Comment by DanielBMarkham | Hacker News Reader

Comment by DanielBMarkham | Hacker News Reader

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Happy to engage you in another forum, which would probably be more productive. Ping me if you'd like to video chat.

But it's a good question and I'll try to reply in a brief and somewhat hand-wavy way (due to the medium, space, etc) Everything I'm going to say has caveats. And I can't cover them all. Meh.

If you believe that the species as a whole has never been this unstable before, then the real question is this: what has changed? Whatever it is, it's obviously happened in the last 20 years, maybe even in the last 7 or so. The thing to do would be to identify those changes and come up with a testable theory that can be tested using the data. In general, however, I am persuaded that the overall problem is that we've incentivized consumer technology based on a battle for attention span. This isn't new; it's been going on forever. But the network effect has shot it through the roof, and even simple AI is proving quite capable of taking that business model even further. If it weren't, there wouldn't be so much money in it.

+If you accept that premise, then that's how the conversation should generally go. If you don't accept that premise, then we need to back up a bit and talk about the effects of technology in general.

Here's a more detailed explanation and defense of my underlying thesis I published twelve years ago. This just didn't appear overnight; a lot of folks were trying to ring the warning bells earlier. (BTW, when I published it on HN, it got a lot of votes, but it also got a lot of "Well, sure, but 1) there'll be a new startup that will replace big tech soon, 2) we'll just invent some new app that will solve the problems we have from the current apps, etc") It was a sad demonstration of how all of us tech folk have a tendency to do the best we can to deny and ignore any implications of what we're doing aside from wondering whether our server is up. (I exaggerate for effect)

http://tiny-giant-books.com/Entry1.html?EntryId=recgcpfuOFUe...

EDITED FOR CLARITY (Addition marked)

> If you believe that the species as a whole has never been this unstable before

What does this actually mean? The world is a very big place, covered by lots of political, economic, and power systems.

The West - primarily, but not exclusively, the English-speaking parts - has seen a big change in the way politics is conducted, with less dignity and more verbal viciousness, but this hasn't really been matched by physical or "kinetic" politics. The sibling comment that there are fewer bombs going off is correct. Even Islamic fundamentalism has got less dangerous in the west - while the great middle eastern war started in 2001 rages on, expanding upwards to Nagoro-Karabakh.

If we want to talk stability, perhaps we should return to control systems theory. The feedback loops of the world have got shorter and faster. This moves the poles of the system around - and, without damping, makes it less stable.

Imagine being so privileged and blind-sighted that thinking that increased political animosity caused by social media in America is equivalent to the worst instability of the species ever.

How does this sort of comment help? To be constructive, please: (1) Describe /why/ this is a privileged position, and (2) Describe /why/ this is "blind-sighted".

As far as I can tell, the OP is right; It's political instability that can instantly touch the globe, along with WMDs, and a head of the state who seems unwilling to adhere to peaceful transfer of power (see: "Will he go?")

I'm really tired of the word "privileged", so much so that I've become a snowflake and get /instantly/ triggered by its usage. It seems to be the "commie" of our era.

I liked your blog post, this part stuck out to me:

> Intelligence is going down as fewer and fewer books are being read (news flash: the printed book industry is on the way out unless this trend stops), and social organizations like churches and civic clubs see fewer and fewer members attend their meetings. The skills that are increasing? Reflex time. Ability to solve abstract, short-timespan problems. Basically the skills we need to interact with our entertainment. More and more, Indians and Chinese – people coming from cultures who have been shut out of the technical world until recently – are writing software for hardcore western appetites to consume.

"Ability to solve abstract, short-timespan problems"

I wonder about this. I speculatively propose that there also seems to be a curious inability (or unwillingness) for people who happen to be blessed with the skill of abstract thinking, to apply that skill to the greater world (the complex system we have built for ourselves to live within). I would say that abstract thinking, done right, allows the one wielding it the ability to step out of the ~axiomatic frame in which they live, and use to evaluate the world with a relatively clean mind - to set their individual political beliefs and preferences aside and consider things from a disinterested 3rd party perspective. At least to some degree. And I think mass social media, including forums like this one, likely contribute in significant ways that we do not currently understand. Whether a change in our aggregate ability has taken place over time, I have no opinion, but an ambitious person could likely pick up on it if it had by reviewing conversations from a decade ago or so.

> If you believe that the species as a whole has never been this unstable before, then the real question is this: what has changed? Whatever it is, it's obviously happened in the last 20 years, maybe even in the last 7 or so. The thing to do would be to identify those changes and come up with a testable theory that can be tested using the data.

This seems like the kind of abstract thinking (disconnection from the specific object level characteristics of the problem) that we need more of. Do you happen to have any theories on what steps we should be considering to get us out of this mess, that could plausibly be applied at national or planetary scale (or, know of any formal or informal organizations that are working on such ideas)?

Your thesis is based on the notion that “society is unstable” more than ever before. How are you measuring that?

Despite tons of noise in social media, real life up has been incredibly stable for the last couple of decades in the west. The least amount of violence, lowest extreme poverty, highest disposable income, etc etc.

In the 70s (before social media), there were multiple bombings every year in the US. That is completely unfathomable today. The headlines and discussions on social media today now heavily surround parsing Trumps words and arguing about how he’s racist and doing things wrong.

Social media is just giving you the impression that things are unstable because people like to complain when by any standard long-term measure it’s just as stable as ever (barring recent economic instability caused by COVID).

Some questions about the US?

- when was the last time a prominent politician was assassinated? - when was the last time a government building was bombed? - when was the last time a prominent politician was assaulted and left in the hospital?

> real life up has been incredibly stable for the last couple of decades in the west

This isn't universally true in the US. Millions lost their homes in the great recession and never fully recovered, it's just easy to forget that the American economy doesn't work for everyone when it does work for you. Now millions more face eviction and starvation amidst a major public health crisis.

> In the 70s (before social media), there were multiple bombings every year in the US. That is completely unfathomable today.

True, but mass shootings were unfathomable in the 70's and happen at an alarming rate today. To your point, we've largely become desensitized to those stories because they just happen so often now. I think that the patterns of violence have shifted, not the presence of violence.

> Social media is just giving you the impression that things are unstable because people like to complain when by any standard long-term measure it’s just as stable as ever

I disagree with this too. Wealth inequality is skyrocketing and has been for many years. Average life expectancy has been declining in the US. Our current president has discussed running for a 3rd term and preemptively declined to accept the results of a Presidential election overseen by his own government. Has that ever happened before?

> when was the last time a prominent politician was assassinated? - when was the last time a government building was bombed? - when was the last time a prominent politician was assaulted and left in the hospital?

These questions say more about the government's ability to protect its members than providing insight into the stability of society. Congressman Steve Scalise was shot in 2017 during a practice session for a congressional baseball game, but survived. Gabby Giffords was shot in 2011 and survived. There are numerous attempts at these things that we'll surely never know about.

It's also worth pointing out that a group plotted to kidnap the sitting governor of Michigan and try her for treason. Law enforcement officials interviewed about that case largely said they'd never seen anything like that before.

> This isn't universally true in the US. Millions lost their homes in the great recession and never fully recovered, it's just easy to forget that the American economy doesn't work for everyone when it does work for you. Now millions more face eviction and starvation amidst a major public health crisis.

On a per capita basis, home ownership was at an all-time high during the 2000s before the crisis and crashed down to 90s levels after the crisis and has returned now to a level not ever seen during the 1900s. In the worst of the Great Recession more people still owned homes than during the 70s-80s.

Starvation is not a realistic outcome for anyone in the US who chooses to use social safety nets. Both government and private programs provide meals to people who need them and are available all across the country. What you might be thinking of is “food insecure” households, which are people that would need such programs.

WRT wealth inequality, that is mostly a meaningless statistic for actual lifestyle of the lower and middle class. All it tells you is that the wealth growth was faster at the top than at the bottom. Not that the bottom got worse or even stayed stagnant for that matter.

From the perspective of the data on violence, purchasing power, disposable income, home ownership, etc, society appears to be quite stable. From the perspective of shared stories on social media, I can see why you might be led to think otherwise.

the US life expectancy is falling largely due to suicide, drug overdoses, and obesity.

the richest city on earth has a sizable, entrenched homeless population that openly do drugs on the street. Are we not in the midst of the opioid epidemic? Can what happens in Chicago be characterized as a war?

There is deep dysfunction and societal numbness to not see these realities; despite the riches accrued and the definitive technological advance, these problems are apparently unable to be solved.

Hold on. The richest city has that because the richest city allows that. Policies in these rich cities are saying, it's inhumane to lock them up. Now you're responding, ah hah, see how messed up we are we a society that this exists. It's proof of my thesis. But you think it was better in the 80s? The answer is that it was worse in the 80s, but the policy response was different.

You'll need a different gauge than that. I'll give you life expectancy. But I'll raise you obesity and other self-induced problems that have gotten worse statistically.

> Your thesis is based on the notion that “society is unstable” more than ever before

It certainly isn't. But it is more polarized and increasing content control in the last 10 years made everything 10x times worse. We continue on this path...

If people just could run their mouths more freely in the most vulgar form, I think the situation would improve quickly. Some people watch sports for that, but I think really telling you opinion to someone on the internet can also be helpful. I don't think the world is ending from that.

>In the 70s (before social media), there were multiple bombings every year in the US. That is completely unfathomable today. T

We get quite a lot of Islamic terrorist attacks in Europe still, but they do seem to be getting less effective over time - A man with a knife rather than a man with a truck.

The fact that rich and important people have very good security - why is this at all relevant?

Before the USSR collapsed, when was the last time a prominent Soviet politician was assassinated, a Soviet government building bombed, a prominent Soviet politician assaulted and left in the hospital?

At least 200,000 Americans and probably a lot more have died in the last eight months, most of them completely unnecessarily. Waving this away as "economic instability" shows a lack of perspective.

And over all hangs the grim spectre of the climate emergency, which we as a species are doing nothing to fix.

Sorry, but as a civilization we are fucked.

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