Gurwinder writes essays on social media, attention, and why people hold irrational beliefs, including audience capture and neotoddlerism.
HN commenters link his audience capture and neotoddlerism essays, and discuss whether pieces on junk information can change anyone's behavior.
Good luck telling your ai-infatuated friends
I've just had a long (slightly frustrating) discussion that basically boils down to their faith being stronger than the numbers, claiming that the study is flawed, that it should be ignored because it's on arxiv.org.
Breaking faith is very difficult, and will likely cause friction with your peers. It doesn't matter what facts are raised, they will fall back on arguments that support their position despite the numbers.
Part of the problem is the time dilation that we experience according to what we're doing and how we feel whilst doing it, discussed here: https://www.gurwinder.blog/p/how-social-media-shortens-your-life
I like collecting little ideas like this. Slightly meta-ironically I'd describe the genre as "just abstract enough to be useful nuggets of knowledge" and I have an org file full of them. The hard part is I don't know any better name for such "concepts" so I can't search for other people's lists.
Does anyone else keep a similar collect or have advice for finding more?
(For example Gurwinder sometimes posts lists like this: https://www.gurwinder.blog/p/30-useful-concepts-spring-2024 - that's what I'm talking about.)
Whether good or bad, the deal was the deal, and the terms of it were fulfilled. I personally am not so fond of Musk suffering from Twitter brain worms (he's neither the first nor will be the last to acquire it) but that is separate and apart from the pay issue.
Audience capture: https://www.gurwinder.blog/p/the-perils-of-audience-capture or perhaps more accurately criticism capture: https://www.houseofstrauss.com/p/criticism-capture-is-more-dangerous is a problem for many people who become media people.
Audience capture is a scary thing: https://gurwinder.substack.com/p/the-perils-of-audience-capture (a particularly sad and grotesque example).
I think it's something we're all vulnerable too.
It's important to be aware of the incentives you're allowing yourself to operate under.
A little tangential maybe, but it reminds me of this book review I really liked: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/17/books/review/herman-wouk-winds-of-war-war-and-remembrance.html
> You'll probably read this article, briefly consider the damage junk info has done to you, and then return to aimlessly scrolling Twitter.
Great article but sadly unlikely to change any outcome so you wonder if the article itself qualifies as junk info or digital defeatism
Case in point, TikTok is still alive and well: https://www.gurwinder.blog/p/tiktok-may-be-a-chinese-bio-weapon
In case anybody missed it, I’m talking about how the dude went full Zarathustra in the agora.
https://twitter.com/jason/status/1634771851514900480
It did lead me to a really interesting article about audience capture and how it twists “influencers” into saying and doing outlandish things though!
https://gurwinder.substack.com/p/the-perils-of-audience-capture