Hacker News Reader

Comment by haswell | Hacker News Reader

I think paper clip optimizers are already here in the form of advertising and engagement algorithms, and the physical element is us.

View on HN

See also, plausibly:

- military industrial complexes

- questionably Democratic democracies, riddled by deception and lobbying

- a financial system that doesn't seem to be particularly constrained by the political system

- yet another major war underway, and another one on deck

- an epistemic & trust crisis

- major political polarization

- global cost of living crises

And we accomplished all of this in record time, with dumb computers!

Did I miss anything or is everything else more or less a-ok?

I agree with most of these but the cause isn’t computers. Computers are just another thing to add to the list

When you say "the cause isn’t computers", do you mean that within the complex causality that underlies it, computers are nowhere to be found?

If you look deeply enough into the 'complex causality' you'll find anything you want. It doesn't mean much by itself.

You may, but not me.

Though, I suspect you are like most people in that if you gaze into the unknown (which is what we are dealing with here), you will see what you want to see.

You see, the actual causality is unknowable, so your mind has generated a simulation of what "the" casualty is.

This is clearly obvious, is it not?

I'll play along with your attempt at armchair psychology. What makes you special that you are immune to this effect you propose I suffer from? Are you not just seeing what you want to see? Why is your simulation of causality better than mine?

For however unpleasant those things may be, I wouldn't call them a Doomsday scenario. They're certainly nothing like the things you'll hear of on LessWrong.

It's too early to tell if it's doomsday. There are plenty of reasons to be alarmed about the impact of social media on mental health, increasing effectiveness of algorithmic radicalization, cracking foundations of important institutions and the potential path that follows.

A path that will include an ever-more pervasive presence and influence of the next generation of this tech.

We failed with social media, and now we're plunging headlong into territory that's arguably far more treacherous and there's very little indication that we'll learn from the last time.

So now we're just starting to come to terms with the harms that we didn't see coming, while going 1000mph with a category of tech that has a myriad of foreseeable problems to say nothing of the ones we haven't thought of.

I hope there will be an equalizing positive effect, but there seem to be good reasons to worry.

The consequences of algorithmic radicalization have yet to hit the level of the radicalization in the 1930s that happened without any social media or computers at all. I think there is a deeper cause to that then just Facebook doing slimy things.

The general agreement of humans at any point in time is that now is the most messed up.

That sentiment is part of society. Not sure if it could ever be changed.

Mass radicalization depends on mass immiseration; when most people are generally satisfied with how things are going, the cranks stay on the fringe. Smart cranks know this, and spend their time on the fringe organizing access to communications such that when people cease to be satisfied and start looking for radical alternatives, they're all ready and set to go bringing their program to the masses. Facebook has already shown itself to be great for that.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com