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Comment by ppod | Hacker News Reader

It's very fashionable to suggest that social media is polarising. It's not clear from actual research that that is true. Most people lived in an echo chamber before social media anyway.

We live in the most peaceful time in human history. Yes, it's true that we can't know the tail risk, but we can take some comfort that, for example, war between two German provinces, or a North American civil war, are remote possibilities compared with 150 years ago.

http://pablobarbera.com/static/barbera_polarization_APSA.pdf

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It's very fashionable to suggest that social media is polarising.

It's very fashionable, because it has produced jaw-dropping public idiocy with unprecedented immediacy on a huge scale. It has given a voice to the loudest idiots, along with the power of the mob. It has unprecedented power to give people license to denigrate other people and anger them, including people they know or are related to. This only figures, as its viral power comes from precisely that effect. (That effect on our affect, no less.)

Maybe it's just like the stylized mock battles carried out by rival little towns in Tuscany dating from the middle ages and renaissance. Maybe it will just amount to blowing off steam and "local color" in the long view of history. I sure hope that undergrads screaming that Yale is not a place of learning is not a harbinger of the future.

Idiots were always around, and they didn't make too much effort to hide either. Remember that people used to gather mobs and actually hang other people, beat them to death, torch their houses, etc. instead of insulting them on twitter. I think there's an improvement here.

>I think there's an improvement here.

I don't know about that. I mean, sure, it's better to be trolled with tweets than hung, but there is something insidious about the way social media, etc. is changing us collectively. We seem to be getting meaner and more polarized on a macro level. Our interactions are more superficial and staged even.

And, the idiots seem to wield a disproportionate amount of "power" these days. It's like idiocy concentrate.

A professor of mine in my first year of college gave a lecture on Determinism and Free Will. His thesis was basically what you described above: subtle yet gradual determination of how we think, believe what is important to us, what we buy etc through your environment and circumstances. Seriously, social media is a numbing poison to the mind....

What's actually wrong with getting meaner if we're also getting less violent?

Perhaps it is just another form of violence. Instead of trying to inflict physical pain, people try to inflict emotional pain. In many ways it can be more damaging, the signs can be less obvious.

I would suggest this causes greater polarisation and less tolerance. This leads to less reasoned discussion to understand perspectives and work out differences. Which leads to more polarisation... etc.

What's wrong with shooting for less violent and less mean?

The timescale, basically. It's only 2016. There's no telling where we'll be in 20,016.

That's the point - I don't think it's changing us. People felt virtuous and righteous sending other people to be stoned to death, burnt at the stake, slowly driven to death in GULAG or murdered in killing fields, concentration camps, and so on. Now people feel virtuous and righteous calling other people names on twitter. The idea didn't change, people didn't become worse. They just now have a way to do it without killing anybody. There's still a beating or two sometimes, and maybe ruined careers, maybe some property damage and so on - it's still not a pretty picture. But better than before I think. And also more public - so we can look in the mirror and see what it looks like.

> the idiots seem to wield a disproportionate amount of "power" these days. It's like idiocy concentrate.

It looks like it sometimes. E.g. worry a lot when I look what is happening in academia. But then again - it's not like there weren't places that were insane before. At least this time I hope nobody gets burned at the stake.

But, with assassins and twitter you can do more than with just twitter.

I agree with you.

It's basically:

1. now we can vent frustrations publicly more easily, anonymously (this should, I hope, lead to fewer actual violent incidents, sort of like many smaller earthquakes relieve pressure and reduce the risk of a big one)

2. since venting frustrations is very, very public and there's basically no curation for content these days, there's a deluge of garbage that could somewhat be avoided in the past

I think it's a good process since at some point we're just going to get immunized: we'll discover better channels, we'll improve curation and since all the garbage is floating to the top, there's a small chance people will actually notice it and actually act, i.e. try to take care of some of these misguided loonies.

I hear you, but I think you may be conflating extraordinary historical events with kind of the day to day notion of what is considered socially acceptable treatment of one another in modern society.

That is, I was referring to the latter, versus suggesting that humans have never done bad things to each another.

It's important to note, especially in forums like this, that no amount of intelligence will save you from someone considering you an idiot. Doesn't matter how right you think your opinions are.

"Even if you are the most beautiful rose in the garden- there simply are people who just don't like roses."

-- my grandmother

I stopped using Facebook and mobile two years ago. I lost contact with people and discovered who my true friends who still wanted my company. I think it was the right decision.

I also agree with you, and furthermore think that we live in the most prosperous and productive period of history and yet we are arguably the most asinine and facile society since the Internet arrived.

> We live in the most peaceful time in human history.

While it might be true for you and me, it is not true for a large chunk of populace, There is constant war going on in various parts of the world. For example Africa and Middle East is experiencing constant war and loss of lives. Ignoring the civil conflicts, look at the list of countries invaded.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_invasions

For example Africa and Middle East is experiencing constant war and loss of lives

Well, obviously they just need more social media and wikipedia.

Honest question: were they ever not?

Yes, but when was it ever better?

American civil war feels quite possible at the moment. Even passing a budget is becoming a gargantuan governmental task subject to polarization and media trench warfare.

Insurgency, maybe, but a full out civil war would be very very implausible at this point. State militias are severely underpowered to launch a full on war.

Basically: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs

> American civil war feels quite possible at the moment.

I think that's unrealistic. What group has both the motivation and ability to rally both state governments and a large chunk of the military into open warfare on American soil? Both parties love polarizing rhetoric to keep their base riled up, but they have nothing to gain and everything to lose in an open civil war. Various militias, "patriots," and racial and religious warriors can occupy some government buildings, kill some cops, and provoke disastrous police standoffs, but have no ability whatsoever to prosecute an actual war.

Passing a budget is a gargantuan governmental task - it's almost 4 trillion dollars, you think it should or could be just thrown around like peanuts? Now if somebody thought about making this budget less gargantuan, that would be interesting - but nobody ever does that.

Indeed. As a political independent I was hoping for a Republican president this time around in order to give the more extreme right wing partisans some chill after 8 years of demonizing Obama. Hillary is probably the worst possible choice for those people and they are openly talking about armed revolt.

> It's very fashionable to suggest that social media is polarising

Well, the media us polarising as well only in more subtile ways -- for example by throwing paranoid pro-Trump comments in an article about Wikipedia.

> we can take some comfort that, for example, war between two German provinces, or a North American civil war, are remote possibilities compared with 150 years ago.

What about the Yugoslavian wars? Or wars orchestrated by the US in the Middle East. If it's peaceful in your zip code it doesn't mean there's peace in Israel for instance, a country that has been in a perpetual state of war since it came to be.

There was a study[1] done in Denmark which showed that while the large population would refrain from engaging in political debates on facebook (me included, I simply don't have the patience), the ones who did often found that their views could be changed.

[1]: http://en.itu.dk/About-ITU/Press/News-from-ITU/Danes-are-rel...

> We live in the most peaceful time in human history.

Any actual evidence for this? Or do you just mean the most peaceful for Western countries time in human history?

https://www.amazon.com/Better-Angels-Our-Nature-Violence/dp/...

Yeah I thought that would be posted. Steven Pinker's theories only work if you do things like imagine that we live in a world without slavery...

Pinker reminds me a lot of the Victorian Herbert Spencer. They were both social scientists fascinated by biology and who believed things were just getting better and better. Of course Spencer's fame took a nosedive when the first world war happened (which wasn't predicted at all by his rosy ramblings).

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