@BoomerSpooner @cde123 I do think that you are both right but as always we must be careful of what information we take in as factual. I think and I'm going to sound old, but that's what can be wrong with younger generations these days. There IS so much info that they go off on the tangent they think sounds best. We all do but there are so many to choose from these days. So maybe that is part of the answer. I do also think there's like some thing that makes us want to stop where it was good so instead of learning more we turtle down whether we know it or not.
In other news I need to go find a blueberry muffin, tea and what I was supposed to be doing. Knowing me I'll be back in 15.
mankind often makes big mistakes by doing things that seem like immediate and obvious improvements to the status quo, but in the long run, those “improvements” turn out to be detrimental to the very people they were intended to help.
This line reminded me of "instant gratification" and how heavy dependence on this instant gratification is often short-sighted so it would naturally lead to outcomes people may not be happy with. Sold me on this book to read!
Just to clarify, I am a firm believer “technology is neutral”. By that I mean it is neither inherently good or evil. Electricity can power a toaster oven or power an electric chair. Nuclear reactions can power cities or level cities. It is what people do with technology that makes any given application of technology positive or negative.
In particular, Google (who owns YouTube) has a goal of getting people to spend as much time on platform as possible because that is how they make money (same for Facebook, Instascam and TikTok). With personalized recommendations in my feed, based on predictive models of the type of content I watch and save / like, how responsible is Google for for the fracturing.
They essentially put people into personalized echo chambers which reinforce the “rightness” of their beliefs / prejudices because it SEEMS “everyone” agrees with their perspective regardless of how ludicrous that perspective may be. I have never watched a “flat earth” or “fake moon landing” video but I have no doubt if I watched one, I would immediately be offered another one in my feed and after watching 3 or 4 of them in a row, 80% of my recommendations would involve nut jobs arguing the earth is flat (no offense to any flat earthers reading this comment 😂).
My point is, I see SOME level of profit driven motivation from big tech to reinforce the “rightness” of any position through repetition. After watching 6 hours of “how the U.S. faked the moon landing”, it would be difficult to carry on a sane conversation with people who “refuse to believe the evidence” thus fueling more fracturing of society.
I am not wanting censorship or saying people should not be allowed to hold and share “out there” ideas, but I do see a big down side to algorithms reinforcing those ideas by trying to maximize the time people spend watching certain content.
I 100% agree this is not a “new” problem and there have been “out there” books and magazines for decades, but technology is an accelerator. What was once a “5” problem is now a “50” or “500” problem because this application of technology has increased the impact of an age old problem.
A very insightful commentary @RedFox16 - the idea of "nostalgia" is very real. The idea of, "Well, back in the good old days..." In reality, things really don't change that much from one generation to the next. Our perceptions are often shaped by our age. And in many cases (though not all as @BoomerSpooner pointed out), as kids we're insulated from the ills of society and the harsh reality of "the real world." And that innocence creates a false illusion that society used to be much different and now it's changed, when in reality we just eventually reach an age of maturity where we better understand the world in all its shades. So it's not necessarily so much that society gets worse as we get older (although it does sometimes), it's that it gets more complicated.
And that's truly how brains work in young people (about teens till mid to late 20s) They literally don't realize what's going on in the larger world around them.
Again, I disagree. I have two kids who both became victims of worry and anxiety around 15 or 16 when they started researching the cost of college and were keenly aware of housing costs and the divide in society because kids reflected their parents political and social views in school. How did they know about a lot of the other issues?? Instagram from the older kids they followed. Technology makes them more socially aware at a younger age now. They soon found their fears justified. My son 24, who has a CompSci BS degree and has had a FT job as a sophomore on overseeing a couple of teams of coders for a publicly traded tech company struggled to find a place to live that was liveable and my daughter who is very smart nailed down several thousand dollars in scholarships and still had to take out loans to cover the cost. But they knew this was coming through social media years ago. Still sucks though.
@JohnR1972 Great topic. I am out for now but looking forward to some of the responses.
@JohnR1972 I heavily agree with your last post. I only get served Lo-fi music, editing and book content, book creation playlists and philosophy. There might be one or two more but it’s comparatively little. I have to go out of my way to find something else and when I do if I watch a couple my feed changes a little but will go back with the algorithm decides I wasn’t interested in that topic. I think the problem with even searching a video outside your norm is that you searched it. That is still narrowing down the circle of influence. Maybe feeding you a portion of what you like and a percentage of other things might be better. I think as long as it’s not hate speech it should be on rotation.. I had one more note but I forgot. I’ll add it in an edit.
Yes, that's very true @BoomerSpooner Being young does not mean a person escapes from knowing and understanding big things around them....at all! And thank you for sharing some of your hard experiences with us! I bet that was really tricky, trying to help your kiddos navigate those anxieties that probably made them feel out of their control. Not that any of those things are in our control as adults, but we have much more life experience and maturity to be able to process those things. (That's not used in an insulting way....but a scientific way)
What I was saying about brains not being able to understand....is more about the development of the brain and absolutely nothing about the experiences of the individual person. Because, as you also mentioned about your childhood, no one grows up unaffected by world issues or unaware of them.
The main reason for increased anxiety to "big" problems is because the parts of the brain that are still developing (amygdala and pre frontal cortex) are still underdeveloped. The amygdala controls emotion....so it doesn't always dispense the correct amount of emotion in response to a given situation (like increased worry and fear when they read troubling news). The pre-frontal cortex is responsible for impulse decision making and future planning. And since it's not developed, kids cannot "see" the possibile solutions for problems happening "now" or cannot plan for future events or problems.
Yes, kids can be in terrible or sad or worrisome situations....and "understand" those situations. But they literally cannot understand them the way that the adults in their lives do at the same time. I'm sure that while helping your kids, you were able to help them navigate things from an extremely different POV.....since you know a lot more and have had more life experience? And your brain is able to process problems differently.
Think of it this way....it's like trying to run a modern computer program on a Commodore 64 computer. There's nothing wrong with that computer, it simply does not have the ability to "understand" programs from now. Or rather, it simply doesn't have the brain parts needed to understand those programs. It can understand parts of those programs....the simpler parts. Just not the complex layers that make up modern programs vs programs it is able to understand. obviously this example is not exact....so please don't take it that way, and then @ me about "but with computers...."
That is just an add on to my first comments....about how we tend to view the past as the good old days due to nostalgia....
Ok, now that I geeked up this whole thread, I also have to go do some adulting! 😎😁
@BoomerSpooner no goal post was moved. I came in here and answered the authors question. You came in here with your first comment, directed towards me instead of answering the authors question which you did later, but your very first instinct was to attack me. I’ll give you a definition of morals if you don’t know what they mean a “person's standards of behavior or beliefs concerning what is and is not acceptable for them to do.”
@lonelytauros I'm going to respectfully disagree with you there. While we do need more community etc there is nothing wrong with having value in self either. Its a balance and as king and queens are generational within families one could argue that they don't deserve their place more than anyone else. I am not speaking to Boomer's comment because I forget which one it was and its not my thing. Simply saying I disagree a bit.
Edit: read @BoomerSpooner 's statement and I'm not sure whats wrong with saying morals are subjective?
@lonelytauros I wasn’t attacking you. I was disagreeing with the morals premise. I stated that morals covers a vast amount of ground and not everyone’s morals are the same. Your definition agrees with what I said:
person's standards of behavior or beliefs concerning what is and is not acceptable for them to do.
It does not say everyone agrees to all the same morals. Every individual is different. And what I mean by moving the goal posts is you started with the “morals” in your first post then came back with raping and stealing. So you cherry picked two examples out of thousands of types of morals. You went from a very general statement to two very specific examples. Morals and two handpicked examples are very different so you moved the goal post from the general to the specific.
I hope this clarifies what I said but don’t assume I was attacking you because I wasn’t. I was disagreeing with the idea of morals being the cause of societal disintegration, and you said it yourself in your first post that it may be an unpopular opinion. I disagreed and said why.
@lonelytauros I will admit that starting off with “Here we go with moving the goal post” comes across like you do it all the time. Not my intention and I can see how it sounds a bit harsh. I should have just said this was an exercise in goal post moving. Saying here we go was a response to the practice of goal post moving that you see a lot of in the forums. I stand by my statement that it was goal post moving, but I do apologize for the tone of how it was said. I hope that makes sense.
@lonelytauros I didn't see the goal post moving one or @BoomerSpooner 's response so I'd like to stay out of that conflict. I was asking/pointing out that the 1st statement didn't seem off. The second set of comments... bye!!! lol
Don't think it was meant as an attack but that's from my view. I can see how it seemed like it so yep... ducking out for now.