Technology

Hot take: if you want to get rid of the outrage, get rid of the stupid.

Decontextualisation might be the fuel of the outrage fire, but it only thrives in an atmosphere full of stupidity.

And by "stupidity" in this case I mean four things:

1. Context illiteracy. Inability to retrieve info from available context, or to notice that the context is missing on first place.
2. Assumptive behaviour. Failure to distinguish between what one knows, and what one doesn't know.
3. Oversimplification. Resistance against complexity and subtlety.
4. Irrelevancy. Lack of focus on what is relevant on a certain matter. Such as obsessing over "who's saying it" instead of "what is being said".

Does this remind you guys of any social network out there? It does, for me; all of the corporation-controlled ones are mostly inhabited by users like this. They were tailored for the stupid.

Yep same thing with all those ads like 90% fail this. They're designed to drive engagement. Best thing you can do is stop doom scrolling. Failing that, ignoring those obvious attempts to get you to respond.

Great topic! Looks like a very fun book to read too. So do the Sapiens books mentioned in the article. Nice.

In this scenario, “Bob” is a hypothetical guy who believes that a woman has cut in front of him in line at the supermarket checkout. He and the woman get into a brief shouting match before she informs Bob that she’d just ducked out of her spot in the line to replace a carton of eggs that turned out to be cracked. He apologizes, and that’s the end of it—except someone recorded the incident on their smartphone, then uploaded only the shouting match, reading all kinds of deplorable motives into it. “The video need only include a hint of cultural asymmetry,” Rose-Stockwell writes:

It may be seen as an angry outburst by a man (Bob) toward a woman (the other shopper). Or a Democrat (Bob) toward a Republican (the lady). Or any heightened reflection of their implied group identity. It can be repackaged as an example of a troubling trend in society. People who feel this way who see the clip now have an opportunity to explain exactly why it’s offensive. They can link it to a larger narrative that may have nothing to do with the actual event itself.

That outrage is often stoked by journalists, who, Rose-Stockwell notes, “are shockingly susceptible to reporting on this kind of thing,” furthering what he calls “trigger chains: cascades of outrage that are divorced from the original event.”

This is so common.. And not only with incidents where a part of them can be taken out of context and used to evoke emotional response related to rage.

This was what The Social Dilemma, the Facebook documentary front Netflix was about.

What was well and truly wild is that, despite everyone I know watching the documentary, most still to this day do not wait or attempt to look for the whole picture. The trial of Kyle Rittenhouse is a great example. There are still people to this day who believe he shot black people, for Christ's sake. Whether you agree with the outcome of the trial or not, to refuse to think you yourself easily fall for propaganda is outrageous.

People watch The Social Dilemma or read this artical and still think it only applies to those whom they disagree with.

Buddha says that you can either attempt to change nature, or come to terms that you will never change nature and must change yourself. Or something, im not a Buddhist.