Last week I was driving down to the Gilroy Garlic Festival when literally 5 minutes from the highway exit I changed my mind; it was too hot, I decided and I ended up taking the exit beforehand to head over the mountains to the beach. It wasn't until the next morning that I heard about the shooting at the festival, which slightly shook me up and remains in my thoughts.
I guess with more shootings I've been having to think about things more.
I have always been a private person and a slightly suspicious one. I have no illusions about the fact that something, somewhere will probably be tearing this text file to pieces to data mine and assemble a virtual portrait of me. Still, I feel like I will play coy in some specific facts to in order to get some ideas off of my chest.
What is wrong with Society with the Internet?
A little background: I entered the wild world of the Internet relatively early on. I also live in Silicon Valley, and have lived among Techies and engineers most of my life, and from all of that I have to say I greatly distrust the Internet.
The absolute first Online community that I joined, prompted by one of my best friends, was the infamous website Something Awful. It was in my experience a vicious, bare-knuckle forum mainly devoted to making jokes and being creative making jokes (Photoshop Phridays were a favorite or mine), but it developed a reputation as one that would- prompted or not- mock people that it thought were "awful" including members of the furry community. I never participated in what were called "Goon Rushes" or anything that I thought was malicious, but neither did I ever speak out against things (or even speak out much at all period).
Something Awful did teach me quite a few things: it taught me that the Internet was filled with people who talked a lot without necessarily knowing what they were actually talking about, that there was a mob mentality Online, that people assumed the worst about other people without giving too much thought to their own Online positions. The biggest thing Something Awful taught me was its slogan: "The Internet Makes You Stupid". I believe this is true to this day.
I am a scientist and I seem to have fairly good memory and Google-fu. I have been able to find intricate details of things from a single mention somewhere years ago and use it to piece together whole concepts and ideas. If information was ever mentioned anywhere and I'm looking for it, there is a pretty good chance that I would find it. A data-mining program could only be much, much better than myself.
Together, Something Awful and Data Mining led to one conclusion for me: If you ever want to communicate, create or organize anything on the Internet, be prepared for that very thing to be found and used against you. This probably led to me being mostly a lurker Online and greatly limiting my Online presence.
This worked until 2016. The World seemed to go crazy for the Internet, and all the information and ease of communication it allowed, and shifted everything to the web. People gave their ideas to the Internet, threw out their raw emotions, betrayed their innermost thoughts (believe me I still will not have at the end of this). Yet it was always the American Wild West: people would rush for strikes of gold (Online shopping craze, Bitcoin craze), people would harass one another (trolling culture, callout culture), people would use it to cheat and steal from one another (Craigslist scams, cyberexortion, hacking and phishing). Most ominously, no one seemed to care about this in Silicon Valley, the people driving and developing these new ideas: there was always a strange Libertarian streak in the Bay Area, and people seemed to naturally "assume" that things would work out-that the more in information in the World there was, the better, that some semblance of order would naturally sort out, that governments would simply cease to exist as everyone joined up Online. I have always thought engineers were borderline sociopaths, more concerned with simplifying everything down to True/False logic than trying to understand things holistically and nothing in more than 25 years living among, having family members in, and being friends with, engineers has persuaded me otherwise.
In the American West, boomtown businesses were soon taken up and consolidated by robber barons, wealthy ranchers, landowners, mining and railroad oligarchs who controlled everything, leading to violent, vicious little wars with the people they crushed. I see the same thing with Facebook, Google, Amazon and Apple. Their hands-off attitude was the crevice that allowed racists, schemers and other sowers of chaos to worm in society, and their greed for their own bottom line was the wedge that those evildoers used to shatter society. Techies paid for their wealth by sacrificing the stability of the world. They excused their own inactions in setting up a fair and stable Online society by pushing for absolute freedom in all things, because hey, they've made bank doing so and need to make money or their company shares won't keep going up. When things go wrong, they shrug and say, oh it's up to the government or people to make decisions preventing such things.
So now we have what we have, a system where only a few people in a few companies make a gazillion dollars, while crushing out all opposition, while everyone is at everyone else's throats, a crapton of people who talked about shit without necessarily knowing shit, mob rushes, people assuming the worst about other people without giving too much thought to their own hypocrisy. It was as if the worst of Something Awful had accelerated and exploded all over everything.
What then can be done?
I'll be honest, I don't know. But I can do MY personal best.
The day of the 2016 election, I severed ties to that best friend of mine, now a Techie working at one of the wealthiest companies in the world, because he was unwilling to compromise, because he wanted to remain pure-i.e. that he would be willing to harm me (I lost my job immediately after the election), his friend of 17 years, because people didn't "value" him enough.
I called bullshit on that. If he wanted to remain pure, I can as well, and he can rule over his empire of shit. I on the other hand, resolved to be a better person.
There is an social science/mathematical idea called Game Theory, sometimes analogized as the Prisoner's Dilemma. The idea is that there will always be a balance between multiple players of any game, whether actual games, business strategy, predator-prey relationships, etc. In the Prisoner's Dilemma (a simple 2-player analogy), the guards give 2 prisoners a trick bargain: if one prisoner confesses to the crime, they'd 5 years while the other gets 20 years, however if both confess then the deal is off, because hey they both confessed and both get 10 years. There would then be 4 scenarios that could happen in this: Prisoner A confesses, A gets 5 years, B gets 20 years. Prisoner B confesses, A gets 20 years, B gets 5 years. Both confess, both A and B get 10 years. Neither A nor B confess, they don't get charged with a crime. For the prisoners, the best outcome is both A and B not confessing; however, this depends not on the individual prisoner A or B, but their relationship to each other. Do they trust one another? The game actually assumes that the default is both A and B getting 10 years by both confessing, because neither can trust one another and actually both confessing is better than one confessing. Again this idea can be applied to all interactions. As far as Game Theory is concerned, the end of my friendship all worked out, because hey, we both got our second worst choice (ending the relationship) as opposed to one of us getting the absolute worst choice (one taking advantage of the other).
Society I think is the same. In old societies like China, Russia and India, people naturally default to what I'll call the double negative option, because everyone has become jaded and cynical and distrustful that people will NOT take advantage of one another. By assuming the double negative option, the double negative option will ALWAYS come true.
How then do you get the double positive option?
I think it has to do with faith.
Not in the religious sense, but we have to CHOOSE to be good to one another. Most people I feel throughout the World are good and want to do the right thing. Even if in the short term, we may be harmed by those taking advantage of it, the answer is to eliminate those who take advantage-falsifying the truth, drawing false equivalence, complaining about lack of fairness- and leave this faith of one another to everyone else.
With the analogy to the American West, the "Wild West" only ended with people AGREEING to set up society. The Wild West closed, not because people started hating freedom, but because they realized they needed to sacrifice SOME freedom to PREVENT that very freedom from destroying everything else. The same I see for the Internet. Ground rules were never set up but better now than never. If the wealthiest companies in the World are too arrogant and selfish to try to build a friendly place where most people can safely interact in instead of nothing, I will nevertheless try to do so in my little corners of the Internet.
I will continue be suspicious of people Online, but I can still act with kindness and fairness and understanding to others. I hope others can apply the same thing to me. I will appeal to the better angels of our nature, for otherwise we will wrestle with the worse demons.
Well I guess I just spent 90 minutes basically ranting. I should get more sleep.
AJJ-People
This work was courtesy of theroguez the day I found out how lucky my last-minute change in plans was. I greatly appreciate her work on this and everyone there during that streaming session.
I guess with more shootings I've been having to think about things more.
I have always been a private person and a slightly suspicious one. I have no illusions about the fact that something, somewhere will probably be tearing this text file to pieces to data mine and assemble a virtual portrait of me. Still, I feel like I will play coy in some specific facts to in order to get some ideas off of my chest.
What is wrong with Society with the Internet?
A little background: I entered the wild world of the Internet relatively early on. I also live in Silicon Valley, and have lived among Techies and engineers most of my life, and from all of that I have to say I greatly distrust the Internet.
The absolute first Online community that I joined, prompted by one of my best friends, was the infamous website Something Awful. It was in my experience a vicious, bare-knuckle forum mainly devoted to making jokes and being creative making jokes (Photoshop Phridays were a favorite or mine), but it developed a reputation as one that would- prompted or not- mock people that it thought were "awful" including members of the furry community. I never participated in what were called "Goon Rushes" or anything that I thought was malicious, but neither did I ever speak out against things (or even speak out much at all period).
Something Awful did teach me quite a few things: it taught me that the Internet was filled with people who talked a lot without necessarily knowing what they were actually talking about, that there was a mob mentality Online, that people assumed the worst about other people without giving too much thought to their own Online positions. The biggest thing Something Awful taught me was its slogan: "The Internet Makes You Stupid". I believe this is true to this day.
I am a scientist and I seem to have fairly good memory and Google-fu. I have been able to find intricate details of things from a single mention somewhere years ago and use it to piece together whole concepts and ideas. If information was ever mentioned anywhere and I'm looking for it, there is a pretty good chance that I would find it. A data-mining program could only be much, much better than myself.
Together, Something Awful and Data Mining led to one conclusion for me: If you ever want to communicate, create or organize anything on the Internet, be prepared for that very thing to be found and used against you. This probably led to me being mostly a lurker Online and greatly limiting my Online presence.
This worked until 2016. The World seemed to go crazy for the Internet, and all the information and ease of communication it allowed, and shifted everything to the web. People gave their ideas to the Internet, threw out their raw emotions, betrayed their innermost thoughts (believe me I still will not have at the end of this). Yet it was always the American Wild West: people would rush for strikes of gold (Online shopping craze, Bitcoin craze), people would harass one another (trolling culture, callout culture), people would use it to cheat and steal from one another (Craigslist scams, cyberexortion, hacking and phishing). Most ominously, no one seemed to care about this in Silicon Valley, the people driving and developing these new ideas: there was always a strange Libertarian streak in the Bay Area, and people seemed to naturally "assume" that things would work out-that the more in information in the World there was, the better, that some semblance of order would naturally sort out, that governments would simply cease to exist as everyone joined up Online. I have always thought engineers were borderline sociopaths, more concerned with simplifying everything down to True/False logic than trying to understand things holistically and nothing in more than 25 years living among, having family members in, and being friends with, engineers has persuaded me otherwise.
In the American West, boomtown businesses were soon taken up and consolidated by robber barons, wealthy ranchers, landowners, mining and railroad oligarchs who controlled everything, leading to violent, vicious little wars with the people they crushed. I see the same thing with Facebook, Google, Amazon and Apple. Their hands-off attitude was the crevice that allowed racists, schemers and other sowers of chaos to worm in society, and their greed for their own bottom line was the wedge that those evildoers used to shatter society. Techies paid for their wealth by sacrificing the stability of the world. They excused their own inactions in setting up a fair and stable Online society by pushing for absolute freedom in all things, because hey, they've made bank doing so and need to make money or their company shares won't keep going up. When things go wrong, they shrug and say, oh it's up to the government or people to make decisions preventing such things.
So now we have what we have, a system where only a few people in a few companies make a gazillion dollars, while crushing out all opposition, while everyone is at everyone else's throats, a crapton of people who talked about shit without necessarily knowing shit, mob rushes, people assuming the worst about other people without giving too much thought to their own hypocrisy. It was as if the worst of Something Awful had accelerated and exploded all over everything.
What then can be done?
I'll be honest, I don't know. But I can do MY personal best.
The day of the 2016 election, I severed ties to that best friend of mine, now a Techie working at one of the wealthiest companies in the world, because he was unwilling to compromise, because he wanted to remain pure-i.e. that he would be willing to harm me (I lost my job immediately after the election), his friend of 17 years, because people didn't "value" him enough.
I called bullshit on that. If he wanted to remain pure, I can as well, and he can rule over his empire of shit. I on the other hand, resolved to be a better person.
There is an social science/mathematical idea called Game Theory, sometimes analogized as the Prisoner's Dilemma. The idea is that there will always be a balance between multiple players of any game, whether actual games, business strategy, predator-prey relationships, etc. In the Prisoner's Dilemma (a simple 2-player analogy), the guards give 2 prisoners a trick bargain: if one prisoner confesses to the crime, they'd 5 years while the other gets 20 years, however if both confess then the deal is off, because hey they both confessed and both get 10 years. There would then be 4 scenarios that could happen in this: Prisoner A confesses, A gets 5 years, B gets 20 years. Prisoner B confesses, A gets 20 years, B gets 5 years. Both confess, both A and B get 10 years. Neither A nor B confess, they don't get charged with a crime. For the prisoners, the best outcome is both A and B not confessing; however, this depends not on the individual prisoner A or B, but their relationship to each other. Do they trust one another? The game actually assumes that the default is both A and B getting 10 years by both confessing, because neither can trust one another and actually both confessing is better than one confessing. Again this idea can be applied to all interactions. As far as Game Theory is concerned, the end of my friendship all worked out, because hey, we both got our second worst choice (ending the relationship) as opposed to one of us getting the absolute worst choice (one taking advantage of the other).
Society I think is the same. In old societies like China, Russia and India, people naturally default to what I'll call the double negative option, because everyone has become jaded and cynical and distrustful that people will NOT take advantage of one another. By assuming the double negative option, the double negative option will ALWAYS come true.
How then do you get the double positive option?
I think it has to do with faith.
Not in the religious sense, but we have to CHOOSE to be good to one another. Most people I feel throughout the World are good and want to do the right thing. Even if in the short term, we may be harmed by those taking advantage of it, the answer is to eliminate those who take advantage-falsifying the truth, drawing false equivalence, complaining about lack of fairness- and leave this faith of one another to everyone else.
With the analogy to the American West, the "Wild West" only ended with people AGREEING to set up society. The Wild West closed, not because people started hating freedom, but because they realized they needed to sacrifice SOME freedom to PREVENT that very freedom from destroying everything else. The same I see for the Internet. Ground rules were never set up but better now than never. If the wealthiest companies in the World are too arrogant and selfish to try to build a friendly place where most people can safely interact in instead of nothing, I will nevertheless try to do so in my little corners of the Internet.
I will continue be suspicious of people Online, but I can still act with kindness and fairness and understanding to others. I hope others can apply the same thing to me. I will appeal to the better angels of our nature, for otherwise we will wrestle with the worse demons.
Well I guess I just spent 90 minutes basically ranting. I should get more sleep.
AJJ-People
This work was courtesy of theroguez the day I found out how lucky my last-minute change in plans was. I greatly appreciate her work on this and everyone there during that streaming session.
Category Artwork (Digital) / Scenery
Species Goat
Gender Male
Size 1280 x 876px
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