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They said, watching society go down the abyss. Have you noticed how things are going? Do you genuinely believe these are non-factors?

by jjani 1y ago

int_19h 1y ago
I don't trust people saying that "society is going down the abyss" and then using it to justify a crackdown on personal freedoms - ranting about "degeneracy" is how authoritarians destroy democracy time and again.
- jjani 1y ago
  Still interested in hearing your answer, and your reasoning behind it, as you didn't engage with the question.
  - int_19h 1y ago
    I agree that social media is exacerbating a lot of problems right now, and I don't have a ready answer as to how to fix that (or if that is even possible at all - it wouldn't be the first time a society is radically disrupted and reshaped by new tech). One thing I'm pretty confident about, though, is that heavy-handed regulation will not only not solve that problem, but will create many others. Maybe if we had some kind of widespread supermajority social consensus on this, it might have worked, but we don't.
    - jjani 1y ago
      Thanks for taking the time to answer. In my view, it's easy to legislate away at least 50% of the harm. Not perfect, but much better than 0%. This would be banning recommender systems and infinite scroll feeds for platforms above a certain size ("gatekeepers"). I'm sure there's a number of loopholes, and you might still believe that even this kind of measure would create more than it solves. On the supermajority bit, in more and more countries there's already a supermajority for banning phones from schools, more and more for banning it for children altogether, and so on. I think that's a clear sign people would actually be in favour of quite a lot of measures to tone things down, like the one I mentioned. Total bans I wouldn't vouch for.
  - stickfigure 1y ago
    No, society isn't going "down the abyss", whatever that means. That which is asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
- rayiner 1y ago
  “Freedom” in the American context means something different than the how people use it today. It’s closer to “freedom to make the right choices.” John Adams said: “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” He was making an important point that has nothing to do with theology. Society can have extensive individual freedoms when people are socialized to mostly to make the right decisions without government coercion. If we loosen the social guardrails, as we have done, more government coercion becomes necessary to suppress anti-social behavior.
  - int_19h 1y ago
    Your words amount to saying that freedom is only allowed when it's meaningless because nobody is actually exercising it in any way that matters. Separately from that, I don't think that the original US constitution - you know, the document that explicitly protected the interests of slave owners, i.e. the vilest kind of filth - could be meaningfully said to be made for "a moral and religious People". Or, if we take that at face value, then that tells us volumes about the value of said morals and said religion, and it's deeply negative.
    - rayiner 1y ago
      > Your words amount to saying that freedom is only allowed when it's meaningless because nobody is actually exercising it in any way that matters It’s interesting that you think freedom is only “meaningful” if people actually engage in the anti-social conduct which they’re free to do. I would say the point of freedom is to eliminate the apparatus of control because you can trust nearly all people to do the right thing without it. That’s the highest form of society. That slavery existed is not some trump card that negates everything else. It’s also a particularly uneducated comment to level at John Adams of all people. The idea that slavery is intolerable, which you easily hold in your head in 2025 without having worked for it—was bequeathed to you by John Adams and his ilk. In 1789, you would have looked the other way at slavery, just like you look the other way at everything you tolerate today. You probably would’ve even called John Adams a religious nut for believing everyone was created equal in the eyes of god, and demanded scientific proof of that.

They said, watching society go down the abyss. Have you noticed how things are going? Do you genuinely believe these are non-factors?

by jjani 1y ago

They said, watching society go down the abyss. Have you noticed how things are going? Do you genuinely believe these are non-factors?

int_19h 1y ago

I don't trust people saying that "society is going down the abyss" and then using it to justify a crackdown on personal freedoms - ranting about "degeneracy" is how authoritarians destroy democracy time and again.

jjani 1y ago
Still interested in hearing your answer, and your reasoning behind it, as you didn't engage with the question.
- int_19h 1y ago
  I agree that social media is exacerbating a lot of problems right now, and I don't have a ready answer as to how to fix that (or if that is even possible at all - it wouldn't be the first time a society is radically disrupted and reshaped by new tech). One thing I'm pretty confident about, though, is that heavy-handed regulation will not only not solve that problem, but will create many others. Maybe if we had some kind of widespread supermajority social consensus on this, it might have worked, but we don't.
  - jjani 1y ago
    Thanks for taking the time to answer. In my view, it's easy to legislate away at least 50% of the harm. Not perfect, but much better than 0%. This would be banning recommender systems and infinite scroll feeds for platforms above a certain size ("gatekeepers"). I'm sure there's a number of loopholes, and you might still believe that even this kind of measure would create more than it solves. On the supermajority bit, in more and more countries there's already a supermajority for banning phones from schools, more and more for banning it for children altogether, and so on. I think that's a clear sign people would actually be in favour of quite a lot of measures to tone things down, like the one I mentioned. Total bans I wouldn't vouch for.
- stickfigure 1y ago
  No, society isn't going "down the abyss", whatever that means. That which is asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
rayiner 1y ago
“Freedom” in the American context means something different than the how people use it today. It’s closer to “freedom to make the right choices.” John Adams said: “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” He was making an important point that has nothing to do with theology. Society can have extensive individual freedoms when people are socialized to mostly to make the right decisions without government coercion. If we loosen the social guardrails, as we have done, more government coercion becomes necessary to suppress anti-social behavior.
- int_19h 1y ago
  Your words amount to saying that freedom is only allowed when it's meaningless because nobody is actually exercising it in any way that matters. Separately from that, I don't think that the original US constitution - you know, the document that explicitly protected the interests of slave owners, i.e. the vilest kind of filth - could be meaningfully said to be made for "a moral and religious People". Or, if we take that at face value, then that tells us volumes about the value of said morals and said religion, and it's deeply negative.
  - rayiner 1y ago
    > Your words amount to saying that freedom is only allowed when it's meaningless because nobody is actually exercising it in any way that matters It’s interesting that you think freedom is only “meaningful” if people actually engage in the anti-social conduct which they’re free to do. I would say the point of freedom is to eliminate the apparatus of control because you can trust nearly all people to do the right thing without it. That’s the highest form of society. That slavery existed is not some trump card that negates everything else. It’s also a particularly uneducated comment to level at John Adams of all people. The idea that slavery is intolerable, which you easily hold in your head in 2025 without having worked for it—was bequeathed to you by John Adams and his ilk. In 1789, you would have looked the other way at slavery, just like you look the other way at everything you tolerate today. You probably would’ve even called John Adams a religious nut for believing everyone was created equal in the eyes of god, and demanded scientific proof of that.