| HN Mirror

"...though given the overall idiocy of mankind I'm not surprised it mutated this way."

It seems to me that one of the most negative outcomes of modern communications is the leveling of the ability to be heard. These days, a person who would have normally earned respect through work and ability doesn't necessarily get heard or listened to, or commands more respect than any of the many empty vessels that frequent the internet and contribute to its cacophony of noise, and it's been especially so since the advent of social media.

It's this inability of many to differentiate between quality and junk that's largely at the heart of the Internet's problems. From my observation, it seems that rational logical thought has fallen to an all-time low and that misinformation, deliberate or otherwise, has reached such proportions in the online world that we're now seeing actual disruption to society in ways that we once would have thought impossible.

I'm of the opinion that one of the most important and central issues of recent times is the loss of factual accuracy along with the widespread lack of concern among many over integrity of information and that the consequential increase in entropy and disorder it's brought has been such that it has disrupted the normal discourse between humans to the extent that much of it has now become dysfunctional. We're now witnessing its effects: society has become so increasingly polarized over so many issues that we're starting to see the beginnings of societal breakdown and that this ought to be of great concern and thus a wakeup call.

What's at stake is nothing less than the cohesiveness of our society and that we humans need to tackle these undermining negative forces much more seriously than we have done previously by devoting considerably more time and effort into addressing them. Moreover, that will necessitate us doing so in smart and nuanced ways with degrees of sophistication that we've never previously applied to the problem.

The core issue is that modern communications and the internet have given many millions a voice that they would otherwise never have had - and that's a good thing, but unlike the media of yesteryear, that voice is largely unmoderated. Whilst the historical situation was far from perfect, at least in the past editors, et al, usually filtered out much of the dross.

Now that we've lost that first-line ability to filter we're left with the serious and difficult problem of having to filter out the 'idiocy' factor without disrupting or stopping the citizenry at large from having its say. Citizens still need to be able to put forward their ideas and points of view even if many are inaccurate or wacky. Any system that fails to let populace do so will be derided and marked with 'elitist' and 'censorship' flags, and thus it's ultimately doomed to failure.

Two key issues arise and need to be addressed:

1. We somwhow need to hold people responsible for statements they make online in that they need to be able to justify what they have said. Furthermore, the degree of accountability to which they should be subject should be commensurate with the scale and importance of their statements.

For example, someone who has made statements that defy all logic and sense or that are inconsistent with overwhelming evidence to the contrary, and if widely believed could cause social disruption, would have to justify his/her position with solid evidence to the effect, and if unable to do so then he/she should be subject to sanctions. In essence, we need to foster a culture of accuracy and truthfulness and we need ways of enforcing them. For instance, someone who denies the holocaust would need overwhelmingly evidence to the effect and when [obviously] it wasn't forthcoming then he/she would be sanctioned accordingly.

That said, implementing any such scheme would be far from being simple and straightforward. For a myriad of reasons, many people genuinely hold whacky way-out ideas that are easily proven wrong by any reasonable analysis and simply sanctioning them from holding those beliefs isn't necessarily the best solution. Moreover, how we would go about differentiating between, say, a political activist who doesn't believe what he's saying but says it for political motives poses very significant problems.Thus, I'm under no illusion that by far the most difficult part of implementing any of these ideas will be in dealing with the fine minutiae.

2. You have a very relevant point about the 'idiocy of mankind'. Whilst I'd suggest some would use a milder description, we've very real problems whenever people launch wayward, inaccurate and or dangerous memes in that counteracting or neutralizing them once they're on the loose and in the wild usually proves nigh on impossible - witness the many problems experienced counteracting wacky ideas re vaccines/COVID, faked moon landings, etc., etc.

I'm not a behavioral scientist but it's clear to me that there's a very undesirable aspect of human nature which is that it's very easy for rumors and false ideas to take hold and spread like wildfire even when there's little or no justification or foundation for them, and when they do then it's essentially impossible to extinguish them. We see similar behavior in crowds going wild and with the decisions of lynch mobs who collectively, like lemmings, make terrible decisions that, upon reflection, very few individuals would ever make in isolation.

It seems that when certain ideas get on the loose that the crowd - that is the herd's collective IQ drops to well below that of individual cognition and it begins to act irrationality. Perhaps such behavior once conveyed an evolutionary advantage in say the way wildebeest are spooked and flee on mass upon seeing a lion. Clearly, nowadays such behavior in humans is very counterproductive. Given that we're not going to change human behavior anytime soon then this has to be factored into any solution. No doubt, how we'd go about 'engineering' such a solution to this human behavioral problem would be open to much debate and argument. For starters, the very notion that behavioral change is necessary would immediately raise the ire of many.

Quo vadis! The current laissez faire situation where fake news, false and dangerous ideas are spreading like wildfire across the internet is now so out of control that it has so polarized and endangered society that we've no longer the luxury of sitting back doing nothing and just accepting the status quo. Like it or not, unfortunate events and circumstances have forced us to act.

By now, you're probably thinking that my suggestions of trying to achieve behavioral change are so unrealistic that I must be living in cloud cuckoo land. Perhaps so, but let me finish. Granted, this would be no easy task but given that the most common medium for most people is social media then this is the place where we should begin, and we should attempt to use a carrot-and-stick approach to achieve it.

It's obvious that those running social media would never introduce the many extensive changes necessary to effectively implement such policies as there's little doubt that they would have a negative impact on the financial bottom line. This means that if we're ever to achieve any worthwhile change then governments would have to intervene and mandate them. Getting this to happen is also likely to be a very major challenge.

Finally, if you think my views are authoritarian, radically paternalistic, elitist or even Orwellian then I tend to agree, but I've certainly no intrinsic desire to hold such views. In essence, they've been forced on me though circumstance. The fact is I'm most uneasy about having arrived at such views as my natural worldview tends to fall into the libertarian camp albeit the libertarian left (which is very different to the libertarian right). Thus it's with reluctance I've adopted such radical views but as I've said they are born out of the need to act. And I believe that it's only when we actually achieve a cultural consensus - one wherein people feel embarrassed and ashamed after they've been caught and exposed spreading misinformation - that we'll then have regained any semblance order.

These are my first-pass ideas and I claim no monopoly on them. I only wish that many more of those who are worried would - to use that now antiquated phrase - commit pen to paper and contribute towards developing a solution. However, let's not fool ourselves in that none of these solutions will come easy, and it's likely they will be a longtime coming.