Comment by roenxi | Hacker News Reader

Comment by roenxi | Hacker News Reader

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> ... it is hard to deny that we are constantly nudged into certain grooves by algorithms ...

I don't see how that could impinge on freedom. We've been nudged into certain grooves by our emotions and instincts for as long as the species has existed. The "nudging" that corporations is exactly the nudging that evolution uses on us - and a huge number of the evolutionary nudges are stupid now (do I really need a fight-or-flight response to trigger in the middle of a meeting? No I do not. And all the instincts designed to operate in societies of 200 people are ineffective too. Why do we keep promoting tall people???).

It is also just a fact that our existences are close reflections of the society around us. "Freedom" in some sense isn't about freedom to act, but freedom to influence our environment, by direct control in the case of owning land and economic action or more indirectly through free speech to influence the culture in ways powerful people might disagree with. Which is why the government is generally an anti-freedom influence. People use it to lock the world into being a certain way; that way usually turns out to be a long way short of optimal and the cost to change something once the law gets involved is high.

The fact that instinct's heuristics are not well-adapted to every situation does not change the above point that the various algorithms which nudge may (do) also detract from one's freedom.

And there is an important difference between the two: instinct has been trained over eons to select for what is good for the organism (heuristic trade-offs notwithstanding). The algorithms have not, and often nudge toward choices that someone else would prefer we make.

Read your Dawkins, evolution does not "select for what is good for the organism".

Sure it does — there is a noisy optimization process, but more importantly an undeniable general trend which is the point.

> instinct has been trained over eons to select for what is good for the organism

They have not, they've had around 2 centuries. There is very little about the current world that instincts have been trained on. They are misleading and unhelpful on almost every topic. We keep seeing stupid mobs form and ignorantly break stuff for no useful reason which should be #1 on everyone's threat model.

The algorithms are positively benign compared to something like the US war frenzy after 9/11, or the constant rolling back of industrial prowess that the US has managed for the last 50 years because people keep accepting death-by-thousand-cuts because they don't have instincts for risk assessment. Communism was welcomed in with cheers, killed millions and we still struggle to convince everyone to have a positive gut-feel response to capitalism and free markets.

> do I really need a fight-or-flight response to trigger in the middle of a meeting? No I do not.

I see some signs that you've never been in a drug deal gone awry...

> Why do we keep promoting tall people???

They have a better (over)view of the situation.

But more seriously, there is also an argument to be made that free will is an illusion, at which point you have to wonder what "freedom" really means, if anything.

> > ... it is hard to deny that we are constantly nudged into certain grooves by algorithms ... > I don't see how that could impinge on freedom.

It depends on what freedom youre trying to preserve. You can spin a story and use technology to share your own narrative with a known susceptible audience. Much like what we say in elections in the US and UK.

Many of the heuristics given to us by evolutionary psychology optimize not for happiness but for passing genes onto the next generation.

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