Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid

Full disclosure, I did not read or even attempt to read the article. I just want to advise The Atlantic to simply say what you mean to say and give me back the balance of my time, please. Making a 1,000-word argument with a 10,000-word article doesn't make you smarter.

 

Seconded

But it's the Atlantic...that's their jam.

 

It is ironic to be liking something very critical of social media on social media but I think a lot of this is spot on including the some of the solutions.

 

They have shorter stuff too. This topic is interesting and important enough to me that I'm fine taking 15 extra minutes to read the more detailed version.

And I would bet that this is an abridged version of a book-length treatment of the subject that Haidt is planning on releasing soon.

 

I read it all but I’m a nerd..

It could be made more succinctly but overall I think it’s pretty well written and with the read.

The main points are that easy sharing of inflammatory content in social media is allowing that to spread with little thought. Also the same time AI is making it easier to create misleading content. The political extremes are being strengthened and the zero sum game of partisan and ideological purity is dividing us further. Many are more willing to shoot darts at those nominally on their side who they aren’t seen as being loyal enough.

Some of the solutions are things like non partisan redistricting and term limits for Federal Judges. Social media should make it harder to share content so rather than have just a share button should require posters to do more to share content. Social media also needs to verify who is posting what to weed out bots. Finally children should not only be exposed to different views but should be given more time to play and not lead such structured lives.

 

Bulletin Boards is old timer Web 1.0 social media. It's like an uncool unscalable Reddit.

 

Good call. Clutchfans! The last bastion of acceptable social media!

 

This isn’t social media.

 

Tech is so old to the point we're debating this...

Wiki through Webster thinks it is (despite the Web 2.0 bulletpoint) because this is an online forum.

Redditters had a thread where they wonder if they fit too.

 

I read this yesterday and liked the article but a few points:

1. The false equivalence of right wing antivaxxers swilling ivermectin and hydroxychloroquinine covid hoaxers and various (new York DC elite magazine writer) liberals debating school closures on Twitter is just too much.

As far as school closures, 99% of schools in all areas have been doing some form of in person school for over a year now. The debate flared up in elite Twitter in December/Jan when some schools did not have enough non sick people to actually operate during Delta & Omicron - but that is way, way over now.

Liberals yelling at each other about school closures is largely something that happened on Twitter and had zero real world policy impact.

Contrast this with right wing insanity which has resulted in probably a million excess deaths and counting over COVID - in the real world, it's ****ing apples to galaxies man.

2. His prescription with how to fix our corrupted institutions is "pass a bunch of leg & reg" - not sure if he noticed but we don't do that because the same corruption he noted combined with badly designed institutions makes this literally impossible. The outlook on changing the system from within is irrepressibly bleak. Like if we were able to pass large scale systemic reforms like this, there's a lot of better things (abolish the Electoral college, the senate etc) that we should probably do first, but we can't so whatever

 

I know you said "probably" (so maybe you were just guessing), but how do you figure a "million excess deaths" due to "right wing insanity"? when afaik, the total number of deaths attributed to covid in the US is on the order of 985,000, total (NYT data tracker).

unless you are estimating global excess deaths due to global right wing insanity, in which case I'm just curious how one goes about estimating global deaths from global right wing insanity

 

I read this the other day and found it beautiful. This exact topic weighs on my mind constantly, daily, poignantly with almost every headline and social media reply that I read. I don't think Democracy recovers from social media because human rationality is bounded too strongly. Emotional creatures can't govern themselves.

 

You're a macro guy.

Life is getting better. We have made tremendous advancements in the last century. We are taking serious consideration colonizing another planet. We expect more out of each other. We are putting more value in life.

Conversely, when we get off social media and have conversations in person, we are not all that divided. Sure, there are plenty of tools out there, but it was much worse in times past.

 

Everyone needs to watch this. I knew this, but it is scary and explains a lot.

 

For those complaining about the length of the article, in this interview the writer gets his point across much more succinctly. I didn't get through the article either, but know I'm going to go back and read it.

 

This thread should be combined with the "Polarized" thread.

 

Since you saved humanity, I will forgo reading this article. Thanks!