[nemild]

One of the scariest quotes for me was Facebook's Little Red Book in 2012 (a book handed out to every employee) that had this quote:

> "When everyone has a printing press [i.e., Facebook], the ones with the best ideas are the ones people listen to."

In retrospect, it gives a ton of insight into the flawed beliefs within the company.

https://twitter.com/nemild/status/1006533287378968576

https://www.businessinsider.com/inside-facebooks-little-red-...

[primitivesuave]

In the century that the printing press was invented, one of the most popular books to be printed was the Malleus Maleficarum, which systematized the practice of witch burning in the following centuries. Better dissemination of ideas does not necessarily mean better ideas. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malleus_Maleficarum

[mathgenius]

In the 1850's it was widely believed that the invention of the telegraph would bring about world peace.

The problem is language itself. We trust it way too much to convey meaning, and truth. But it's just a delusion, or a mirage, in much the same way that the search for artificial intelligence is. In fact, I would say that language itself is the first AI invented.

[GarrisonPrime]

Some of the ancient Greeks were aware of the limitations and drawbacks of language. Rumor is some of the Spartans took it so far as to refuse to read or write, and even speak as spartan (heh) as possible.

[sherr]

Not only some Spartans. Socrates did not write anything down (Plato did that for him), thinking that writing was a poor way at finding out about the world e.g.

https://newlearningonline.com/literacies/chapter-1/socrates-...

[sjg007]

Is it your "thinking" Plato's ? Or Socartes? It's probably is better to QUESTION rather than form your own INTERPRETATION. At least a dialog is formed. Maybe the acients were more informed then we are.

[leppr]

> Rumor is some of the Spartans took it so far as to refuse to read or write, and even speak as spartan (heh) as possible.

Do you have any source or pointer to learn more about this ?

[freen]

Lookup “laconic”.

[sgt101]

Interestingly some people see novels and plays as vital tools for creating better decision makers. By entering into another persons imagination we can experience events and lessons that we would never have access to in real life or by observing real events in our communities. So - yes, Artificial Intelligence on the page.

[sjg007]

The problem is that language is polymorphic.

[ekianjo]

> "When everyone has a printing press [i.e., Facebook], the ones with the best ideas are the ones people listen to."

Should be:

"When everyone has a printing press, the most persuasive ones are the ones people listen to"

[perl4ever]

The ideas that survive are the ones that reproduce themselves by being copied from one mind or other storage facility to another.

Where it all goes wrong is that it is very expensive to test an idea and determine whether it is good, whereas an idea that is very attractive to repeat and copy without testing is much fitter and the more it resists testing the better it is.

This is why the whole framework for protecting IP is broken as well - we incentivize coming up with ideas, but ideas are worthless - it's evaluating and testing ideas that is valuable.

[fyp]

I have seen the theory that the most optimally emotional ideas are the ones that go viral: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc

[perl4ever]

Emotion is adaptive, but only if the emotion is revulsion at the idea of skepticism.

[chiefalchemist]

The issue isn't who is the most persuasive. The problem is confirm bias and echo chambers. People aren't persuaded any more. Now they make emotional trigger snap assumptions and then only consume that which fits the narrative of the assumption.

[rapind]

I think almost everyone agrees that echo chambers at massive scale are really bad for society... and yet it's still as, if not more, prevalent as ever.

We're letting the world burn for the sake of online advertising revenue and broken business models.

[taneq]

"A lie can make its way around the world while the truth is still getting its shoes on."

[mattkevan]

It’s more like “When everyone has a printing press, the ideas people listen to are the ones that have been pushed relentlessly by a millions-strong AI generated bot army.”

[Supermancho]

Product success via pure advertising volume, is not an effective strategy. Maybe that oversimplification needs work.

[roywiggins]

That's a tautology!

[TeMPOraL]

A good tautology can be helpful in revealing errors in reasoning. Like here, the sentence "ones with the best ideas are the ones people listen to" sounds reasonable; the equivalent statement "best reasoning is the most persuasive" is clearly wrong.

[drdeca]

“Stating tautologies is sometimes necessary in the presence of those who believe self-contradictions” - paraphrased from weird sun twitter

[wwweston]

True.

And a good tautology like this one can at least help people realize the difficulties in distinguishing merit from success.

Which puts it up a step from overconfident generalizations.

[klyrs]

Which is funny, because that's also a decent lay-explanation of how PageRank works.

[btown]

I can see this being a naïve but realistic take given what we knew in ~2008. In 2012 it should have been clear that this model could be gamed. And it's on Facebook that their culture wouldn't allow them to see that.

[xorcist]

Spam and Sybil attacks were well known problems a decade earlier. It is basically what killed the vision of the semantic web in its infancy, several years before Facebook took off. It's certain everybody knew gaming data was a thing in 2008.

[pushpop]

You’re assuming they didn’t see that. Given it’s now nearly 2020 and we’ve had years of reports of election meddling yet Facebook are only calming down on suggestive emoji - stating that they have no interest in policing “free speech” when it comes to political ads - I’m inclined to believe they’re not unaware their network is being games but rather don’t care because it’s still money in their pocket.

[davidajackson]

I don't think you're right @nemild, it's not a scary quote and it's also true. Sure, people can be duped temporarily but the best quality ideas last. Information is best distributed when it can be distributed freely. What alternative would you propose, censorship, regulation?

Facebook solved a problem (connecting) but it also created one (fake content, bot farms).

Either Facebook will fix it, or if they don't, new products will pop up to solve the problem to try to provide more reliable content.

Recently, might have seen it on here (I forget where) someone trained an AI to try to detect fake news. Sure the first attempts will be crappy prototypes, but the point is that people are trying to figure the problem out.

[btown]

> Either Facebook will fix it, or if they don't, new products will pop up to solve the problem to try to provide more reliable content.

While this may be inevitable on a long timescale, the cost in human lives and dignity may be monstrous before this naturally occurs.

[ben_w]

> Either Facebook will fix it, or if they don't, new products will pop up to solve the problem to try to provide more reliable content.

Do you believe that “more reliable content” will have a financial edge over “more popular content”, and if so, why?

[pushpop]

You’re downvoting and replying to me but your comment is directed at someone else.

[sjg007]

It's sophomoric at best even in 2008. The quote itself and the fact that the book itself is called the "Little Red Book". It's almost a straight up comic irony.

[asveikau]

I think in part Zuckerberg thinks of his own personal success this way. In his mind, he did well because He was Him, and right all the time.

A more humble view might include that he was raised in relative privilege, a lot of doors were open to him, and there was a lot of good luck involved.

[bittercynic]

He was also more willing than most to abuse the trust of his fellow students at Harvard.

I imagine it is only a small fraction of people who would be so brash as to ask fellow students for their email passwords, but with the benefit of hindsight, it seems clear that someone who asks for that information probably wants to do something nasty with it.

[corporate_shi11]

It might not be quite that simple - people can game the system of course - but it has been my experience that the Internet is generally very good at highlighting the best ideas and best content to the fore. The most upvoted comments and most upvoted posts are usually those which are thought out and reasonable, interesting, etc. In other words, of high quality. The best podcasts and the best music, along with the most entertaining YouTube personalities are generally those which get the most attention. At least, I have almost never "discovered" content which was really good without an already sizeable following.

[unityByFreedom]

I think that's still true, it's just that the internet + social media let a lot of people become publishers at once, and we haven't yet decided to whom we should listen.

There are a lot of mistakes being made for which consequences have not yet occurred. Journalists of previous generations on whom we could rely had built up lifetimes-worth of reputation. On whom can you rely today? It's an open problem which I think is solvable in spite of today's difficulties.