Stewardship of global collective behavior

[Swammerdami]

Social media (and related tech) are bigger threats to humanity than climate change. I've started at least two threads on this important topic; rather than bumping one of those I'll start another.

Vox interviewed some of the authors of a recent journal article.

A group of 17 researchers across disciplines from biology to philosophy published a paper [titled "Stewardship of global collective behavior"] arguing that the impacts of social media should be treated as a “crisis discipline.”
...
The paper argues that our lack of understanding about the collective behavioral effects of new technology is a danger to democracy and scientific progress. For example, the paper says that tech companies have “fumbled their way through the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, unable to stem the ‘infodemic’ of misinformation” that has hindered widespread acceptance of masks and vaccines. The authors warn that if left misunderstood and unchecked, we could see unintended consequences of new technology contributing to phenomena such as “election tampering, disease, violent extremism, famine, racism, and war.”

It’s a grave warning and call to action by an unusually diverse swath of scholars across disciplines — and their collaboration indicates how concerned they are.

[The paper is] a call to arms. It’s saying, “Hey, we’ve got to solve this problem, and we don’t have a lot of time.”

My sense is that social media in particular — as well as a broader range of internet technologies, including algorithmically driven search and click-based advertising — have changed the way that people get information and form opinions about the world.

And they seem to have done so in a manner that makes people particularly vulnerable to the spread of misinformation and disinformation.

... There’s no reason why good information will rise to the top of any ecosystem we’ve designed.

Here's the pdf of the paper under discussion. Of course it is drier and longer-winded than a popular summary! Here are some samples:

... Scientists have confronted this type of problem before. The counterintuitive properties of emergent behavior frustrated early20th century ethologists who reluctantly concluded that animal collectives such as flocking birds must employ telepathy to synchronize their harmonious short-term behaviors (1). To progress beyond these fanciful theories, researchers found ways to directly measure the collective dynamics of animal groups and developed approaches grounded in well-established sensory physiology and evolutionary theory (26, 39, 40). This body of literature has cataloged myriad ways in which collective functionality arises from natural selection shaping the behavioral rules that govern the actions and interactions of group members (41, 42). This research has highlighted that the remarkable capabilities of animal groups are not granted by supernatural forces but rather arise through the adaptation of collective behavior to ecological context (43, 44).
...
The speed of recent changes to our society has largely precluded evolution by natural selection from altering our innate behavior and physiology in response. Hard-wired aspects of our individual and collective behavior are largely relics of earlier ecological and sociological contexts. Cultural evolution happens on a much faster timescale and has radically shaped collective human behavior (36, 51). This process has only accelerated, and our collective behavior now occurs in an environment that is defined by recent innovations in communication technology (e.g., social media, email, television) (53). While ideas for institutions and technology may be traced to individuals, their diffusion and shaping both arise from and alter collective, and historical, processes. Expanding the scale of a collectively behaving system by eight orders of magnitude is certain to have functional consequences. Not only are societies at the scale of ours rare in the natural world;they also are often ecologically unstable where they do form (54). There are many possible challenges such large groups can face. Scarce resources, perhaps resulting from degraded commons or overpopulation, can cause inter-group or inter-individual competition and war (55–57). Although there is evidence that shared commons can be sustainable, it is challenging to make them so—particularly at global scales (47). Even if sufficient resources are available, changes in group size will have a host of functional consequences. Research in statistical physics and opinion dynamics demonstrates that group size can impact the tendency of collectives to settle on decisions (58, 59). Work from the collective intelligence literature suggests intermediate optimal group sizes in complex environments and high-lights the difficulty of wise decision making in large groups (60,61). Evolutionary mechanisms that encourage cooperation or coordination may be scale dependent, requiring institutions such as religion and governance to maintain these properties as group size increases (36, 62–64). Heterogeneous adoption of these institutions may further create conflict and erode cooperation (29,65). In short, changes in scale alone have the potential to alter a group’s ability to make accurate decisions, reach a clear majority, and cooperate.
...
Human collective dynamics are critical to the well-being of people and ecosystems in the present and will set the stage for how we face global challenges with impacts that will last centuries (14, 15,64). There is no reason to suppose natural selection will have endowed us with dynamics that are intrinsically conducive to human well-being or sustainability. The same is true of communication technology, which has largely been developed to solve the needs of individuals or single organizations. Such technology, combined with human population growth, has created a global social network that is larger, denser, and able to transmit higher-fidelity information at greater speed. With the rise of the digital age, this social network is increasingly coupled to algorithms that create unprecedented feedback effects.

 

[Rhea]

I agree that the disinformationcrowd do pose a serious threat.

It is part of what stops work on many other crises, including global warming and pandemic.

 

[Jarhyn]

So, immediate conjugations that spring up in my mind I this topic are "truth dilution" and "filter failure".

As I get older I come to appreciate some forms of death, as life would have had a hard time if, while allowing better forms, the plethora of old forms were still too present to fail to the newer, more tentative, and much smaller population of competition in the niche space.

Information, I think, must be similar. Today, however, old information doesn't time out.

I was playing a game the other day and looked up a map concerning a thing. I used the map I got and failed the task repeatedly. This meant restarting, which was annoying to say the least...

Why did this happen? Because the map was 2 years out of date; and this is a piece of information that was still true when it was posted.

The point of this, though, is that much of what goes up isn't even that; it was a known lie when it went up and went up anyway and will be there forever to be found again and again by those who know nothing of "Snopes".

The inability for information in this day and age to time out is at the core of the mechanism on which the OP's article pivots.

And an active filter can only take so much before the infrequency of selectable information makes such virtually impossible to find in the muck

 

[Swammerdami]

I just happened upon an interesting article in Wired which, though totally unrelated to the points made in the OP-linked article, also fits the theme of "Stewardship of global collective behavior."

In 2014, a team of behavioral scientists from Harvard and Yale tried to save the future—with a little game theory.

Here’s the game part: The researchers broke up a big group of volunteers into five teams they called “generations.” They gave the players designated the first generation 100 points, or “units,” and told them to take some for themselves, up to 20 units each, and then pass the remainder on to the next generation. If the overall pool had 50 units or more at the end of the round, the next generation would get a reset—100 units to start all over, a model of sustainability. If the pool had fewer than 50 units, the next generation got what it got.

Do you want the good news or the bad news? The good: Two-thirds of players were “cooperators,” taking 10 units or fewer and ensuring the survival of the species. The bad: A minority of “defectors” always tanked the game. In 18 rounds of this Intergenerational Goods Game, just four had a first generation abstemious enough to give generation 2 a full reset to 100 units. Of those, only two reset for generation 3. Nobody made it to generation 4.

In a game designed to test how people might plan ahead for a sustainable world, all it took to reliably bring about the apocalypse were a few selfish schmucks—which sounds pretty familiar, actually, but does seem like a ruefully ironic outcome for a paper called “Cooperating With the Future.”
...
[T]his past week has highlighted the pathetic human inability to avoid bad outcomes in a possible future. You can see that in the horrifying collapse of a condominium tower in Surfside, north of Miami Beach, which killed at least 16 people and has left dozens more still unaccounted for. An engineer warned the building’s residents in 2018 about serious damage to the concrete and rebar holding the building up. As recently as last April, the condo board was telling residents that the damage was worsening. But the multimillion-dollar project to fix it—in the works for more than two years—hadn’t yet begun. The Champlain Towers residents of two years ago worried, reasonably, about the impact of the repairs and how much they would cost. The Intergenerational Goods Game showed how bad people are at protecting future generations; in Miami, people couldn’t even protect their own future selves.
...
... [T]he solution to the long-term risk governance issue the game hints at was a simple one: democracy. When the Ivy League dungeonmasters changed the rules just a little bit, forcing every generation to take a binding vote on what their individual unit-take would be … it worked. Every generation took its fair share and left enough for the next generation to get theirs too.

We can do more than cooperate with the future. We can shape it. Telling every individual human to recycle more (even if most folks don’t have access to a municipal recycling program) and drive less (in places where they have no access to good public transit, and housing and services are 45 minutes away from their jobs) won’t avert a single focusing event. The instructions and responsibility have to go in the opposite direction. Every one of us has to demand that our nominal leaders, the people with the authority and resources to fix the infrastructure of human civilization, respond. Their inaction has become murderous—they’re ignoring warnings about failing concrete, and we’re the ones who live in the building.

 

[Elixir]

I just happened upon an interesting article in Wired which, though totally unrelated to the points made in the OP-linked article, also fits the theme of "Stewardship of global collective behavior."

In 2014, a team of behavioral scientists from Harvard and Yale tried to save the future—with a little game theory.

Here’s the game part: The researchers broke up a big group of volunteers into five teams they called “generations.” They gave the players designated the first generation 100 points, or “units,” and told them to take some for themselves, up to 20 units each, and then pass the remainder on to the next generation. If the overall pool had 50 units or more at the end of the round, the next generation would get a reset—100 units to start all over, a model of sustainability. If the pool had fewer than 50 units, the next generation got what it got.

Do you want the good news or the bad news? The good: Two-thirds of players were “cooperators,” taking 10 units or fewer and ensuring the survival of the species. The bad: A minority of “defectors” always tanked the game. In 18 rounds of this Intergenerational Goods Game, just four had a first generation abstemious enough to give generation 2 a full reset to 100 units. Of those, only two reset for generation 3. Nobody made it to generation 4.

In a game designed to test how people might plan ahead for a sustainable world, all it took to reliably bring about the apocalypse were a few selfish schmucks—which sounds pretty familiar, actually, but does seem like a ruefully ironic outcome for a paper called “Cooperating With the Future.”
...
[T]his past week has highlighted the pathetic human inability to avoid bad outcomes in a possible future. You can see that in the horrifying collapse of a condominium tower in Surfside, north of Miami Beach, which killed at least 16 people and has left dozens more still unaccounted for. An engineer warned the building’s residents in 2018 about serious damage to the concrete and rebar holding the building up. As recently as last April, the condo board was telling residents that the damage was worsening. But the multimillion-dollar project to fix it—in the works for more than two years—hadn’t yet begun. The Champlain Towers residents of two years ago worried, reasonably, about the impact of the repairs and how much they would cost. The Intergenerational Goods Game showed how bad people are at protecting future generations; in Miami, people couldn’t even protect their own future selves.
...
... [T]he solution to the long-term risk governance issue the game hints at was a simple one: democracy. When the Ivy League dungeonmasters changed the rules just a little bit, forcing every generation to take a binding vote on what their individual unit-take would be … it worked. Every generation took its fair share and left enough for the next generation to get theirs too.

We can do more than cooperate with the future. We can shape it. Telling every individual human to recycle more (even if most folks don’t have access to a municipal recycling program) and drive less (in places where they have no access to good public transit, and housing and services are 45 minutes away from their jobs) won’t avert a single focusing event. The instructions and responsibility have to go in the opposite direction. Every one of us has to demand that our nominal leaders, the people with the authority and resources to fix the infrastructure of human civilization, respond. Their inaction has become murderous—they’re ignoring warnings about failing concrete, and we’re the ones who live in the building.

It's almost as if today's Republinazis studied that article, and decided it was an urgent call to do away with democracy so they could have more pie.
But seriously, tribal unity is a detriment unless the "tribe" is all encompassing. The higher the population number, the smaller the chance that such universal unity will be attained.
Or put differently, the bigger the population, the bigger the outside threat needed to create unity. We need an alien invasion, an earth crossing asteroid or comet that represents a doomsday threat or something similar, before trivial matters such as Manchin and Sinema's grandstanding will stop controlling our outcomes.

 

[untermensche]

One problem is so-called "education" is not education about the real world and smart kids figure that out real fast and are bored to tears.

Our educational system was constructed by corporations and it is used as a way to find the most intelligent and most compliant people to serve as corporate drones.

Those not useful to the corporate system are discarded and abandoned like garbage.

They are taught a bunch of useless stuff that will not serve them.

They become Qanon members because they know no history.

Knowing history does not serve the corporation. Neither does free thinking.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

It's almost as if today's Republinazis studied that article, and decided it was an urgent call to do away with democracy so they could have more pie.
But seriously, tribal unity is a detriment unless the "tribe" is all encompassing. The higher the population number, the smaller the chance that such universal unity will be attained.
Or put differently, the bigger the population, the bigger the outside threat needed to create unity. We need an alien invasion, an earth crossing asteroid or comet that represents a doomsday threat or something similar, before trivial matters such as Manchin and Sinema's grandstanding will stop controlling our outcomes.

Pretty much this.

I long ago lost the ability to pretend that humanity has what it takes. Life is much more enjoyable while the ship heads for the edge. The problem is cognitive disparity across our species. There isn't enough intelligence and there's far too much superstition. That wouldn't matter if our collective survival didn't depend on our ability to come together. The planet has always been big enough to take the punches and recover. But now we've polluted the entire thing and we continue to keep breeding like the life of our tribe depended on it.

When you meet republitards who adamantly claim that the planet's systems are "self-correcting" you immediately know you're up against people who still depend upon magical thinking to make their decisions. You see stupid shit on hats like "I stand for country but kneel for god." That is mindless inane twaddle that passes for intelligent thought among a large proportion of our population.

We just don't have it. And if past performance is a good indicator of future performance we never will.

 

[TV and credit cards]

Perhaps a person’s vote should be weighted by age. The youngest among us having the most skin in the game having the most voting power.

Regarding the condo collapse. There’ll be a handful of engineers with their final report of what caused the collapse but will it address the human factor?

There are too many people with an “I’ve got mine. Fuck everyone else” attitude. Too many people with an “I’ve got one foot in the grave. Fuck everyone else” attitude.

Imagine the Republicans acquiescing to such an idea as weighted voting.

There’s a time to listen to the people and a time for governance. People should not be permitted to vote on issues they have only a passing understanding of. People should not be permitted to vote on the safety of others. The old should not be permitted to vote on the future of the young.

It is a time for governance. Instead, it seems our next big accomplishment will be to bring high speed internet to rural America so we can further amplify the ignorance of social media.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Perhaps a person’s vote should be weighted by age. The youngest among us having the most skin in the game having the most voting power.

Regarding the condo collapse. There’ll be a handful of engineers with their final report of what caused the collapse but will it address the human factor?

There are too many people with an “I’ve got mine. Fuck everyone else” attitude. Too many people with an “I’ve got one foot in the grave. Fuck everyone else” attitude.

Imagine the Republicans acquiescing to such an idea as weighted voting.

There’s a time to listen to the people and a time for governance. People should not be permitted to vote on issues they have only a passing understanding of. People should not be permitted to vote on the safety of others. The old should not be permitted to vote on the future of the young.

It is a time for governance. Instead, it seems our next big accomplishment will be to bring high speed internet to rural America so we can further amplify the ignorance of social media.

With the condo collapse we have a case of dueling "experts"--I strongly suspect they put more credibility on the report that said no need to panic rather than the ones that said PANIC!

I'd like to see what basis the guy had for the "It's ok" report. I rather suspect he's going to be sued into bankruptcy.

 

[Swammerdami]

Perhaps a person’s vote should be weighted by age. The youngest among us having the most skin in the game having the most voting power.

I've emphasized this and colored it blue because this is an idea and reasoning I strongly support and have recommended in the past (though I don't recall proposing it at TFT.) Chance of adoption seems so tiny, I've never pursued it seriously.

Value of the idea was brought home to me by a conversation with an elderly well-off woman who was once "California's grade-school teacher of the year" or such. I mentioned some looming crisis. Her response was only "Oh. What will this do to my shares in Fannie Mae?"

 

[TSwizzle]

Social media (and related tech) are bigger threats to humanity than climate change. I've started at least two threads on this important topic; rather than bumping one of those I'll start another.

This reads like a collection of control freaks and busybodies that want to censor stuff they don't like. They just want you to have the "correct" information, none of the "misinformation". How Orwellian.

 

[Swammerdami]

Social media (and related tech) are bigger threats to humanity than climate change. I've started at least two threads on this important topic; rather than bumping one of those I'll start another.

This reads like a collection of control freaks and busybodies that want to censor stuff they don't like. They just want you to have the "correct" information, none of the "misinformation". How Orwellian.

"Stop the Steal" has taken over a political party and is endorsed by tens of millions of Americans. Where does it fit in your pantheon of "correct" and "mis" information?

Americans often don't fasten their seat-belts. Should they also be allowed or encouraged to inject bleach into their veins if that's what they want to do?

 

[TSwizzle]

Social media (and related tech) are bigger threats to humanity than climate change. I've started at least two threads on this important topic; rather than bumping one of those I'll start another.

This reads like a collection of control freaks and busybodies that want to censor stuff they don't like. They just want you to have the "correct" information, none of the "misinformation". How Orwellian.

"Stop the Steal" has taken over a political party and is endorsed by tens of millions of Americans. Where does it fit in your pantheon of "correct" and "mis" information?

So, what of it ?

Americans often don't fasten their seat-belts.

Some Americans don't brush their teeth before they go to bed or wash their hands after going to the bathroom. Some drink too much, take drugs, smoke, go sky diving, etc.

Should they also be allowed or encouraged to inject bleach into their veins if that's what they want to do?

Really, is this a big problem ? This is the tipping point where the gatekeepers are appointed guardians of what we can and cannot see ? Fuck that.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Social media (and related tech) are bigger threats to humanity than climate change. I've started at least two threads on this important topic; rather than bumping one of those I'll start another.

This reads like a collection of control freaks and busybodies that want to censor stuff they don't like. They just want you to have the "correct" information, none of the "misinformation". How Orwellian.

Social media among people can be noisy, but that is life. It is when people with fake personas or BOTs take over and attempt to manipulate behavior or opinion that there is trouble that shouldn't be simply condoned as 'free speech'.

 

[Trausti]

Social media (and related tech) are bigger threats to humanity than climate change. I've started at least two threads on this important topic; rather than bumping one of those I'll start another.

This reads like a collection of control freaks and busybodies that want to censor stuff they don't like. They just want you to have the "correct" information, none of the "misinformation". How Orwellian.

Social media among people can be noisy, but that is life. It is when people with fake personas or BOTs take over and attempt to manipulate behavior or opinion that there is trouble that shouldn't be simply condoned as 'free speech'.

 

[TSwizzle]

Social media (and related tech) are bigger threats to humanity than climate change. I've started at least two threads on this important topic; rather than bumping one of those I'll start another.

This reads like a collection of control freaks and busybodies that want to censor stuff they don't like. They just want you to have the "correct" information, none of the "misinformation". How Orwellian.

Social media among people can be noisy, but that is life. It is when people with fake personas or BOTs take over and attempt to manipulate behavior or opinion that there is trouble that shouldn't be simply condoned as 'free speech'.

I don't disagree that fake personas and BOTs should be curtailed but I don't think that's what the article in the OP was aiming at. That article seems like a rant about how the plebs don't vote or behave the way they should because of memes or something.

 

[Trausti]

Social media among people can be noisy, but that is life. It is when people with fake personas or BOTs take over and attempt to manipulate behavior or opinion that there is trouble that shouldn't be simply condoned as 'free speech'.

I don't disagree that fake personas and BOTs should be curtailed but I don't think that's what the article in the OP was aiming at. That article seems like a rant about how the plebs don't vote or behave the way they should because of memes or something.

It is ironic that the supposed threat to democracy is that more people are participating in public discourse.

 

[TSwizzle]

Social media among people can be noisy, but that is life. It is when people with fake personas or BOTs take over and attempt to manipulate behavior or opinion that there is trouble that shouldn't be simply condoned as 'free speech'.

I don't disagree that fake personas and BOTs should be curtailed but I don't think that's what the article in the OP was aiming at. That article seems like a rant about how the plebs don't vote or behave the way they should because of memes or something.

It is ironic that the supposed threat to democracy is that more people are participating in public discourse.

Indeed and there are some who call for an upper age limit for who may vote or not ! I expect these are the same people who lose their shit if they have to show ID at the polling station.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Social media among people can be noisy, but that is life. It is when people with fake personas or BOTs take over and attempt to manipulate behavior or opinion that there is trouble that shouldn't be simply condoned as 'free speech'.

I don't disagree that fake personas and BOTs should be curtailed but I don't think that's what the article in the OP was aiming at. That article seems like a rant about how the plebs don't vote or behave the way they should because of memes or something.

It is ironic that the supposed threat to democracy is that more people are participating in public discourse.

You know, just change that to ‘voting’ and simmer.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Social media among people can be noisy, but that is life. It is when people with fake personas or BOTs take over and attempt to manipulate behavior or opinion that there is trouble that shouldn't be simply condoned as 'free speech'.

I don't disagree that fake personas and BOTs should be curtailed but I don't think that's what the article in the OP was aiming at. That article seems like a rant about how the plebs don't vote or behave the way they should because of memes or something.

Get rid of the manipulation and that helps a lot. I do know from personal experience with social organizations, anonymity is also a notable problem as well. Trolls, attention seekers have infinite noise to communication ratios.

It is tough having nice things because of the minority that want to make things burn.