Knowledge is the food of the soul. Problem is we are all binge eating.
Edit : Good TED talk on this topic https://www.ted.com/talks/jp_rangaswami_information_is_food [2012]
Edit : Good TED talk on this topic https://www.ted.com/talks/jp_rangaswami_information_is_food [2012]
EDIT: Deleted my twitter account after a month, wanna nerf LinkedIn as well but that decision has professional impacts.
What I really see happening is a "part 2" repeat of the spam apocalypse that hit e-mail, Usenet, and other federated systems on the early Internet. In the late 1990s spam destroyed most of these systems. E-mail was so valuable it had to be saved, but saving it has mostly involved delegating it to a small oligopoly of vertically integrated e-mail providers with the resources to fight spam. Usenet and other less well known federated systems were destroyed.
I think we are now seeing a similar kind of spam assault against the open web, social media, and the news. The latter with the whole "fake news" phenomenon really resembles a Sybil attack. In recent years I've seen an avalanche of totally fake news sites that look like legitimate newspapers popped up (apparently from templates) and used to spam social media with a whole slew of unfounded allegations and other assorted bullshit. The role they've had in the election has gained a lot of press but it's in no way limited to that or even to politics. A lot of it seems to be shilling for quack medical products and other traditional mainstays of... spam!
I've started calling this whole phenomenon "spam 2.0." I'd define spam 2.0 as the semi-automated bulk creation of fake news outlets, fake social media profiles, and hoaxes and their use to engage in the coordinated manipulation of opinion.
I'm also anticipating the rise of spam 3.0. Spam 3.0 will be fully automated and AI-powered, with AI being used to create an individual "persuasive agent" for each human target. Think of it as massively parallel individual con artistry and/or "spear phishing" at scale. Social media companies are already pioneering this tech, but the spam apocalypse will really hit when it goes public and you can do it with readily available tools.
I find it rather depressing but for a while I've been predicting that the first use of AI that can (even borderline) pass the Turing test will be con artistry, cult indoctrination techniques, and demagoguery at scale. It's really pretty scary to the point that I'm wondering if the use of AI to persuade humans should be outlawed. Of course then you get the "then only criminals will have guns" effect. This is particularly true on the borderless Internet where it's unlikely to be outlawed everywhere. Users of this tech would just go offshore.
An alternative to outlawing might be to disseminate the tools as widely as possible to eliminate any comparative advantage and render the whole thing moot. If this destroys social media in the process then so be it. Going to happen anyway.
Edit: the bottom line is that "cognitive self-defense" is going to become a thing. These "warning signs for tomorrow" are becoming relevant:
http://www.aleph.se/andart/archives/images/warning4.png
We are living in a cyberpunk novel.
This already happens.
The other day I was exploring internet ads; I clicked on every one I saw to see where it would lead me. At one point I ended up on a dating website.
All of the profiles were good looking Asian ladies. Creating an account was free but messaging users cost you points. You have 15 free points so you can messages ladies but after that, you need to pay for points.
Problem is, all of those women were robots. Very good quality chatbots, you wouldn't know unless you were tech-savvy. (I pasted them each other messages and they broke) They use emotional manipulation in order to pressure you to answer. At first, it was simply "Hi!" but it quickly turned into "Please answer me you beautiful man" and then "I'm looking for a man like you in my bed".
You need to pay to answer, but also to do things such as change profile picture, post a message on a public profile, etc. The bots pressured you into doing those things.
In short, this means that there are already people using "AI" that pass Turing tests good enough to fool people in order to manipulate them into giving out their money.
In particular, the idea of AI-driven ads to improve targeting to near-as-makes-no-difference perfect levels is rather unnerving. We're at a moment when the influence of companies or governments in social media is still somewhat obvious/trackable, often because it's driven by actual people. Making it better and then making it automated would result in a system where it would be basically impossible to tell the difference between ads and actual people.
The spam relationship is a correct interpretation. More specifically: as any new medium or channel becomes influential enough, it will be sought by those who seek to use it to their ends: for commercial or financial return, or social or political power. And their means are distraction, disinformation, misinformation, and manipulation.
There's quite a body of literature on this topic, going back a few thousand years.
A blog entry on Brandolini's Law: https://real-psychiatry.blogspot.com/2016/12/brandolinis-law...
"Everyone knows that debugging is twice as hard as writing a program in the first place. So if you're as clever as you can be when you write it, how will you ever debug it?"
-Brian Kernighan
I think the above is one of the key questions for the survival of humanity. A part of the answer is that there has never been a clear demarcation between the meaningful and meaningless. There is valuable information in the structure of myth, songs, and idle talk.
It is clear that something in human beings acts as an effective filter for meaning and value. It is also clear that rationality isn't the totality of whatever this is, though it might be a part of it.
I think the major concern here, aside from the general deleterious effects of addiction of any sort on people, is that the tide of meaningless factoids and useless information is swelling and drowning out substantive, useful information which is generated with greater difficulty and spreads less easily.
A greater ratio of meaninglessness to meaningfulness is part of the problem, compounded by the aggressive way our attention is directed toward it. I think the filter you mention exists but is struggling in this environment more than in the recent past.
Which is precisely why humanity didn't progress, never invented science, never improved human rights and the standard of living, and we died out in a state of primitive brutishness.
Clearly, actual meaning has found its way through, somehow.
I think the filter you mention exists but is struggling in this environment more than in the recent past.
What is your evidence for this? Can you quantify this in objective terms?
That said, I haven't put much thought into this viewpoint and was mostly extending the parent poster's idea. Proper discussion of this would require a great deal of care and nuance and I honestly don't feel like putting in the effort for that. Apologies if you were looking for a substantive debate.