with their OXBRIDGE and Ivy League Universities - but recently the results have not been so good. Maybe the upcoming younger generation can surprise us all?
  - polygamous_bat 3y ago
    How can we expect people with nuance to win elections if the population has been trained to expect solutions that fit in 280 characters and/or 15 seconds of video?
    - worthless-trash 3y ago
      You dont. It ends up like the clip on futurama, where Jack Johnson vs John jackson both end up talking about the 3c titanium tax going too far, or not too far enough.
ToucanLoucan 3y ago
With all due respect, the narrative being spun here positions the social network as an entity as an impartial, disinterested actor that is simply facilitating conversations: this is not the case. All mainstream social media websites are (operated by) for-profit entities. They are selling access to human attention to advertisers to generate profit. Because of this, they are motivated to increase the amount of attention they have to sell; keep people in their app. And they have found via reliable experimentation by numerous social scientists that the most effective way is to keep users in a near-constant state of some combination of rage, indignation or disgust. This poisons the entire well. I don't think the issue is that ~5% of the population is insane. I think the issue is social media has every reason in the world to find that 5% and give them the largest megaphone possible, up to and including TikTok's model of outright paying them for their insanity. The fact that the agent mediating all this intimacy as put by the author is inclined to do this, to shove the insane person in front of as many people as possible because they will readily cause reactions and further engagement with their product, makes it impossible to ignore them, nor to ignore the subsequent consequences of them being shoved in front of so many other people. I've said it before and I'll say it again: social media cannot be a profit-driven industry. It simply cannot. The incentives for what makes a good, healthy, useful social media apparatus and the incentives that make it profitable to industry are two circles, with MAYBE 2% overlap in the middle on a good day.
- em-bee 3y ago
  they have found via reliable experimentation by numerous social scientists that the most effective way is to keep users in a near-constant state of some combination of rage, indignation or disgust this is only true for social media that promotes particular content, which means it is not true for signal, telegram, whatsapp, wechat and many others that just share messages as the users intended.
  - polygamous_bat 3y ago
    I've never used WeChat, but are signal/telegram/Whatsapp considered "social media" now? I thought they belonged to a separate category of "messaging apps", which consist of people messaging others that they already possibly know from a different channel.
dboreham 3y ago
When you add bots, it's way more than 5%.
winter_blue 3y ago
I'd say it might be closer to 30% of the population that is unhinged at some level.
chankstein38 3y ago
I always described this as "The old time concept of the 'Village Idiot' still exists and now they have a way to discuss their nonsense with other likeminded people which gives them a bigger voice" Completely agree with what you're saying

Kosirich 3y ago

Well put. I think the 5% is a combo of "low IQ psychopaths", narcissist and just assholes ("bad people"). The word insane IMO points perhaps to much to inability for rational judgment, while a certain % of 5% is very much aware of their impact. The most dangerous among the bunch are obviously high IQ psychopaths...

steveBK123 3y ago
Anyone who has worked a retail job, sat on a condo board, worked in a medical office, etc .. dealt with general public, basically understands this principle. Someone will inevitable nitpick my particular choice of word, but "insane" is the general non-clinical description of the category. Points to high value in making your kids work a bad retail job in high school to build some character & experience this first hand early.
- specialist 3y ago
  For reasons, I had to learn about actual insanity. 5% is spot on (filed under believe but cannot prove). The kicker is when someone is high functioning, as in can pass for sane, in most contexts. But then unpredictably acts totally out of bounds, sometimes in very scary ways. Start thinking about insanity and you'll get pulled down the sinkhole of "what is sane?", "am I insane?", "would I know if I wasn't?" IMHO, the takeaway point isn't "insane" or "sane". It's more like "Do I have a theory of mind for the person(s) I'm interacing with?" and "How do I have compassion for people who are suffering in ways that I don't understand?" YMMV.
- maccard 3y ago
  Indeed. This [0] compilation from Parks & Rec is obviously an exaggaration, but if you've ever spent any time with the public as a representative of something, you'll recognise most of these people. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=areUGfOHkMA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=areUGfOHkMA
  - amelius 3y ago
    These people really deserve to interface with an LLM!
    - toofy 3y ago
      i suspect this is one of driving fears many people have with LLMs.
    - NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
      These people will end up training the LLMs. And there's nothing you can do about it.
- Kosirich 3y ago
  Points to high value in making your kids work a bad retail job in high school to build some character & experience this first hand early. It also points that banning access to social networks is a right call until kids get to a (mental/educational) stage where they can judge these things in a similar manner.
  - BobaFloutist 3y ago
    You thinking like 30s? 60s? Maybe once humans turn 100 they're emotionally capable of being normal on the internet?
- dredmorbius 3y ago
  I'd met an old friend who runs a high street business, walking into their shop and chatting briefly before a random walked in off the street and said random stuff, then walked out. My friend shrugged, turned to me, and said, "Welcome to retail". I've related that to a few people over the years. It's a useful lesson to keep in mind. Much better to recognise this for what it is than attempt to fix, fight, or rationalise it.
  - pixl97 3y ago
    With an ever increasing amount of cameras and AI, I would expect that fighting it will start to look like facial identification blocking people from entering businesses for their past transgressions, online or off.
    - dredmorbius 3y ago
      What I'd meant was attempting intervention in the one-on-one case. It's simply not productive, you're better off generally either letting the wave roll over you, or making a quiet exit. The mass-surveillance / access denial approach is a different tactic. One that has some advantages, but also very clear disadvantages and inequities.
  - gglitch 3y ago
    > Much better to recognise this for what it is than attempt to fix, fight, or rationalise it. This is a morally and emotionally sophisticated position, and though I agree with it, it's a bitter pill.

spacecadet 3y ago

Only 5%? While most of us in the US been drinking lead filled water for the last 70 years.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

beefield 3y ago

I have a feeling that it is more like 99% of people are insane 5% of time. Or if not insane, at least forgetting the principle of charity. And given that a typical social media text does not contain all nuances, someone is interpreting the text in an absurd way almost guaranteed. And downhill from there it goes.

Retric 3y ago
I’m sure there’s quite a bit of variety here but having crazy ideas in one area seems to correlate with having crazy ideas in another area. Separating separating fact from fiction is a skill and people don’t all end up making the same number of mistakes. Similarly, people who enjoy trolling flat earth ideas are going to enjoy tweaking people with other bizarre ideas.
- BobaFloutist 3y ago
  The second you decide you're not prone to being irrational is the same second you give up any hope of policing your own rationality. It's actually pretty common for extremely intelligent, methodical scientists in one field to have somewhat bananas thoughts/opinions in unrelated fields.
  - Retric 3y ago
    Nobody is going to be completely correct across the full breath of human knowledge. However, people can be wrong without their ideas being crazy. If I was going to pick my most controversial idea it would be something like, humanity was like a ring species going back thousands of years with people somewhat regularly crossing the Baring Sea without realizing anything particularly unusual was going on. That’s a somewhat wacky idea because diseases didn’t make the jump etc. But it’s wildly more reasonable than ancient aliens. So as long as we are talking crazy rather than simply incorrect, crazy isn’t evenly distributed.
twh270 3y ago
There's both. There's the "I have persistent trouble coping with what we generally accept as 'reality' in a healthy, functional fashion" and "I've just had a moment of completely stupid/delusional/reactionary thinking". (The previous is completely my own wording and not intended to be precise.) I 100% agree with the overall idea that we aren't able to deal well with the consequences of what we've created with social media.

bsenftner 3y ago

While that ~5% may be insane, it also appears that around 30% are hopelessly gullible, and herded into voting blocks by power hungry manipulators. I think this post is almost there: what does not scale is humanity, our current constitution of largely selfish, immature adults operating as our leaders. In order for our civilization to scale, we need more real adults, and not these immature adult-babies running things.

another2another 3y ago
Alas they don't always get voted in, or even get involved in modern day politics. That just leaves the attention seekers, and people with a burning agenda. Saying that, what would make a good national politician and leader is probably quite a rare combination of traits. Good understanding of politics (natch), law, history, economics and statistics (as well as possibly industry, marketing, PR, the money markets), and have a degree of personal charisma. If the healthy ongoing survival of democracy needs that, we'd better get better at producing these people. England (sorry Scotland, but there is a bit of a gap there) and the US try to solve this with their OXBRIDGE and Ivy League Universities - but recently the results have not been so good. Maybe the upcoming younger generation can surprise us all?
- polygamous_bat 3y ago
  How can we expect people with nuance to win elections if the population has been trained to expect solutions that fit in 280 characters and/or 15 seconds of video?
  - worthless-trash 3y ago
    You dont. It ends up like the clip on futurama, where Jack Johnson vs John jackson both end up talking about the 3c titanium tax going too far, or not too far enough.

ToucanLoucan 3y ago

With all due respect, the narrative being spun here positions the social network as an entity as an impartial, disinterested actor that is simply facilitating conversations: this is not the case. All mainstream social media websites are (operated by) for-profit entities. They are selling access to human attention to advertisers to generate profit. Because of this, they are motivated to increase the amount of attention they have to sell; keep people in their app. And they have found via reliable experimentation by numerous social scientists that the most effective way is to keep users in a near-constant state of some combination of rage, indignation or disgust. This poisons the entire well. I don't think the issue is that ~5% of the population is insane. I think the issue is social media has every reason in the world to find that 5% and give them the largest megaphone possible, up to and including TikTok's model of outright paying them for their insanity. The fact that the agent mediating all this intimacy as put by the author is inclined to do this, to shove the insane person in front of as many people as possible because they will readily cause reactions and further engagement with their product, makes it impossible to ignore them, nor to ignore the subsequent consequences of them being shoved in front of so many other people. I've said it before and I'll say it again: social media cannot be a profit-driven industry. It simply cannot. The incentives for what makes a good, healthy, useful social media apparatus and the incentives that make it profitable to industry are two circles, with MAYBE 2% overlap in the middle on a good day.

em-bee 3y ago
they have found via reliable experimentation by numerous social scientists that the most effective way is to keep users in a near-constant state of some combination of rage, indignation or disgust this is only true for social media that promotes particular content, which means it is not true for signal, telegram, whatsapp, wechat and many others that just share messages as the users intended.
- polygamous_bat 3y ago
  I've never used WeChat, but are signal/telegram/Whatsapp considered "social media" now? I thought they belonged to a separate category of "messaging apps", which consist of people messaging others that they already possibly know from a different channel.

dboreham 3y ago

When you add bots, it's way more than 5%.

winter_blue 3y ago

I'd say it might be closer to 30% of the population that is unhinged at some level.

chankstein38 3y ago

I always described this as "The old time concept of the 'Village Idiot' still exists and now they have a way to discuss their nonsense with other likeminded people which gives them a bigger voice" Completely agree with what you're saying