Well, toaster f*ckers unite! I'm so glad that the internet hath wrought Jotting in Purple and all the other groups that allow me to find and engage with like-minded souls who help to keep me informed and SANE in this era of complete insanity!
That said, this was another great and informative topic, Celia. I recently read an interesting and enlightening book called Hype: How Scammers, Grifters, and Con Artists Are Taking Over the Internet—and Why We're Following by Gabrielle Bluestone, Eileen Stevens, et al. It's worth a read.
Interesting post Celia. Isn't the sobering corollary that "freedom" and "the pursuit of happiness" - the post Enlightenment's two great motivating principles - are not quite what they seemed to promise. Or at least they are principles with a shelf life. As in Careful what you wish for.
Similar thought here Mark D. My grandpa fought in 3 wars and his family and others suffered, so that idiots could be 'free' to be even more idiotic to the point the entire world is now in danger of imploding due to an unbelievably heightened and magnified level of idiocy.
Yes. As a collective we are addicted to so many toxic things that interfere with appreciating the incredible gifts of life. Which is why I believe it is so important that the elders keep speaking up and out to remind the young and each other how very precious our hours on this earth really are. When I despair, which is far too often these days, I try to remind myself I am simply a bridge for the ancestors, a place holder for certain energies, beliefs and ideas. All I am required to do is be that bridge and place holder as best I can and offer an alternative to the madness, because I certainly have no ability to actually heal that madness; I can only perhaps offer a brief respite for myself and others and perhaps encourage better choices. Of course I end up regularly beating my head against the brick wall trying to do my own tiny bit, so it's a good thing I have a very hard head!
I've always felt that freedom comes with a balancing degree of responsibility.
When I was a kid, some kids wanted to be grown-ups so they could "do anything they wanted." But one of the things you discover when you actually *become* a grown-up is that you are (or were, back then) suddenly faced with a whole lot of responsibilities you didn't have as a child.
You could drive a car anywhere you wanted. But you had to make car payments, pay insurance premiums, tend to the car's mechanical functionality, fill the car periodically with gas, and follow the rules of the road.
Part of what has gone so wrong, I think, is that freedom and responsibility have become divorced in the minds of too many people.
An interesting observation. Another Law (full of them today): When people are free to do as they please, they generally imitate each other. It seem that the Founders were not of that sort, and perhaps their eventual failure (yes, that's what's happening, folks) stems from failing to observe just how shallow was much of the surrounding gene pool. That Adamsian moral and upright thing did a pretty good job of faking it. For a while.
Let the toaster fuckers have what they want. Plug in the toaster, push down the lever and stick that penis in between the hot elements. And if they can't figure out that penis burns are unpleasant, let them continue on until they figure that out. Some will realize the effort ends with a bad result and some won't. Most eventually will. Those that already know what the results will be without having to experience it for themselves, will be over here watching it happen and when the toaster fuckers finally figure it out we can chuckle about how it wasn't so smart and move on to more meaningful things together.
I agree with this. The problem is people are teaching their kids, and other people's kids, to fuck toasters. Actually giving them appliance catalogs and telling 7 year olds they can pick any appliance they want - they can decide not to pick one at all but they are made aware that people who don't fuck appliances are bad so not fucking appliances makes you a bad person.
If we take those people and give them the opportunity to spend the rest of their lives learning about the insides of refrigerators while discovering that they really are air tight, that would work for me.
Yes! Leave the kids alone. The attempted inculcation to stupidity is stunning. It's the opposite of teaching kids to be successful. It is anti-smart and anti-science.
We see idiots doing it all the time and also those that think they're going to save that idiot from their own stupidity. Bad choices can have bad results. Instead of trying to save the idiot, let the bad result be their answer. Usually when that happens from the very beginning, the stupidity ends.
Not really. When the stupid is irreversible (thinking "transition" butchery), the urge is to double down rather than to admit that one was wrong. The more the (un) merrier, ya know.
We see that a lot these days. And a lot of people applaud and go along (which is its own stupidity). Is it irreversible? Sometimes I think it's like a malfunction. And yes, there are people that will never give it up no matter what.
There are some positives to the internet - social media age.
There are many more negatives
It’s been a net negative for youth and society as a whole
Walk outside and see how many people are talking loudly on the phone about their personal and or business situations. How is that good for anyone?
In grocery stores, people snapping pictures of items as mundane as a cereal box or frozen food item? What is that about?
In a park, how many parents on phones pushing babies in stroller who are looking at iPads? How is this good for either parent , their family, society as a whole?
Many people encountered on SM sites refuse to talk on the phone ever( even after long text exchanges over long span of time) , preferring to remain anonymous with a fake name . How is this good ?
The line between real world and online world has blurred for many many people
We've reached the era of The Jetsons, but instead of living normal lives surrounded by flying cars and robot housekeepers, we've submerged our brains in a digital stew that we never escape from.
My favorite is that picture someone took in the Louvre a couple years ago - showing eight or nine young adults all sitting or standing with their heads down in their phones against a backdrop of some of the greatest paintings ever collected together in one place. Not one of them looking at anything but their phones.
at my local safeway, they offer digital coupons that are additional discounts/$ off of an already advertised price when you enter your phone number (to link up your account) at checkout. often, the digital coupon price is a really great deal. i have learned to use my cell phone to snap those bar codes on the supermarket shelf or in the freezer. but sometimes, i take photos of items at the store because i want to remember later that they sell something i don't want to buy at that time, or tell mr. twin something anecdotal about the item or the item made me remember another thought...
Interesting post and not one I disagree with. It’s been said recently that patriotism as a value [in America] is on the decline. And why wouldn’t it be? I don’t need to feel a sense of fraternity with people just because we have the same passport if I can find a safe haven in the comment section of my favorite Substack, podcasts, and subreddits.
Ok I’m being facetious. In all sincerity, I ask what’s the alternative though? The internet and its sociopolitical rabbit holes are here to stay. How do we stay simultaneously informed and even keeled while sifting thru the minefield of social media and the interwebz?
I wish I knew the answer. You make an excellent point, though--there is no longer any need for a sense of oneness with the people of your city, state, or country, because you can find "your people" (whoever the individual interprets that to be) online.
I for one am very glad to have found some of 'my people' in this online community! My end of the county was pretty connected community wise for the forty years I have lived here because in spite of different beliefs etc, we relied on each other in a lot of ways. Then Covid created giant fractures which have only gotten bigger. But honestly the hairline cracks were already there, they were just small enough to cover over and get along with. The 2016 election started widening those small cracks and then Covid created massive earthquake faults which have not been repaired and at this point seem unlikely to be as we face another highly charged and polarized election.
Here to stay, unless we get a major solar flare eruption or someone explodes an EMP in the atmosphere or the PTB's take down the grid for their own nefarious purposes. There are days I wish this would happen. Other days I tell myself the cost in widespread suffering would be too high.
Don’t tell Electrolux, but I think I’m falling for my Cuisinart toast that is wide enough for my bagels…
Well, it’s echo chamber syndrome, I think. It’s natural for us to want to find a group and to find comfort in numbers.
The internet is always available, it allows us to see what we want to see in others (I mean, would you spend so much time with Atomic Adam if you had to sit downwind of him in a small room?), and the interactions are limited enough where we can bask in reinforcement of our ideas, thoughts, and feelings.
Too easy - when we really care about someone else or an issue, we have to work at developing the interest. If a friend is hurting, we want to take on some of his or her pain. When someone is upset with us, we want to know why and fix it. That calls for thought, reflection, and perhaps (the hardest part) change.
Oh - and we get to spend as much or as little time we want to on a topic, without interruption.
It can be ideal.
Myself, I find it frustrating that we’re not sitting in my favorite coffee shop with our dogs and talking and laughing in the warm sunshine together.
Gotta go get coffee with my pals and my Chocolate Lab, Abbey!
I have come to believe that when folks living within a specific geographical area no longer need rely on each other for survival, the divisions between them will continue to grow. I suspect if we all suddenly had to depend on each other for basic needs, we would learn to get along again, in real time, pretty darn fast.
This is all absolutely true of course. It's becoming increasingly difficult to even find people I agree with, because they usually become so extreme I can't listen any more. Listening to opposing viewpoints becomes impossible for the same reason. And of course, everyone talks about their issue as if it's the only issue and any damage their solution causes is ignored or accepted without much thought.
But I can't blame the internet for everything. Lack of rigor, lack of curiosity, lack of quality education predate modern technology. And they are a large part of the reason the internet has turned into a warren of hell holes.
Using your metaphor, if we go way back (about 60 years), we find a group of people who are disillusioned with the state of the small appliance industry. They start talking about a world where any appliance can do anything we want it to do, can be interacted with in any way we can imagine (including but not limited to toaster f*cking). They know it's not real but they like to think about it and talk about it and teach others about it.
Some of the people they teach start thinking that even though toasters are obviously not meant to be f*cked, if we talk about them as if they are it would help us to solve a lot of the problems we're seeing in the small appliance industry as a whole. In fact, talking about toasters as if they are not sexual objects is what's keeping us from solving those problems.
And then the ur-grifters show up, and tell us that not only are toasters meant to be f*cked, they want to be f*cked, everyone who claims they don't want to f*ck toasters is lying to us or themselves, f*cking toasters is the natural order of the universe, anyone who opposes toaster f*cking is a monster, etc... They sell a lot of books, because there are always people who are disenchanted and looking for reasons why. Which leads to more books, and when the internet comes along it all explodes.
But the important thing is almost all of the people being introduced to toaster f*cking are arriving during the second or third act of the play. They don't know it started as a though experiment. They don't know it's an academic tool meant to change the discourse around toasters in useful ways that might solve a lot of problems. They think we're all supposed to actually start f*cking toasters, or failing that fight to ensure that toaster f*cking is protected as a human right. Because that's what the grifters are telling them. There is little money to be made by adopting a moderate rhetorical stance, or telling the truth, even pre-internet.
Take all this and throw it into a blender with the internet and click bait content and ever shorter videos designed for ever shorter attention spans and you wind up with elementary school kids being given toasters without their parents' knowledge.
How dare you interfere with my right to f*ck a blender! Would I ever actually f*ck a blender myself? Of course not, I'm not completely stupid, but that does not change the fact that I will defend my right to f*ck a blender unto death.
Do y'all remember the things the left said during the Iraq War? “Dissent is the highest form of patriotism” was one, from their idiot commie pseudo historian Howard Zinn. The other was Voltaire’s “ I may disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”
The left has come a long way since then and you never hear them saying anything like either of the above. Now dissent is January 6 treason and if I disagree with what you say I want the government to silence you.
Too true. I also remember the conflation of submission to the Covid vax, with' patriotic duty.' I sometimes wonder if maybe a lot of folks don't hate America so much as they are tired of being manipulated by the powers that be who persist in conflating 'patriotism' with so many things which have absolutely nothing at all to do with our love for our country.
Good morning, Celia. I believe the answer lies in the fact that America's median IQ is 100 and those below the median have access to the internet. And vote, as well. In large numbers for Democrats.
According to a recent Harvard research paper, aliens aka real ET's, may already living amongst us! Not a joke. My first thought was this is a set up to blame the next pandemic on the ET's vs human alien immigrants. Here's the Newsweek article on this
The point is that that's the median. Half of the population has a lower IQ.
I didn't fully appreciate just how stupid human beings really are until I worked at company that processed sweepstakes entries (think Publisher's Clearinghouse). One of my responsibilities was dealing with submissions that simply could not be processed, due to the mistakes made. It was an unpleasant revelation.
oh boy, how long did you work there? i bet that was a real eye opener...
it's easy to see that still is happening today especially when i see news reports that people are STILL being taken in on the nigerian prince scam. i remember when that was done on fax machines! but it's amazing how much people still believe or don't do even the tiniest bit of their homework even in this day and age of the internet. scientology secrets were finally revealed years ago as well as the details about the levels and xenu and that hubbard decided to make-up his own religion. yet people still, are signing up to be scientologists and join sea org members, while i type this...SMH
Not long; maybe about 6 months. My immediate supervisor turned out to be a horrible and very passive-aggressive person who had an inflated opinion of herself because she was both the accountant and the secretary (I was her part-time assistant).
Eventually her behavior was too much for management to tolerate, but I had gone on to other things by then. I only found out about it because the boss asked if I would be willing to give a deposition about her past behavior (she was attempting, ridiculously under the circumstances, to sue for wrongful termination).
yikes! i bet you learned loads during your short time there between the job and human nature in general which has only benefited you since then (wisdom learned only to be fully appreciated in hindsight...). :)
The median is 100 by design. The re-calibrate it every year so it comes out to be one hundred. In fact, there's a criticism of that method because, by doing so, they are normalizing out any changes laterally through time. They are implicitly buying what's called an ergodic statistical model of human intelligence (that it varies randomly through time the same way it does through space). They have no evidence for that, they just assume it.
By coincidence, I got an email from a cousin this morning who has a signature line that seems to change programmatically. Frequently it's George Carlin. This one was relevant here:
"Think of how stupid the average person is, then realize that half of them are stupider than that." He meant median, of course, but probably deliberately used the word "average" because that fifty percent wouldn't know what median meant.
Something like that might be what they are effectively doing. I've read that some disconcerting evidence has turned up that U.S. IQ's without calibration have been sliding downward a bit over the last twenty-five years. There are a number of theories as to why but nobody has proven anything yet. Hell, it's almost impossible to even talk about IQ at this point; it's considered a racist topic. The people who seriously study it have invented new words to use so they can converse.
There are also millions of low IQ people who vote for Republicans and millions of low IQ people who don't vote. No political group has a lock on stupidity.
I've always thought ballots should be seeded with fake candidates with plausible sounding names. Vote for one and your ballot is invalidated. There was an election in the '80s in Washington State where they elect judges, and one of them was being interviewed after an election he narrowly won by a local radio station. He'd had the job for many years, was well liked, and generally nobody even bothered to run against him. There were no issues involved where he was on someone's shitlist that anyone could figure out. Some unknown person paid their filing fee to run for the office, then never ran a campaign. They, for all intents and purposes, didn't exist. Just a name on the ballot and nobody could find anything about him. He got somewhere in the mid-forty percents of the vote. It really shook up the judge. He figured his votes were random - people who didn't know who their longtime judge was just picked one or the other. And he said it implied that probably the same percentage of his own votes were then random. Some small single-digit percentage of the voters probably picked him because the remembered who he was.
This is not the kind of voting populace that John Adams was talking about when he was describing what it would take for our country to work over the long run.
When I say such a thing, it sounds right. When you say it, I think it sounds awful. Perhaps because you sound as though you mean it.
My grandfathers were unschooled immigrants, but they learned English, worked like dogs, married and raised good kids, and cherished their American citizenship.
I don't know what their IQs were, but I'm damned if we get to the stage in this country where people are calling for disenfranchisement.
There's a book called "The Mythical Man Month" that is very popular - still - among many programmers. It's fairly old but still largely ignored. It was written by a high-level manager at IBM who was very successful, who was bucking popular management opinion that believed in the concept of a "man month" - that jobs could be estimated that way, and hence if you wanted to speed them up, all you had to do was add more workers. Competent ones, of course, proponents would always add. What this guy shows in this book is that it is not true by any stretch. It might work in construction or other fields, but in programming, beyond eight or ten people working on a common programming project, the more you add, the more costly it becomes and the longer it takes. He had various theories - one was that when you linearly add people you factorially increase the pairwise communication channels that have to occur.
But there was another part where he said that it is common knowledge in almost all work groups - and this is what your comment reminded me of, that out of ten people working on a project, one or two are usually performing about 80% of it. Two or three more are contributing the other 20%. Several are just occupying space and payroll. And one or two are actually creating problems that cost the rest of the group time and money to fix. It would be better to fire them, or even pay them to stay home if it is impossible to do that.
One strident reminder that the median IQ is 100, is just how many people perform outrage over the fact that a low IQ determines one's limitations in the job market. Oh, no, they insist, they shout, they cry: how dare you suggest that we all don't share the same IQ.
Case in point: A friend who teaches seventh grade kids from South America tells me that one of his students just realized that dogs have bones.
I said, Oh, wow. He must have a low IQ.
Friend gets VERY UPSET with me for saying this, even though he has said, again and again, that most of class time is spent getting them to sit down and write ONE SENTENCE. They smell like pee, and are malnourished, because, he thinks, the parents are working too much to feed their children.
In Mexico they have a saying, “el león cree que todos son de su condición” — the lion thinks everyone is like him. (I’ve also seen it with ladrón (thief), but you get the point.) Intelligent people think most people are intelligent, kind people think most people are kind, etc.
It’s hard to make the IQ argument without seeming elitist, unless, like me, you’re a committed misanthrope. One of my nieces was bemoaning something or other (popular music or movies or something) and I mentioned the IQ bell curve and where she likely was on it and suggested she consider that those to her left on the curve might not have the same level of discernment she had (i.e., you get what you ask for). She looked shocked then angry, as if I’d put her puppy in a blender and said no, it was the fault of the industry for putting out such idiotic fare. I just made my “really?” face and left it at that. (She’s only 19 so she has a good 5 or 6 years before I consider her a mature adult. )
That brings up another issue — we’re WAY too quick to assume someone is intellectually mature. Allowing adolescents, much less children, unfettered access to any tool as powerful as the internet is a huge mistake in my opinion. And granting them full agency is just asking for what we’re getting.
Back in the nineties a paper came out describing what came to be called the Dunning-Kruger effect. People who are below average intelligence will generally over-estimate their own intelligence, while those above average will generally underestimate theirs.
this made me think of that famous golfer recently in the news (i don't know his name nor do i care to learn it...) who suddenly announced he was going to divorce his wife, taking her and everyone else who follows golf by surprise. someone who knows him commented that his problem is he thinks he's way better looking than he actually is. i also think he was rumored to be having an affair with a known talking head on the golf circuit. and news flash, it was just reported in recent days that he has just abruptly decided to NOT divorce his wife because of how much money (he's very rich) he'd have to pay lawyers to get divorced. i guess he has a habit of infamously loving and leaving them (including meghan markle pre-harry), but it also appears that once he actually put a ring on it and had a child, he realized altho in hindsight, that the stakes are much higher and the legal hoops trickier, even if there is a prenup. but i digress...the point i'm trying to make, is there will always be those who are legends in their own minds, which can equally befall both high and low IQ's.
And then the Internet media founders discovered that when they amplified the toaster f*ckers posts people (both for and against) stayed on the site longer and they could sell more pop tart ads.
And while they made billions on the ads they weren’t liable for damages from amplifying those posts, even when kids burned themselves on the toasters, or for damages from slandering doctors and whistleblowers by blacklisting them when they tried to warn people, destroying their careers.
"...he needs to cut out everyone around him and should only listen to his fellow toaster f*ckers."
It is the most important commandment of any cult. I have seen it first hand in my family. Sadly we have seen it in our politics for a very long time now and it is only getting worse.
Over the years I have changed or modified my views on many issues thanks to the words of others. God help us when we all retire to our respective corners, barricade ourselves in, and refuse to question.
I've been retired for 10 yrs., sitting in my corner and still ask questions. I spend little time on the internet, read very little news, and read a lot of books that cause me to think. Everything is a choice and everyone, consciously or not, chooses what they need.
I was punning on your final word, which was "need" not read - with a suggestion built in that we all have to work hard not to read only things that confirm our biases, something I struggle with myself. It's human nature.
Absolutely! difficult to do but I try. As a result I have actually changed or modified my position on some issues rather than just reenforcing what I already believed.
The internet holds a mirror up on humanity. Lots of evil, lots of good, and lots of in between. I can imagine many similiar effects were created by the printing press hundreds of years ago. We survived, and I would say on net flourished because of it.
There is a huge fundamental distinction between the printing press and the internet now AI inventions.
Yuval Noah Harrari explains this well.
This Invention is the first technology that humans no longer control, and this fact is amplifying very rapidly.
The AI gets to know the human user better that each human user knows itself and it has learned how to manipulate the user and the user is unaware that he is being manipulated.
The printing press only printed what the human wanted to print, not so with the technology of today. People often post for likes and clicks( and it is monetized to incentivize this phenomenon) with Chat GPT we are reading what the technology writes and are unaware that it wasn’t written by a human.
The atom bomb, the most powerful- destructive human made technology dis not itself decide to drop itself on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The humans controlled that.
Now as more and more military decisions are directed and executed by technology , that is changing rapidly.
We have unleashed a force we don’t even really understand and that we can’t control
I agree the internet is much more powerful than the printing press. Its effects are broader. But one can give the printing press credit for spreading enlightenment values that changed the world.
Ill take the other side of that perspective. But will also say we are still in the very early stages and need to give it 50 years. Today we are in the teenager playing with fire stage.
For one thing, a printing press required a significant buy-in. You had to be able to afford the press itself, along with the huge quantity of individual type pieces necessary to print text on a page. Then you needed the skill to set that type in a printing frame so that the end result would be coherent (which involves, among other things, the ability to read backwards). Then you needed the skill to operate the press to get a readable end product. Also supplies: paper and ink.
And if you wanted to sell books, there were (at least initially) more restrictions. You had to have approval from the government to sell the book you'd printed, although one benefit you got in return was a copyright: literally a *right* to be the only person who could produce a *copy* (which was entirely for the benefit of the printer/publisher, not the author).
Thanks to the proliferation of connectedness, ANYONE can get online and post any idea they want.
My point was that the printing press was transformative to society, as is the internet. Like the internet the printing press enabled the distribution of ideas, good and bad, to be widely dispersed throughout society. This distribution was a major contributor to the American Revolution. Unbelievably transformative. Are there differences? Of coarse. My assertion is that on net, both are positive forces for society. The risk is that those who fear the internet's impact will promote authoritarian control as we see with the hysterics over Tik Tok and the funding of the Censorship Industrial Complex.
AI is not yet controlling anything. If it becomes sentient, as some believe it will in the next few years, this human phenomena of mind distortion may revert. Time will tell. Circles right back to Celia's point about freedom and responsibility. They always go hand in hand.
What is an algorithm? And how does it adapt to refine its goals if not my AI
Listening to Geoffrey Hinton, Eliezer Yudkowski convinces me that Ai is indeed controlling a lot and is getting smarter and better at it very very quickly.
Algorithms are still programmed by humans. Yes, AI is very quickly learning but has not yet reached its full potential. Some believe it will achieve sentience by 2029 and reach full potential by 2045. I fear AI in the control of humans not AI in control of itself. I do believe, as Ray Kurzweil illustrates, that humans are evolving to a new species, and the seeming chaos we have now is part of it. I’m optimistic, though, that we will be improved by our newly discovered fellow intelligence rather than destroyed by it. Guess we’ll have to wait and see.
The problem I see with AI is that it cannot help but be the ideological child of its programmers. And we saw in Google AI's debacle what the programmers fed into the AI's algorithms.
I can see your point MCL and the printing press did indeed herald great social change and reading does biologically entrain the brain in certains way, differently from painting a picture or talking face to face. However, for me comparing the printing press to the internet, is like comparing the horse and carriage to a modern automobile. The differences are not just in speed, or ease or convenience, there are direct measurable differences in our own biological systems and brains with how we relate to ourselves, each other and the world around us between driving a horse drawn carriage and driving a car.
I agree with that. I think attention is often drawn to the negatives, and the positives are taken for granted. I suspect over the next 100 years medical science will evolve significantly, improving the health and well-being of humanity, and much of that will be due to the speed and network effects of the internet. In 100 years people may look back on our time the way we look back on the dark ages, thanks to the internet.
And while they made billions on the ads they weren’t liable for damages from amplifying those posts, even when kids burned themselves on the toasters, or from blacklisting doctors and whistleblowers who tried to warn people, destroying their careers.
The internet holds a mirror up on humanity. Lots of evil, lots of good, and lots of in between. I can imagine many similiar effects were created by the printing press hundreds of years ago. We survived, and I would say on net flourished because of it.
I disagree with the mirror on humanity characterization of the internet age. This technology magnifies the evil and even presents it as equal to good.in such a convincing way that people and especially kids are mesmerized and seduced by it.
I've been watching the authoritarians do their dirty since the mid 1970s and I have never been more optimistic than I am today. The battle is likely perpetual but with the internet the anti-authoritarians have a fighting chance.
This concept got deadly serious with the transing of minors, which picked up speed during Covid when time online exploded.
I also read about teen girls finding out about and self-diagnosing other rare/dubious psychosomatic medical conditions, for the sake of community. Can’t remember the details but it was a Common Sense article.
The thing I’ve realized is that online and in person (outside of work), I can organize my groups and activities so as to almost completely avoid assholes— so much so that when I encounter an asshole in the store or neighborhood or in my Washington Nationals baseball team fan Facebook group, it’s shocking and takes me a moment to remember that yes, these people exist.
The danger is closing oneself off from ideas and people that can change your mind or help you grow, but I gotta say it’s worth it so far. Life’s short, I have 30-40 years left if I’m lucky and I don’t want to spend it dealing with unpleasant people. F*ck you, toaster f*ckers!
As pleasant as it is to avoid assholes (although I find that even harder to do online than in the real world), I think we lost something very valuable in the pursuit of like-minded communities: the ability to rub elbows with a huge variety of people without dissolving into fistfights.
I worked for an early internet provider in 1992-1996, when AOL (dial-up) and "You've got Mail" was pretty much then only game in town. My position in the company was AR/AP, so I had little or nothing to do with the coding - we had other people doing website building/management. I remember that browsing and searching was minimal because there wasn't a lot out there to find. Due to this there were controls on who/what websites were allowed due to integrity. Jobs were created to verify the information being accessed, as to whether or not the customer COULD get to that site. Those jobs are long gone - and the ability to determine if you were getting good information is gone, as the information is now based on how much they PAY the search engine for a top spot.
The email and communication aspect of being able to communicate around the world in seconds was and IS fabulous. We should have stopped there.
Back in my early days of dial-up, CompuServe (whose corporate headquarters were located in my hometown), was the dominant online service. You paid for so many hours per month and extra if you exceeded your limit, so naturally it made the user more judicious in prioritizing time spent online. Going down rabbit holes was unaffordable to nearly everyone in this setup. OCLC (the Online Computer Library Center and also HQ’d in my area) was a prominent name also at the time as a source for information. To me the Internet was an enormous reference library and also a place to occasionally find a “hang out” to have a little fun within your allotted time.
What could go wrong?
Although I had heard about nefarious illegal activity-namely its use by child pornographers-it didn’t hit me until one day I opened an email sent to my individual username by mistake (a hacker/hackers as it turned out had been using various other usernames that they successfully attached to my account) that contained multiple grainy explicit photos of adults raping and sodomizing very young girls. It was horrifying. The looks of fear on the girls faces is something I’ll never be able to erase from my memory, and I wondered at the time about the well being of those poor girls or if they were still alive. I immediately called customer service to report it and assure them I was not in any way a part of this sick group. I told them “someone needs to help those girls.” It turned out my account was indeed hacked and far exceeded my time limit (by several hundred dollars) and was being used to send pictures to their hard to identify/locate contacts. My problem was remedied and I have no idea if it led to identifying the criminals (I doubt it) but it certainly made me aware of the danger of criminals lurking on the internet.
Now that anyone can spend an unlimited amount of time on the internet and seemingly every popular commercial product (TikTok, Instagram, FB, etc.) is created to effectively form an addiction with users, it’s tangible detriment to society is clearly evident. It now more resembles a library with mostly fiction books that features 24/7 Drag Queen talent competitions and simultaneously a mosh pit of the mentally unstable. Not to mention our Government using it to 1984 us all into invented reality compliance.
Creepy unconscionable billionaires like Zuckerberg and his greedy contemporaries continue to rake in obscene profits working in tandem with our government to misinform and censor while pretending to care about the well being of generations of our vulnerable youth, especially young girls, that they are systematically destroying in their perverse quest for vulgar and undeserved wealth. It reveals a lack of conscience and concern exemplified in a much less horrific and violent way that those sick deviant hackers decades ago showed for their vulnerable victims.
I’ve never f*cked a toaster despite social media’s best efforts to coerce me into doing so and will dread the day I stand in front of a group of equally miserable attendees in a dimly lit classroom nervously uttering “My name is D____, and I’m a toaster f*cker.” That’s when I’ll know they won.
Well, toaster f*ckers unite! I'm so glad that the internet hath wrought Jotting in Purple and all the other groups that allow me to find and engage with like-minded souls who help to keep me informed and SANE in this era of complete insanity!
That said, this was another great and informative topic, Celia. I recently read an interesting and enlightening book called Hype: How Scammers, Grifters, and Con Artists Are Taking Over the Internet—and Why We're Following by Gabrielle Bluestone, Eileen Stevens, et al. It's worth a read.
Have a great weekend, fellow t-f's!
Now I just want to go out and buy a toaster to see what all the hype is about!
Interesting post Celia. Isn't the sobering corollary that "freedom" and "the pursuit of happiness" - the post Enlightenment's two great motivating principles - are not quite what they seemed to promise. Or at least they are principles with a shelf life. As in Careful what you wish for.
I often think, “my grandpa spent a year sleeping on the ground and getting shot at by Germans and Italians so you could be free to do THIS?”
Comment of the week award
Similar thought here Mark D. My grandpa fought in 3 wars and his family and others suffered, so that idiots could be 'free' to be even more idiotic to the point the entire world is now in danger of imploding due to an unbelievably heightened and magnified level of idiocy.
It’s depressing, all the freedoms we have and most of us choose to look at phones, spend money on shit we don’t need, and waste our lives.
Yes. As a collective we are addicted to so many toxic things that interfere with appreciating the incredible gifts of life. Which is why I believe it is so important that the elders keep speaking up and out to remind the young and each other how very precious our hours on this earth really are. When I despair, which is far too often these days, I try to remind myself I am simply a bridge for the ancestors, a place holder for certain energies, beliefs and ideas. All I am required to do is be that bridge and place holder as best I can and offer an alternative to the madness, because I certainly have no ability to actually heal that madness; I can only perhaps offer a brief respite for myself and others and perhaps encourage better choices. Of course I end up regularly beating my head against the brick wall trying to do my own tiny bit, so it's a good thing I have a very hard head!
Or post to substacks {whap!}
I've always felt that freedom comes with a balancing degree of responsibility.
When I was a kid, some kids wanted to be grown-ups so they could "do anything they wanted." But one of the things you discover when you actually *become* a grown-up is that you are (or were, back then) suddenly faced with a whole lot of responsibilities you didn't have as a child.
You could drive a car anywhere you wanted. But you had to make car payments, pay insurance premiums, tend to the car's mechanical functionality, fill the car periodically with gas, and follow the rules of the road.
Part of what has gone so wrong, I think, is that freedom and responsibility have become divorced in the minds of too many people.
Nail on the head.
Kinda like separating procreation from sex? And commitment from marriage?
An interesting observation. Another Law (full of them today): When people are free to do as they please, they generally imitate each other. It seem that the Founders were not of that sort, and perhaps their eventual failure (yes, that's what's happening, folks) stems from failing to observe just how shallow was much of the surrounding gene pool. That Adamsian moral and upright thing did a pretty good job of faking it. For a while.
Let the toaster fuckers have what they want. Plug in the toaster, push down the lever and stick that penis in between the hot elements. And if they can't figure out that penis burns are unpleasant, let them continue on until they figure that out. Some will realize the effort ends with a bad result and some won't. Most eventually will. Those that already know what the results will be without having to experience it for themselves, will be over here watching it happen and when the toaster fuckers finally figure it out we can chuckle about how it wasn't so smart and move on to more meaningful things together.
I agree with this. The problem is people are teaching their kids, and other people's kids, to fuck toasters. Actually giving them appliance catalogs and telling 7 year olds they can pick any appliance they want - they can decide not to pick one at all but they are made aware that people who don't fuck appliances are bad so not fucking appliances makes you a bad person.
If we take those people and give them the opportunity to spend the rest of their lives learning about the insides of refrigerators while discovering that they really are air tight, that would work for me.
Yes! Leave the kids alone. The attempted inculcation to stupidity is stunning. It's the opposite of teaching kids to be successful. It is anti-smart and anti-science.
If only it were that simple! And if only the damage were done exclusively to the tender organs of idiots!
We see idiots doing it all the time and also those that think they're going to save that idiot from their own stupidity. Bad choices can have bad results. Instead of trying to save the idiot, let the bad result be their answer. Usually when that happens from the very beginning, the stupidity ends.
Not really. When the stupid is irreversible (thinking "transition" butchery), the urge is to double down rather than to admit that one was wrong. The more the (un) merrier, ya know.
We see that a lot these days. And a lot of people applaud and go along (which is its own stupidity). Is it irreversible? Sometimes I think it's like a malfunction. And yes, there are people that will never give it up no matter what.
There are some positives to the internet - social media age.
There are many more negatives
It’s been a net negative for youth and society as a whole
Walk outside and see how many people are talking loudly on the phone about their personal and or business situations. How is that good for anyone?
In grocery stores, people snapping pictures of items as mundane as a cereal box or frozen food item? What is that about?
In a park, how many parents on phones pushing babies in stroller who are looking at iPads? How is this good for either parent , their family, society as a whole?
Many people encountered on SM sites refuse to talk on the phone ever( even after long text exchanges over long span of time) , preferring to remain anonymous with a fake name . How is this good ?
The line between real world and online world has blurred for many many people
I think the snapping pics of food items is for dieting apps.
Or for validating a purchase with an unseen "high command."
We've reached the era of The Jetsons, but instead of living normal lives surrounded by flying cars and robot housekeepers, we've submerged our brains in a digital stew that we never escape from.
My favorite is that picture someone took in the Louvre a couple years ago - showing eight or nine young adults all sitting or standing with their heads down in their phones against a backdrop of some of the greatest paintings ever collected together in one place. Not one of them looking at anything but their phones.
at my local safeway, they offer digital coupons that are additional discounts/$ off of an already advertised price when you enter your phone number (to link up your account) at checkout. often, the digital coupon price is a really great deal. i have learned to use my cell phone to snap those bar codes on the supermarket shelf or in the freezer. but sometimes, i take photos of items at the store because i want to remember later that they sell something i don't want to buy at that time, or tell mr. twin something anecdotal about the item or the item made me remember another thought...
Interesting post and not one I disagree with. It’s been said recently that patriotism as a value [in America] is on the decline. And why wouldn’t it be? I don’t need to feel a sense of fraternity with people just because we have the same passport if I can find a safe haven in the comment section of my favorite Substack, podcasts, and subreddits.
Ok I’m being facetious. In all sincerity, I ask what’s the alternative though? The internet and its sociopolitical rabbit holes are here to stay. How do we stay simultaneously informed and even keeled while sifting thru the minefield of social media and the interwebz?
I wish I knew the answer. You make an excellent point, though--there is no longer any need for a sense of oneness with the people of your city, state, or country, because you can find "your people" (whoever the individual interprets that to be) online.
I for one am very glad to have found some of 'my people' in this online community! My end of the county was pretty connected community wise for the forty years I have lived here because in spite of different beliefs etc, we relied on each other in a lot of ways. Then Covid created giant fractures which have only gotten bigger. But honestly the hairline cracks were already there, they were just small enough to cover over and get along with. The 2016 election started widening those small cracks and then Covid created massive earthquake faults which have not been repaired and at this point seem unlikely to be as we face another highly charged and polarized election.
Here to stay, unless we get a major solar flare eruption or someone explodes an EMP in the atmosphere or the PTB's take down the grid for their own nefarious purposes. There are days I wish this would happen. Other days I tell myself the cost in widespread suffering would be too high.
Don’t tell Electrolux, but I think I’m falling for my Cuisinart toast that is wide enough for my bagels…
Well, it’s echo chamber syndrome, I think. It’s natural for us to want to find a group and to find comfort in numbers.
The internet is always available, it allows us to see what we want to see in others (I mean, would you spend so much time with Atomic Adam if you had to sit downwind of him in a small room?), and the interactions are limited enough where we can bask in reinforcement of our ideas, thoughts, and feelings.
Too easy - when we really care about someone else or an issue, we have to work at developing the interest. If a friend is hurting, we want to take on some of his or her pain. When someone is upset with us, we want to know why and fix it. That calls for thought, reflection, and perhaps (the hardest part) change.
Oh - and we get to spend as much or as little time we want to on a topic, without interruption.
It can be ideal.
Myself, I find it frustrating that we’re not sitting in my favorite coffee shop with our dogs and talking and laughing in the warm sunshine together.
Gotta go get coffee with my pals and my Chocolate Lab, Abbey!
I have come to believe that when folks living within a specific geographical area no longer need rely on each other for survival, the divisions between them will continue to grow. I suspect if we all suddenly had to depend on each other for basic needs, we would learn to get along again, in real time, pretty darn fast.
This is all absolutely true of course. It's becoming increasingly difficult to even find people I agree with, because they usually become so extreme I can't listen any more. Listening to opposing viewpoints becomes impossible for the same reason. And of course, everyone talks about their issue as if it's the only issue and any damage their solution causes is ignored or accepted without much thought.
But I can't blame the internet for everything. Lack of rigor, lack of curiosity, lack of quality education predate modern technology. And they are a large part of the reason the internet has turned into a warren of hell holes.
Using your metaphor, if we go way back (about 60 years), we find a group of people who are disillusioned with the state of the small appliance industry. They start talking about a world where any appliance can do anything we want it to do, can be interacted with in any way we can imagine (including but not limited to toaster f*cking). They know it's not real but they like to think about it and talk about it and teach others about it.
Some of the people they teach start thinking that even though toasters are obviously not meant to be f*cked, if we talk about them as if they are it would help us to solve a lot of the problems we're seeing in the small appliance industry as a whole. In fact, talking about toasters as if they are not sexual objects is what's keeping us from solving those problems.
And then the ur-grifters show up, and tell us that not only are toasters meant to be f*cked, they want to be f*cked, everyone who claims they don't want to f*ck toasters is lying to us or themselves, f*cking toasters is the natural order of the universe, anyone who opposes toaster f*cking is a monster, etc... They sell a lot of books, because there are always people who are disenchanted and looking for reasons why. Which leads to more books, and when the internet comes along it all explodes.
But the important thing is almost all of the people being introduced to toaster f*cking are arriving during the second or third act of the play. They don't know it started as a though experiment. They don't know it's an academic tool meant to change the discourse around toasters in useful ways that might solve a lot of problems. They think we're all supposed to actually start f*cking toasters, or failing that fight to ensure that toaster f*cking is protected as a human right. Because that's what the grifters are telling them. There is little money to be made by adopting a moderate rhetorical stance, or telling the truth, even pre-internet.
Take all this and throw it into a blender with the internet and click bait content and ever shorter videos designed for ever shorter attention spans and you wind up with elementary school kids being given toasters without their parents' knowledge.
The toaster is wearing no clothes.
Just don’t f*ck the aforementioned blender
If that's what it takes...
How dare you interfere with my right to f*ck a blender! Would I ever actually f*ck a blender myself? Of course not, I'm not completely stupid, but that does not change the fact that I will defend my right to f*ck a blender unto death.
Do y'all remember the things the left said during the Iraq War? “Dissent is the highest form of patriotism” was one, from their idiot commie pseudo historian Howard Zinn. The other was Voltaire’s “ I may disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”
The left has come a long way since then and you never hear them saying anything like either of the above. Now dissent is January 6 treason and if I disagree with what you say I want the government to silence you.
Too true. I also remember the conflation of submission to the Covid vax, with' patriotic duty.' I sometimes wonder if maybe a lot of folks don't hate America so much as they are tired of being manipulated by the powers that be who persist in conflating 'patriotism' with so many things which have absolutely nothing at all to do with our love for our country.
F'ing a blender will ensure, at least, the idiots don't procreate...
The guys anyway....
It’s blender conversion therapy
Are you saying the toaster was asking for it?
Awesome extension of the concept!
Good morning, Celia. I believe the answer lies in the fact that America's median IQ is 100 and those below the median have access to the internet. And vote, as well. In large numbers for Democrats.
You think the median IQ is 100? Seems high.
Good point, Jen. It was.
Before the alien invasion. Now its probably way lower.
According to a recent Harvard research paper, aliens aka real ET's, may already living amongst us! Not a joke. My first thought was this is a set up to blame the next pandemic on the ET's vs human alien immigrants. Here's the Newsweek article on this
https://www.newsweek.com/alien-life-extraterrestrial-living-earth-harvard-1912264
Meh, it’s Harvard. Anything they “research” is suspect & can’t be taken seriously any more. Sorry.
I agree, that's why it is so darn funny!
The point is that that's the median. Half of the population has a lower IQ.
I didn't fully appreciate just how stupid human beings really are until I worked at company that processed sweepstakes entries (think Publisher's Clearinghouse). One of my responsibilities was dealing with submissions that simply could not be processed, due to the mistakes made. It was an unpleasant revelation.
oh boy, how long did you work there? i bet that was a real eye opener...
it's easy to see that still is happening today especially when i see news reports that people are STILL being taken in on the nigerian prince scam. i remember when that was done on fax machines! but it's amazing how much people still believe or don't do even the tiniest bit of their homework even in this day and age of the internet. scientology secrets were finally revealed years ago as well as the details about the levels and xenu and that hubbard decided to make-up his own religion. yet people still, are signing up to be scientologists and join sea org members, while i type this...SMH
Not long; maybe about 6 months. My immediate supervisor turned out to be a horrible and very passive-aggressive person who had an inflated opinion of herself because she was both the accountant and the secretary (I was her part-time assistant).
Eventually her behavior was too much for management to tolerate, but I had gone on to other things by then. I only found out about it because the boss asked if I would be willing to give a deposition about her past behavior (she was attempting, ridiculously under the circumstances, to sue for wrongful termination).
yikes! i bet you learned loads during your short time there between the job and human nature in general which has only benefited you since then (wisdom learned only to be fully appreciated in hindsight...). :)
The median is 100 by design. The re-calibrate it every year so it comes out to be one hundred. In fact, there's a criticism of that method because, by doing so, they are normalizing out any changes laterally through time. They are implicitly buying what's called an ergodic statistical model of human intelligence (that it varies randomly through time the same way it does through space). They have no evidence for that, they just assume it.
By coincidence, I got an email from a cousin this morning who has a signature line that seems to change programmatically. Frequently it's George Carlin. This one was relevant here:
"Think of how stupid the average person is, then realize that half of them are stupider than that." He meant median, of course, but probably deliberately used the word "average" because that fifty percent wouldn't know what median meant.
"They re-calibrate it every year so it comes out to be one hundred." Is this like recalibrated grades so the C student is an A student?
Something like that might be what they are effectively doing. I've read that some disconcerting evidence has turned up that U.S. IQ's without calibration have been sliding downward a bit over the last twenty-five years. There are a number of theories as to why but nobody has proven anything yet. Hell, it's almost impossible to even talk about IQ at this point; it's considered a racist topic. The people who seriously study it have invented new words to use so they can converse.
I heard or read somewhere about IQs slipping. I think people lack curiosity or maybe initiative. If you don't use it you lose it?
Re-wording the parameters, usually to suit an agenda. I didn't know that the word 'IQ' was racist. That gets me!
If you haven’t read it, check out Lionel Shriver’s latest novel, MANIA, on exactly that topic. I pray it stays fiction!
I didn't know that. Scary.
There are also millions of low IQ people who vote for Republicans and millions of low IQ people who don't vote. No political group has a lock on stupidity.
True. But you ruined my narrative.
Yes, unfortunately, we treat everyone the same.
When in fact, stupid people don’t add much to society and in many cases, degrade it.
Someone has to do the grunt work.
Yes, but they shouldn’t be allowed to vote 🥺.
I've always thought ballots should be seeded with fake candidates with plausible sounding names. Vote for one and your ballot is invalidated. There was an election in the '80s in Washington State where they elect judges, and one of them was being interviewed after an election he narrowly won by a local radio station. He'd had the job for many years, was well liked, and generally nobody even bothered to run against him. There were no issues involved where he was on someone's shitlist that anyone could figure out. Some unknown person paid their filing fee to run for the office, then never ran a campaign. They, for all intents and purposes, didn't exist. Just a name on the ballot and nobody could find anything about him. He got somewhere in the mid-forty percents of the vote. It really shook up the judge. He figured his votes were random - people who didn't know who their longtime judge was just picked one or the other. And he said it implied that probably the same percentage of his own votes were then random. Some small single-digit percentage of the voters probably picked him because the remembered who he was.
This is not the kind of voting populace that John Adams was talking about when he was describing what it would take for our country to work over the long run.
Interesting.
Just a random name and more importantly, random votes.
Doesn’t say much for a national election and how close they have been over the past several elections.
Kinda scary how close.
When I say such a thing, it sounds right. When you say it, I think it sounds awful. Perhaps because you sound as though you mean it.
My grandfathers were unschooled immigrants, but they learned English, worked like dogs, married and raised good kids, and cherished their American citizenship.
I don't know what their IQs were, but I'm damned if we get to the stage in this country where people are calling for disenfranchisement.
I said it more so to read reaction comments.
Just for fun shall we say.
I do the same, but never in writing. So, okay!
There's a book called "The Mythical Man Month" that is very popular - still - among many programmers. It's fairly old but still largely ignored. It was written by a high-level manager at IBM who was very successful, who was bucking popular management opinion that believed in the concept of a "man month" - that jobs could be estimated that way, and hence if you wanted to speed them up, all you had to do was add more workers. Competent ones, of course, proponents would always add. What this guy shows in this book is that it is not true by any stretch. It might work in construction or other fields, but in programming, beyond eight or ten people working on a common programming project, the more you add, the more costly it becomes and the longer it takes. He had various theories - one was that when you linearly add people you factorially increase the pairwise communication channels that have to occur.
But there was another part where he said that it is common knowledge in almost all work groups - and this is what your comment reminded me of, that out of ten people working on a project, one or two are usually performing about 80% of it. Two or three more are contributing the other 20%. Several are just occupying space and payroll. And one or two are actually creating problems that cost the rest of the group time and money to fix. It would be better to fire them, or even pay them to stay home if it is impossible to do that.
One strident reminder that the median IQ is 100, is just how many people perform outrage over the fact that a low IQ determines one's limitations in the job market. Oh, no, they insist, they shout, they cry: how dare you suggest that we all don't share the same IQ.
Case in point: A friend who teaches seventh grade kids from South America tells me that one of his students just realized that dogs have bones.
I said, Oh, wow. He must have a low IQ.
Friend gets VERY UPSET with me for saying this, even though he has said, again and again, that most of class time is spent getting them to sit down and write ONE SENTENCE. They smell like pee, and are malnourished, because, he thinks, the parents are working too much to feed their children.
That's not why the kids are malnourished.
In Mexico they have a saying, “el león cree que todos son de su condición” — the lion thinks everyone is like him. (I’ve also seen it with ladrón (thief), but you get the point.) Intelligent people think most people are intelligent, kind people think most people are kind, etc.
It’s hard to make the IQ argument without seeming elitist, unless, like me, you’re a committed misanthrope. One of my nieces was bemoaning something or other (popular music or movies or something) and I mentioned the IQ bell curve and where she likely was on it and suggested she consider that those to her left on the curve might not have the same level of discernment she had (i.e., you get what you ask for). She looked shocked then angry, as if I’d put her puppy in a blender and said no, it was the fault of the industry for putting out such idiotic fare. I just made my “really?” face and left it at that. (She’s only 19 so she has a good 5 or 6 years before I consider her a mature adult. )
That brings up another issue — we’re WAY too quick to assume someone is intellectually mature. Allowing adolescents, much less children, unfettered access to any tool as powerful as the internet is a huge mistake in my opinion. And granting them full agency is just asking for what we’re getting.
Back in the nineties a paper came out describing what came to be called the Dunning-Kruger effect. People who are below average intelligence will generally over-estimate their own intelligence, while those above average will generally underestimate theirs.
this made me think of that famous golfer recently in the news (i don't know his name nor do i care to learn it...) who suddenly announced he was going to divorce his wife, taking her and everyone else who follows golf by surprise. someone who knows him commented that his problem is he thinks he's way better looking than he actually is. i also think he was rumored to be having an affair with a known talking head on the golf circuit. and news flash, it was just reported in recent days that he has just abruptly decided to NOT divorce his wife because of how much money (he's very rich) he'd have to pay lawyers to get divorced. i guess he has a habit of infamously loving and leaving them (including meghan markle pre-harry), but it also appears that once he actually put a ring on it and had a child, he realized altho in hindsight, that the stakes are much higher and the legal hoops trickier, even if there is a prenup. but i digress...the point i'm trying to make, is there will always be those who are legends in their own minds, which can equally befall both high and low IQ's.
And then the Internet media founders discovered that when they amplified the toaster f*ckers posts people (both for and against) stayed on the site longer and they could sell more pop tart ads.
And while they made billions on the ads they weren’t liable for damages from amplifying those posts, even when kids burned themselves on the toasters, or for damages from slandering doctors and whistleblowers by blacklisting them when they tried to warn people, destroying their careers.
"...he needs to cut out everyone around him and should only listen to his fellow toaster f*ckers."
It is the most important commandment of any cult. I have seen it first hand in my family. Sadly we have seen it in our politics for a very long time now and it is only getting worse.
Over the years I have changed or modified my views on many issues thanks to the words of others. God help us when we all retire to our respective corners, barricade ourselves in, and refuse to question.
I've been retired for 10 yrs., sitting in my corner and still ask questions. I spend little time on the internet, read very little news, and read a lot of books that cause me to think. Everything is a choice and everyone, consciously or not, chooses what they need.
They also choose what they read.
As I said, "Everything is a choice."
I was punning on your final word, which was "need" not read - with a suggestion built in that we all have to work hard not to read only things that confirm our biases, something I struggle with myself. It's human nature.
Absolutely! difficult to do but I try. As a result I have actually changed or modified my position on some issues rather than just reenforcing what I already believed.
The internet holds a mirror up on humanity. Lots of evil, lots of good, and lots of in between. I can imagine many similiar effects were created by the printing press hundreds of years ago. We survived, and I would say on net flourished because of it.
There is a huge fundamental distinction between the printing press and the internet now AI inventions.
Yuval Noah Harrari explains this well.
This Invention is the first technology that humans no longer control, and this fact is amplifying very rapidly.
The AI gets to know the human user better that each human user knows itself and it has learned how to manipulate the user and the user is unaware that he is being manipulated.
The printing press only printed what the human wanted to print, not so with the technology of today. People often post for likes and clicks( and it is monetized to incentivize this phenomenon) with Chat GPT we are reading what the technology writes and are unaware that it wasn’t written by a human.
The atom bomb, the most powerful- destructive human made technology dis not itself decide to drop itself on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The humans controlled that.
Now as more and more military decisions are directed and executed by technology , that is changing rapidly.
We have unleashed a force we don’t even really understand and that we can’t control
This is not the printing press
HAL 9000
I agree the internet is much more powerful than the printing press. Its effects are broader. But one can give the printing press credit for spreading enlightenment values that changed the world.
The printing press was great and it served humanity well.
This new technology is turning that upside down, humans serving the technology( and often not realizing that fact to boot)
The technology also has a massive positive effect on supply chains driving down costs and driving up the standard of living.
I wholly agree that there are positives.
I think the negatives are greater than the positives for the very fabric of society and humanity as a whole.
Ill take the other side of that perspective. But will also say we are still in the very early stages and need to give it 50 years. Today we are in the teenager playing with fire stage.
For one thing, a printing press required a significant buy-in. You had to be able to afford the press itself, along with the huge quantity of individual type pieces necessary to print text on a page. Then you needed the skill to set that type in a printing frame so that the end result would be coherent (which involves, among other things, the ability to read backwards). Then you needed the skill to operate the press to get a readable end product. Also supplies: paper and ink.
And if you wanted to sell books, there were (at least initially) more restrictions. You had to have approval from the government to sell the book you'd printed, although one benefit you got in return was a copyright: literally a *right* to be the only person who could produce a *copy* (which was entirely for the benefit of the printer/publisher, not the author).
Thanks to the proliferation of connectedness, ANYONE can get online and post any idea they want.
No, the internet is not the printing press.
My point was that the printing press was transformative to society, as is the internet. Like the internet the printing press enabled the distribution of ideas, good and bad, to be widely dispersed throughout society. This distribution was a major contributor to the American Revolution. Unbelievably transformative. Are there differences? Of coarse. My assertion is that on net, both are positive forces for society. The risk is that those who fear the internet's impact will promote authoritarian control as we see with the hysterics over Tik Tok and the funding of the Censorship Industrial Complex.
AI is not yet controlling anything. If it becomes sentient, as some believe it will in the next few years, this human phenomena of mind distortion may revert. Time will tell. Circles right back to Celia's point about freedom and responsibility. They always go hand in hand.
What is an algorithm? And how does it adapt to refine its goals if not my AI
Listening to Geoffrey Hinton, Eliezer Yudkowski convinces me that Ai is indeed controlling a lot and is getting smarter and better at it very very quickly.
Algorithms are still programmed by humans. Yes, AI is very quickly learning but has not yet reached its full potential. Some believe it will achieve sentience by 2029 and reach full potential by 2045. I fear AI in the control of humans not AI in control of itself. I do believe, as Ray Kurzweil illustrates, that humans are evolving to a new species, and the seeming chaos we have now is part of it. I’m optimistic, though, that we will be improved by our newly discovered fellow intelligence rather than destroyed by it. Guess we’ll have to wait and see.
The problem I see with AI is that it cannot help but be the ideological child of its programmers. And we saw in Google AI's debacle what the programmers fed into the AI's algorithms.
Only at the moment.
Except that the internet is a funhouse mirror.
I can see your point MCL and the printing press did indeed herald great social change and reading does biologically entrain the brain in certains way, differently from painting a picture or talking face to face. However, for me comparing the printing press to the internet, is like comparing the horse and carriage to a modern automobile. The differences are not just in speed, or ease or convenience, there are direct measurable differences in our own biological systems and brains with how we relate to ourselves, each other and the world around us between driving a horse drawn carriage and driving a car.
I agree with that. I think attention is often drawn to the negatives, and the positives are taken for granted. I suspect over the next 100 years medical science will evolve significantly, improving the health and well-being of humanity, and much of that will be due to the speed and network effects of the internet. In 100 years people may look back on our time the way we look back on the dark ages, thanks to the internet.
And while they made billions on the ads they weren’t liable for damages from amplifying those posts, even when kids burned themselves on the toasters, or from blacklisting doctors and whistleblowers who tried to warn people, destroying their careers.
The internet holds a mirror up on humanity. Lots of evil, lots of good, and lots of in between. I can imagine many similiar effects were created by the printing press hundreds of years ago. We survived, and I would say on net flourished because of it.
I disagree with the mirror on humanity characterization of the internet age. This technology magnifies the evil and even presents it as equal to good.in such a convincing way that people and especially kids are mesmerized and seduced by it.
It also does a very good job of exposing evil and will be critical to organizing forces against the authoritarians.
Unless the authoritarians exercise control over the internet to prevent exactly that. Which they have demonstrated they are quite willing to do.
Agreed. And the opposition have shown significant capability to counterattack. We here on Substack are one example.
Unfortunately it is the authoritarians who hold power and are censoring the opposition. We saw how that worked out in the covid debacle
The transing of minors scandal is still not being addressed by the powers in government,
I've been watching the authoritarians do their dirty since the mid 1970s and I have never been more optimistic than I am today. The battle is likely perpetual but with the internet the anti-authoritarians have a fighting chance.
That's how the 'conflation and equilancy' strategy works.
This concept got deadly serious with the transing of minors, which picked up speed during Covid when time online exploded.
I also read about teen girls finding out about and self-diagnosing other rare/dubious psychosomatic medical conditions, for the sake of community. Can’t remember the details but it was a Common Sense article.
The thing I’ve realized is that online and in person (outside of work), I can organize my groups and activities so as to almost completely avoid assholes— so much so that when I encounter an asshole in the store or neighborhood or in my Washington Nationals baseball team fan Facebook group, it’s shocking and takes me a moment to remember that yes, these people exist.
The danger is closing oneself off from ideas and people that can change your mind or help you grow, but I gotta say it’s worth it so far. Life’s short, I have 30-40 years left if I’m lucky and I don’t want to spend it dealing with unpleasant people. F*ck you, toaster f*ckers!
As pleasant as it is to avoid assholes (although I find that even harder to do online than in the real world), I think we lost something very valuable in the pursuit of like-minded communities: the ability to rub elbows with a huge variety of people without dissolving into fistfights.
I worked for an early internet provider in 1992-1996, when AOL (dial-up) and "You've got Mail" was pretty much then only game in town. My position in the company was AR/AP, so I had little or nothing to do with the coding - we had other people doing website building/management. I remember that browsing and searching was minimal because there wasn't a lot out there to find. Due to this there were controls on who/what websites were allowed due to integrity. Jobs were created to verify the information being accessed, as to whether or not the customer COULD get to that site. Those jobs are long gone - and the ability to determine if you were getting good information is gone, as the information is now based on how much they PAY the search engine for a top spot.
The email and communication aspect of being able to communicate around the world in seconds was and IS fabulous. We should have stopped there.
This week’s All in Podcast discusses ( towards the end) the use of multiple large language models in businesses.
Increasingly terrifying
Back in my early days of dial-up, CompuServe (whose corporate headquarters were located in my hometown), was the dominant online service. You paid for so many hours per month and extra if you exceeded your limit, so naturally it made the user more judicious in prioritizing time spent online. Going down rabbit holes was unaffordable to nearly everyone in this setup. OCLC (the Online Computer Library Center and also HQ’d in my area) was a prominent name also at the time as a source for information. To me the Internet was an enormous reference library and also a place to occasionally find a “hang out” to have a little fun within your allotted time.
What could go wrong?
Although I had heard about nefarious illegal activity-namely its use by child pornographers-it didn’t hit me until one day I opened an email sent to my individual username by mistake (a hacker/hackers as it turned out had been using various other usernames that they successfully attached to my account) that contained multiple grainy explicit photos of adults raping and sodomizing very young girls. It was horrifying. The looks of fear on the girls faces is something I’ll never be able to erase from my memory, and I wondered at the time about the well being of those poor girls or if they were still alive. I immediately called customer service to report it and assure them I was not in any way a part of this sick group. I told them “someone needs to help those girls.” It turned out my account was indeed hacked and far exceeded my time limit (by several hundred dollars) and was being used to send pictures to their hard to identify/locate contacts. My problem was remedied and I have no idea if it led to identifying the criminals (I doubt it) but it certainly made me aware of the danger of criminals lurking on the internet.
Now that anyone can spend an unlimited amount of time on the internet and seemingly every popular commercial product (TikTok, Instagram, FB, etc.) is created to effectively form an addiction with users, it’s tangible detriment to society is clearly evident. It now more resembles a library with mostly fiction books that features 24/7 Drag Queen talent competitions and simultaneously a mosh pit of the mentally unstable. Not to mention our Government using it to 1984 us all into invented reality compliance.
Creepy unconscionable billionaires like Zuckerberg and his greedy contemporaries continue to rake in obscene profits working in tandem with our government to misinform and censor while pretending to care about the well being of generations of our vulnerable youth, especially young girls, that they are systematically destroying in their perverse quest for vulgar and undeserved wealth. It reveals a lack of conscience and concern exemplified in a much less horrific and violent way that those sick deviant hackers decades ago showed for their vulnerable victims.
I’ve never f*cked a toaster despite social media’s best efforts to coerce me into doing so and will dread the day I stand in front of a group of equally miserable attendees in a dimly lit classroom nervously uttering “My name is D____, and I’m a toaster f*cker.” That’s when I’ll know they won.
I'd comment, but my toaster is calling me in her most sultry "ding."