Half Blamed the EU for Their Problems, Blame Facebook for Yours
thememo.com
thememo.com
</rant>
<entrepreneur>
I'd love to see a product/social network that confront their users with opposite point of views.
Does the increased access to points of view override the insular effect of seeking out like-minded thinkers?
Additionally, is it all bad that some people find support on the Internet that allows them to become firmer in their beliefs? If a homosexual boy finds support on the Internet for his feelings that he otherwise doesn't get in his real-life social environment - is that a bad thing?
Debates tend to polarize people so it wont do much good.
Unfortunately, I don't know what "wise use" of social media looks like. Personally, I don't use it at all, but freely acknowledge this may be overkill. It's just my current adaptation.
Another example of what I mean is all the articles that pop up on HN about how the modern internet is destroying attention spans. How do we address that best? I'm not sure. I'm not sure anyone really knows. There's some people with some ideas, but I don't think we have enough people experimenting with pushing back against this to really know.
I think the concept has gone passé [1] because ~60 years ago we flipped to a youth-focused culture, and youth generally have little respect for wisdom.
However, I'm not slagging on anybody for not knowing how to wisely use technology, because it does take time, and we haven't had much time! The best we could possibly be doing today is just considering the question, which is still better than not considering the question. I think there are a lot of people who would find the idea that there could be features of a social network that are "unwise" to use still a foreign concept. (Though I feel like certain aspects are starting to get into popular culture. The idea that Facebook can literally be depressing is starting to get out there, for instance.) And I wouldn't expect even tentative answers for another few years, minimum. It's a hard problem.
[1]: Hey, if you're going to make it easy to copy & paste I will :)
Assuming that "modern internet is destroying attention spans" is actually true. http://www.xkcd.com/1227/
I realised this was a serious problem about 3 years ago, after reading The Shallows. (I knew I'd had the problem before, but didn't realise how serious it was). I feel I've pretty much solved it now and I'll happily spend my free time slowly reading 1000-page ancient tomes.
The only thing to do, really, is to try and maintain awareness of why you're reading any particular thing and what you hope to get out of it. E.g. - say you have many tabs open on a topic. You remind yourself that you initially had one simple question to answer, and decide - do you still just want to get a quick answer, or do you now want to research this topic in depth?
If you just want a quick answer, close all but the 1 or 2 most reliable looking sources.
Otherwise, make a note to schedule time to research the topic properly. For me this means creating a note in Evernote, jotting down what I think about the topic beforehand and my key questions, finding the best sources for answers to those questions, and possibly saving documents to read offline if they look like they merit careful study. This is actually more enjoyable, which is important - you need to train your subconscious to associate slow reading with pleasure, and skimming with anxiety and frustration.
For certain hot-button topics (like politics), I often do my own research, decide what I think, and then note how most discussion (even intelligent-sounding discussion) seems ignorant and shallow. I can also now see the huge value in well-edited writing - with the best writing, you can tell the author has chosen each word carefully, and simply by asking why they used a particular word over a near-synonym can reveal insights.
I could say more, but that's the basic idea. You really need to take responsibility for your own reading habits.
No one did. Well, possibly we had a very strong clue when looking at the impact of Television on society, on family, and on the individual. Wisdom, I suggest, would have counseled restraint given the preponderance of evidence that immersive technology had already proven disruptive.
> Another example of what I mean is all the articles that pop up on HN about how the modern internet is destroying attention spans. How do we address that best?
I've found having a narrow timeslot for being on the net works wonders. My schedule is somewhat extreme, usually limited to morning/afternoon email checks and a grab bag of open tabs to filter when disconnected. And of course, my mobile phone is just for that: phone calls. The benfits? In the past 4 years that I've adopted this, I've rediscovered the immense pleasure of being curled up with a book somewhere, etc.
Technology has always been a double edge sword for humanity, starting with Fire ...
In music, videos, movies, etc - the whole 'recommended for you' concept is a bit of a paradox, because after an initial seed, the algorithm starts to influence your preference and then feeds in on itself until it becomes the exclusive provider of content and generator of your preferences.
After some time the line between 'recommended' and 'mandatory' becomes very thin - in theory you still can "just say no", but in reality we don't, because we like what we're being offered.
Spotify is hopeless. I train it by listening to high quality instrumental (i.e. no spoken words) music and it tries again and again to tell me I'd possibly like vocal music :-/
Whrn it comes to the music I use for work I'd like more bubble.
I've long believed that forums are this answer.
Interests bring people together across political and geographical divides.
I run cycling forums, some tech forums, and even had a startup called Microcosm to try and spread this benefit I really believe in more widely (it failed, there's a story, there is always a story).
The things I think forums do best:
1. Bring people together around an interest, regardless of race, gender, class, wealth, and political or religious beliefs.
2. Because they bring people together, this frequently (especially when geographically centred) spills over into real life. Forums can be a cure for the modern disease of loneliness that cities spread.
3. Re-thinking political engagement and societal structures. Forums are able to model, test and implement on a small subset of a cross-section of society, various political systems. From dictatorships, through to shades of anarchy. In doing so they are able to imbue a sense of disenfranchisement, or ownership, or whatever... in the user of the forum.
Crazily, in an age of social networks, I believe in the forums and the interest network as the obvious solution.
I am perhaps wrong, my startup failed, but I still believe.
But...
If one of the primary functions of a service/site/app is to organise relationships via a network of people... then that isn't suitable for this purpose.
The core function needs to be organising around an interest (composed of 1 or more of: topic, place, time), and that core function is so strong that it shouldn't offer the secondary function of then networking around people.
People are very good at backing into small groups, forming cliques and communicating privately. Of constructing the very bubbles that are the issue here. A system that puts interests first has to avoid this by not encouraging it. It will still happen, but it shouldn't be a primary function.
Or maybe for MVP, a subreddit which does the same thing but manually.
Something like https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/ ? Indeed it is a fantastic idea for a site, but how can you hope for people to be open-minded when even HN is a big echo-chamber?
4chan
Strong opinions voiced a certain way will still probably devolve into a shouting match with crass language and potentially seething hate. But it's by definition not personal, as the responders are either responding to your points in earnest, or just trolling.
OK, then I'd like to see a social network that confronts their users with opposite points of view and is not routinely used by people to get off on pictures and videos of someone's being or having been maimed or killed.
It has dawned on me over time that HN is like this, mainly because there's a single common non-siloed site, i.e. no subreddits into which people silo themselves. That means that on any divisive topic, anyone who feels strongly has comments in their face that they strongly dislike, and vice versa. (I wrote more about this downthread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12003205).
This is not an entirely good thing. It's responsible for most of the conflict that happens here.
As an example, HN often has socially-related posts that hit the front page, such as today's Voice Modulation in the Interview Process (not actual title). This gets people from two very different sides that are informally split, depending on who you ask, as "overly politically correct regressives" and "stupid racist [___]phobic bigots". A bunch of conflict that detracts from the study/topic happens when those two groups butt heads.
Is there an article about the huge benefit of for-profit journals? How abortion is an affront to God? How ISIS is trying to do some good in an area?
Are you really suggesting there's really no bias towards certain demographics or viewpoints?
There's a definite demographic that posts here, and it is very much an echo chamber.
My claim is that you (I don't mean you personally, but all of us in your position) perceive HN as an 'echo chamber' on such issues precisely because it isn't. I imagine there are small biases on some of them, but people exaggerate this into "groupthink", "bubble", "echo chamber", etc., not because that's how it is but because that's how it feels.
This is by "design". These are almost the only things that are on-topic here and we mostly like it this way. I'm sure you know.
No one's suggesting that, but the fact that you had to pick those odd examples to make your point is evidence that on many common issues (which I hesitate to name because even naming them makes sparks fly) this community is deeply divided. And when people complain about HN being biased against their view, it isn't ISIS or abortion they're thinking of.
I value rational corrections even if I just think parts of it is correct; in some cases I've also come to changed my views somewhat.
I arrived at this view because I have a different perspective than most users. It's my job to monitor the site overall, plus pay attention to the complaints people make about it. From such a position one quickly notices how many complaints about HN contradict each another. For example, for any political X, some people are certain that HN is overwhelmingly X. But those claims can't all be true, so there has to be some distortion at work here.
Edit: here's an example I just ran across: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11990458. (I'm not mentioning that to single one user out; it's a common phenomenon, and this is just the first example I saw after writing the above.)
This doesn't actually address the issue I feel there is in that HN is a fairly small group of people from a particular demographic. A site called "hacker news" with a heavy focus on technology and startups is surely likely to have some bias compared to a random sampling of the general population.
Any post added gets voted on and only a small number of the posts that get posted will get any real traction, do you feel there's no bias in the type of things that get to the front page?
As a quick example, how many of the frontpage articles do you really disagree with? Which ones are strongly against what you actually believe? I've just had a look and honestly there are none. Everything fits very comfortably with my general beliefs.
I have never felt like I was surrounded by enemies here.
Re disagreements and conflict, I'm talking about the comment threads, not the articles. I don't think articles really excite agreement or disagreement at themselves (except about whether they should be on HN in the first place—another divisive topic), so much as provoke it in the threads.
Re not feeling surrounded by enemies: that's great, but note that the "feel strongly about" qualifier is a necessary condition for this effect.
While there are also some folks that are undoubtedly passionate about their particular political views, they mainly get well thought out replies as to the argument they are presenting for and against... even if some people get a bit passive aggressive with the down voting.
I chalk it down to HN being positive (and me being polite and not needlessly provocative), and I also try to help others who have been targeted by the downvote & flag squad as long as what they have said is somehow reasonable.
For a long time, I've been an avid HN reader. However, one day, months ago, I noticed that majority of posts in most threads I was reading on HN started with a variant of "You are wrong". It may be in some form that does not make it immediately apparent but once I noticed the pattern, it was hard to unsee it. After this, I just stop reading threads which have a lot of this and in general, I've found that the few threads that remain make for (relatively) pleasant reading.
I haven't yet found something better than HN though. So, I chose to stick around for now.
But in a discussion where you have an upvote button, there are basically only two follow-ups to an assertion which remain on topic: "you're wrong", or "you're right, and also". Anyone who wants to +1 will just click the upvote button.
"Me too" posts aren't worth posting so if I have nothing to add I'll +1 the comment I agree most with/is most accurate to my knowledge and leave it at that. The result being I have a lot more "You're wrong, here's why..." or "I disagree with [something said]" than I have posts saying "You're right, and also..." since I don't always have something to add. It makes me seem really negative - since nobody can see all the comments I've +1'd. Multiply that by every user on the site and things look more negative than they are.
I use "-1" for "You're horribly wrong and I don't have time to correct you (though sometimes I have time and will)" and "Trolling/Vapid posts". If someone is "a little wrong" I don't -1 them and will just post a minor correction.
If you have a belief that can't survive HN downvotes, to the point where you'll hide it simply to avoid those votes, you should consider how sincerely you hold those beliefs.
People with less karma need to avoid downvotes and flags because it affects how they can use the site - it affects the rate limiting they get.
(And because they don't know that they can email dang if they think they've been unfairly flagged.)
"Hellbanning" is a form of banning where the site takes steps to avoid tipping you off that you've been banned. It's ostensibly a defense against spammers and trolls, who will create new accounts after being banned.
For the past couple years, bans on HN are announced publicly. They're not automatic; the moderators do it directly. It's not based on your karma.
For the most part. We don't do so for spammers or (sometimes) serial trolls.
Top-level comments that are literally seconds old are typically posted about 2/3 down the page. None of my votes appear to actually count. It's been this way for several months.
I'm used to it, but it's still very annoying and I wish HN would actually acknowledge they do this.
I'm pretty sure that's not it at all[1]. I can see (and personally do these days) avoid[2] certain types of conversations because of all the down votes. It has nothing to do with not sincerely holding the belief, and it has everything to do with not wanting to expend the energy on comments that aren't actually going to be seen[3]. As you know, as a comment is down voted it turn grayer and grayer. Plus, if you're not as articulate as you wish you were, you are just going to feel frustrated that you couldn't get your point across.
This board, for most, takes up free time, and people tend to want to enjoy their free time.
1) in fact, that statement does rankle the feathers a bit - I've heard a variation that was meant to silence people
2) not very successfully at times
I have difficulties thinking of HN in the singular - from what I can tell it is a group of people with pretty different views on most things. I don't think people get downvoted for expressing different views - pretty sure the times I have been downvoted it is because I've said something crass, irrelevant or just plain wrong!
It's such a relief to read this! Seems so obvious, but the trope of anthropomorphizing the community grows like weeds.
Frankly, I think you discount the extent to which people avoid or abandon comments out of an expectation that they'll be downvoted. If you don't already have them in place, analytics would go a long way in letting you know how often that happens.
---
Edit: might've been unnecessarily personal
What I said is that because there's a single front page and set of threads, people reading comments on a divisive topic inevitably encounter comments they strongly dislike, and this affects their impressions of HN.
I know it's counterintuitive; that's why I brought it up. I find it interesting and far from obvious, something I only realized slowly over several years.
HN is not what I would describe as true multifaceted debate, but I doubt any forum can achieve that as there always seem to be large groups with well formed opinions on the matter who do not wish to participate.
Discerning the reasons for participation or non participation is my go-to for understanding a topic, despite it always being almost impossible by definition.
People talked about it beforehand that it would create insular thinking - that people would only receive articles that already confirmed their biases.
Seems that's happened :-/
This reminds me of a related unexpected networking effect. I read a study that hypothesized that internet-enabled chat on mobile phones would distribute more messages across a more diverse set of one's friends and acquaintances.
Instead, the study found the opposite: communication became more concentrated, with a greater proportion of communications going to a smaller subset of people. To analogize, messaging habits became "deeper" not "wider"; more extreme, not more diverse.
The confirmation bias that Facebook has created is indeed scary. Now that they wan't to be your source for news this is really troubling.
There's also another side to this which is is just a strange apathy that FB enables. People seem to think that ranting on FB to their friends of like mindedness somehow constitutes being an aware, informed and active citizen when all it is just a strange and sad malaise. There's a new tragedy? - quick change your profile pic to the flag of the country where said tragedy occurred - social responsibility fulfilled!
Sure all news is biased to some extent that's why its important to get your news from multiple sources. However if I could only choose one I would take a newspaper with an editorial bias which allows me to at least see all the articles over something that chooses and filters that for me based on some mystical weighting.
I'm with you, but I'm still looking for reliably high-quality reading suggestions. My Pocket feed is abysmal.
I mention this because confronting someone with a poorly-reasoned argument is not good UX, especially when one disagrees with the content.
This kind of moral relativism is exactly part of the problem. Some positions are wrong no matter how many people believe in them. Things like Brexit happen exactly because we choose to tolerate things like religion, giving all the homophobes, creationists, conspiracy theorists, racists, math phobes, etc the idea that their world view is acceptable.
Have you heard of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoicism or are you trolling?
Internet is an amazing thing, but also is a terrible thing. You can use it to improve yourself and your life or you can use it to foster addictions like watching porn all day or gamble or gossiping.
Internet did not invented cognitive bubbles. When I was a child I was member of a Church, it was a bubble. Then I met atheists in Reddit, another bubble. A country is a bubble, with their media only giving people one view. I have traveled a lot around the world and every country is a bubble.
For example, how many Americans have a strong opinion on Putin without understanding Russian or Ukranian, having traveled to Ukraine or talked to the people there. Their opinion is not their own, it has been implanted by the media from people with strong economic interest in the region but they believe their opinion is valid because everybody(there) agrees with each other.
I have Ukrainian friends on both sides, traveled the country, and what is told in Western media is totally deceiving. But in Europe lots of people speak those languages, know people and understand the region. It is way harder to deceive them.
It is like North Korea media telling the people that West society is poor(like they say) or Florida is a desert with no water. Koreans will believe it, but a lot of Americans will not.
It is your personal decision to cultivate yourself and use the tools you have at your disposal for good and not for bad.
If you don't like the tools at your disposal, as a programmer lots of people here could do something about it. HN itself it such a tool, or example, when reddit diluted his great content in order to gain popularity-money.
I think this impression of 'the community lined up against my view' happens because when you read HN threads on any divisive topic you're inevitably confronted with comments you dislike and disagree with. That follows simply from the community being divided while the site content is all in common, i.e. non-siloed - no subreddits into which people partition themselves.
Such comments are unpleasant—indeed painful—to read, and therefore more memorable, so we notice them more. These impressions accrete into a mental model of the community all being on the opposite side. But this is actually a side effect of the site not being homogeneous—of the fact that for most X, everyone who feels strongly about X has anti-X comments in their face, and vice versa.
* Edit: this eventually changed.
Facebook can't fix it. Twitter can't fix it. Reddit can't fix it. Only an individual can fix it.
Defaults matter, tools are not neutral, etc.
If your only friends are the people that agree with you you're going to be disappointed to find out how the real world operates. I'm black caribbean, my neighbour is a white, southern boy. He believes in the 2nd amendment, a Trump presidency, and the Iraq War. Just about every weekend we BBQ, drink a few beers, and talk shop.
Talking with him I've learned a lot. I knew that Trump was going to win the nomination months ago. He says a lot of things that don't get mentioned in the news, everyone would do well to get a transcript and not rely on CNN. Obamacare was more popular than politicians will lead you to believe, but it could be better we both agreed. And the both of us were surprised by how successful the Brexit campaign was. We both thought it was about the money.
It's not about politics, it's about being a human being. I'm okay with saying I won't tolerate support of a despicable human being.
Hey, I personally believe the majority of my fellow citizens are terribly wrong in what I think are important cases but it doesn't prevent me from being polite and decent.
Edit: I might have missed your /s, did I?
How is he behaving that is unacceptable and to whom is it unacceptable?
I'm sure there are places in the world where it's acceptable behavior. I'm not interested in living there.
But then you have to realize it's not even about him. Conservative voters are rebelling against the Republican party. They'd rather have anyone else rather than a career politician.
The incredible Brexit fiasco should drive home to us all that this is not a game, not a reality TV show.
This isn't about politics, it's about humanity. It degrades us (the U.S.A. as a Nation) to have this trainwreck taken seriously as a candidate.
What if they strongly supported something illegal? Like illegal immigration?
I have listened to several hours of him speaking and I have no idea what you are talking about.
>I've never met someone who would tolerate a child who throws tantrums the way he does.
Specific examples?
I have a question for you which may or may not be related. Do you get your "news" from professional clowns?
Then Bezos bought the Post. Now it looks like the top stories are picked by click-through rates. The print edition of the Washington Post, which you can see online, has better story selection.[2]
It's hard to find any decent daily news outlet today. Reuters comes the closest on what's important. Their lead stories are on Brexit and the latest South China Sea troubles. Those are events which will have worldwide impact if things go bad.
I miss the San Jose Mercury News from the days before it was bought by the Contra Costa Times.
The Economist remains good, but it's a weekly.
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/ [2] http://thewashingtonpost.pressreader.com/the-washington-post
They disclose Amazon's relationship to WP in the middle sentence of the second paragraph.
Suddenly everybody pays attention to the shouting town-drunk again.
How To Delete Your Facebook Friends Who Like Donald Trump
https://www.buzzfeed.com/kevinsmith/get-rid-of-those-pesky-f...
I feel cheated.
You were cheated by yourself then, surely.
The only thing stopping one's ability to connect on the internet is a failure to actively branch out. I am ignoring language barriers for a moment.
Nothing stops you from using different search engines, blogs or news venues.
As of recently, Google has been cornering me into a subset of the results I used to get, based on my language : while I used to have a pretty balanced and well-optimized experience with results being either in english or my language depending on what I looked for. However, as of recently, even asking question in english, or asking question on a topic where most sources are in english yields subpar results in my home language. This transition has been very fast - and very brutal, as if Google trapped me in a subset of my former experience.
I have been using google for some time now, and keep using it, because its competition focuses on US market optimization (bing), doesn't achieve the same level of relevance (ddg) or simply sucks. This won't change for one reason : Google's competitors don't get enough data to become relevant.
The consequence for me right now is that I have no efficient tool to search, and that Google's move forces me more and more to find alternatives to searching in order to access some of the data I need.
And I'm an american, safe bet probably, but while my ability to butcher spoken french is legion, reading it isn't too bad. German I find much better and for tech sometimes the only link I have found fixing something has been in German.
If you find something that searches all languages again let me know, google is shit now for search.
Delete cache and cookies, block all analytics through a combination of hosts file, adblocker, ghostery, and noscript, and google in private mode. That should help.
>start using the Tor Browser
...and you'll probably join the NSA's ever growing list. Of course, you're probably on the list for reading anything about Tor, Tails, PGP, or other online privacy or security tools, techniques or news[1]. Remember the saying, "you only worry about privacy if you've got something to hide." I think that's how it goes?
[1] http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/interest-privacy-will-ensure-yo...
If you think that this is just how all people are naturally, that these opinions and preferences are too obvious to even discuss, then you need to travel.
Also, I don't really do reddit myself, but I hear it is heavily moderated, to the point of removing posts that are politically incorrect, from a liberal American point of view. I'm not sure to what degree that varies by subreddit.
Gee, I don't think that. Why do you think I have such an opinion? I am from Germany (the eastern part), and have family members who are AFD-supporters and worse. So I do realize that most people (esp. here where I live) don't share my liberal world views. But in contrast to them I don't just get my news / filterbubble-content from facebook. I read conservative Newspapers that disagree with my opinions, because it is important to look beyond your own Horizon (even though I constantly get mad when I read the likes of Jasper von Altenbockum).
> I'm not sure to what degree that varies by subreddit
A lot, I am mostly on smallish/specialized subreddits: erlang, haskell, spaceengine, gis. There not much conflict potential fairly few trolls.
Oh and by the way: the best dialogues I had on Hacker news were technical, not political. Also I don't think that the HN-crowd is that homogeneous.
One thing that I didn't remember earlier, is that there is an exceptionally high percentage of deep, introspective people here. That's pretty cool.
We respect dang to close those discussions though and we try to be civil even before he closes them ;-)
That said I'd ask you to reconsider the part about "We consistently don't respect Trump supporters..."
I for one at least manage to dislike Trump while still understanding those who support him.
Oh: and reddit: yes, some subreddits are quite different from others. I have been surprised to see the difference between what people say about certain subreddits and what it actually looks like.
One of the ways to mitigate this to a degree (everyone is biased in one way or another even with the best of efforts, I think) is to engage yourself in multiple "bubble zones". The old social media experience (forums etc.), which was very de-centralized, could provide this experience. Even if you just went to specialized forums of, say, your hobbies and interests, there is a decent chance that each forum will have a different cultural viewpoint compared to the other one. Forum culture also allow you to peak into other cultures you aren't even into at all, just for some perspective.
From my viewpoint, one possible problematic trend I see with the Internet (at least from a social media perspective) is centralization of the experience, and the implications of algorithmic filtering (as implied by fears over a "filter bubble" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filter_bubble)). I am not sure if the "filter bubble" concern is 100% warrented now (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/08/technology/facebook-study-...)... but for subjects which provoke strong feelings, there seems to be a tendency for those with the loudest, strongest opinions to actually strongly want a filtered comfort zone, one free of any conflicting opinion, or even people with that opinion.
My hope is that the Facebooks of the world note that not everyone desires epistemic closure. I'm not terribly optimistic about this though.
I respect Trump supporters, I just don't respect Trump.
So much of humanity came online in such a short period of time, it's bound to be chaos for a few more decades. If you took 1000 of the world's smartest, kindest, and most articulate people, stuffed them all in the same giant room, and only allowed them to interact via shortish typed messages with no other social queues, those people would probably descend into anarchy and barbarism within weeks or months. The internet's kind of like that except it's several billion people covering the full range of age, intelligence, education, economic status, religion, language, nationality, mental health, maturity, etc.
I'm hoping that in 20 years we'll look back on how things are now in the same way we look back on the '90s...with a combination of nostalgia for how many unsettled frontiers there were, coupled with amazement at our collective naivete when seen in hindsight. It'll still seem like everything's terrible in 2036, but I suspect we'll all still feel like it's way better than it was back in 2016.
At the same time, people have to take and carry responsibility for their environment. I think we need to become more aware of the huge biases we are exposed to by living in media bubbles. A huge part of that is that both sides need to tone down the us-vs-them rhetoric, because it makes it very hard for somebody in the other camp to listen to opposing voices.
I do think there's an instituional lack of options today for people who want bipartisan news, partially because bipartisan reporting would get flak from both "sides", but also because partisan outrage sells.
We share responsibility for our environment. As long as we buy partisan outrage, that is what will surround us.
You aren't a victim of the market, you are the market.
Before the Internet, we lived in media bubbles manufactured by relatively few voices in the media and political power structure.
Now we still have influences, but they're less centralized.
Social media (really just an extension of widespread internet/telecom connectivity) breaks the connection almost entirely. You can walk though a sea of people each day that may have completely different views than yours, while you are virtually connected with people across the world who share your viewpoints.
Should we be surprised that this increases disharmony in regional politics?
This is a bit "iamveryclever" but my belief is that they were unable to debate me because I was aware and confident of the issues of the economy, the social space and business world - rightly or wrongly - I feel confident and can speak at length on such subjects.
No-one put forward any real arguments except "but Boris is a bufoon" and "no to xenophobes and racists".
I wanted someone to debate with, I got very little.
Now the voting is over there are suddenly an endless stream of economists and social scientists posting exchange rates and share indexes and bad news.
I wish I had seen more OUT people. We all need to take stock and look at how solid facts on the economy and society are shared properly. Hopefully we can move on from this.
Destruction is a positive force.
"Let banks fail, says Nobel economist Joseph Stiglitz". 2009
Without direct access to the EU market and the exceptions that the EU allowed the UK to keep them in, the UK may become a less attractive place to launder money or tax shelter in general, which may actually do real damage to the economy. I've even heard a bit of fear from Irish commentators that their profits from allowing companies to avoid tax all over the world may be affected, because it partially depended on a special relationship with the UK, which had a special relationship with the EU. I find it hard to see this as a bad thing for the world.
Thus far, all permanent damage is very hypothetical, except that hysterical Remainers seem determined to bash the majority who voted Leave enough to guarantee Britain the most right-wing government in its history. Their first reaction seems to have been to take the farthest-left prominent person who had the ability to relate to Leavers out as leader of Labour, and try to replace him with one of the army of Blairs that have been openly attacking him ever since he was fairly elected. The UK will be lucky if it only ends up with Boris; if the Guardian and the PLP scream enough, they may end up with Farage in opposition...
HSBC, Vodafone who used Luxembourg to avoid UK tax have threatened to leave.
A major Singapore mortgage house saying it won't fund buying London real estate.
Vodafone routed the acquisition of Mannesmann through a Luxembourg subsidiary, set up to avoid paying tax on the deal, and continued to place its profits in Luxembourg.
HSBC helped clients shield income from tax collectors - https://www.icij.org/project/swiss-leaks
Guess who was Prime Minister of Luxembourg at the time, brokering all this - Current President of the European Commission : Jean-Claude Juncker
https://medium.com/@octskyward/how-is-the-remain-campaign-lo...
I know a lot of people are despairing at the commoners ignoring "expert advice". Personally, I'm despairing at so many of the "educateds" ignoring the fact that the track record for "expert advice" has been awful, and failing to take the appropriate actions based on that. You don't hear much about the hazards of education, but in my opinion, education can implicitly teach the primacy of words over facts. Education teaches some things that are unintuitive and superficially contradict observed reality, yet are true. For instance, chemistry is based on atoms, or Newtonian physics. These concepts took centuries because they are not intuitive, but they are true.
But trusting words over reality can easily go too far. As you say in that article, you can see "experts" who utterly shocked by what should have been predictable. I've been reading "Debunking Economics", (by an econ professor, not just "a guy"), and he shows (mathematically!) the dominant economic model does not include the Great Recession in its possible state space. The mathematically inclined should be gasping in horror. But that's not even the real problem; the real problem is that the "experts" cling to it even so. Because they like the words.
The "common man" is much better at sniffing these mismatches out than the "educated man". Whether this is an intrinsic hazard of education, or a defect in our system, I'm not sure. Observed reality can still mislead them, it is absolutely true. (I can argue either way.) But unfortunately, the educated masses are not generally justified in their belief of superiority. It is at best a very situational superiority, and one that carries its own unique hazards, not a universal superiority. (And I do truly mean that "unfortunately". It should not be. We are leaving so much "on the table" because our educated class is not all that "educated". But it is what it is.)
Maybe what we need is to teach "limits of models" or some such as part of our educational curriculum. Learning to know when to stop trusting your model without further evidence seems to me to be a critical skill.
And it seems to me that a prime example of this problem is the "the universe is probably a simulation" people. I get that you can make that argument, but they seem to actually believe that the argument reflects reality. That's kind of unsettling - not the argument, but that they take it that seriously.
Edit: (not from the UK but I do a lot of business there and most my income is GBP so I am very interested)
Except they are not representative of the truth. The elites are on damage control when they found out that their brainwashing didn't work. Share indexes are going up and will continue to rise for the UK and continue to fall for the rest of Europe. You did well. Don't let them tell you otherwise.
Secondly, you can still find alternative views on the internet if you look. I know I looked prior to the referendum. Unfortunately, relatively speaking, I found little evidence of reasoned argument from the Leave camp. Events after the referendum, such as their lack of a plan and leadership, confirms that was probably an accurate reflection of their position rather than any "bias" of the internet.
I think there's a much more obvious cause: the pro-EU side has become incredibly, incredibly nasty and vicious. By posting a constant stream of tirades against people they disagreed with not just attacking arguments but the people themselves, they practically guaranteed their friends would not speak up in case it damaged pre-existing relationships.
The echo chamber isn't made of algorithms. It's made of hatred and pseudo-intellectual contempt. And it's been a problem of the left wing for a long, long time. Corbyn leaving Parliament to speak to hard-left protesters with t-shirts like "eliminate the right wing Blairite scum" on them shows just how the supposedly caring left treats anyone who disagrees.
edit: seems some people are voting this down, thus rather ironically enacting the problem the article is about ...
That said, I think left/right wing politics have faded into the background for now. The EU splits people outside of party lines. Lots of Labour supporters voted out, hence the self destruction of the Labour party itself right now. Lots of Tories voted in. The new ideological divide is between globalists and those who value the nation state.
I'd rather say the real divide is between people whose politics are expressed along a single line, and those whose political views are well-rounded.
Nearly 40% of them, which doesn't seem to be part of the narrative at all.
Personally i add a economic liberal/conservative axis as well, and at that point something interesting emerges.
those holding socially liberal but economically conservative attitudes seems to have industrial worker backgrounds etc. In earlier days you would find them labeled Marxists, socialists or communists.
then you have the socially conservative but economically liberal. In that box you quite often find brownshirts and "self made" men in equal measure.
Funny thing is that these two groups, that in other days may well have been in each other throats, have found a common enemy in globalization.
If you have two groups supporting one side of a issue, and one of those groups also holds a criminal or socially unpalatable opinion, then the other side will use that opinion to tar and feather both groups.
Several of my friends who've been making hateful pro-EU posts have been complaining that Facebook is suggesting hateful anti-EU pages to them, so I suspect Facebook is just detecting hateful posts about the EU rather than making a distinction between sides.
I don't have the source to hand anymore but Facebook started doing a lot of research into the different types of 'likes' may have applied.
Did you like it because it was your friend without reading it? Did you read it but not like it? Did you read it and like it?
These are all data points they track. If you assume they have accurate gauges of what you do and don't like, it's then easy to work out whether a post is going to sit well with you based on who did and didn't like it and what you've liked in the past.
It's too much of a "competition"
> People bought personalized filter programs to skim a few droplets from that sea and keep the rest out. For some, subjective reality became the selected entertainments and special-interest zines passed through by those tailored shells.
> Here a man watches nothing but detective films from the days of cops and robbers–a limitless supply of formula fiction. Next door a woman hears and reads only opinions that match her own, because other points of view are culled by her loyal guardian software.
Fact is: that management is gone. Anybody can spread anything now and most people aren't getting any smarter amidst that hurricane of information, most of it charged in a highly negative way. They get scared, angry and numb.
NB I voted Remain.