[ben_w]

I’ve seen the difference between what YouTube presents to me when I’m logged in v.s. when I’m on a clean computer it can’t associate with me, and I do value the personalisation — when not logged in it shows me a hundred duds for every one thing I care about, and logged in it’s about 50:50.

How much of this improvement is a mysterious machine learning algorithm and how much is it just looking for new things from my subscription list, I’m not sure, and that’s important: being trapped in a torrent of self-reinforcing falsehoods is something I fell for in my teenage-goth-New-Age phase, which Carl Sagen condemned in The Demon-Haunted World, and which people in general have been falling for with every sychophant and propagandist from soothsayers to tabloids telling them what they want to be so.

[PolygonSheep]

> I’m not sure, and that’s important: being trapped in a torrent of self-reinforcing falsehoods is something I fell for in my teenage-goth-New-Age phase, which Carl Sagen condemned in The Demon-Haunted World.

Genuinely curious here: how can you tell you've escaped one set of self-reinforcing falsehoods while being sure you haven't fallen into another, different set?

[ben_w]

You can’t be certain of not falling into a different set of false beliefs, but you can look for inconsistencies in your beliefs and be less and less wrong.

Spotting inconsistencies in my beliefs is what pushed me out of New Age mode, and ironically what pushed me into it in the first place (from Catholicism).

[EnderShadow8]

An alternative might be for personalisation to be opt-in rather than opt-out even when signed in with an account (which shouldn't even be necessary for many services anyway)