America Is Addicted to Outrage. Is There a Cure?

This article talks about an epidemic not limited to America. It's brought on by social media all over the world.

The terrific CGP Grey did his best video on this topic: the viral spread of anger on the internet.

https://youtu.be/rE3j_RHkqJc

It'll be interesting see which countries navigate this new world best. Will Chinese censorship of such be more successful in keeping a productive society? Part of me is afraid the answer could be yes.

Another piece by the same author:

"A day cannot live in infamy without the nourishment of rage. Let's have rage... Let America explore the rich reciprocal possibilities of the fatwa. A policy of focused brutality does not come easily to a self-conscious, self-indulgent, contradictory, diverse, humane nation with a short attention span. America needs to relearn a lost discipline, self-confident relentlessness and to relearn why human nature has equipped us all with a weapon (abhorred in decent peacetime societies) called hatred... This is the moment of clarity. Let the civilized toughen up, and let the uncivilized take their chances in the game they started."

Some people - OK, one guy, using two accounts, which is highly ironic considering the topic - have suggested that getting rid of the upvote/favorite counts would help. I disagree. Such things can be useful. We even use those counts here, and for all the many faults with the specific system used here its overall effect is slightly beneficial.

I think getting rid of retweet/re-share/etc. buttons is more likely to help (though still no panacea). When it's so easy to amplify someone else's message, lazy people do exactly that. Even fewer than before - and there were never enough - add their own personal thoughts. Messages that are directly targeted at their audience's ideological center get amplified far more than messages that are more neutral. The result is more conformity within groups and more polarization between them. Then bots and dedicated troll armies (I was recently targeted by one) make it even worse. As with disease, slowing the spread of harmful and hateful memes might keep them from reaching epidemic proportions.

We need platforms for constructive arguments, ones where we can clearly state our assumptions and derive our conclusions. When outrage takes place, it would be up to those willing to invest their time on such platforms to establish various conclusions from the various disjoint assumptions found in the public discourse. Once that is done, people can link to these pages. There are a lot of issues with such an idea, I'm very aware, but it's what we need. We need more logically rigorous and data driven discourse that is accessible through platforms which are more friendly to modern tastes, not long treatise. I'd like such platforms to include interactive models, like Bayesian networks (https://www.bayesialab.com/ has many good examples of how captivating these models can be if given the right UI treatment), so that users can interact with the model by changing various parameters in order to observe the resulting propagation of what a change in the belief of one factor has on other components of the issue. Interactivity may make such a platform more engaging and successful, because it would allow users to "engage" with the structure of the argument rather than being a passive consumer and perhaps explore why one side of the argument emerges when different beliefs are held.

What platforms for constructive discourse already exist? Would accessible clarity quell outrage?

Cure is simple.

Get rid of the dumb counts (views,clicks,upvotes,likes etc etc) next to every thought/comment/image/video.

These are highly arbitration/inaccurate signals of quality. They influence thought and behavior. And then we waste our time reacting to those thoughts and behaviours.

Algorithms that need these metrics for ranking, advertising etc can still function. They just don't have be carelessly, blindly, robotically displayed to users.

Misguided people are usually surrounded by misguided people. The counts just make things worse.

Cure is simple.

Get rid of the dumb counts (views,clicks,upvotes,likes etc etc) next to every thought/comment/image/video.

These are highly arbitration/inaccurate signals of quality. They influence thought and behavior. And then we waste our time reacting to those thoughts and behaviours.

Algorithms that need these metrics for ranking, advertising etc can still function. They just don't have be carelessly, blindly, robotically displayed to users.

Misguided people are usually surrounded by misguided people. The counts just make things worse.

My teenage son's take is that when teen's express outrage these days they are mostly being ironic.

Edit: He didn't grow up where I grew up. He grew up in a college town bubble, not in a rural ghetto of dirt and chicken coops where I grew up (and left). I think, in all things, your experiences shape you.

I like to think of the rage that social media has spawned as simply a natural result of everyone's thoughts coming on-line.

When Twitter first appeared I thought it was pretty dumb. Why would I want to see a friend's comment that they just went for a haircut? Or that someone just decided to watch show X?

The rage is everyone's collective, private thoughts. It's unclear to what extent the internet has exacerbated what was already there.

It’s also “wittiness”. Everyone is trying to be funny without considering whether it’s warranted.

This is outrageous.

Well news media on "both sides" have a vested interest in this. They get more eyeballs. I only trust ft, Bloomberg, wsj now a days.