The phenomenon described here is one of many side effects of what I think is the greatest disturbance in the zeitgeist since at least 9/11: the disintermediation of information itself.
We live in an era where authorities of all kinds are under greater scrutiny than ever before, because the Internet's made it so much easier for everyone to learn about and discuss what they're doing. And to believe that we know better than them. The mass media gatekeepers who once shaped public opinion are still present but have a fraction of the influence they had in the 20th century.
But it is really the same thing. From the post-Snowden privacy movement to Brexit to the Trump campaign to "the destructo-critics" referred to in this article, all of these things are a product of people becoming more informed about what authorities are really doing, getting pissed off about it, and taking action.
You can make your own value judgments about whether all of these things are good or bad (we surely know what the predominant opinions will be among HN's audience of left wing tech people: pro-Snowden, anti-Brexit, anti-Trump, pro destructo-critics). But I think the overall trend is good. And intensely destabilizing to society, in no small part because even as we approach this information equality, wealth inequality is soaring.
I think one important thing to understand about this trend is that _numbers win_ -- you can be right but if a large enough part of the population disagrees with you, you're going to be on the defensive anyway.
Another thing is that while people are rapidly becoming better informed, they're becoming more confident in their opinions even faster. So again we are not necessarily always going to see better decisions being made -- but they are going to be made with more public input.
I know that might sound a little crazy when we seemingly hear about a new secret conspiracy or abuse of power every day, but that's the point: _this stuff was always going on and we just didn't know._
Very little of the scrutiny is any good at all. It's riddled with mood affiliation and confirmation bias. The incentives simply are not with thoughtful, considered analysis. It's too easy to create moments for people to be swept up in, and to use the tools of persuasion to raise the persuader's stock. Where social media could be an agent for reason, it had not taken that role very much so far.
Take the stories around Ferguson - I think Alex Tabbarok won the internet the day he released "Ferguson and the Modern Debtor's Prison" but that point of view only appears in other references to the situation sparingly if at all.
I just have to flatly disagree with the idea that better information leads to higher confidence in conclusions - there's simply no way that can be true unless the subject is inherently trivial or unless some methodological advance has made the previously intractable tractable. More information means more uncertainty unless you're dealing in convergent statistical situations.
What's needed overall is for more people to listen with respect and genuine curiosity to people with whom they disagree.
The effect of social media so far has been decidedly uncomfortable, especially in the Middle East. Perhaps that is the Islamic Protestant Reformation, with social media playing the role of printing press, but I doubt it - people who know Islam much better than I claim it's actually riddled with deep apostasy and not the kind that seems overall a positive thing. Ignoring deeply normative Koranic instructions for the application of Islam in favor of violence ( perhaps even war-crime-shaped violence ) cannot be a good thing.
We live in an era where authorities of all kinds are under greater scrutiny than ever before, because the Internet's made it so much easier for everyone to learn about and discuss what they're doing. And to believe that we know better than them. The mass media gatekeepers who once shaped public opinion are still present but have a fraction of the influence they had in the 20th century.
Nassim Taleb discussed this recently from a more political angle: https://medium.com/@nntaleb/the-intellectual-yet-idiot-13211...
But it is really the same thing. From the post-Snowden privacy movement to Brexit to the Trump campaign to "the destructo-critics" referred to in this article, all of these things are a product of people becoming more informed about what authorities are really doing, getting pissed off about it, and taking action.
You can make your own value judgments about whether all of these things are good or bad (we surely know what the predominant opinions will be among HN's audience of left wing tech people: pro-Snowden, anti-Brexit, anti-Trump, pro destructo-critics). But I think the overall trend is good. And intensely destabilizing to society, in no small part because even as we approach this information equality, wealth inequality is soaring.
I think one important thing to understand about this trend is that _numbers win_ -- you can be right but if a large enough part of the population disagrees with you, you're going to be on the defensive anyway.
Another thing is that while people are rapidly becoming better informed, they're becoming more confident in their opinions even faster. So again we are not necessarily always going to see better decisions being made -- but they are going to be made with more public input.
I know that might sound a little crazy when we seemingly hear about a new secret conspiracy or abuse of power every day, but that's the point: _this stuff was always going on and we just didn't know._