I’m part of the X/Twitter “Community Note” community – I think I’ve mentioned it’s becoming a bit of a farce – a 3-way battle between factions with “No Note Needed” (NNN) as part of the faction naturally siding with the original poster. Net result is effectively random / binary / populist outcomes – so I don’t waste too much time on it these days, like all good ideas, being gamed degenerately , BUT …
One set of such recent battles obviously involves the utterly crass utterances of Musk. His defenders say – but it’s just his opinion, NNN, he has rights, Freeze Peach, etc.
What these people miss, like the off-the-spectrum-autistic Musk himself, is that truth is made of a lot more than (objective) facts. Dialectic – logical objective argument – is only a formalised sub-set of rhetoric, good or bad. A bad idea with a simple message and powerful reach can be much more dangerous & degenerate, than any factual inaccuracy.
#Dysmemics
#PartOfTheProblem
See (Civilised) Rules of Engagement
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Disclaimer:
Yeah, yeah, I know that particular fire in the embedded image, has no direct relation to Musk (Trusk-minus-Trump) or Tesla, but it serves here to illustrate that Trusk is, as they say, “a dumpster fire”. (It is, of course, nevertheless very deeply relevant in a complex systems view.)
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Part of the problem with Musk is certainly his lack of human depth. He does appear to be autistic, if not actually psychopathic. But another part of the problem is the amplification of his voice and the speed of its dissemination. I think somewhere you talked about managing the rate and quantity of communication as an overlooked aspect of systems analysis (maybe in connection with information overload on the Internet).
We seem to have arrived at a world where so-called “free speech” has become a market commodity. Musk is in a position to buy it (as when he bought Twitter, and again when he bribed people to sign a petition just before the 2024 U.S. election), and to exercise control over it (as when he interferes personally with who gets to say what on his platform). That he doesn’t get his own hypocrisy regarding “cancel culture” seems shocking, but we can only conclude that he and his followers don’t really mean it. They obviously have some other agenda than free speech.
I think we probably need to look at that agenda and how it’s being implemented. It’s the psychopathic agenda of furthering a cause that lacks some aspect of being fully human (or anyway humanistic), and it’s enabled by several factors: an economic system that rewards such psychopathic traits; a communications infrastructure that is easily dominated by those so rewarded; and a public discourse that is primed for the “spectacle and violence” of their shallow pronouncements — to quote the “wake-up call” of the guy who blew up the Tesla in front of the Trump building.
Hi AJ,
That speed and easy to repeat / amplify issues is under that #Dysmemics tag.
You must surely have noticed it’s been a core agenda item of mine for decades to fix that “memetic problem” and that my recommendation is “moderation” of speed and quantity so that proper “rules of engagement” can work. (I use moderation like the rods in a nuclear reactor – used that analogy hundreds of times – as opposed to “censorship” per se.)
As to having another agenda, I don’t think they’re that clever or devious. I’m sure they sincerely (but wrongly) believe that absolute freedom is good for them and the mob that claims to support them. The belief is indeed psychopathic, but that’s a mental illness – Nick Maxwell described the “neurosis” – not a conspiracy, a mental illness shared with whole swathes of society, the vast majority in fact.
(The hypocrisy is of course double-edged. It’s an essential skill between contexts in the hands of people that understand that, but as per above in the psychopathic minds it is simply misunderstood / not recognised. Brunsson et al.)
I can’t see the news from Zuckerberg today changing the Musk psycopathy trajectory. I see Jacob Mchangama is arguing that community noting may indeed be the way to go, though you’ve noted how this, in turn may be gamed, and that’s not something I’ve seen him address so far.
Until you brought it up, I had no idea what “Community Notes” were. I don;t use social media. With the news that Meta may be adopting it, I’m getting a better idea. Apparently the plan is to let “the community” police what is reasonable.
We can take comfort from the concession that police are required. The nominal conception of “free speech” is that it must not be policed, but in fact Musk and his followers believe that policing is needed. This policing is supposed to be performed by “the community,” which by its nature will winnow out false opinions and converge on the truth.
This is an optimistic understanding of “community,” associated with a humanist optimism that reason will prevail. The real truth about community is that it is subject to many other influences than reason. In particular, it is subject to tribalism. From what you’re saying, this tribalism has come to dominate X / Twitter. We should not be surprised. It is just as likely to dominate Facebook or Instagram.
The remedy of expecting communities to be reasonable will not work. The proper remedy, especially in a democracy, is to guard against tribalism. What is needed is not “Community Notes,” which will only reinforce the tribal messages, but a challenge to the communications structures that allow tribes to define themselves in smaller and more specialized units, even as they compete for the control of a common geographical space.