4 ms·

All societies are consensus realities wholly dependent upon participation. The system was fine but no one has yet constructed a system that can withstand weapo

All societies are consensus realities wholly dependent upon participation. The system was fine but no one has yet constructed a system that can withstand weaponized mass stupidity. Even the ones created to combat corruption fail to account for this danger. So.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
echelon 1y ago
Weaponized social media. That's what wasn't predicted.
- wyldfire 1y ago
  Maybe the abnormal thing was the century or so we had of papers/radio/TV guided by ethics or professionalism or some delicate trustworthiness-equilibrium. And now we have returned to a state where humanity is guided by inventive stories and manipulated by propaganda.
  - pfannkuchen 1y ago
    This implies that the period with massively more centralized control of information had a truer consensus reality. That seems… unlikely?
    - neltnerb 1y ago
      At least they mostly felt the need to pick a single consensus reality to approximate. How well it represented common experience, well...
    - beezlewax 1y ago
      It was better than the illusion of freedom of information a lot of people have now. In reality mass manipulation is happening on a global scale at unprecedented levels.
    - maxerickson 1y ago
      It wasn't that centralized (many many independent newspapers and such). And then "information" is doing a lot of work when you start talking about social media.
  - oblio 1y ago
    You know what the weirdest thing about that century is? The Soviets. A sort of seemingly valid communal society seemed possible so all the other capitalism based ones had competition and as a result were trying to improve the life of citizens. I'm starting to become more and more convinced that as real fear of Communism disappeared at the top, our systems are regressing to the mean.
- amelius 1y ago
  It wasn't predicted because freedom of speech is generally considered a good thing so its darker aspects were never considered. Same reason adtech has free reign to bring down society.
a_bonobo 1y ago
Germany has learned this lesson the hard way, with a 'defensive' constitution post-1945. You don't have 100% free speech in Germany, and it is possible to make parties illegal. It's not without its issues (currently, the far-right AfD might be banned using these laws but the whole system has been dragging its feet) but it is a lesson the US should have learned after the first Trump term. Democracies by default assumed that all players in the system are supportive of the system itself, kind of like all early Internet protocols assumed that there are no malicious users.
- roenxi 1y ago
  They didn't "learn this lesson", they had a constitution imposed on them and were basically occupied for 50 years by multiple foreign powers; even up until 2020 as I recall there were about as many active US army personnel in Germany as German ones. There isn't a hugely compelling story that the constitution is the big factor in the German journey. It isn't possible to build a paper system that consistently resists an incompetent elite and the people deciding to re-roll the dice on a new system because the current one isn't working. Corruption creeps in and people stop following the official rules.
  - triknomeister 1y ago
    Germans have this false belief that if you just create the correct laws, people will follow them and system would be good. When in reality, for most people around the world, they follow laws only till it makes sense for them.
    - pjmlp 1y ago
      This belief is stronger in Switzerland and Scandinavian countries, based on my experience.
  - impossiblefork 1y ago
    It's also worth noting that the mainstream German parties have actually supported ethnic cleansing abroad, in Nagorno-Karabach, etc. while the AfD opposed those things, so I don't think it's very clear cut that AfD is the dangerous party. Personally I find the political inclinations of the German mainstream parties to be what appears to be dangerous, since what they're doing actually led to a large number of deaths and a large number of people being displaced, to the loss of sovereignty and to the expansion of a dictatorship. I see very little difference between Aliyev and Hitler, and he is still tolerated (in fact, my perception of Azerbaijani hate attitudes is that they're actually more extreme that the Nazi hate attitudes, i.e. simply going further, the systematic teaching of this hatred to even younger children that the Nazis primarily targeted, etc.).

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

echelon 1y ago

Weaponized social media. That's what wasn't predicted.

wyldfire 1y ago
Maybe the abnormal thing was the century or so we had of papers/radio/TV guided by ethics or professionalism or some delicate trustworthiness-equilibrium. And now we have returned to a state where humanity is guided by inventive stories and manipulated by propaganda.
- pfannkuchen 1y ago
  This implies that the period with massively more centralized control of information had a truer consensus reality. That seems… unlikely?
  - neltnerb 1y ago
    At least they mostly felt the need to pick a single consensus reality to approximate. How well it represented common experience, well...
  - beezlewax 1y ago
    It was better than the illusion of freedom of information a lot of people have now. In reality mass manipulation is happening on a global scale at unprecedented levels.
  - maxerickson 1y ago
    It wasn't that centralized (many many independent newspapers and such). And then "information" is doing a lot of work when you start talking about social media.
- oblio 1y ago
  You know what the weirdest thing about that century is? The Soviets. A sort of seemingly valid communal society seemed possible so all the other capitalism based ones had competition and as a result were trying to improve the life of citizens. I'm starting to become more and more convinced that as real fear of Communism disappeared at the top, our systems are regressing to the mean.
amelius 1y ago
It wasn't predicted because freedom of speech is generally considered a good thing so its darker aspects were never considered. Same reason adtech has free reign to bring down society.

a_bonobo 1y ago

Germany has learned this lesson the hard way, with a 'defensive' constitution post-1945. You don't have 100% free speech in Germany, and it is possible to make parties illegal. It's not without its issues (currently, the far-right AfD might be banned using these laws but the whole system has been dragging its feet) but it is a lesson the US should have learned after the first Trump term. Democracies by default assumed that all players in the system are supportive of the system itself, kind of like all early Internet protocols assumed that there are no malicious users.

roenxi 1y ago
They didn't "learn this lesson", they had a constitution imposed on them and were basically occupied for 50 years by multiple foreign powers; even up until 2020 as I recall there were about as many active US army personnel in Germany as German ones. There isn't a hugely compelling story that the constitution is the big factor in the German journey. It isn't possible to build a paper system that consistently resists an incompetent elite and the people deciding to re-roll the dice on a new system because the current one isn't working. Corruption creeps in and people stop following the official rules.
- triknomeister 1y ago
  Germans have this false belief that if you just create the correct laws, people will follow them and system would be good. When in reality, for most people around the world, they follow laws only till it makes sense for them.
  - pjmlp 1y ago
    This belief is stronger in Switzerland and Scandinavian countries, based on my experience.
- impossiblefork 1y ago
  It's also worth noting that the mainstream German parties have actually supported ethnic cleansing abroad, in Nagorno-Karabach, etc. while the AfD opposed those things, so I don't think it's very clear cut that AfD is the dangerous party. Personally I find the political inclinations of the German mainstream parties to be what appears to be dangerous, since what they're doing actually led to a large number of deaths and a large number of people being displaced, to the loss of sovereignty and to the expansion of a dictatorship. I see very little difference between Aliyev and Hitler, and he is still tolerated (in fact, my perception of Azerbaijani hate attitudes is that they're actually more extreme that the Nazi hate attitudes, i.e. simply going further, the systematic teaching of this hatred to even younger children that the Nazis primarily targeted, etc.).