I think there’s a pretty deep existential question here: how many PEOPLE are basically just executing on social programming from school, media, etc, and are essentially just parroting values someone told them to believe in brief, shallow discussions between monotonous work shifts where they show up at a certain time to do a certain thing, day after day, with little deviation?
What separates us from bots or from “artificial intelligence?”
Is it our ability to understand the expectations placed on us and then refuse to comply (in another word, sin)?
Is it our ability to process data from our experiences and learn from it in order to formulate responses to different stimuli?
I think there’s a certain amount of room to argue that a lot of people aren’t much better than bots -- unable to engage with the world with anything other than a fixed perspective that was imposed on them by someone / something else.
This is a great point, and I think it dovetails nicely with the main point of the article. How much of the internet is bots, algorithms and scripts, or socially engineered "people" bots who can only parrot what they've been told. We might even take it one step further. I have no Twitter, Facebook or Instagram, and I rarely use YouTube. But, I'm still influenced by these platforms. You hear news stories about who said what on Twitter, a news item that broke or was algorithmically promoted on Facebook, or someone's follower count on YouTube, or that someone was de-platformed from one or more of these platforms. That has a sort of "meta" impact.
Another question I might ask is: Given the above, how representative are these platforms of "real life?" I posit that they are not very representative. These platforms have been engineered to create a false social construct in order to move the Overton window, faster and further than without the engineering. But, getting back to your question: What separates us from bots? I would argue that it is critical thinking skills. So, the next question is: Are these platforms sapping us (or enough of us) of those skills?
An example of this comes from Matt Walsh's What is a Woman. I haven't seen the film, but I've seen many clips from it. In one, Walsh visits an African tribe. He asks one of its elders, presumably a person who spends no time on the internet, whether a man can gender identify as a woman. The tribal elder responds simply: No. It's not even a doubt or a nuance for him. He hasn't been socially engineered to think it's possible. That doesn't make either side of this argument "right," in my opinion. It's just an example of the thought process of one who hasn't gone through the internet psyop for the past 40 years.
Wow, you guys went deeeep.The philosophical question of "Are we acting 'bot-like' on the internet.. and, perhaps even more than real bots with our groupthink?" gave me chills.
I've long thought to myself is investing more time on the internet worth it than real life at this point? Who knows.
Your argument about "meta internet narratves," Laramie, spilling into your life makes me think the web is more important than food to many people.
Crazy times. Follow up to this definitely coming up eventually.
I think there’s a pretty deep existential question here: how many PEOPLE are basically just executing on social programming from school, media, etc, and are essentially just parroting values someone told them to believe in brief, shallow discussions between monotonous work shifts where they show up at a certain time to do a certain thing, day after day, with little deviation?
What separates us from bots or from “artificial intelligence?”
Is it our ability to understand the expectations placed on us and then refuse to comply (in another word, sin)?
Is it our ability to process data from our experiences and learn from it in order to formulate responses to different stimuli?
I think there’s a certain amount of room to argue that a lot of people aren’t much better than bots -- unable to engage with the world with anything other than a fixed perspective that was imposed on them by someone / something else.
Dead internet? Or dead collective consciousness?
This is a great point, and I think it dovetails nicely with the main point of the article. How much of the internet is bots, algorithms and scripts, or socially engineered "people" bots who can only parrot what they've been told. We might even take it one step further. I have no Twitter, Facebook or Instagram, and I rarely use YouTube. But, I'm still influenced by these platforms. You hear news stories about who said what on Twitter, a news item that broke or was algorithmically promoted on Facebook, or someone's follower count on YouTube, or that someone was de-platformed from one or more of these platforms. That has a sort of "meta" impact.
Another question I might ask is: Given the above, how representative are these platforms of "real life?" I posit that they are not very representative. These platforms have been engineered to create a false social construct in order to move the Overton window, faster and further than without the engineering. But, getting back to your question: What separates us from bots? I would argue that it is critical thinking skills. So, the next question is: Are these platforms sapping us (or enough of us) of those skills?
An example of this comes from Matt Walsh's What is a Woman. I haven't seen the film, but I've seen many clips from it. In one, Walsh visits an African tribe. He asks one of its elders, presumably a person who spends no time on the internet, whether a man can gender identify as a woman. The tribal elder responds simply: No. It's not even a doubt or a nuance for him. He hasn't been socially engineered to think it's possible. That doesn't make either side of this argument "right," in my opinion. It's just an example of the thought process of one who hasn't gone through the internet psyop for the past 40 years.
Thanks for this article and your comment.
Wow, you guys went deeeep.The philosophical question of "Are we acting 'bot-like' on the internet.. and, perhaps even more than real bots with our groupthink?" gave me chills.
I've long thought to myself is investing more time on the internet worth it than real life at this point? Who knows.
Your argument about "meta internet narratves," Laramie, spilling into your life makes me think the web is more important than food to many people.
Crazy times. Follow up to this definitely coming up eventually.
Isaiah, did you piss off the Amazon gods? Your ebook is currently unavailable for purchase. Any link to an alternate source, any epub format is fine.