6 ms·

> I feel like every decade of the 1900's had pretty distinct cultural trends and identity, and even subcultures and counter cultures of the past were more publi

> I feel like every decade of the 1900's had pretty distinct cultural trends and identity, and even subcultures and counter cultures of the past were more public, but now it's all balkanized. I have no idea if that is a bad thing, but it is certainly different. I like it. Instead of sitting around talking about whatever the big media gatekeepers shoved down our throats we can get together and share what we've found and be introduced to something new and worthwhile that we'd never heard of before, then talk about those things. We have fewer cultural touchstones, but they still exist in the form of things like major events (like Covid) or heavily advertised media.

tayo42 3y ago
I think that's a little too cynical about culture in the past decades and also underestimating how much curated stuff is being shoved down our throats now. It's not really discovering, it's consuming what ever some ml model from one of the few big tech companies decides you should see.
- Geisterde 3y ago
  I have become immunized to algorithmic content curation, I dont know exactly why that happened, but understanding how it works at a surface level I think helped. Im curious if thats a widespread phenomena or not, I suspect it is.
  - slimsag 3y ago
    Or, you became aware of the most aggressive aspects of algorithmic curation, feel you are immune now, while not knowing the more subtle ways it has influenced your internalized thinking the past 5 years.
    - WalterBright 3y ago
      Since I'm way out of step with what most people think, I'm not too concerned about that.
      - Eisenstein 3y ago
        I'm curious how you know what most people think?
        WalterBright 3y ago
        Sort of like my dad, a professor of finance, who had a student remark to him "I didn't know there even was a case for free markets!" I get similar responses. Sometimes I feel like I'm the only person on HN who understands how free markets work. For example, most people would say that hard work leads to success. This is incorrect. It's creating value that leads to success. I very rarely hear the latter, in fact, pretty much never. When I was a kid, I made some pocket money by mowing lawns. None of my customers ever asked me how I was going to do it, or how hard I worked at it. They did not give a damn. They only cared about was the lawn mowed. Using scissors, a push mower, a gas mower, or a rider mower all came with a huge variance in how hard the work was. None of that had any influence on what I was paid for it.
        deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
        superb_dev 3y ago
        > …most people would say that hard work leads to success. I don’t think most people would agree with that these days. I know most of the people around me wouldn’t
        WalterBright 3y ago
        Indeed, a lot of people in America believe that there is no path to success. It's a very popular notion on HN. Another thing I'm in a small minority of is pointing out that adults of sound mind and body in America are capable of success.
        Eisenstein 3y ago
        > adults of sound mind and body in America are capable of success. You are in a minority because of those caveats. 'Sound mind and body' and 'success' are vague enough to lend themselves to many interpretations and act as an escape hatch you can jump out of when someone points out any one of numerous exceptions to that statement.
    - Geisterde 3y ago
      Yea, maybe. Though you can put me on youtube and ill scoll for maybe 15 secondsbefore leaving or searching for the specific content I want. Twitter, facebook, instagram, whatever it is I dont have the interest.
  - SpicyLemonZest 3y ago
    I’m pretty skeptical that it’s possible to be immune to algorithmic content curation. It seems more than a little bit like the people who say “hey, mainstream media is all biased, but that’s not a problem for me because I’ve found the sources that are actually true”. How do you choose which content to watch and how does that process exclude algorithmic curation?
    - notjoemama 3y ago
      I don’t think it’s a matter of choosing content that is served up by algorithm but by finding the content that the algorithm omits. I find I then have to listen for what are truth statements, for verifiable truth statements, and sift out the emotional language. In fact, the more emotional the tone, the more intention I attribute to the engineering of it being shown to me. This has resulted in me looking at and reading what I think is garbage sometimes, but I typically find some nugget of truth in it that helps me reason about why someone would think that way. Kind of erases the left versus right thing in politics.
      - Eisenstein 3y ago
        How do you know when you found that truth nugget? Why do you think content that is excluded from the algorithm is more legitimate? How do you know it was excluded? What do you think about the notion that many/most people who claim they are neither left nor right end up demonstrating that they are actually pretty right-wing?
        deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
        Tainnor 3y ago
        > What do you think about the notion that many/most people who claim they are neither left nor right end up demonstrating that they are actually pretty right-wing? I'm not even sure how to respond to that. Maybe this is true for the US, but in other places of the world, societies aren't yet as polarised (although, sadly, it looks as though we're copying the American model more and more). Maybe you should make it more precise what you mean by left and right, otherwise it's always easy to call something "right-wing" just because it's more to the right than whichever positions you espouse. (For the record, I always considered myself to be rather center-left, and I still hold many positions that are broadly left-wing, but recent events have made me realise that there's also a huge part of leftism with which I fundamentally disagree, so I'm not sure if I want to call myself that any more.)
  - doix 3y ago
    I wish I was immunized to it. By avoiding it for years I have basically 0 immunity. Hand me a phone with stock YouTube on some short and 5 minutes later I've scrolled through people dancing, some cats, shitty DIY tips, crazy sport moments, someone talking about how traveling is great etc. Luckily I'm easily distracted so any little thing is enough to snap me back to reality and have me questioning my life on why I just scrolled and watched that garbage. It's really scary how effective it is on me. I completely understand how it's designed to work and what it's trying to do and yet it's extremely effective.
Aerbil313 3y ago
The bonds between people are diminishing while the bonds between people and the institutions / technology is strengthening. The normal course of technological progress. This will and is already leading to widespread unhappiness and mental illness, as bonding with others is a biological need.
- junofan 3y ago
  Concomitant is the erosion of spirituality and its replacement with other forms of tribalism. Atheists now donate to politicians at incredible rates—more than any other group.
JohnFen 3y ago
> we can get together and share what we've found and be introduced to something new and worthwhile that we'd never heard of before, then talk about those things. That's the theory, yes, but what I've been seeing is people increasingly just staying in their own little world and not talking about those things with each other much at all.
jeegsy 3y ago
The older I get, the more I realize that I didnt so much have a problem with the 'gatekeeping' as the 'gatekeepers'

tayo42 3y ago

I think that's a little too cynical about culture in the past decades and also underestimating how much curated stuff is being shoved down our throats now. It's not really discovering, it's consuming what ever some ml model from one of the few big tech companies decides you should see.

Geisterde 3y ago
I have become immunized to algorithmic content curation, I dont know exactly why that happened, but understanding how it works at a surface level I think helped. Im curious if thats a widespread phenomena or not, I suspect it is.
- slimsag 3y ago
  Or, you became aware of the most aggressive aspects of algorithmic curation, feel you are immune now, while not knowing the more subtle ways it has influenced your internalized thinking the past 5 years.
  - WalterBright 3y ago
    Since I'm way out of step with what most people think, I'm not too concerned about that.
    - Eisenstein 3y ago
      I'm curious how you know what most people think?
      - WalterBright 3y ago
        Sort of like my dad, a professor of finance, who had a student remark to him "I didn't know there even was a case for free markets!" I get similar responses. Sometimes I feel like I'm the only person on HN who understands how free markets work. For example, most people would say that hard work leads to success. This is incorrect. It's creating value that leads to success. I very rarely hear the latter, in fact, pretty much never. When I was a kid, I made some pocket money by mowing lawns. None of my customers ever asked me how I was going to do it, or how hard I worked at it. They did not give a damn. They only cared about was the lawn mowed. Using scissors, a push mower, a gas mower, or a rider mower all came with a huge variance in how hard the work was. None of that had any influence on what I was paid for it.
        deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
        superb_dev 3y ago
        > …most people would say that hard work leads to success. I don’t think most people would agree with that these days. I know most of the people around me wouldn’t
        WalterBright 3y ago
        Indeed, a lot of people in America believe that there is no path to success. It's a very popular notion on HN. Another thing I'm in a small minority of is pointing out that adults of sound mind and body in America are capable of success.
        Eisenstein 3y ago
        > adults of sound mind and body in America are capable of success. You are in a minority because of those caveats. 'Sound mind and body' and 'success' are vague enough to lend themselves to many interpretations and act as an escape hatch you can jump out of when someone points out any one of numerous exceptions to that statement.
  - Geisterde 3y ago
    Yea, maybe. Though you can put me on youtube and ill scoll for maybe 15 secondsbefore leaving or searching for the specific content I want. Twitter, facebook, instagram, whatever it is I dont have the interest.
- SpicyLemonZest 3y ago
  I’m pretty skeptical that it’s possible to be immune to algorithmic content curation. It seems more than a little bit like the people who say “hey, mainstream media is all biased, but that’s not a problem for me because I’ve found the sources that are actually true”. How do you choose which content to watch and how does that process exclude algorithmic curation?
  - notjoemama 3y ago
    I don’t think it’s a matter of choosing content that is served up by algorithm but by finding the content that the algorithm omits. I find I then have to listen for what are truth statements, for verifiable truth statements, and sift out the emotional language. In fact, the more emotional the tone, the more intention I attribute to the engineering of it being shown to me. This has resulted in me looking at and reading what I think is garbage sometimes, but I typically find some nugget of truth in it that helps me reason about why someone would think that way. Kind of erases the left versus right thing in politics.
    - Eisenstein 3y ago
      How do you know when you found that truth nugget? Why do you think content that is excluded from the algorithm is more legitimate? How do you know it was excluded? What do you think about the notion that many/most people who claim they are neither left nor right end up demonstrating that they are actually pretty right-wing?
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      - Tainnor 3y ago
        > What do you think about the notion that many/most people who claim they are neither left nor right end up demonstrating that they are actually pretty right-wing? I'm not even sure how to respond to that. Maybe this is true for the US, but in other places of the world, societies aren't yet as polarised (although, sadly, it looks as though we're copying the American model more and more). Maybe you should make it more precise what you mean by left and right, otherwise it's always easy to call something "right-wing" just because it's more to the right than whichever positions you espouse. (For the record, I always considered myself to be rather center-left, and I still hold many positions that are broadly left-wing, but recent events have made me realise that there's also a huge part of leftism with which I fundamentally disagree, so I'm not sure if I want to call myself that any more.)
- doix 3y ago
  I wish I was immunized to it. By avoiding it for years I have basically 0 immunity. Hand me a phone with stock YouTube on some short and 5 minutes later I've scrolled through people dancing, some cats, shitty DIY tips, crazy sport moments, someone talking about how traveling is great etc. Luckily I'm easily distracted so any little thing is enough to snap me back to reality and have me questioning my life on why I just scrolled and watched that garbage. It's really scary how effective it is on me. I completely understand how it's designed to work and what it's trying to do and yet it's extremely effective.

Aerbil313 3y ago

The bonds between people are diminishing while the bonds between people and the institutions / technology is strengthening. The normal course of technological progress. This will and is already leading to widespread unhappiness and mental illness, as bonding with others is a biological need.

junofan 3y ago
Concomitant is the erosion of spirituality and its replacement with other forms of tribalism. Atheists now donate to politicians at incredible rates—more than any other group.

JohnFen 3y ago

> we can get together and share what we've found and be introduced to something new and worthwhile that we'd never heard of before, then talk about those things. That's the theory, yes, but what I've been seeing is people increasingly just staying in their own little world and not talking about those things with each other much at all.

jeegsy 3y ago

The older I get, the more I realize that I didnt so much have a problem with the 'gatekeeping' as the 'gatekeepers'