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Social media seems to suffer from serious confirmation bias or echo-chamber effect, where an individual's political and / or social views are reinforced by the messages that they view on the display of their network-connected computational device.
Opinion poll companies have now developed quite refined
techniques for adjusting the results of polls so as to correct for biases in the sample polled, to bring the results in line with the large-scale demographics of the population as a whole.
Now social media, just like opinion polls, cannot possibly interact with the entire population. But, the number of people that a typical user interacts with is of a similar order of magnitude to the number of persons polled in a typical opinion poll. Further, while some of the interactions on social media are more of the nature of an inner circle of friends, many of them are more distant, where the interaction, discussion, or reading of messages is between people who don't know or recognise each other.
It should be fairly simple to apply the pollsters' methods to filter or pad social media feeds, so that the messages and discussions more closely approximate the range of views found through a population.
Jane, You Ignorant Slut
https://www.youtube...watch?v=c91XUyg9iWM
[theircompetitor, Dec 24 2019]
[link]
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"Four legs good, two legs better" ? |
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Your species likes, and actively seeks, confirmation bias. Individuals will, for example, buy the Morning Star or the Daily Fascist*, select particular TV and radio stations, and associate with those who share their prejudices. |
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*Any one of a number of tabloid titles run by News International. |
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The average of "the Jews are using media to replace the white race" and "anyone who likes the constitution is a Nazi" is not sanity. |
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There's a saying in Russian, loosely translated "what's on a
sober man's mind is on a drunkard's tongue". Those who
get radicalized are predisposed to it, and I'm skeptical
you can unradicalize by media manipulation. |
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Cancel Culture is the first wave, where humans policing
humans in their own Stasi type volunteer networks, but
ultimately AI will take that role -- once AI can take the
role of moderators, speech on commercially available
networks, at least, will moderate significantly |
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It's an interesting dynamic for Jews who face increased
anti-semitism from left and right. In the States they've
had a slight drift right in response to the left's support of
the boycott, but it's a very nervous drift, and likely
primarily in the older generation |
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Can you point out to us where it's written down that you have to be actually sane to participate in "society" ? |
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In fact, in politics it's probably a real disadvantage. |
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Just to agree with & follow up on 8th's point. I was once engaged in conversation by a rather senior official of my acquaintance who expressed surprise in seeing me exiting a newsagent shop carrying a copy of the Daily Telegraph. His surprise was understandable as he had driven through my picket line only a few weeks earlier.
In response, I pointed out to him that I already knew what *I* thought about things & that I read the Torygraph in order to find out what the opposing view was.
Regarding the idea, I am against 'normalising' anything. Views expressed in social media are no more representative of the general population than mine are. "Normalising" them doesn't get you any closer to describing the real-world than the current opinion polls. It just eliminates from view any opinions that go against the accepted 'norm'. Stalin would be proud. |
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Proud ? He'd be suing for breach of copyright ... |
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You should wait until the New Year, [DrB]; in his budget, Boris will be looking to splash some of the Brexit Divident on boosting the funding for the Ministry of Truth. After all, he can spend a lot of money on trying to improve the NHS, and fail - or spend much less money convincing voters that it's better, even though it isn't. |
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The Truth Is Out There ... |
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Agreed. The truth isn't all it's cracked up to be, is it! |
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"The truth ? You can't handle the truth* ! " |
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*Which is literally true, because "truth" is an abstract philosophical concept with no physical reality. |
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//what heavily sanitised PC comedy is//
Heavily
sanitised PC comedy is
what is on on BBC1 on Saturday night, or on American
chat
shows. You do
not have to look that hard to find examples of it.
//is laughing still ok in those circles or is it
triggering//
ah ok, you were
actually talking about something else entirely... |
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My grand unified theory of comedy is that there are two
types of stand up
comedy, or rather there are two ends of the stand up
comedy spectrum. |
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The first end is the type of comedy where the comedian
makes an effort to
say the sort of thing that the the audience will recognise
and agree with.
This is the root of observational comedy (also know as
observation) and
there are forty billion examples of it, including the dread
prancing laugh-
vacuum that is Michael McIntyre and the generally
consistently amusing
Kevin Bridges. Paradoxically, it is also the root of shock
comedy, as the
purpose of shock comedy is to amuse the audience by
fulfilling their
expectation that they will hear things that the audience
know would be
objectionable to the "out group". This would include
Frankie Boyle and also
worthless cunts like Dankula. |
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The other end is the type of comedy where the comedian
makes an effort
to say the sort of thing that the audience does not expect
and the audience
laughs as a result of its being wrong footed, or of their
brains being
unexpectedly exercised. I would put Spike Milligan
towards
this end of the
spectrum in this category, as well as people like Hannah
Gadsby (who, for
the record, I don't find particularly funny). |
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So, both ends of the spectrum can host unpleasant shit
(Dankula's witless
fash-pandering and Milligan's racism being clear
examples)
but in my view it
is harder to push racist / sexist / exclusionary themes at
the second end of
the spectrum as this end of the spectrum requires either
a
completely
gonzo disconnection from society or a pretty strong
consideration of the
expectations of the audience (and so also of the wider
world) in order to
work. And the more you think about these sorts of
things,
the less funny
exclusionary approaches become. The issue is that the
second spectrum-
end is just harder to pull off, and so there are fewer
comedians operating at
this end and fewer still able to pull it off and be funny. |
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[The third end of the spectrum is people being kicked in
the balls, which
will never not be funny but very few stand ups kick
themselves in the balls.
More's the pity.] |
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tl;dr:
1. Dankula et al are obvious and lazy, their punchlines
(such as they are)
can be seen coming a mile off.
2. "PC comedy" is generally harder to make funny. |
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One of the most gratifying sorts of comic is the type that make the PC brigade squirm; for example, the genuinely wheelchair-bound comic who introduced himself at the Edinburgh Fringe as "A sit-down comic. I wanted to be a stand-up comic but I can't ..." |
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He had the previous performer deliberately leave the mic stand set very high, so he couldn't reach it, then looked at the audience and shrugged helplessly. Then he told lots of jokes about disability and life in a wheelchair ... |
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Did that person actually make the PC brigade squirm (ans:
no)? Or,
perhaps more pertinently, does the PC brigade actually
exist
(ans: no) and if it
does exist, does it go the Fringe (ans: no)? I am v much in
favour of comedians making people uncomfortable. The
example you provided would, in my grand unified theory,
as assessed by me, fall towards the second end of the
spectrum. |
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As to the idea, I would be agog if it were not possible -
facebook need only invert the political ad targeting: the
existence of a user profile implies the existence of that
user's anti-profile. |
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// I am v much in favour of comedians making people uncomfortable. // |
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It was "observational" comedy, derived from personal experience; very funny, yet cringe-making. |
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I fear you are attempting to reject my grand uniform theory
of comedy and instead supplant your own. I would be
interested to hear your theory (though not subscribe to your
newsletter, thanks though). I think that between us we
should able
to sort out what is funny (or, more accurately, what funny
is) and get the UN to ratify it. |
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Quantum comedy is probably a Thing ... |
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//Views expressed in social media are no more representative of the general population than mine are.// |
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Well exactly, that is the whole point of this idea. The vast majority of views expressed on social media are socially and/or politically extreme in many different directions. However there are enough different directions and enough different individuals that there is also a large number (though nowhere near as large) of messages that are neutral, bland, irrelevant or even just normal. |
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I think there are enough different people spouting enough different views that it should be possible (within the limits of granularity) to approximate any given worldview or any given spread of worldviews. What I mean by "normalising" is the selection and/or filtering of discrete messages so that their aggregate approximates a representative sample of the true, assumed or modelled aggregate of the totality of beliefs and worldviews in a given population. |
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How many messages are posted per day? How many messages does a typical user see each day? What proportion of those viewed messages need to be substituted out, to make the aggregate range of opinions and worldviews approximate the population distribution of opinions and worldviews? |
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Should this be implemented silently behind the scenes, as a kind of social engineering of the masses, or should it be explicitly opt-in? |
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// The vast majority of views expressed on social media are
socially and/or politically extreme // |
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This I think would self-qualify. |
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Vast majority are not extreme. They're more of the "Jane,
you ignorant slut" variety. |
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She sounds nice, do you have her phone number ? |
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// approximates a representative sample of the true, assumed or modelled aggregate of the totality of beliefs and worldviews in a given population. // |
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... i.e. the ones that post on social media, rather than the ones that just lurk and read, and the ones that don't bother at all. |
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Besides, once you publish the results, Heisenberg will step in ... |
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That's an interesting question, whether calling someone an ignorant slut is or is not socially extreme. |
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//Heisenberg// I think I blocked him ages ago. I'm not certain, though. |
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I would think that even if you presume socially means social
as in social network, it doesn't. Overthrow of the social
order, on the other hand... |
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There's also the question of what counts as expressing a view, or a view expressed. One could propose that calling someone an ignorant slut does not actually express a view, and is merely social grooming behaviour. |
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Of course social grooming is a form of expression. Approval and disapproval are entirely legitimate. |
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//What's that ? I think I can smell shite ... *sniff* *sniff* ... Ah yes, definitely shite. //
oh yes - I wrote it! |
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But what about hipsters who dislike anything
popular? |
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