When you maximize the ability of humans to determine what info, ideas and art gets the most attention, I think you better society as quickly as possible.
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When you maximize the ability of humans to determine what info, ideas and art gets the most attention, I think you better society as quickly as possible. I trust us to collectively manage our selfish incentives well when power is widely distributed. Fully connected while not allowing anyone to be harassed into silence, must be our goal.
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When you maximize the ability of humans to determine what info, ideas and art gets the most attention, I think you better society as quickly as possible. I trust us to collectively manage our selfish incentives well when power is widely distributed. Fully connected while not allowing anyone to be harassed into silence, must be our goal.
@wjmaggos i'm skeptical that maximum attention is a measure for value. even if all humans could discover and evaluate universal information in negligible time, you'd still see the wrong things getting attention. it's not purely a distribution problem, and it's not simply perverse incentives, either -- well-meaning people allocate their attention incorrectly all the time.
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R relay@relay.mycrowd.ca shared this topic
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@wjmaggos i'm skeptical that maximum attention is a measure for value. even if all humans could discover and evaluate universal information in negligible time, you'd still see the wrong things getting attention. it's not purely a distribution problem, and it's not simply perverse incentives, either -- well-meaning people allocate their attention incorrectly all the time.
who decides it's the wrong things? the people should get to decide imo. and we won't all see everything but hopefully the best stuff can bubble up. isn't this how the world figured out fire etc, just more slowly?
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who decides it's the wrong things? the people should get to decide imo. and we won't all see everything but hopefully the best stuff can bubble up. isn't this how the world figured out fire etc, just more slowly?
@wjmaggos everyone decides for themselves. but people aren't perfect judges. even personally i can say i pay attention to things i should rightfully ignore.
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@wjmaggos everyone decides for themselves. but people aren't perfect judges. even personally i can say i pay attention to things i should rightfully ignore.
and maybe you don't share some of that stuff. but some stuff, you do. and some of that, your followers think is worth sharing with their followers. and we are hopefully less misled by a few people with access to the mass media version of bullhorns but moreso by the wisdom of crowds. Or those who have a social media version of a bullhorn in the form of lots of followers who they had to earn, not achieve reach by buying ads or a media outlet.
bad attention stewards will lack followers.
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and maybe you don't share some of that stuff. but some stuff, you do. and some of that, your followers think is worth sharing with their followers. and we are hopefully less misled by a few people with access to the mass media version of bullhorns but moreso by the wisdom of crowds. Or those who have a social media version of a bullhorn in the form of lots of followers who they had to earn, not achieve reach by buying ads or a media outlet.
bad attention stewards will lack followers.
@wjmaggos i'm making an argument from human psychology, because negative emotions are stronger and more likely to incite a reaction than positive emotions. we don't have perfectly spherical humans in frictionless environments. an argument toward popularity assumes that popular = good. it isn't. some of the best stuff is niche and even unpopular. you'd get a cultural "tyranny of the majority"-esque situation. i certainly hope i'm not judged by how many followers i accrue or how many boosts i get
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@wjmaggos i'm making an argument from human psychology, because negative emotions are stronger and more likely to incite a reaction than positive emotions. we don't have perfectly spherical humans in frictionless environments. an argument toward popularity assumes that popular = good. it isn't. some of the best stuff is niche and even unpopular. you'd get a cultural "tyranny of the majority"-esque situation. i certainly hope i'm not judged by how many followers i accrue or how many boosts i get
@wjmaggos which is to say: the best way to better society isn't about reach (although that certainly warps the information landscape). the way to better society is to give people the ability to organize and the ability to set their own rules. conflict is forced when disagreeing parties are forced to interact; eventually, someone's "will" gets imposed on the "other". the pressure to conform to some norm is one of the worst things about society.
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@wjmaggos which is to say: the best way to better society isn't about reach (although that certainly warps the information landscape). the way to better society is to give people the ability to organize and the ability to set their own rules. conflict is forced when disagreeing parties are forced to interact; eventually, someone's "will" gets imposed on the "other". the pressure to conform to some norm is one of the worst things about society.
you are extrapolating from my argument that it's best if the public collectively decides how info, ideas and art spreads instead of fewer people with more money dominating that process, to claim I'm arguing for human value being based on followers and that I'm against other forms of fighting for change and that I want to force people to interact etc. I'm not saying any of that.
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you are extrapolating from my argument that it's best if the public collectively decides how info, ideas and art spreads instead of fewer people with more money dominating that process, to claim I'm arguing for human value being based on followers and that I'm against other forms of fighting for change and that I want to force people to interact etc. I'm not saying any of that.
@wjmaggos "the public collectively decides" is the part i'm questioning. who is "the public"? how do they decide "collectively"? what is the scope/audience of that decision? these kinds of processes need bounding boxes of some sort.
