What do you think about this? Is it social media? ...
# thinking-togetherc
curious_reader
09/05/2019, 8:25 AMWhat do you think about this? Is it social media? Is it the old media? Where does all this hate and impatience/non empathy come from? Can we do better? What is "our" role it? Thank you for sharing your thoughts!
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Stefan
09/05/2019, 8:46 AMFirst and foremost (and sadly), it’s human nature. (Social) media is just amplifying it. The currently unfolding Wait but Why story seems like it will be a good explanation of this: https://waitbutwhy.com/2019/09/stories.html
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Stefan
09/05/2019, 9:12 AMFor the US this is even more important, as they have bred polarization with their political system for centuries. With a two-party system and every election structured like a sports event, you easily push everyone into a polarized Us-vs.-Them mentality. Those who can see beyond the simple good-vs.-evil storylines are a minority and they mistakenly hope that everyone is capable and interested in seeing the bigger picture, but unfortunately that’s not how the world works. Simple-and-wrong trumps complex-and-true all the time.
The media (and not just the “social” kind) have been riding on that wave for ages — what polarizes causes clicks and page views and engagement or whatever today’s metric to optimize for is.
And that’s where we technologists share at least partial responsibility. Creating value with effort and giving it away for free to the masses but only through recapturing that value manyfold with a business model that separates users and customers and lets one exploit the other is genius, but unfortunately also undermines our democracy.
Stefan
09/05/2019, 9:39 AMWhat we need to do — as you ask for our role in this — is to first accept that there will always be unintended consequences. We need to take responsibility for these (no, it’s not just a tool anymore and not only the user decides if it’s used for good or for evil) and design our systems with this responsibility in mind.
We need to stop believing in technological solutions for what are essentially people problems. No, you can’t fix that with a blockchain!
And we need programmers that are brave enough to show integrity in difficult situations where they are not afraid to risk their status and their jobs when they deny participation in the design and implementation of technologies that create more problems than they solve. A little bit like these 21 UK conservatives: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/09/04/british-conservatives-put-country-over-party-why-cant-republicans-do-same/
As our skill set is still extremely valuable and we don’t have to worry about automation as much as those who we automate away we have quite some power in this game.
What you work on and who you work for is at this point probably more important than who you vote for. Choose wisely. Good luck!
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curious_reader
09/05/2019, 1:28 PMThank you Stefan for sharing the wait but why Link, I hadn'T seen it yet! It seems all the knowledge to self improvement is there but we are just to busy doing something else
curious_reader
09/05/2019, 1:28 PMCoherence is not a simple matter..
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wtaysom
09/05/2019, 4:46 PM@Stefan reading the Wait But Why too. So far so good. For once he's serializing as is best for blogging.
Us vs Them. Like r/hongkong used to be all about little culture clashes: Foreigners whinging about Hongkongers. Hongkongers whinging about Foreigners. Both whinging about Mainlanders. And the Taiwanese talking about food. Now not so much.
@curious_reader that Memetic Tribes article will take some reflection.
Maybe it's always been this way except now with the singularity, the memeplex life-cycle has become so short compared to our own.
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Stefan
09/05/2019, 5:42 PMFor those of you interested in spending even more time reading, I can also recommend Ribbonfarm in general and the Predictable Identities blog chain in particular: https://www.ribbonfarm.com/series/predictable-identities/
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curious_reader
09/05/2019, 7:41 PMRibbon farm is also in the article/ google docs sheet!
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Wouter
09/06/2019, 1:42 AMThere's always been an us vs them.. except now these people are withing shouting (tweeting) distance
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Stefan
09/06/2019, 9:23 AMRibbon farm is also in the article/ google docs sheet!Yeah, we clearly need to step this up a notch here, because nowhere can I find Future of Coding under Campfire in that spreadsheet or @stevekrouse under Chieftains. ;-) Not sure how much a spreadsheet like this helps or harms… I guess it’s good to see a list of several tribes across the spectrum(s) as these groups clearly exist as organized entities in some form. Ultimately it depends on your mindset when you approach a person that is clearly from a Them-tribe in your own relative view on the world — do you approach them as “Ok, tell me more and help me understand you” or do you fall into ignorant, aggressive, or missionary patterns towards them.
Stefan
09/06/2019, 9:24 AMWhich ties this back to empathy and also this conversation we had over here: https://futureofcoding.slack.com/archives/CLYCGTCPL/p1566407663231600
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