Social media dehumanize us. Unpleasant people drag others into their stupidity. Simply ignore it and it may go away. Every time someone says to you “I heard XYZ” gently ask ‘Where’, ‘How do you know it is true’, and ‘What do you think’. Longer term we have to educate people (particularly the young) in how to think and reason.
I have left all social media except LinkedIn and I never had any regrets about it. There may be some good content on Twitter but honestly, I can get better content längere without the poisonous environment.
social (and anti-social) media is just a tool. You take it out of the box, use it, and put it back in.
The problem is in treating a tool like a toy, no matter whether it's cars (which IMO have much larger externalities), or TV, or whatnot. Perhaps that is a facet of the infantilization of society, that people think everything is there for their personal amusement. Or maybe it's an anthropological desire to Potlatch your status neuroses.
Personally, I have profited by following some financial folks on the Xitter, and will hopefully continue to do so, until the time Musky really manages to ruin it.
More and more of these studies appear as (younger) psychologists and other social scientists (i.e.associate professors, i follow a few on LinkedIn) have found a new source of funding (more on funding at the bottom, courtesy Sabine Hossenfelder).
And everybody models these days (though no more at Formula 1 races), with the humanities happily joining in since all those calculations suggest seriousness and scientific ruggedness. I hope they model better than Greenspan. But let’s start with a bucket of cold water:
'Professors more confident in the truth of the taboo conclusions reported more self-censorship, a pattern that could bias perceived scientific consensus regarding the inaccuracy of controversial conclusions.
Almost all professors worried about social sanctions if they were to express their own empirical beliefs. Tenured professors reported as much self-censorship and as much fear of consequences as untenured professors, including fear of getting fired.
Most professors opposed suppressing scholarship and punishing peers on the basis of moral concerns about research conclusions and reported contempt for peers who petition to retract papers on moral grounds. Younger, more left-leaning, and female faculty were generally more opposed to controversial scholarship' https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38752984/
Reading this sentence from the (Klement Substack) study ‘(𝐞. 𝐠., 𝐞𝐝𝐮𝐜𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐮𝐬𝐞𝐫𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐞𝐱𝐞𝐫𝐜𝐢𝐬𝐞 𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐜𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐥 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐰𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐞𝐦𝐨𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐭)’ one has to smirk a bit thinking of the supposed ‘calmness’, ‘rationality’ and claimed ‘unbiased’ reporting by our traditional media.
While the below sentence could just as well have been said about any traditional media outlet:
‘This is especially critical as repeated exposure to false information has led many users to erroneously believe that it was true’.
But we all know that kicking in open doors is an important item of the humanities.
(Philosopher John Gray favorably refers to this, now a bit forgotten, classic (and rather expensive second-hand) book by Stanislav Dombreski. With the glorious title ‘Social sciences as sorcery’. But i found a free download with a reasonable quality book-scan:
Twitter/X is where all the journalists, pundits, academics and think tankers reside. Only 18% of Xers make less than 30k annually. Half of users graduated or have some college years.
But despite this abundance of educated people indeed many falsehoods keep getting shared:
No, Russian trolls did not significantly influence the 2016 election. At least 3 papers have debunked this. A little over 1 mln dollars was spent on targeting mostly elderly conservative voters who already were in Trump's camp. Clinton simply was not strong enough in a few key states. Her performances there were perhaps not deplorable but nevertheless not good enough.
And no, the Hunter Biden laptop-story was not a hoax. The cabal was organized for the duration of the run up to the elections by pro Biden media and the biden admin itself (the US gov, intelligence services, related think tanks and university media programmes are all over social media since they sense the danger it poses to their concept of democracy and pluralism:
The House always wins.
If you compare the social media echo chamber to our ‘adult’ western generic media’s version(s)...
With its boiling planet, a Putin who simply has visited Madame Tussauds too often and now wants to be Peter the Great, (and Sauron), Biden’s mental health was really hunky dory until very, very recently - until it wasn’t (he called Zelensky ‘President Putin’ last night at a NATO event) etc etc…
Apparently energy security, climate(s) science, (geo)politics etc are that simple. Add an ever diminishing understanding of (linear) history i.e. an understanding that used to produce reactions like ‘calm down, we’ve been here before’. After Berlusconi came Monti…But when Trump was elected MSM went berserk and announced the end of the world.
They then found out that The End of the World made for excellent new business models @ CNN and the NYT - which went from 1 mln subs to 10 mln in no time. And they’re still there, reveling in their moral supremacy (If you want to understand what changed in western generic media the past 2 decades read Andrey Mir’s substack and/or get his books. He is not seldomly named McLuhan’s heir).
Unfortunately a few decades of ever worse western education (especially History as it became a tool to educate progressive pov’s) has resulted in many ‘rational’ westerners having quite a crappy idea of where we are and where we come from. This accidental new interpretation of literally living in the ‘now’ leads to a hysterical notion of righteousness, which has the younger cohort especially escalating towards quite a cavalier perception of nuclear war (‘no blackmail!’).
If Mutual Assured Destruction should simply be understood as blackmail then that has worked out pretty well since WW2. I guess a lot of people confuse their need for moral primacy with escalation dominance. Now that’s really MAD. (While they’d blackmail ((or bribe)) God herself (that’s Saint Greta now) if they would happen to fall in some military conscription bracket…)
For most western media outlets, although we’re the rational, freedom-loving, free speech people, certain topics are simply off limits: earlier this year leftwing journalists showed how Israel had activated what it calls the ‘Hannibal Directive:‘kill Israeli soldiers/citizens if they are on the brink of being captured by Hamas c.s. to prevent blackmail - there it is again).
Back then these journos were accused of lying / spouting propaganda a..o. by Haaretz (traditionally a leftwing paper but at the moment i guess best considered a centrist one, since the others have moved so much).
But now Haaretz has agreed: IDF Ordered Hannibal Directive on October 7 to Prevent Hamas Taking Soldiers Captive
Few western papers wrote about it: The Telegraph in june, citing a UN report and recently the Guardian and The Independent. In the NL one of the 6 major papers. NYT & WaPo = nothing
As for what algos i.e. their creators typically understand as true or false: i believe that green transition prophets are as delusional as flat earthers. And while flat earthers are harmless green prophets were and are causing energy insecurity through their foolish plans. And that kills people. Mostly in EM of course, though i’ve seen studies where a 1% increase in the US price of home heating resulted in a 12% rise in deaths from cold (globally deaths-from-weather are split 90/10 between cold/heat).
Throughout Europe businesses and citizens now will have to deal for at least 10 years with elec grids incapable of hooking up new customers.
But my pov makes me a ‘climate denier’ to a generous segment of, if not most, climate catastrophists and boiling planeters. After all it’s humans who set the parameters of all algos. While voters moving to the right because of gov ineptness are typically understood as not too bright victims of Russian/Chinese misinformation.
I guess that’s how The House reassures itself of the legitimacy of its attempts to influence the media itself.
Let’s end on a funny note, and an optimistic one for psychologists looking for some dough:
‘Elsewhere, there are extraordinary discussions on how to manage “trans clients” with dissociative identity disorder (what used to be called multiple personality disorder) when “not all the alters have the same gender identity”’
I must say i find this very creative. Both from the trans clients and the researchers.
And, as to be expected, milk is finally politicized (by the Oxford museum of History):
“Milking it: colonialism, heritage and everyday engagement with dairy,”
Niala and Sharp “will question both the imagined and real aspects of milk,” including the “political nature of this everyday substance,”
In 2022, Sharp participated in a panel discussion on the topic of “Milk and Whiteness” hosted by the Wellcome Collection in London. The event “explor[ed] milk’s associations with purity and whiteness and the racialised politics of diet and nutrition,” according to the collection website.
The Telegraph reports more:
In the panel discussion, the professor outlined a “Northern European obsession with milk” which has led to an assumption that it is a “vital part of any human diet”, and should be produced and provided on a vast scale.
Such an assumption, she argued, “may be understood as a white supremacist one”
* Scientific funding: more on how contemporary scientists and universities work (for money) by Sabine Hossenfelder:
I have never used social media platforms, so I am not knowledgeable about the content and content quality, but I can still understand why. It gives people an outlet they never really had before. It’s too easy to rip into someone, close the app, and move on with your life, as you are untrackable unless you are a public figure. The same is true for spreading false rumors; there are no consequences for spreading rumors or fake news. Most people have no time or desire to validate everything they see on social media and pass it on to others.
“False news is more novel, and people are more likely to share novel information, and people who share novel information are seen as being in the know.”
“We saw a different emotional profile for false and true news,” Vosoughi says. “People respond to false news more with surprise and disgust,” he notes, whereas true stories produced replies more generally characterized by sadness, anticipation, and trust.
Social media dehumanize us. Unpleasant people drag others into their stupidity. Simply ignore it and it may go away. Every time someone says to you “I heard XYZ” gently ask ‘Where’, ‘How do you know it is true’, and ‘What do you think’. Longer term we have to educate people (particularly the young) in how to think and reason.
I have left all social media except LinkedIn and I never had any regrets about it. There may be some good content on Twitter but honestly, I can get better content längere without the poisonous environment.
social (and anti-social) media is just a tool. You take it out of the box, use it, and put it back in.
The problem is in treating a tool like a toy, no matter whether it's cars (which IMO have much larger externalities), or TV, or whatnot. Perhaps that is a facet of the infantilization of society, that people think everything is there for their personal amusement. Or maybe it's an anthropological desire to Potlatch your status neuroses.
Personally, I have profited by following some financial folks on the Xitter, and will hopefully continue to do so, until the time Musky really manages to ruin it.
More and more of these studies appear as (younger) psychologists and other social scientists (i.e.associate professors, i follow a few on LinkedIn) have found a new source of funding (more on funding at the bottom, courtesy Sabine Hossenfelder).
And everybody models these days (though no more at Formula 1 races), with the humanities happily joining in since all those calculations suggest seriousness and scientific ruggedness. I hope they model better than Greenspan. But let’s start with a bucket of cold water:
𝐓𝐚𝐛𝐨𝐨𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐒𝐞𝐥𝐟-𝐂𝐞𝐧𝐬𝐨𝐫𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐩 𝐀𝐦𝐨𝐧𝐠 𝐔.𝐒. 𝐏𝐬𝐲𝐜𝐡𝐨𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐲 𝐏𝐫𝐨𝐟𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐨𝐫𝐬
'Professors more confident in the truth of the taboo conclusions reported more self-censorship, a pattern that could bias perceived scientific consensus regarding the inaccuracy of controversial conclusions.
Almost all professors worried about social sanctions if they were to express their own empirical beliefs. Tenured professors reported as much self-censorship and as much fear of consequences as untenured professors, including fear of getting fired.
Most professors opposed suppressing scholarship and punishing peers on the basis of moral concerns about research conclusions and reported contempt for peers who petition to retract papers on moral grounds. Younger, more left-leaning, and female faculty were generally more opposed to controversial scholarship' https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38752984/
Reading this sentence from the (Klement Substack) study ‘(𝐞. 𝐠., 𝐞𝐝𝐮𝐜𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐮𝐬𝐞𝐫𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐞𝐱𝐞𝐫𝐜𝐢𝐬𝐞 𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐜𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐥 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐰𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐞𝐦𝐨𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐭)’ one has to smirk a bit thinking of the supposed ‘calmness’, ‘rationality’ and claimed ‘unbiased’ reporting by our traditional media.
While the below sentence could just as well have been said about any traditional media outlet:
‘This is especially critical as repeated exposure to false information has led many users to erroneously believe that it was true’.
But we all know that kicking in open doors is an important item of the humanities.
(Philosopher John Gray favorably refers to this, now a bit forgotten, classic (and rather expensive second-hand) book by Stanislav Dombreski. With the glorious title ‘Social sciences as sorcery’. But i found a free download with a reasonable quality book-scan:
https://zlibrary.to/dl/social-sciences-as-sorcery-0 )
Twitter/X is where all the journalists, pundits, academics and think tankers reside. Only 18% of Xers make less than 30k annually. Half of users graduated or have some college years.
https://tinyurl.com/49v4muc8
But despite this abundance of educated people indeed many falsehoods keep getting shared:
No, Russian trolls did not significantly influence the 2016 election. At least 3 papers have debunked this. A little over 1 mln dollars was spent on targeting mostly elderly conservative voters who already were in Trump's camp. Clinton simply was not strong enough in a few key states. Her performances there were perhaps not deplorable but nevertheless not good enough.
And no, the Hunter Biden laptop-story was not a hoax. The cabal was organized for the duration of the run up to the elections by pro Biden media and the biden admin itself (the US gov, intelligence services, related think tanks and university media programmes are all over social media since they sense the danger it poses to their concept of democracy and pluralism:
The House always wins.
If you compare the social media echo chamber to our ‘adult’ western generic media’s version(s)...
With its boiling planet, a Putin who simply has visited Madame Tussauds too often and now wants to be Peter the Great, (and Sauron), Biden’s mental health was really hunky dory until very, very recently - until it wasn’t (he called Zelensky ‘President Putin’ last night at a NATO event) etc etc…
Apparently energy security, climate(s) science, (geo)politics etc are that simple. Add an ever diminishing understanding of (linear) history i.e. an understanding that used to produce reactions like ‘calm down, we’ve been here before’. After Berlusconi came Monti…But when Trump was elected MSM went berserk and announced the end of the world.
They then found out that The End of the World made for excellent new business models @ CNN and the NYT - which went from 1 mln subs to 10 mln in no time. And they’re still there, reveling in their moral supremacy (If you want to understand what changed in western generic media the past 2 decades read Andrey Mir’s substack and/or get his books. He is not seldomly named McLuhan’s heir).
Unfortunately a few decades of ever worse western education (especially History as it became a tool to educate progressive pov’s) has resulted in many ‘rational’ westerners having quite a crappy idea of where we are and where we come from. This accidental new interpretation of literally living in the ‘now’ leads to a hysterical notion of righteousness, which has the younger cohort especially escalating towards quite a cavalier perception of nuclear war (‘no blackmail!’).
If Mutual Assured Destruction should simply be understood as blackmail then that has worked out pretty well since WW2. I guess a lot of people confuse their need for moral primacy with escalation dominance. Now that’s really MAD. (While they’d blackmail ((or bribe)) God herself (that’s Saint Greta now) if they would happen to fall in some military conscription bracket…)
For most western media outlets, although we’re the rational, freedom-loving, free speech people, certain topics are simply off limits: earlier this year leftwing journalists showed how Israel had activated what it calls the ‘Hannibal Directive:‘kill Israeli soldiers/citizens if they are on the brink of being captured by Hamas c.s. to prevent blackmail - there it is again).
Back then these journos were accused of lying / spouting propaganda a..o. by Haaretz (traditionally a leftwing paper but at the moment i guess best considered a centrist one, since the others have moved so much).
But now Haaretz has agreed: IDF Ordered Hannibal Directive on October 7 to Prevent Hamas Taking Soldiers Captive
https://tinyurl.com/mr3u3nxr
Few western papers wrote about it: The Telegraph in june, citing a UN report and recently the Guardian and The Independent. In the NL one of the 6 major papers. NYT & WaPo = nothing
As for what algos i.e. their creators typically understand as true or false: i believe that green transition prophets are as delusional as flat earthers. And while flat earthers are harmless green prophets were and are causing energy insecurity through their foolish plans. And that kills people. Mostly in EM of course, though i’ve seen studies where a 1% increase in the US price of home heating resulted in a 12% rise in deaths from cold (globally deaths-from-weather are split 90/10 between cold/heat).
Throughout Europe businesses and citizens now will have to deal for at least 10 years with elec grids incapable of hooking up new customers.
But my pov makes me a ‘climate denier’ to a generous segment of, if not most, climate catastrophists and boiling planeters. After all it’s humans who set the parameters of all algos. While voters moving to the right because of gov ineptness are typically understood as not too bright victims of Russian/Chinese misinformation.
I guess that’s how The House reassures itself of the legitimacy of its attempts to influence the media itself.
Let’s end on a funny note, and an optimistic one for psychologists looking for some dough:
‘Elsewhere, there are extraordinary discussions on how to manage “trans clients” with dissociative identity disorder (what used to be called multiple personality disorder) when “not all the alters have the same gender identity”’
I must say i find this very creative. Both from the trans clients and the researchers.
And, as to be expected, milk is finally politicized (by the Oxford museum of History):
“Milking it: colonialism, heritage and everyday engagement with dairy,”
Niala and Sharp “will question both the imagined and real aspects of milk,” including the “political nature of this everyday substance,”
In 2022, Sharp participated in a panel discussion on the topic of “Milk and Whiteness” hosted by the Wellcome Collection in London. The event “explor[ed] milk’s associations with purity and whiteness and the racialised politics of diet and nutrition,” according to the collection website.
The Telegraph reports more:
In the panel discussion, the professor outlined a “Northern European obsession with milk” which has led to an assumption that it is a “vital part of any human diet”, and should be produced and provided on a vast scale.
Such an assumption, she argued, “may be understood as a white supremacist one”
* Scientific funding: more on how contemporary scientists and universities work (for money) by Sabine Hossenfelder:
My dream died, and now I'm here
https://tinyurl.com/4tt4ay2p
I have never used social media platforms, so I am not knowledgeable about the content and content quality, but I can still understand why. It gives people an outlet they never really had before. It’s too easy to rip into someone, close the app, and move on with your life, as you are untrackable unless you are a public figure. The same is true for spreading false rumors; there are no consequences for spreading rumors or fake news. Most people have no time or desire to validate everything they see on social media and pass it on to others.
I remember reading below sometime back (https://news.mit.edu/2018/study-twitter-false-news-travels-faster-true-stories-0308), which seems to have some truth to it:
“False news is more novel, and people are more likely to share novel information, and people who share novel information are seen as being in the know.”
“We saw a different emotional profile for false and true news,” Vosoughi says. “People respond to false news more with surprise and disgust,” he notes, whereas true stories produced replies more generally characterized by sadness, anticipation, and trust.
I will not be psyopped into spreading fake good news!