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More constructive!? Ok, let’s break it down for you: What all 8 billion people in the world think does not matter to you. There are people out there cutting he

More constructive!? Ok, let’s break it down for you: What all 8 billion people in the world think does not matter to you. There are people out there cutting heads off in the name of religion, or people who think their dictator is a divine being. People outside your country have little effect on your daily life. Even people within your country have a weak effect on your daily life. What other people believe only really matters for economic reasons. Still, unless you are very dependent on social safety nets even they don’t matter that much. You just find more money and carry on. You might think that more propaganda will result in people voting for bad politicians, but it is actually possible to have too much propaganda. If people become aware of how easily fake content is generated, which they are rapidly realizing in the age of AI, the result is they become skeptical of everything, and come up with their own wild theories on what the truth really is. The people whose thoughts matter most are the people you interact with on a daily basis, as they have the most capability to alter your daily life physically and immediately. Fortunately you can control better who you surround yourself with or how you interact with them. If you turn off the conversation, the world will appear pretty indifferent even to things that seem like a big deal on social media.

bayindirh 1y ago
It's ironic that the front page of HN had a related article: - Study finds growing social circles may fuel polarization: https://phys.org/news/2025-10-friends-division-social-circles-fuel.html https://phys.org/news/2025-10-friends-division-social-circle... tl;dr: More close friends people have, more polarized societies become. It's easy to profile people extensively, and pinpoint them to the same neighborhood, home or social circle. Now what happens when you feed "what you want" to these groups of people you see. You can plant polarization with neighbourhood or home precision and control people en-masse. Knowing or seeing these people doesn't matter. After some time you might find yourself proverbially cutting heads off in the name of what you believe. We used to call these flame wars back then. Now this is called doxxing and swatting. The people you don't know can make life very miserable in a slow-burning way. You might not be feeling it, but this the core principle of slowly cooking the frog.
GamingAtWork 1y ago
You said: "You might think that more propaganda will result in people voting for bad politicians" In the US at least, the people who vote the most are typically the older people 40+ and those people have very little experience with tech and AI and are easily tricked by fake crape. Add AI to the mix, and they literally have no perception of the real world.
- deadbabe 1y ago
  40s have very little experience with tech? Those were the people who practically invented tech as we know it today. Most AI researchers are in their 40s and 50s, and have been experimenting with machine learning and AI for the past decades. I think your comment is just very ageist. You stereotype everyone who is middle age and above as barely lucid nursing home seniors. Ironically I would say it is young 20 somethings and below who have no clue how a computer or software even works. Just a magic sheet of glass or black box that spits out content and answers, and sometimes takes pictures and video.
  - ben_w 1y ago
    I am 42. I had a Commodore 64 as a kid. From the perspective of my first girlfriend, this made me wildly privileged. My first boyfriend was about a decade older than me, he didn't even have a household phone growing up. > You stereotype everyone who is middle age and above as barely lucid nursing home seniors. No, they have not. My dad worked on UK military IFF software solutions and simulations. Still took him years to realise Google (c. 2010) search results had a scroll bar. Mum eventually did get Alzheimers, but was mixing up reality and fiction decades earlier, in the form of New Age healing crystals, ley lines, etc., and as I grew up with that influence I too believed them until practicing Popper-like falsification stripped away each magickal belief. Me, I've been following AI since before the turn of the millennium, and I still get surprised when I see how fast the tech is improving. I also see plenty of people, even on HN, assert AI will take (paraphrasing) "centuries, if ever" to reach performance thresholds it has now reached.
    - deadbabe 1y ago
kakacik 1y ago
A lot of assumptions, some could be correct, some are plainly not. Your idea of living in society is something very different form my idea, or European idea (and reality). Not seeing how everything is interconnected, ripple effects and secondary/tertiary effects come back again and again, I guess you don't have kids... well you do your life, if you think money can push through and solve everything important. I'd call it a sad shortsighted life if I cared, but thats just me.
pjc50 1y ago
This is kind of true - the media environment can be both overwhelming and irrelevant. But eventually it hits. I have some friends who are trans and very familiar with what a hostile propaganda campaign can do to your healthcare. (also, has everyone forgotten COVID?)

bayindirh 1y ago

It's ironic that the front page of HN had a related article: - Study finds growing social circles may fuel polarization: https://phys.org/news/2025-10-friends-division-social-circles-fuel.html https://phys.org/news/2025-10-friends-division-social-circle... tl;dr: More close friends people have, more polarized societies become. It's easy to profile people extensively, and pinpoint them to the same neighborhood, home or social circle. Now what happens when you feed "what you want" to these groups of people you see. You can plant polarization with neighbourhood or home precision and control people en-masse. Knowing or seeing these people doesn't matter. After some time you might find yourself proverbially cutting heads off in the name of what you believe. We used to call these flame wars back then. Now this is called doxxing and swatting. The people you don't know can make life very miserable in a slow-burning way. You might not be feeling it, but this the core principle of slowly cooking the frog.

GamingAtWork 1y ago

You said: "You might think that more propaganda will result in people voting for bad politicians" In the US at least, the people who vote the most are typically the older people 40+ and those people have very little experience with tech and AI and are easily tricked by fake crape. Add AI to the mix, and they literally have no perception of the real world.

deadbabe 1y ago
40s have very little experience with tech? Those were the people who practically invented tech as we know it today. Most AI researchers are in their 40s and 50s, and have been experimenting with machine learning and AI for the past decades. I think your comment is just very ageist. You stereotype everyone who is middle age and above as barely lucid nursing home seniors. Ironically I would say it is young 20 somethings and below who have no clue how a computer or software even works. Just a magic sheet of glass or black box that spits out content and answers, and sometimes takes pictures and video.
- ben_w 1y ago
  I am 42. I had a Commodore 64 as a kid. From the perspective of my first girlfriend, this made me wildly privileged. My first boyfriend was about a decade older than me, he didn't even have a household phone growing up. > You stereotype everyone who is middle age and above as barely lucid nursing home seniors. No, they have not. My dad worked on UK military IFF software solutions and simulations. Still took him years to realise Google (c. 2010) search results had a scroll bar. Mum eventually did get Alzheimers, but was mixing up reality and fiction decades earlier, in the form of New Age healing crystals, ley lines, etc., and as I grew up with that influence I too believed them until practicing Popper-like falsification stripped away each magickal belief. Me, I've been following AI since before the turn of the millennium, and I still get surprised when I see how fast the tech is improving. I also see plenty of people, even on HN, assert AI will take (paraphrasing) "centuries, if ever" to reach performance thresholds it has now reached.
  - deadbabe 1y ago

kakacik 1y ago

A lot of assumptions, some could be correct, some are plainly not. Your idea of living in society is something very different form my idea, or European idea (and reality). Not seeing how everything is interconnected, ripple effects and secondary/tertiary effects come back again and again, I guess you don't have kids... well you do your life, if you think money can push through and solve everything important. I'd call it a sad shortsighted life if I cared, but thats just me.

pjc50 1y ago

This is kind of true - the media environment can be both overwhelming and irrelevant. But eventually it hits. I have some friends who are trans and very familiar with what a hostile propaganda campaign can do to your healthcare. (also, has everyone forgotten COVID?)