How the online hate mob set its sights on me

Re:How the online hate mob set its sights on me by madaxe_again on Tuesday December 22, 2015 @08:01AM (#10777473)

Yes, symbol set reduction can weigh in this too - that was the entire idea of orwell's newspeak, to reduce the available set of symbols and therefore thought - fundamentally providing a more malleable, more simplistic model.

Were humans not capable of and in the habit of treating assumptions as axioms, we could not function nor develop beyond an infantile inquisitive state, as we rely on inductive learning to link the symbols through which we interpret reality - so one can only work with this particular axiom (or assumption? Hah.) to effect change.

The Internet is damoclean in nature - at first flush it presents a divisive frontier of information, which leads to the behaviours we see today - but prolonged exposure could result in a general improvement in the models individuals and cultures carry, assuming auto-innoculation doesn't happen too quickly. It'll be interesting to watch pan out.

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Re:How the online hate mob set its sights on me by mafribe on Tuesday December 22, 2015 @08:08AM (#10777503)

   prolonged exposure could result in a general improvement

That's certainly what happened after the previous two revolutions in communication: the invention of convenient writing and that of the printing press. So I have high hopes for the third! I doubt that will be part of the bright future though. It is antithetical to better communication.

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Re:How the online hate mob set its sights on me by madaxe_again on Tuesday December 22, 2015 @08:40AM (#10777667)

Eventually, yes, but at the time they'd have been bemoaning this bloody Luther guy and that gutenburg idiot.

Progress doesn't always look like progress at the time. In fact, it rarely does - what we usually see and call progress is actually entrenchment.

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