I found that idea interesting. Will we consider it the norm in the future to have a “firewall” layer between news and ourselves?
I once wrote a short story where the protagonist was receiving news of the death of a friend but it was intercepted by its AI assistant that said “when you will have time, there is an emotional news that does not require urgent action that you will need to digest”. I feel it could become the norm.
EDIT: For context, Karpathy is a very famous deep learning researcher who just came back from a 2-weeks break from internet. I think he does not talks about politics there but it applies quite a bit.
EDIT2: I find it interesting that many reactions here are (IMO) missing the point. This is not about shielding one from information that one may be uncomfortable with but with tweets especially designed to elicit reactions, which is kind of becoming a plague on twitter due to their new incentives. It is to make the difference between presenting news in a neutral way and as “incredibly atrocious crime done to CHILDREN and you are a monster for not caring!”. The second one does feel a lot like exploit of emotional backdoors in my opinion.
Yeah, op seems to think minds are weak and endlessly vulnerable. I don’t believe that, not about myself at least
Your mind is subject to cognitive biases that are extremely difficult to work around. For example, your statement is an example of egocentric bias.
All you need is content that takes advantage of a few of those biases and it’s straight in past your defences.
I am fairly armored intellectually, but emotionally, I find it draining to be reminded that war is at my doorsteps and that kids are dying gruesome deaths in conflicts I barely know about.
Yeah I understand people are pretty flawed, and vulnerable to some degree of manipulation. I just think that the idea proposed in this post is not only an overreaction, underestimates people’s ability to reject bullshit. We can’t always tell what’s bullshit, sure, but we don’t need to be treated like we’re too fragile to think for ourselves. Once that happens, we would literally become unable to do so.
I think you’re too optimistic as to how difficult it is to influence people. Just think of the various, obviously false, conspiracy theories that some people still believe. I think that for every person there is some piece of information/news, that is just believable enough without questioning it, that is going to nudge their opinion just ever so slightly. And with enough nudges, opinions can change.
You’re referring to fringe groups. There are a lot of them, but they’re also in the vast minority. But even so, treating adults like especially fragile children isn’t going to help
Yes, only fringe groups believe outlandish conspiracies, but it’s unrealistic to believe that most people, including you, can’t be influenced. Just think of ads or common misconceptions. everyone is susceptible to this to some degree, no one can have their guard up 24/7, regardless of being a child or an adult. Having a “firewall” for everything isn’t a good solution I’d say, but it’s not as if everybody is as resilient as you think.
I don’t think we’re actually disagreeing. I’m not actually saying people are super resilient. Just that we are at all, which the post appears to doubt.