I love Haidt since reading "A Righteous Mind"; however, although I do agree with much of his blaming of social media for wrecking so much of western society, I think he misses the actual root cause that Jordan Peterson nails.
It is our western education system. It is a hive controlled by the human species of radical malcontents. It is the seed of social, political and economic dysfunction that social media only serves to amplify. And the rot of the toxic ideology of critical theory is front and center for pushing the dysfunction into the system and thus into society as the little graduated darlings are thus programmed to rage at all the things they yet possess the wisdom to understand.
Haidt blaming social media is like blaming the misfiring of the sprinklers for the weeds taking over the garden.
And it isn't social media per se that is the sprinkler problem; it is the filtering algorithms. Social media does good as it was originally designed to network people together. It's original vision was to enhance human connections and conversations; thus increasing understanding of diverse thought, views and opinions. But the algorithms do just the opposite. The put people in group-think bubbles where their myopic bias is strengthened by a information feed tailored to make them feel smugly right about everything. Then in the rare case of an opposing view getting based the gate-keeping robots, they explode with rage claiming the source to be a science denier, a threat to democracy, a radical white supremacist fascist... and they support a Biden Administration Ministry of Truth to shut down those terrible people that are obviously dangerous in their wrongness.
My perspective in all this is that the current education system along with the algorithms are the real threat to democracy. They are both out of compliance with American First Amendment rights as they actually take over to direct thought and speech. They also break the Forth Amendment in the guaranteed rights of privacy... because they document our opinions and use information and use it to make us targets.
Remove the fake scholarship toxic ideological programing of Critical Theory from the education system, support education choice to allow parents to get their kids out of the Marxist hive. Then implement new legislation that limits the use of algorithms to filter content to feeds and replaces it with users' choice and acceptance for how their feeds are configured.
An admiral effort at dissecting a complex problem. I wonder if the following is a possibility: a new social media platform whose algorithms are heavily informed by humane values. Uncivil and unhealthy behavior in various forms would be blocked. Freedom and self-expression would take a back seat here, not to conformity, but to simple decency. Why not? Why should tech nerds, corporate profiteers and the pathological rule this medium? Tweaks to the existing formats suggested by the authors and J. Haidt would help. But what we ultimately need is a regenerate culture with its own institutions.
I love Haidt since reading "A Righteous Mind"; however, although I do agree with much of his blaming of social media for wrecking so much of western society, I think he misses the actual root cause that Jordan Peterson nails.
It is our western education system. It is a hive controlled by the human species of radical malcontents. It is the seed of social, political and economic dysfunction that social media only serves to amplify. And the rot of the toxic ideology of critical theory is front and center for pushing the dysfunction into the system and thus into society as the little graduated darlings are thus programmed to rage at all the things they yet possess the wisdom to understand.
Haidt blaming social media is like blaming the misfiring of the sprinklers for the weeds taking over the garden.
And it isn't social media per se that is the sprinkler problem; it is the filtering algorithms. Social media does good as it was originally designed to network people together. It's original vision was to enhance human connections and conversations; thus increasing understanding of diverse thought, views and opinions. But the algorithms do just the opposite. The put people in group-think bubbles where their myopic bias is strengthened by a information feed tailored to make them feel smugly right about everything. Then in the rare case of an opposing view getting based the gate-keeping robots, they explode with rage claiming the source to be a science denier, a threat to democracy, a radical white supremacist fascist... and they support a Biden Administration Ministry of Truth to shut down those terrible people that are obviously dangerous in their wrongness.
My perspective in all this is that the current education system along with the algorithms are the real threat to democracy. They are both out of compliance with American First Amendment rights as they actually take over to direct thought and speech. They also break the Forth Amendment in the guaranteed rights of privacy... because they document our opinions and use information and use it to make us targets.
Remove the fake scholarship toxic ideological programing of Critical Theory from the education system, support education choice to allow parents to get their kids out of the Marxist hive. Then implement new legislation that limits the use of algorithms to filter content to feeds and replaces it with users' choice and acceptance for how their feeds are configured.
An admiral effort at dissecting a complex problem. I wonder if the following is a possibility: a new social media platform whose algorithms are heavily informed by humane values. Uncivil and unhealthy behavior in various forms would be blocked. Freedom and self-expression would take a back seat here, not to conformity, but to simple decency. Why not? Why should tech nerds, corporate profiteers and the pathological rule this medium? Tweaks to the existing formats suggested by the authors and J. Haidt would help. But what we ultimately need is a regenerate culture with its own institutions.