Hacker News Reader

Comment by moosey | Hacker News Reader

The book "Anti-Social" by Andrew Marantz introduced me to the concept of "High Arousal Emotions", which is exactly what clickbait, advertising and 'social networks' take advantage of to get clicks.

Personally, I don't think it runs up against the first amendment to limit the use of such a blatant emotional/mental hack.

View on HN

>I don't think it runs up against the first amendment to limit the use of such a blatant emotional/mental hack.

The Snowden leaks resulted in some fairly high-arousal emotions, so I would be careful with where you go with that.

I don't believe it should be limited, I am generally an absolutist on free speech. But I do think media outlets need an internal reform, or we need to start looking at alternative methods of revenue that don't rely on societal damage. I honestly don't even think some of these people mean what they say, it is very much an Ann Coulter methodology.

Of course the massive irony is that if it was accepted as true the rationale in itself is a "High Arousal Emotion" to manipulate into accepting limitations and seeing nothing wrong with them. It doesn't technically mean it is wrong (Fallacy fallacy style) but I find it reason to be suspicious.

Right or wrong with the First Ammendment it isn't exactly precedented in the best of ways as the closest doctrines were abandoned for good reason. Fighting words and vague definitions of "inciting a riot" which mean "the mob really doesn't like you" instead of "calling for them to murder/burn something down". There is false advertising but that framework would be far more limited by design. Even if considered a good idea it would call for its own constitutional amendment.

I keep saying this: we don't need to be attacking the symptom, we need to be attacking the disease. Regulating what people are posting online will never get rid of the real problem, there is simply too massive of an incentive to manipulate people for financial gain. Until that's fixed we're just going to keep putting out new fires when someone discovers the next big unethical business practice that happen to work.

So what, pray tell, is the disease in your analogy? Human nature?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com