Creating a knowledgeable public requires at least some workable signals that distinguishtruth from falsehood.
I suppose this an effective approach to step one, but step two means facilitating self-awareness at a level that would protect the masses from their own (our) confirmation bias, and those who actively cater to it. Neither step seems easily feasible, and I can imagine the powers at be have no interest surmounting such "unnecessary challenges".
The rest is notFacebook’s department
Sad, but true. Morality is not a category in the corporate budget.
that would not have been a way to reach the affected audience.
If this is true, it opens a door I'm sure many people would prefer stay closed.
drawing out the most naked forms of Southern police brutality for the cameras
?
These are important questions— I like this author's style.
meddling with trust and attention, notmuzzling speech itself.
capillaries
This author's vocabulary is out of this world.
They use massive surveillance of ourbehavior, online and off, to generate increasingly accurate, automated predictions of whatadvertisements we are most susceptible to and what content will keep us clicking, tapping,and scrolling down a bottomless feed.So what does this algorithmic public sphere tend to feed us? In tech parlance, Facebook andYouTube are “optimized for engagement,” which their defenders will tell you means thatthey’re just giving us what we want. But there’s nothing natural or inevitable about thespecific ways that Facebook and YouTube corral our attention. The patterns, by now, are wellknown. As Buzzfeed famously reported in November 2016, “top fake election news storiesgenerated more total engagement on Facebook than top election stories from 19 major newsoutlets combined.”Humans are a social species, equipped with few defenses against the natural world beyondour ability to acquire knowledge and stay in groups that work together. We are particularlysusceptible to glimmers of novelty, messages of affirmation and belonging, and messages ofoutrage toward perceived enemies. These kinds of messages are to human community whatsalt, sugar, and fat are to the human appetite. And Facebook gorges us on them—in what thecompany’s first president, Sean Parker, recently called “a social-validation feedback loop.”Sure, it is a golden age of free speech—if you can believe your lying eyes.There are, moreover, no nutritional labels in this cafeteria. For Facebook, YouTube, andTwitter, all speech—whether it’s a breaking news story, a saccharine animal video, an anti-Semitic meme, or a clever advertisement for razors—is but “content,” each post just anotherslice of pie on the carousel. A personal post looks almost the same as an ad, which looks verysimilar to a New York Times article, which has much the same visual feel as a fake newspapercreated in an afternoon.See What’s Next in Tech with the Fast Forward NewsletterFrom artificial intelligence and self-driving cars to transformed cities and new startups, signup for the latest news.Will be used in accordance with our Privacy Policy.
Well said— giving very Orwellian
golden age of free speech.
more like the golden age of free lies
comparable in size to CNN’s for a short while
I would have loved to be a fly on the wall at CNN at the time.
Canceling the match was too risky for the junta
When soccer matches interfere with your ability to overthrow the government....
mechanically disseminated
wow, I had to look this up.
they can't
Not going to lie --this line made me tear up.
an addict
This is part of the stigma I previously described. Even calling someone "an addict' infuses that word in their brain as part of their identity, which I consider to be both dangerous and indelible.
thick fog
This paragraph has really got me thinking about the ways in which we can remove ourselves from social situations these days in favor of a more solitary way of life, and I don't disagree.
Decriminalization
I love this insight, and in a way, is what I was referring to as the "courage" it must have taken for the author to write this article with the admission that they themselves were once addicted to a drug--although not always considered to criminals, the stigma associated with admission of drug use is strong, and for some people, follows them their entire lives.
bigger picture
Agreed--there are many more elements that tie an individual to their addiction beyond chemical dependency, including the power of ritual.
naggingdoubt.
Same. It's compelling evidence followed by an insightful theory, but I also question a solution that seems to be so simplistic.
just stop
How do we know for sure that they just stopped?
happens
This is compelling evidence.
It'snot you. It's your cage.
POWERFUL
stopped
This human equivalent is compelling, but I would love to see a more controlled experiment that doesn't involve the many unknown factors that may have played a part here.
did
Devil's advocate: A "good life" for a rat and a "good life" for a human are two dramatically different things. Rats don't deal with social pressure the way we do, they don't have to adhere to laws, and they don't have ideologies. I'm curious how these factors would influence a human equivalent of this study, assuming one would ever be ethically viable.
Rat Park
I remember watching a youtube video about this years ago! The points made in this experiment have always stuck with me.
until it kills itself
ethical implications?
me
Wow, it must have taken a lot of courage and self-awareness to write this article.
drugs
wow, this article really doesn't pull its punches, does it?
her
Whaaat. I want to know more about this.
everything we havebeen told about addiction is wrong
agreed
war on drugs
aka a "war on drugs" the government deemed unacceptable, while ignoring other substances that are also technically drugs.
banned
It would be helpful to know what the article defines as "drugs.' Are substances like caffeine and alcohol included in this statement?