I wonder if a true meaningful deliberation is possible between strangers on a widespread scale with social media, period. We can sometimes manage it between smaller groups of people with some degree of shared norms, at least epistemic norms and some minimum baseline of social norms and some degree of competence at disagreeing constructively. But it is unfortunately very clear that those conditions are not present in current digital spaces, regardless of whether those seem "tyrannical" or not to people who have had bad experiences with them.
Those conditions may well also not have been possible face to face, especially once we grew larger than the ancient Polis, and even that seems like a borderline case. We just didn't realize how far we were from the deliberative ideal until we started looking closely at what was really happening because the "polarization" and so on became so dramatic.
Reputation is not to me a solution to the problem of social media not being social in the more fully human sense because reputation is so easily manipulated and we have no solution to that problem other than some sort of agreed upon reliable certification process or some sort of agreed upon fair deliberative process. And we are lacking either of those, at least in any broadly agreed on form.
Well, in real life that "certification process" happens because, in our disputes, we *bet* reputation. That's what keeps us honest. Emotional expressions themselves come along with them these bets. ...and are very much like poker. When functioning well, folks tend to behave, lest they get caught in a bluff and lose lots of reputation. But, today's social networks don't have the needed structures allowing the normal functioning socio-emotional signaling systems that enable the "honest" movement of decentralized reputation currency. Anyhoo, that's what the book is about, what we're up to at FreeX.group, and what I talk here and there about at the YouTube series.
I wonder if a true meaningful deliberation is possible between strangers on a widespread scale with social media, period. We can sometimes manage it between smaller groups of people with some degree of shared norms, at least epistemic norms and some minimum baseline of social norms and some degree of competence at disagreeing constructively. But it is unfortunately very clear that those conditions are not present in current digital spaces, regardless of whether those seem "tyrannical" or not to people who have had bad experiences with them.
Those conditions may well also not have been possible face to face, especially once we grew larger than the ancient Polis, and even that seems like a borderline case. We just didn't realize how far we were from the deliberative ideal until we started looking closely at what was really happening because the "polarization" and so on became so dramatic.
Reputation is not to me a solution to the problem of social media not being social in the more fully human sense because reputation is so easily manipulated and we have no solution to that problem other than some sort of agreed upon reliable certification process or some sort of agreed upon fair deliberative process. And we are lacking either of those, at least in any broadly agreed on form.
Best to you Mark.
Well, in real life that "certification process" happens because, in our disputes, we *bet* reputation. That's what keeps us honest. Emotional expressions themselves come along with them these bets. ...and are very much like poker. When functioning well, folks tend to behave, lest they get caught in a bluff and lose lots of reputation. But, today's social networks don't have the needed structures allowing the normal functioning socio-emotional signaling systems that enable the "honest" movement of decentralized reputation currency. Anyhoo, that's what the book is about, what we're up to at FreeX.group, and what I talk here and there about at the YouTube series.
Got it, thanks for sharing your thoughts and for that helpful clarification Mark.