Humans tend to suck. The internet is just this presented in a hyper way. Layers of obfuscation created by the consuming of technology.. What's so great about the act of survival? What's so great about our little hobbies, friends, and family? Really, the internet is just a mirror of this lack at the center. We crave more because we cannot just be. Being and becoming are important themes here. Internet is a network of manifested obfuscation of becoming. But being is really not much better. Just thereness there.. so we diddle and daddle and doodle and dawdle.

I just want to add another way large swaths of the internet are destroying democracy: servers with authoritarian mods who suppress even benign opinions they dislike. I keep coming back here (despite my better judgement, haha) because at least our TPF mods talk with us reasonably and discuss things thoroughly and fairly.

:up:

First time I'm hearing anything about that!

That internet mods are increasingly ruthless tyrants or that TPF has a pretty decent mod team? :wink:

Discord is the worst offender, afaik. More and more whiny kids wanting "safe spaces" where they never have to hear about politics or philosophy *at all*. It makes them "uncomfortable." Reddit is getting worse too. I keep seeing subs with a brand new "no politics allowed" rule.

Which, I understand that politics have gotten heated in the past years and so shutting it down saves a lot of time and energy, but I just can't understand how any person who lives in and most likely theoretically supports democracy can suddenly be in favor of censorship.

Of course, I'm not totally naive: I realize free speech has pretty much always only been supported by and for the "in group" but still.... it boggles the mind.

That internet mods are increasingly ruthless tyrants or that TPF has a pretty decent mod team? :wink: — Artemis

TPF has a pretty decent mod team?

That one.

Humans tend to suck. The internet is just this presented in a hyper way. Layers of obfuscation created by the consuming of technology.. What's so great about the act of survival? What's so great about our little hobbies, friends, and family? Really, the internet is just a mirror of this lack at the center. We crave more because we cannot just be. Being and becoming are important themes here. Internet is a network of manifested obfuscation of becoming. But being is really not much better. Just thereness there.. so we diddle and daddle and doodle and dawdle. — schopenhauer1

In my experience, humans tend to suck and blow. So, like everything else in our imperfect world, we have to take the good with the bad. As they say, "that's life". But we don't have to overdose on either.

Back in the good old days, before mass communication, most news was mundane local gossip. And really bad news was rare. But now, with instant communication, news is global & instantaneous, and mostly bad news. As they used to say about newspapers, "if it bleeds, it leads". So, for those who pay attention to such things. they are inundated with reports of "man's inhumanity to man". Even uncommon "man bites dog" stories are told & retold, even if the event is a thousand miles away. It's that broadened scope and wearisome repetition that makes the whole world seem to suck more than in the Golden Age before technology gave us eight billion neighbors.

Consequently, as you say, internet news is mostly bad news "presented in a hyper way". Ironically, the human brain is always on the lookout for threats to survival. Hence, it's innately interested in tittle-tattle gossip, especially scandalous & terrifying information. But when such news is not relevant to your local situation, such fake & fatalistic news tends to color your outlook a gloomy gray, even when your own skies are sunny. You are the center of your worldview. And that shadow can only penetrate your personal corner of the world, if you let it in.

To avoid the extremes of Optimism or Pessimism, I call myself a "Peptomist". That's why I usually try to look away from the burning building or the bloody crash, and note the heroic firemen with a saved child, or just return to my little comfy nest, where little is newsworthy. If you look for it, there is usually some good news on the back page -- even on the internet. :cool:

“Inhumanity, n. One of the signal and characteristic qualities of humanity.”
― Ambrose Bierce, The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary

“Humanity needs injustice, which it can savour through the bitterness, the self-directed Schadenfreude that is one of the variants on the spectrum of misfortune. This mortification is particularly noticeable among the most celebrated, who like to see themselves as betrayed and misunderstood."
― Jean Baudrillard, Cool Memories V: 2000 - 2004

"Some people see the glass half full. Others see it half empty. I see a glass that's twice as big as it needs to be". — George Carlin, 1936-2008, American comedian

"An optimist expects his dreams to come true; a pessimist expects his nightmares to."
— Laurence J Peter, 1919-1990, Canadian writer & educator

"An optimist may see a light where there is none, but why must the pessimist always run to blow it out?"
— René Descartes, 1596-1650, French philosopher

The internet & democracy? The key to a healthy democracy is, inter alia, transparency and that, in my humble opinion, means access to information and a fast mode of dissemination - the internet fits the bill as far as I can tell.

Unfortunately, disinformation/information travels/employs the same medium with equal ease and efficiency.

It's about free speech in the end, right? Democracies depend, existentially, on the liberty to speak one's mind. Sadly, hate speech must also be accepted as part of the bargain.

One possible solution to counteract hate speech/disinformation/misinformation would be to teach people how to use the internet (digital safety): a baloney detection kit à la the late Carl Sagan's should be put together and made hypervisibile so that people can learn how to separate the wheat from the chaff online. I found one :point: Internet Safety 101.

If we look at viruses from an information theoretic angle, it's supposed to disseminate/spread information but in the case of viruses, they're simply disseminating/spreading, zero information content.

The medium is the message.
— Marshall McLuhan — Agent Smith

The internet is democratizing destruction!

the internet is just a mirror — schopenhauer1

:clap:

One possible solution to counteract hate speech/disinformation/misinformation would be to teach people how to use the internet (digital safety): a baloney detection kit à la the late Carl Sagan's should be put together and made hypervisibile so that people can learn how to separate the wheat from the chaff online. I found one :point: Internet Safety 101. — Agent Smith

The problem with solutions like this is that the only people who'll read them are the likes of us who don't need to! Those who do, won't, just as they won't bother to get their news from reputable sources..

Another facet of this problem that's only just occured to me: the shortening of attention-spans and growing inability to focus on tasks for more than a minute or two, caused by many people's addiction to social media on their smart phones, its short-term buzzes and the sleep-deprivation caused by not having the will power to turn it off. Hence many people are happy to go along with simplistic political statements made by the likes of Trump - who never said anything more complicated than what could fit into a Tweet. People who've never made a habit of thinking are not concerned about using that facility less and less if they don't need to.

But again, its the internet - if the wireless one - that's allowing the social media addiction to capture so many minds. Obviously people - especially children - should turn their phones off at night, and bosses should not be allowed to msg workers outside office hours. But who's going to enact legislation that would limit freedom and annoy many ignorant voters? Instead today's populist politicians work on exploiting the public's lack of patience with ever more simplistic and emotive messaging.

According to an article by Johann Hari in the UK Observer: people think they can do several things a once - ie work and phone; but they can't; the mind doesnt work that way. With each switch the mind has to stop, adjust, remember; then re-adjust and re-remember after the return. A side-by-side test of workers with phones with text-message interrupting and without showed a 20% reduction in the productivity of the 1st group. The longer it takes for the problem to be recognised the harder it will be to solve - like the obesity problem..