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Future philosophers are being purged from social media

12 points by TellMeWhoToBan ↗ HN
Social media trends towards, promotes, and rewards exclusive filter bubbles. [1]

Parody and extremism are interchangeable. [2][3]

As a result, content curators and creators gain short-term benefits from banning and removing critics, both real and perceived. [4]

Thus, to preserve the curated (and profitable) filter bubble, those who critique it must be banned because cultural consistency (also known as memetic rent-seeking) is more desirable than cultural innovation.

Therefore, it becomes profitable to purge future philosophers en masse from conventional avenues of social media, forcing them to seek refuge in the unprofitable ether of highly anonymous digital space.

1. https://qz.com/913114/bill-gates-says-filter-bubbles-are-a-serious-problem-with-news/

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law

3. http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/List_of_Poe%27s_Law_examples#People (Stephan Colbert reference)

4. http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2015/11/ditch-blog-comment-sections/

9 comments

[ 469 ms ] story [ 1245 ms ] thread
usgroup
... imagine: Socrates alive. Spending his days vehemently explaining himself on Twitter.

shudder

cgio
He would most likely dm questions...
brudgers
Socrates was banned from Athens' version of Twitter with Hemlock.
TelmoMenezes
> memetic rent-seeking

Excellent! Did you come up with this term?

TellMeWhoToBan
Yes. It describes the profit motive of filter bubbles fairly accurately. Upon additional inspection... I've concluded how horrifying such a thing can be.
mtrycz
> conventional avenues of social media

What's conventional about social media? Someone with the least love of self should seriously stay away from that.

aaron695
Not a fan on this theory.

Not a fan of the theory bubbles exist in a form worse than before, if at all. It's pretty rediclious to think people in small towns are in worse bubbles now. And to be frank same goes for big cities. Would need a lot more proof. Do you think acceptance of gay marriage and pot reform has been made worse by these new 'bubbles'? If they exist it should have been.

I would say we are far better off, but there is a 'thing' slowing down progress at an even greater rate.

And propergander is far more effective, but I see this as a separate issue.

TellMeWhoToBan
The edge of filter bubbles in the counties and communities model was limited by the speed of information transmission. Rumors and new developments were highly prized due to the difficulty of information transmission.

In a world where the costs of information transmission aggressively races to the bottom, filter bubbles are no longer driven by geoinformatic limtations. Instead, they are driven entirely by the limitations of each individual's capacity for cognitive overload management.

The bubble beings and ends within the confines of the cognitive overload management of every individual in today's world. Therefore, any "political issues" that shares a structural resemblance of said strategy will find have an advantage in memetic survival. Anything that defies it too deeply and begs for more complexity will be eschewed and outright purged.

mcphage
Philosophers have survived for thousands of years without social media, I should hope future philosophers are at least as competent as that. Besides, social media is a poor medium for philosophy, unless you mean the kind of teenage philosophy that seems destined for r/iamverysmart.