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Strangeattractor comments on Open Thread, May 4 - May 10, 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion
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Here's a blog post about how everyone hates each other over politics more than before. Eliezer commented on it on Facebook, hypothesizing that it's a slow-growing effect of the Internet.
I cursed aloud when I read that comment, because I've had that exact idea and an accompanying sick feeling for a while now, and this is the first time I've seen it repeated.
(it's never a good sign when Eliezer Yudkowsky is the one to express your deepest fears about why everything's and everyone's brokenness is unstoppably accelerating)
I wish to read more about the "The Internet Is Why We Can't Have Even The Few Nice Things We Almost Kind Of Once Had" phenomenon — hopefully from someone who thinks there's a way easier than developing Friendly AI to put even one evil back in Pandora's Box, but that's probably wishful thinking, and I want to read about it in any case.
(Note: I'm aware that the entire LW-affiliated rationalist community writes about how things are broken, and desires to teach people to be less broken. But right now I'm looking specifically for things about how the Internet's massive boon to free speech is way more double-edged than was anticipated.)
Anyone have any good links?
I like Venkatesh Rao's perspective on this, in his blog post about "escaped realities". He argues that our games and mental models of the world are becoming closer to reality over time, "less escaped", rather than more escapist. He points out that geography is a much bigger filter than online groups regarding the variety of ideas that a person is exposed to. If anything, the internet, overall, seems to be widening people's perspectives. (Although it also lets people get better organized with their tribalism.)
I think the United States is undergoing a sort of cultural civil war right now, which I think makes the perspective of people living there somewhat different than people living in other parts of the world. I don't think that it would be as easy to make the case for "the internet encourages tribalism in politics" in other countries. I don't think that the internet is the reason for the social tensions in the United States right now, (and there are many.)