Right, engagement algorithms are like giving bad takes a rocket ship.
The words of world renown epidemiologists who were, to be frank, boring and unentertaining could never possibly compete with crunchymom44628 yelling about how Chinese food causes covid.
Bad takes have the advantage of the engagement of both the people who vehemently agree and the people who vehemently disagree. Everyone is incentivized to be a shock jock. And the shock jocks are then molded by the algorithm to be ever more shock jockish.
Especially at a time when we were all thrown out of the streets and into our homes and online.
And here I'll end this by suggesting everyone watch Eddington.
Just wiki'd Eddington and I'm adding it to my watch list. Thanks for the recommend prisenco.
One of the sentiments I've been flirted with in posts below/above is the idea that while bad takes and their amplification are indeed a kind of societal evil-- in a society which was more effectively mediated bad takes might serve a vital purpose in the discourse. Societies committed to their own felicity might treat disagreements as an opportunity to extend the public discourse. This seems to be the crux of the thing-- we can take all day about checks and balances but unless a society is truly at some level committed to its own preservation and expansion those checks and balances will end up becoming tools for domination and exploitation as we see in the United States.
It don't care how well you can bake you can't make apple pie with rotten apples. No amount of sugar will correct the rot. Th trick is growing healthy apples.
The words of world renown epidemiologists who were, to be frank, boring and unentertaining could never possibly compete with crunchymom44628 yelling about how Chinese food causes covid.
Bad takes have the advantage of the engagement of both the people who vehemently agree and the people who vehemently disagree. Everyone is incentivized to be a shock jock. And the shock jocks are then molded by the algorithm to be ever more shock jockish.
Especially at a time when we were all thrown out of the streets and into our homes and online.
And here I'll end this by suggesting everyone watch Eddington.