To stretch it a bit, I'd say there's an important difference between a fire door and reddit. The fire door knows its job is to prevent people burning to death. Reddit... does it know it's job is to prevent outraged reaction?
I think this is one of the things that made facebook so problematic on politics, it can't tell the the good likes, comments and shares from the bad ones. I'm not sure they really had a concept of better and worse. Some stuff isn't allowed, but otherwise?
Imagine one post, where Mrs X invites neighbors to meet a local candidate at her house for revolutionary thoughts and biscuits. Another post, where Ms Y rants about Macron voters, Trump, taxes and kids these days. Both are political. One is actually democratic and participatory. The other is cheap, nasty, unproductive and divisive. Does Facebook, in any meaningful sense, value one over the other? Does reddit?
Reddit has its non-censorship values. I respect that. It's important that someone does. I also think they want to house the weird, and I respect that too. But, I think unrestricted speech may be an insufficient value, like nondiscrimination or atheism. It's not enough to build on. You need positive values too.
Free speech is also problematic, when taken as 'all speech is equal.'
Ha, ha, ha.
Cause that'll increase pageviews.
Outraged reaction is exactly what all news media is going for because people rant and rave and in passing see more adverts. It's just they want to sanitise the topics according to their advertisers wishes.
Reddit doesn't have non-censorship values, it's heavily censored; not all from the top admittedly, but the sanitisation that's gone on in the last few years is huge as Conde Nast have moved to make it a more tempting platform for advertisers.
If you think reddit doesn't have those values, I guess we disagree. I don't see any way of coming to that conclusion apart from fundamentalism, it's either absolute or it's bullshit.
https://www.wired.com/story/bad-actors-are-using-social-medi... .. is the first entry Reddit, is it in the list, nope.
I think Conde Nast are prepared to stoop pretty low in the search for dollars before integrity.
That said, it certainly seems to me like if not as an explicit business decision, Conde Nast certainly has no problem with their properties sensationalizing their media for views/clicks/etc
It looks like you are imagining that every speech has objective "value" which can be determined (maybe it's hard to do, but if we throw enough "big data" magic dust onto it we can get at least close) and then somehow speech can be sorted by value.
I think it's completely wrong from the premise up. The value of the speech is a subjective measure. Some people value invitation of candidate X, some people value rants of Ms Y. In fact, if salaries of talk radio hosts and late night comedians tell us something, way more people value rants than measured, polite discussion. Thus I think "value" exists only in the eye of beholder, and trying to objectify it would only mean dismissing the values of part of the audience and emphasizing values of some other part of the audience. I can see why a site may want to do it and why one may want it to happen, if he or she happens to belong to the latter part, but I see no real justification for it.
And yet we need to do it. As you observed, "way more people value rants than measured, polite discussion", and I'd claim that this is a problem. The "value" may be subjective, but the consequences of both "kinds of speech" are real, and so it would be great to incentivize the kind that leads to a more stable, more just society, and disincentivize the one that causes thoughtless destruction.
Yes, I'm aware that "disincentivize" is getting dangerously close to "ban", but I feel we need to try and walk that fine line, if we want to have a society that's better than just random.
Who are "we"? And what is "it"? Do you just take on yourself the mantle of decider for the whole world who is worthy and who is not? Or how is it determined? Who is worthy to wear that mantle? I don't think any human is.
> I'd claim that this is a problem
Maybe human nature is a "problem". But what you're going to do, replace humanity with better species? Do you have one in mind? Beyond that, I don't see how declaring it "a problem" helps anything, unless there's a fix to this problem. History teaches me that all attempts to create a "new, better human race" didn't just end badly - they ended so awfully terrible that when people point at it, other people get offended that you dare to compare their ideas to that. So, we have to deal with what we have now - and had for millienia. Given what we did with it - well, not ideal, but certainly there have been some improvement.
> it would be great to incentivize the kind that leads to a more stable, more just society
How do you know what leads to more just society? Maybe rants would lead to more just society faster? As for stability, stability is only good when we're at the optimum. Are we?
> I feel we need to try and walk that fine line, if we want to have a society that's better than just random.
Which fine line? Everybody has their own fine line, that's the point. You could maybe find a bunch of people whose fine line is similar to your own, if you don't look too far into the future (and if you do, what you get is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WboggjN_G-4) - but pretending there's some line that's good for everybody is just willful blindness. And out of all possible ways of building a better society, I don't think dismissing people that have different views as something that doesn't matter is the best one to start with.
I agree that the root of the "problem" currently lies within people and not process. I agree that changing people wholesale is not easy and not desirable. I agree that there has been some improvement.
I also think human nature is a product of the environment. The way people behave on different websites, in different countries, and in different social situations shows this rather clearly. There is no fixed set of anything that constitutes the whole of how people act. Put someone in a nudist colony, and the environment changes, and the way they act changes (with time). If a reddit user starts going to 4chan, the environment changes, and the way they act changes. Put someone who follows the "always defect" strategy in a community of "always cooperate" people, and the environment changes, and the way they act changes. Put a racist in a racially diverse community of acceptance, and the environment changes, and the way they act changes.
If you accept this idea, it follows that certain environments can be better for society as a whole. Case in point with Reddit: they decided an environment without beastiality and certain violent elements would be better. Maybe they were wrong, but I don't think so. I'm not suggesting I have a wonderful theory of what the best environment is, only that there are better and worse ones. The problem of what we value is hard, but that doesn't mean it's not worth trying.
This ties the loop back: human nature is a product of environment, and environment is a product of humans. We have the power to create environments that make thoughtful discussion easier and hate harder. We can put energy toward solving the problem by changing the environment. HN has an environment I am very fond of, despite being here for only a couple years. I appreciate the work that has gone into making the comments an insightful, respectful, and generally nice place.
We can't replace humanity. We can't change people without changing the conditions they exist in. We can change the circumstances of our struggle in order to grow together as a species.
> I don't see how declaring it "a problem" helps anything, unless there's a fix to this problem.
This seems wrong to me.
The process of (as a group) clearly identifying things that are problems, and coming to agreement that they are problems, and coming to agree on whether they are important, is of fundamental value, regardless of whether we have solutions at hand.
Without this step, folks will either be ignoring problems because they don't know about them, or proposing "solutions" to things that others don't even see as problems, neither of which can lead to any good...
Presenting what the problem is.
The first step to solving a problem is understanding it. It's not solving it. Trying to solve a problem immediately is like trying to write code before you fully understand the requirements.
If you lack the mental fortitude to simply look at a problem without having an immediate solution to it, you're not going to be able to solve major, ugly, nasty, uncomfortable problems like this.
But, inevitably, these problems will show up and knock on your door. Running away from them is not a good plan.
We can tell people it's not attractive to be ranty, but I'm not very comfortable going further than that, at the risk of wandering into thought policing.
Look at some modern political opinion, I'm sure you've seen it as much as me. Ranting is cool. Calling everything under the sun "problematic". The tricky thing is it's not always wrong. There's surely a nearly infinite list of "problems" one could identify, and some of them are truly important. But we just need to turn down the heat on the criticism for just a second. But you can't just ask bipartisans to listen to each other more. We need to make it less cool to be blindly partisan. We need to increase the value of being able to identify with anyone. And we need to make it really uncool to judge hundreds of millions of people you've never met with deep assumptions.
I don't know, it's an interesting problem and I haven't thought of it this way very much. All I'm sure of is that this growing lack of interest in protecting free speech is about the only topic in modern politics that I give a shit about.
I don't want to see it going much further than that either. I was thinking more along the lines of making it so being thoughtful is "sexy" and being ranty isn't, the way today owning a car is "sexy" and smoking isn't.
Free speech has its positive and negative consequences on stability and happiness; I do not want to fight free speech, I'm looking for ways to reduce the negative consequences. I'll protect your (and mine) right to rant about whatever you want, but I sure as hell would like the general policy discussion to involve less rants and more thoughtful cooperation.
I agree that free speech is an essential aspect of what makes us humans, and that it comes with both many positive and negatives.
In implementation of a plan to mitigate the negatives though, I much more support a private entity such as Reddit censoring whatever they wish, as if people believe it becomes to harsh they can simply leave. I'm paranoid that allowing an entity like the government (where constituents can't easily just leave) to get involved with it is good, as it allows for many conflicts of interest. These conflicts could be instances where the ruling party or minority parties push to label an opposing belief as more divisive, or where the ruling majority seeks to 'disincentivize' a minority or outside belief/religion by saying it is offensive to what they deem our values.
I feel like we should push for the civilization of speech to be a societal change, not a policy based change.
On a slightly different note, people have been saying that language and civil discourse have been going to hell for a very long time. George Orwell rather famously wrote an essay titled "Politics and the English Language" in the early-mid 20th century, wherein he detailed how society was moving towards using unclear and imprecise language to pander to the many without being forced to use falsifiable statements. Anthony Burgess wrote "A Clockwork Orange" in the 1960's where he highlights the main characters savagery in part by highlighting their usage of 'barbaric' dialect. William Langland wrote that “There is not a single modern schoolboy who can compose verses or write a decent letter.” in 1386. While civil and educated discourse is an important issue, people have been saying it will lead to the downfall of society for a very long time, but in many cases it is just changing and the entrenched powers dislike having to cope with that change.
Says who? Let's get a little more objective first. Its job is to make money, presumably, if not encourage participation by any means necessary. Its job isn't to moderate. Its job is to allow the creation of sub-communities that can be moderated in any conceivable way. Most moderators aren't interested in reducing reactionism, they're just interested in reducing whatever they or their community doesn't like.
I agree with this statement, except for the inclusion of atheism in the list. Atheism is literally the lack of a belief. You may as well say "The lack of belief in astrology isn't enough to build on. You need positive values too."
Unrestricted speech and nondiscrimination argue for something. Atheism literally argues for nothing.
Free speech is not problematic, as long as everyone has the right to speak and falsehoods can be debunked - there should be no "safe place" for the exchange of ideas, whether they are good or not. Starting by saying that 'free speech' has a problem is a very, very dangerous place to go to.
What do you think a "safe space" is? If you are arguing that there should be platforms where people can speak without being shouted down when the audience strongly disagrees with what they're saying, that is a safe space. In order to construct that space, you have to deny some rights of the audience to speak in that context.
And this is the whole problem with naive free speech advocacy. Unrestricted free speech is not possible anymore than unrestricted freedom in general is possible. People cannot possibly hear every single person's viewpoint, so some people will always be denied a platform to speak to some other people.
The question is how best to structure our societal discourse. What values are important, and how do we protect them? And the question needs an answer more complicated and nuanced than "free speech". Because when we don't acknowledge the complexity of this question, we become blind to the de-facto decisions that we're making about which speech to prioritise.
No, I am not asking for that kind of platforms. I am saying to let people express what they want to say, and the only restriction to Free Speech should be "direct incitation to violence" (such as asking to lynch someone publicly) as mentioned in the US Constitution. Everything else should be able to be said and be heard, and debated between people as long as they want to debate. And of course you will be responsible for what you say, as an individual, and you will have to face the consequences of your words. But it goes both ways.
Restricting Free Speech puts power among the ones in control of Speech. Allowing Free Speech is the only thing you can do to allow even the marginal points of view, even unpopular ones, to be heard.
But what does that actually mean? If all you're saying is that the state should not stop them, then relatively few people disagree with that, but the argument usually goes further. There are many ways people's speech can be limited without the involvement of the state. Be that de-platforming, protests or economic or social limitations.
>Restricting Free Speech puts power among the ones in control of Speech.
This is true, but the reality is there will always be restrictions on speech. It is not physically possible to let everyone speak to everyone, or even just those willing to listen. However we structure our societal discourse, it will always privilege some speech over other speech.
We have to engage with, and be ready to criticise, the implicit decisions being made about what speech is privileged and why. Because if we don't, then we cede power to those who already restrict speech with these decisions.
Just saying "don't restrict speech", and thinking that gives everyone a voice, is incredibly politically naive.
I don't see how "incredibly naive" is something that is the fundamental piece of Western Civilization (at least in most of the English world).
> It is not physically possible to let everyone speak to everyone
No, but first not putting any filter on the nature and contents of speech, as long as it is not violent, is something we should stand for. The "How" is irrelevant.
> However we structure our societal discourse, it will always privilege some speech over other speech.
This should be an individual's choice to make, as in what "speech" you want to listen to. When you go on social networks for example, it should be expected and natural to find people who share different views, no matter how revolting they might appear to you. And we should find comfort in the fact that they are allowed to be expressed, because in turn we are allowed to express ourselves just as well. So in fact, there is no intervention needed by any state actor - on the contrary, free speech is the tool that enables us to discourse and experiment with ideas. Just shutting the door, or filtering inconvenient speech is not making it go away, and certainly will end up having no positive effect towards those who profess such speech, because it could further solidify their opinions and prevent them from being receptive in the future.
It may be good for me to hear an uncomfortable truth, but ultimately I get to decide whether I listen or not. If I want to live in an echo chamber, I can do so, but it should be my choice. Equally if I want to hear uncomfortable opposing views, I should be able to. (Somewhere. Not necessarily on Reddit.com. The site's owners can publish whatever they want.)
This is true in practice, because as a last resort I can put my fingers in my ears and say “la la la not listening” loudly. So frankly, advertisers should give up trying to force me to see their adverts — they can't — and persuade me to listen instead.
Also, affordances aren't to support habit or unconscious behavior. Affordances are to imply meaning or how to use something by their design (whether digital or physical).
That's actually called a signifier. https://ux.stackexchange.com/a/94270
One could even write a book about the discourse of affordances. It would be boring and irrelevant, but it wouldn't be wrong.
Sorry, just defending the mechanics of meaning.
Asking people to build user-interfaces that promote self-control seems a bit naive though. There's a reason self-control is identified as one of the primary "fruits" of a Christian life (Galatians 5:22-23), since it's exactly the opposite of default human behavior.
Automatic negative feedback mechanism.
Much of internet usage is, essentially, a giant slot machine. We've studied the things that make gambling addictive and intentionally incorporated them into social platforms to keep eyeballs on. The goal is to generate a reflexive subconscious impulse to check for new inputs with specific relation to the platform. A good high-level overview of this is the book Hooked, about how to build addictive computer interfaces. As we've "gamified" and "optimized for engagement", we've created an apparatus that many have difficulty understanding or overcoming.
This concept cemented more for me as I watched an Amazon FBA seller just impulsively hit "Match Price" over and over again, despite the fact that it was leaving him with margins of less than 25c per unit. He couldn't be reasoned out of this and insisted he had to match price with the lowest seller, even though his units would've sold for much higher margins over the ensuing weeks if he hadn't.
I realized then that really, he was simply gambling. He hits the button, sees a corresponding spike in sales, and sees a corresponding increase in his "income", despite the fact that letting it increase at a slightly more moderate rate would've easily netted 3x-4x more money (not talking years here -- just a few weeks to sell out as non-cheapest). He does it because he likes the impulse. He likes pressing the button and correlating that action with numbers that say he increased his money.
Facebook is the slot machine; Likes and Comments (broadly "engagement") are the currency; Your Posts are the input. You drop in a post and find that bland, mature, predictable posts don't generate a bright animation or engagement. You respond by posting more and more stuff that has high-engagement quality, which is, of course, the more controversial things like religion, politics, and identity.
The check on this is one's own identity is tied back to it, but that generally just means that you take the things you conceptualize as positive self-image to an extreme that warrants reaction, in particular in these controversial fields that generally have high-yield output from the slot machine.
So Republicans are put on a path toward cartoonish Republicanism, Democrats on a path toward cartoonish Democratism, and so forth. It has a distorting, reinforcing echo-chamber quality on everyone. It encourages people who are more moderate on certain issues to disengage, it encourages us to select them out and weaken our bonds, it makes it easier for our own little world to become all-consuming and feel all-encompassing. It has an overall corrosive effect on public discourse and relationships in general.
The more I think about it, the more I think the physical constraints of "real life" on dialogue and relationships, like being in a room with someone who can punch you if you sink too low, or making instinctive reactions and adjustments based on a conversation partner's body language, are much more valuable than we've assumed.
Well, maybe, but is there a way it could it be otherwise?
We can't even notice the other possibilities, let alone consider them.
Is this true? I always assumed it was because it's pretty much impossible to pull open a door when you are being crushed by people pressing against one another trying to escape.
>An inward-swinging door - three times cited as a code violation by West Warwick inspectors and three times replaced by club managers - was blocking the exit closest to the stage.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2013/02/15/series-errors-s...
The door in question's main problem appears to have been that bouncers wouldn't let people use it, not its orientation.
But I think your assumption is probably more correct, past a certain point they have no option to pull anymore.
There are engineering reasons to prefer a round hole, but there are sometimes other considerations which push a different shape.
Manhole covers exist in several shapes, as illustrated on the Wikipedia page.
You can see lots of utility covers that are hinged, square, or other options, but all are lipped for safety. While a circular profile makes the lipping easier, it doesn't seem to influence many utility covers.
Stop for a moment next time you walk in an urban environment. Look for circular utility covers you see in your urban environment as opposed to squaed ones. Look at the features of the circular ones vs the non-circular ones.
One of the reasons this myth irritates me so much is that everyone is so certain that they know exactly the answer but their actual daily experience doesn't line up with the results at all.
I've heard several people offer explanations from a geometric safety option (which is attractive for free-standing covers) to the simplicity of manufacturing (e.g., that it's very easy to make circular molds and get even density compared to square molds) to simply what the contractor suggested. I've also heard people suggest that metal cylindrical templates were something very common to manufacture for a variety of industrial uses.
I'm not sure what features I would look for because the lip on a rectangular cover would be under the lid. How do I know that the rectangular covers have sufficiently large lips to prevent the lid from falling in? I'm willing to accept that in some cases the lids are rectangular and there is a risk of them falling in.
Then why do rectangular (including square) and triangular manhole covers exist? Rectangular ones are quite common, triangular less so.
Grandparent is correct, lips are what, in practice, prevents manhole covers from falling in, not being circular (which many are not.)
(Not always, but quite frequently.)
They have the same gravitational-gradient dynamic as manholes.
Also fun fact: That used to be a Microsoft interview question.
This is why emergency exit doors must open outwards. People have died in fires in theaters trying to push on doors that said “Pull”. The crash bar on an emergency exit door is what’s known in design as an affordance.
When you present people with a door handle that affords “pulling”, they will pull even if the sign says “push”.
Now consider the fact that the primary affordance of social media is the “reaction”. Is it a surprise that content that garners a reaction will trend towards the outrageous?
If proactivity is the road to a more fulfilled, more civilly minded life and society, maybe we need to think of our affordances. Because we’ve made it awfully easy to be reactive, and awfully cumbersome to be proactive.
Edit: The comments below correctly point out an error; what I should have said was that there’s a danger in putting a “pull” handle on an emergency door that pushed outward, because of the confusing affordance.