HN Theater @HNTheaterMonth

Our society is so obsessed with the fear of censorship, or the "elite" hoarding all information, that we've now dived right into the opposite deep end. There's always too much of a good thing.

We created tech to usher in an era of new mediums. But we never stopped to ask ourselves what should we keep from the "old" systems. In any system that gets recreated/refactored, there is always a duplication of efforts. And that's what we're seeing right now. We're slowly realizing that editorialization is desperately needed.

In all these social graphs that's been created, we assume all "nodes" are rational actors, or are likely to be rational actors and that the information if just let free would steadily sort itself out. But that's not what we're seeing. Old diseases are new again and entire republics have fallen victim to misinformation.

It's well past time to address these issues. I thought 2008 was bad. I could have never imagine 2016. And now I'm severely worried about what non-sense we'll see in 2020.

Tech companies, and the employees in these companies, need to continually ask themselves what they're empowering.

EDIT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMotykw0SIk&feature=youtu.be...

I am sorry, but I beg to differ. This concept is built onto basic insights into how the human reward system works, why else would Design (cf. Tristan Harris tristanharris.com/essays or Chamath Palihapitiya https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMotykw0SIk&t=1220) and Advertisement use this to try to shape peoples desires (and in turn consumer choices)?

What you are drawing is in my opinion a false equivalency. It is not at all the same doing things in real life like reading a book, mowing the lawn or knitting a sweater and skimming a news feed or interacting with social media. The main reason for that imo is the amount of effort you have to put in to get a reward. When you take the offline work you (in the case of a book) at least have to go to the bookshelf, pick a book, take it in your hand and whilst reading have the rough content of the previous pages in your head or (in the case of mowing the lawn) actually physically move. This delays the gratification you get when having finished reading the book or mowing the lawn.

With social media or quickly skimming articles from a news feed the delay you get on your gratification when scrolling through is literally given by the speed with which you can scroll and read. This makes dopamine so cheap for your brain, that it will of course reward you when you engage in these activities. (Incidentally it also makes it more susceptible to future easy dopamine hits (too lazy to find online sources, will look a little later. Joachim Bauer: Selbststeuerung is a very good book on this)).

And no, it is nihilistic to think that 99% of what we are allowed to do is pointless. Having these discussion for example is a great source of meaning. Really: educating yourself, talking to other people and forming opinions on different topics is also very meaningful as it will influence your perspective on the world in a lot of (sometimes even positive ;) ) ways.

I must admit, that I don't quite get your point on the disassembly of fundamental aspects of human civilization (although it sounds very good :D). To me the equivalency would be a bicycle becoming an ebike, which drives nearly effortlessly. The difference between today and before is that before you had enough time to think where you want to go while riding the bike (as it was tedious and slow to ride) and today the bike is going so fast that some people just ride it for the rush of speed and don't actually know where they want to go.

So the lesson to me is: Get off the bike. Sit down, enjoy the view and figure out where you want to go first and then drive the hell out of it in that direction.

⬐ jumper_F00BA2

So some self-important "tech luminary" claims to have engineered a secret weapon feedback loop, and it's so incredible that it hacked everyone's brain, and wowee, he's so smart.

It's easy to pin post-hoc rationalizations for his own success, onto a self-aggrandizing personal narrative, after becoming successful. Believe whatever airbrushed fish story you like.

B.F. Skinner and Ivan Pavlov showed us the truth about operant conditioning for sure. And indeed, the principle extends to Great Apes if you reward them with delicious snacks for using an iPad correctly.

But humans have executive function, and more downtime than we know what to do with lately, because modes of behavior are more efficient now, than even one decade ago, and there's a gap left behind, leaving a preoccupation vacuum in it's wake. We don't know what to do with ourselves, and that imparts a malaise of idle restlessness, especially relative to the pace of change.

Computers, mobile devices, ubiquitous applications, smart appliances, have become something like a ball hog in a game of basketball. They keep grabbing the ball and scoring, and never pass the ball to a human, because they always possess a better chance of scoring themselves, so it would be irrational to put the ball into a human's hands. Except we're the ones that wanted to play the game. We didn't show up to sit on the bench and watch a game played by robots.

It's less about the operant conditioning of our pleasure centers (oh, oh, excuse me! fancier words: dopamine receptors, because neuroscience) than the fact that we've truly got nothing better to do than watch Saturday morning cartoons. We're bored, the world is scary, and funny cartoons in our bedroom is safe.

You're conflating something to fit in with your world view, regarding the bicycle analogy. Motorcycles have existed since the early 1900's, and people already ride them at high speeds. It's not about the bike. It's not about The Mind Bike. It's about seeing the forrest for the trees.

The B.F. Skinner box for our dopamine drip is but one tree, and there is an entire forrest of drastic change shaping new social norms.

If you consider what will happen to traditional family structures in India, if you took away arranged marriage, I suspect you'd begin to notice a massive sea change in world views among those affected in less than a decade.

That's the degree of transformation unfolding, everywhere emerging technologies find new ways to alter routine daily behaviors, although such transformative effects are not limited to family structures or courtship rituals. It also affects culturally agnostic activities like driving a car or mailing a letter.

If one deludes themselves into a postive outlook of sunshine and smiles because the perception of nihilism seems detestible, expect to be unpleasantly surprised now and again, because taking a hard pragmatic look at what's right under your nose is necessary, to not get blindsided by others who aren't always so cheerful.

If I come across as negative, it's probably only relative to your preferred frame of reference. I tend to stay neutral and objective wherever possible, since life is pretty much always this way. The deconstructivist concept isn't a personal invention of mine. In fact, I think it's rooted strongly in zen/buddhist ideology. It finds it's basis in the understanding that while the whole is the sum of its parts, each part, taken as an island unto itself, has less purpose, when removed from the greater context of the whole.

A bodily organ cannot stand alone, but what we are doing to the various cultural norms, around the globe, is experimenting with the transplant of synthetic organs, to see if society can survive, if we take away the heart and lungs in exchange for a heart and lung machine. Maybe this, by turns, is truly an achievement for some, but not everyone sees a payday for these efforts. Some don't get their organs back.

What I don't think many people get is that these types of people and structures and institutions they exist in largely exist in order to perpetuate inequality in many ways.

It's not just google though, this is fairly widespread in America, and I bet many of these companies that practice hiring like that are either doing it because thats what everyone else has done (without realizing the reasons or not articulating the real ones), or because taking those kinds of candidates means not only do you get a potentially useful in their job employee, but you get access to another kind of elite-social capital.

https://youtu.be/PMotykw0SIk?t=595

⬐ CalRobert

I didn't originate the phrase, but read once that university is mostly privilege laundering. It seemed an apt description.

⬐ acjohnson55

100%.

People ignore the extent to which the signals they're using as input are simply correlated with the signals some previous gatekeeper used. Therefore, they vastly underestimate how much a person's resume is "all signal".

I'm a great case in point. At some point, scholarships I had earned became the justification for giving me more scholarships. Much of my early adult life was spent compiling signals and statuses. I absolutely tried to develop real capabilities along the way, but to say my "impressive" resume indicated significant real world value created outside my own life probably wasn't true until about age 30.

When I was a hiring manager, I tried to evaluate people on what they accomplished relative to what they were given.

⬐ jackgolding

haha this is very relatable - there are massive rewards for signalling

This was posted over a month ago [0] — and has been discussed in numerous ways since then.

[0] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMotykw0SIk

EDIT — Thanks to cpv (below), this is the discussion I should've linked to: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15900551

⬐ andy_ppp

I hadn’t seen this yet, I think we can all agree using machine learning to brainwash people is bad and probably more effective that you might think given Cambridge Analytica’s and Russia’s recent successes.

⬐ waytogo

This is not entirely true. Your link leads to a 56 minutes video while my linked video is just 4 minutes and providing the relevant discussion point.

Moreover, I couldn't find any larger discussion: I searched HN with the link you gave and found only two postings, one with 1 point and another one with 7 points and only 2 comments.

⬐ cpv

Probably this one https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15900551

⬐ waytogo

Thanks and this link makes much more sense (but the video is again 56 minutes but there is a marker).

there’s pure nuggets of wisdom here from Chamath Palihapitiya, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMotykw0SIk&app=desktop

He categorically stated [t=10m] that "150 [people], and they are all men, run the world".

Watch the interview.

https://youtu.be/PMotykw0SIk

other similar stories:

https://www.theverge.com/2017/12/11/16761016/former-facebook...

based on this interview

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMotykw0SIk

⬐ artur_makly

amen he hits all my points.

⬐ simonswords82

One of the best videos I've watched in a while. Chamath accurately articulated all of the negative beliefs I've held about Facebook for many years, and some more I hadn't considered.

We're seeing the effects of this already. Never before has society been so connected for the sharing of information/data, whilst simultaneously disconnected spiritually/politically etc.

Kids hooked on social media are growing up anxious, depressed and totally overwhelmed.

None of this will end well.