Persuasion and Control

[NormR]

I found Sam Harris's podcast with Zeynep Tufekci on Persuasion and Control to be an interesting one.  Particularly with regard to the new social/attention economy's propensity to radicalize politics.

[rukawa]

I found Sam Harris's podcast with Zeynep Tufekci on Persuasion and Control to be an interesting one.  Particularly with regard to the new social/attention economy's propensity to radicalize politics.

Pretty interesting. There is this strange convergence going on. I think capitalism has always been a fundamentally revolutionary force but perhaps somewhat orthogonal to social and cultural change. But I guess that is a ridiculously stupid idea..after all the social/cultural effects of capitalist introduced innovations like televisions and the car have been massive.

But here it appears the effect is even more direct than normal. You get social media trying to grab peoples attention to market products and in the process they end up polarizing people politically.

I've been thinking a lot about the car and television. The idea I have been mulling over is how these technologies led to the rise of brand names. But obviously all these other political developments and cultural developments: the loosening of cultural norms around marriage, sex, religion. Its all connected.

And now the internet has up-ended everything. We get the rise of the distributors: Amazon, Uber, Google, AirBnB, Facebook. The increase in political polarization due to competition for attention so you can sell advertising: you interest people by saying/doing ridiculous, shocking things. So kids start shooting people in schools. Terrorists start beheading people. The Left starts calling America a White Supremacist society. The Right becomes the alt-right and starts flirting with White Supremacists.

[ScottHall]

America used to have a shared culture because of gatekept, oligopolistic media cos. whose power was incredible. Cable TV changed that with fragmentation so you weren't forced to watch one of the Big Three anymore and could pick your own media diet. The transmission was still mostly one way but niches began to form. The internet added even more niches AND allowed two-way transmission. You could even create your own niche now.

It's easier to have a shared national culture when everyone is exposed to the same media, and harder to find an outlet to get exposure to and for different points of view. It's different now. The world is not going to go back to how it used to be, but TBH I'd rather it didn't.

This is the world John Malone has built and I will be DAMNED if I see you people tear it down now. Look at the joys. More high quality content is available than ever. You can have anything you want delivered to your house for free in a couple days. You can watch WHAT YOU WANT WHEN YOU WANT. I remember when I was a kid and I had a craving to watch my Scoobies, but when my Scoobies were over I couldn't just get more. I could watch the same ones over again, if I recorded them. But I couldn't get any Scooby episode EVER with the click of the button.

A remote control that had every Scooby ever made... PLUS Tom & Jerry, He-Man, and the Flintstones just to name a few. It would have blown my mind; in fact, that WAS basically my dream as a kid. To take control of the programming schedule.

Now it's possible and we can all watch Game of Thrones and Breaking Bad and Mad Men and a dozen zombie shows or foreign language stuff and ALL WE HEAR ABOUT IS HOW AWFUL TWITTER AND FACEBOOK ARE?

We're more polarized than ever, but that's part of the game now. Some of us have seen the light and you can know us by OUR KNOWN TRUTH...

The Few Became Many, the Many Became All, and now All Becomes One...

[rkbabang]

America used to have a shared culture because of gatekept, oligopolistic media cos. whose power was incredible. Cable TV changed that with fragmentation so you weren't forced to watch one of the Big Three anymore and could pick your own media diet. The transmission was still mostly one way but niches began to form. The internet added even more niches AND allowed two-way transmission. You could even create your own niche now.

It's easier to have a shared national culture when everyone is exposed to the same media, and harder to find an outlet to get exposure to and for different points of view. It's different now. The world is not going to go back to how it used to be, but TBH I'd rather it didn't.

This is the world John Malone has built and I will be DAMNED if I see you people tear it down now. Look at the joys. More high quality content is available than ever. You can have anything you want delivered to your house for free in a couple days. You can watch WHAT YOU WANT WHEN YOU WANT. I remember when I was a kid and I had a craving to watch my Scoobies, but when my Scoobies were over I couldn't just get more. I could watch the same ones over again, if I recorded them. But I couldn't get any Scooby episode EVER with the click of the button.

A remote control that had every Scooby ever made... PLUS Tom & Jerry, He-Man, and the Flintstones just to name a few. It would have blown my mind; in fact, that WAS basically my dream as a kid. To take control of the programming schedule.

Now it's possible and we can all watch Game of Thrones and Breaking Bad and Mad Men and a dozen zombie shows or foreign language stuff and ALL WE HEAR ABOUT IS HOW AWFUL TWITTER AND FACEBOOK ARE?

We're more polarized than ever, but that's part of the game now. Some of us have seen the light and you can know us by OUR KNOWN TRUTH...

The Few Became Many, the Many Became All, and now All Becomes One...

+1 basically everything is much better today except politics, because politics tends to poison everything.
Think about evolution.  It requires random change (diversity of ideas & experimentation), competition, and selection.  Cultural evolution is no exception, it requires those very properties to keep evolving.  And those very things are what free markets are all about and are exactly what governments always try to suppress, license, regulate, or control.