This post summarises and elaborates on Neil Postman’s underrated “Amusing Ourselves to Death”, about the effects of mediums (especially television) on public discourse. I wrote this post in 2019 and posted it to LessWrong in 2022.
Looking back at it, I continue to think that Postman’s book is a valuable and concise contribution and formative to my own thinking on this topic. I’m fond of some of the sharp writing that I managed here (and less fond of other bits).
The broader question here is: “how does civilisation set up public discourse on important topics in such a way that what is true and right wins in the limit?” and the weaker one of “do the incentives of online platforms mean that this is doomed?”. This has been discussed elsewhere, e.g. here by Eliezer.
The main limitations that I see in my review are:
Postman’s focus is on the features of the medium, but the more general frame is differing selection pressures on ideas in different environments. As I wrote: “[...] Postman [...] largely ignores the impact of business and economics on how a medium is used. [...] in the 1980s it was difficult to imagine a decentralized multimedia medium [...] The internet [...] is governed by big companies that seek “user engagement” with greater zeal than ever, but its cheapness also allows for much else to exist in the cracks. This makes the difference between the inherent worth of a medium and its equilibrium business model clearer.” I wish I had elaborated more on this, and more explicitly made the generalisation about selection for different properties of ideas being the key factor.
Some more idea of how to model this and identify the key considerations would be useful. For example, the cheapness of the internet allows both LessWrong and TikTok to exist. Is public discourse uplifted by LessWrong more than it is harmed by TikTok? Maybe the “intellectuals” are still the ones who ultimately set discourse, as per the Keynes quote. Or maybe the rise of the internet means that (again following the Keynes quote) the “voices in the air” heard by the “madmen in authority” are not the “academic scribblers of a few years back” but the most popular TiKTok influencers of last week? In addition to what happens in the battle of ideas today, do we need to consider the long-term effects of future generations growing up in a damaged memetic environment, as Eliezer worries? How much of the harm runs through diffuse cultural effects, vs democracy necessarily being buffeted by the winds of the median opinion? What institutions can still make good decisions in an increasingly noisy, non-truth-selecting epistemic environment? Which good ideas / philosophies / ideologies stand most sharply to lose or gain from the memetic selection effects of the internet? How strong is the negativity bias of the internet, and what does this imply about future culture? How much did memetic competition actually intensify, vs just shift to more visible places? Can we quantify this?
Overall, I want to see much more data on this topic. It’s unclear if it exists, but a list of what obtainable evidence would yield the greatest update on each of the above points, plus a literature review to find any that exists, seems valuable.
What do we do next? There are some vague ideas in the last section, but nothing that looks like a battle plan. This is a shame, especially since the epistemics-focused LessWrong crowd seems like one of the best places to find the ideas and people to do something.
Overall, this seems like an important topic that could benefit greatly from more thought, and even more from evidence and plans. I hope that my review and Postman’s book helped bring a bit more attention to it, but they are still far from addressing the points I have listed above.
This post summarises and elaborates on Neil Postman’s underrated “Amusing Ourselves to Death”, about the effects of mediums (especially television) on public discourse. I wrote this post in 2019 and posted it to LessWrong in 2022.
Looking back at it, I continue to think that Postman’s book is a valuable and concise contribution and formative to my own thinking on this topic. I’m fond of some of the sharp writing that I managed here (and less fond of other bits).
The broader question here is: “how does civilisation set up public discourse on important topics in such a way that what is true and right wins in the limit?” and the weaker one of “do the incentives of online platforms mean that this is doomed?”. This has been discussed elsewhere, e.g. here by Eliezer.
The main limitations that I see in my review are:
Postman’s focus is on the features of the medium, but the more general frame is differing selection pressures on ideas in different environments. As I wrote: “[...] Postman [...] largely ignores the impact of business and economics on how a medium is used. [...] in the 1980s it was difficult to imagine a decentralized multimedia medium [...] The internet [...] is governed by big companies that seek “user engagement” with greater zeal than ever, but its cheapness also allows for much else to exist in the cracks. This makes the difference between the inherent worth of a medium and its equilibrium business model clearer.” I wish I had elaborated more on this, and more explicitly made the generalisation about selection for different properties of ideas being the key factor.
Some more idea of how to model this and identify the key considerations would be useful. For example, the cheapness of the internet allows both LessWrong and TikTok to exist. Is public discourse uplifted by LessWrong more than it is harmed by TikTok? Maybe the “intellectuals” are still the ones who ultimately set discourse, as per the Keynes quote. Or maybe the rise of the internet means that (again following the Keynes quote) the “voices in the air” heard by the “madmen in authority” are not the “academic scribblers of a few years back” but the most popular TiKTok influencers of last week? In addition to what happens in the battle of ideas today, do we need to consider the long-term effects of future generations growing up in a damaged memetic environment, as Eliezer worries? How much of the harm runs through diffuse cultural effects, vs democracy necessarily being buffeted by the winds of the median opinion? What institutions can still make good decisions in an increasingly noisy, non-truth-selecting epistemic environment? Which good ideas / philosophies / ideologies stand most sharply to lose or gain from the memetic selection effects of the internet? How strong is the negativity bias of the internet, and what does this imply about future culture? How much did memetic competition actually intensify, vs just shift to more visible places? Can we quantify this?
Overall, I want to see much more data on this topic. It’s unclear if it exists, but a list of what obtainable evidence would yield the greatest update on each of the above points, plus a literature review to find any that exists, seems valuable.
What do we do next? There are some vague ideas in the last section, but nothing that looks like a battle plan. This is a shame, especially since the epistemics-focused LessWrong crowd seems like one of the best places to find the ideas and people to do something.
Overall, this seems like an important topic that could benefit greatly from more thought, and even more from evidence and plans. I hope that my review and Postman’s book helped bring a bit more attention to it, but they are still far from addressing the points I have listed above.