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Comment by spamizbad | Hacker News Reader

That's because the "marketplace of ideas" is being distorted by algorithms that are going to favor "provocative" ideas that drive clicks. Exciting lies defeat boring truths.

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That tells you that "marketplace of ideas" is a dumb idea, because we already have proved a million times that people are not the rational creatures that we were sold we were for a long time. We are smart apes, but apes none the least: emotionally driven by our limbic system, very tribal and status seeking. Prone to rationalize all these basic impulses in a million different ways creating the illusion of rational individualism. The algorithms just shows us our true nature, don't make the mistake of shooting the messenger.

If the algorithm distorts conversation, then how can you be sure it more accurately reflects human nature?

How does something that isn't a marketplace of ideas prove it's dumb? Or should this question be punished by your algorithm?

The main agenda the algorithm has is selecting stuff human nature has a high propensity to click on...

Alternatively, it simply makes it easier to click on the presented content than to purposely seek out other content. Front pages and headlines dominate media for a reason.

Kind of like drug cartels having the agenda of producing drugs that human nature has a high propensity to be drawn to?

In the face of hyperstimuli, we can't talk about mere human propensities as a justification, else we would have already turned ourselves into junkies many times over.

How many years did it take for heroin go from a cough medicine to a schedule I drug? Amphetamines, cigarettes etc.

There is a reason you can't put simply everything on the marketplace, and that is OK. That doesn't mean the idea of a marketplace is broken.

That's an assumption which critics of these algorithms would disagree with.

The marketplace of ideas works. It may not work in the timescale you want or with the tradeoffs you want while the truth settles out, but I think these claims that it doesn’t work are hasty.

Furthermore there isn’t a better alternative. Right now censorship from platform owners is abusively used to skew political discussions, using the pretense of factuality. I regularly see fact checkers make mistakes or make misleading claims or they inconsistent apply scrutiny. I see trusted organizations like old newspapers and health organizations (like the WHO) regularly make mistakes or sell their own speculation as incontrovertible truth. Trust cannot be given to a few lone entities. The marketplace of ideas doesn’t have this problem since it is decentralized.

There is a marketplace of ideas. That's not anything that is ever going to change. Concepts spread and are accepted or they don't.

The question is only how. Is it going to be by dictate? Is a church or government or institution going to enforce which ideas spread, or is it going to be free, spreading at the level of the individual?

There is no moral alternative to the free exchange of ideas. The only alternative is a restricted exchange... censorship and punishment.

> or is it going to be free, spreading at the level of the individual?

And what are the consequences of that?

When people talk about the marketplace of ideas they tend to think of good, beneficial, ideas winning out over foolishness, conspiracy and just plain inaccuracy.

This has been shown up as naive lately. And if we really are talking about the "marketplace of ideas" being raw, Darwinian, strongest wins, then are we prepared to deal with the fallout of the fact that loud, motivated, well funded bullshit merchants will continue to have a huge grip over the public dialogue?

Censorship has also turned out recently to be a bad idea. Neither solution is perfect but since censorship has the basis to destroy information we should choose the less dangerous path of “do nothing”. What is so dangerous lately that has you concerned?

I feel you are possibly too cynical about the ability of people to (eventually) figure things out.

Because something is posted on the internet doesn't mean large numbers of people actually believe it.

There will always be "wrong" people. That will never change. But there is a degree of wisdom in crowds.

Proper education and "good" cultural values are extremely important and we haven't done so well instilling those lately.

Or that a few algorithms created by a few companies does not constitute anything remotely resembling a marketplace.

The usual idea of a marketplace is preserving people's freedom to go to alternatives. Yes, sometimes that freedom has to be preserved via intervention to preserve choices (e.g. antitrust laws), but it's always weird to me to see the critique used as a reason for less freedom rather than more.

People can choose to get their information from places other than the large platforms. To me, the "marketplace" is the internet as a whole. If people choose to stay on the platform, is it not similar to choosing CNN and not ever looking at Fox? In the end, people have many options but choose to limit which options they engage with

There’s a section in the EFF on why not being on the large networks is a detriment.

Also the shock "wrongthink" things we see on the internet might not be a representative sample of what the general public actually believes.

That may well be a big factor, and that's something that needs to be looked at more closely. Lots of people describe being drawn down the rabbithole by algorithmically driven suggestions which nudge them ever more extreme.

I have thought this for a while. Algorithms are something entirely new to human discourse.

Apparently I watched some alt-right-adjacent podcast or something, so for weeks youtube kept recommending seriously racist, fascist, white nationalist content. The algorithm was actively trying to lead me down the rabbit hole. Obviously it's learned that doing so increases engagement.

The lab-leak hypothesis is provocative (and probably true), but got smothered anyway. It was just inconsistent with the narrative.

You believe in the narrative?

There was quite a public display last election about news orgs agreeing to not cover Biden in negative light so as to not hurt his chances. What would you call this?

I don’t know, newspapers support one party or another. The narrative with emphasis makes you sound like a nutjob.

> I don’t know, newspapers support one party or another.

Yea that’s one, extremely light-footed, way to explain it. It doesn’t cover all left biased news sounding near identical though nor does it cover the dangers of group think mentality which we see manifesting now.

> The narrative with emphasis makes you sound like a nutjob.

That's a pretty petty thing to have issue wouldn't you say? But ok, dems now say using italics makes you a nut job, lets ban italics now.

Same could be said about right biased news, and this has always been like that (both sides of spectrum) since the invention of newspapers basically.

I'm not American, hell I can't even remember which of democrats/republicans are more or less conservative - or which animal logo is which.

What I'm saying is, that using the narrative makes you sound like a conspiracy nutjob that insinuates that there is some conspiracy going on.

> Same could be said about right biased news, and this has always been like that (both sides of spectrum) since the invention of newspapers basically.

How come dems always revert to whataboutism?

We’re not talking about biased news. We’re talking about concerted efforts by multiple groups of people to create a single unified voice for their party.

Also do you get that you can not be a dem and also not be a republican?

> What I'm saying is, that using the narrative makes you sound like a conspiracy nutjob that insinuates that there is some conspiracy going on.

Oh it’s no conspiracy, it’s a unified party fighting what they view as an enemy.

The nutjob thing is just stupid already. In fact you’re starting to sound like one for having such and issue with it.

This is clearly not whataboutism. I’m not gonna debate why, I leave that as either an exercise for you, or tale it as a trolling attempt.

> you can not be a dem and also not be a republican

False dilemma.

> Oh it’s no conspiracy, it’s a unified party fighting what they view as an enemy. The nutjob thing is just stupid already. In fact you’re starting to sound like one for having such and issue with it.

Sure sure

> This is clearly not whataboutism. I’m not gonna debate why, I leave that as either an exercise for you, or tale it as a trolling attempt.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism

I leave that as an exercise to you. This quite literally fits the definition.

Agree with the rest or not, lets see what happens in 2022! Dems keep digging a hole for themselves acting this way.

Also, speaking of trolling, remember you took issue with emphasis and still haven't disproven that the narrative doesn't exist. So this entire post chain is a troll attempt by yourself.

It seems to me that it has been a popular meme since the start of the pandemic.

It didn’t get smothered though. Since the early days of the pandemic I haven’t seen any discussion of the pandemic of any appreciable length that doesn’t contain mentions of that hypothesis.

That's a case of the "marketplace of ideas" routing around the attempted suppression by the large media organizations and government. I don't think you would have read any mention of it (besides condemnation) from any of them, until the last few months.

Geez, I think that paragraph is completely true, but it sure sounds like conspiratorial nonsense. The state we're in...

It seems unfair to deprecate algorithms which "favor 'provocative' ideas that drive clicks" as a `distortion` of the marketplace of ideas.

It seems more that by driving clicks, the algorithms are `facilitating` the marketplace. People are signaling the ideas they prefer, idea suppliers are producing more of such ideas, and the people get these ideas at ever-lower prices.

How is that in any way a distortion of an ideal marketplace?

There is no ideal marketplace of ideas.

It takes years to fully develop an understanding of any particular ideology. How are you supposed to judge which one is better at interpreting the world on such a short term system?

There is simply too much friction in the ideological marketplace for it to approximate even loosely an ideal market.

It's an ideal "twitch" marketplace, not an ideal "deep thought" marketplace. "The marketplace of ideas" wasn't usually considered to be about gossip, rumor, or entertainment. Those are... something, but not "the marketplace of ideas".

Provocative ideas are not the same as good ideas. These algorithms artificially promote provocative ideas because that drives revenue. That's a market distortion, just like subsidies distort economic markets.

I actually think algorithms are more likely to promote things that either reinforce your existing beliefs or incite outrage.

That is an idea extremely unlikely to be contested, given what we've known for a few years now.

I don't think there is a marketplace of ideas that can be separated from the algorithms used to promote them.

Every ordering of content is going to favour something, even chronological.

Somebody will find a way to abuse any sorting mechanism you use

Give the user the driving wheel of the recommendation or open up the algorithms. It's not that complicated.

Speaking of, I wish hn would hide upvote counts. If I wrote something provocative and stinging here against social media, it would be karma city, and it feels good to see your number go up. Thats not a temptation I like

That is no doubt true (about how the algorithms work). At the same time what we see is that there is a market, demand, for misinformation. And some people are making money from that.

Why is there so much misinformation about Covid vaccines and vaccines in general? Because people want to believe in such misinformation and because that allows websites to make money from their readership. Therefore the peddling of misinformation continues.

It is not so different from what publications like National Inquirer and Weekly World News have been doing for a long time. But instead of paying for National Inquirer you can now get such misinformation for free on the web, because you are paying for that by spending your time seeing the advertisements. Information wants to be "free" whatever that means, but people want misinformation, to give them the feeling they are right about their prejudices.

SEE: https://fortune.com/2021/05/14/disinformation-media-vaccine-...

Because there are sociopolitical actors who can extract direct benefit from OTHER people believing misinformation to their detriment. You are omitting this motivation, and it's a significant factor, worth spending money and energy on if your motivation is to harm a population that you see as your enemy.

This assumes a global marketplace of information propagation. That's the new factor here: the actual motivation isn't all that new.

I wonder how prevalent the will to "harm a population" is. I think it's more about benefitting oneself financially than trying to harm others. Politically speaking yes politicians try to harm (the popularity of) their opponents. But politicians are a very small slice of the population.

> Weekly World News

This has always been obvious satire.

Yeah, well the Chupacabra still keeps me up at night.

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