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walkitouthttps://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abe5641
This is very recent and very science-y! It is even specific to twitter. Hard to beat this for relevancy!
From the abstract:
“Norm learning overshadows reinforcement learning when normative information is readily observable: in ideologically extreme networks, where outrage expression is more common, users are less sensitive to social feedback when deciding whether to express outrage.”
Insensitivity to context and feedback creates control problems for sure. This may be the _best_ description I’ve ever seen of what I think of as the Tiger Dismount Problem.
Also — unrelated to above, but relevant to outrage:
The social world of humanity and just the world in general has a lot of pretty awful aspects. I mean, we all die. There’s a lot of pain. There’s a lot of random. Rocks are hard. Gravity works. Etc. It’s bad. When we are young (and for the purposes of this discussion, young ends sometime _before_ age 40), we have some energy and optimism and belief that we can make things better or find a better place, at least for ourselves if not for everyone. When we are older (and we’re going to assume that older starts around 50, without claiming that 50 is “old” because I don’t want anyone here saying, oh, you don’t know what _old_ really is, you youngster), we have _less_ energy, and we are far less able to sustain the belief that we can make things better for anyone with any reliability because we have way too much personal experience of trying and it not going the way we had hoped.
During one’s 40’s (and yes, this period goes younger AND older, but really, that decade), we still have a fair amount of energy — for some people, this is _peak_ energy years — and the world still sucks, and we are at kind of still point on the pendulum where we can see clearly _and with energy_ the absolute pointlessness of it all AND WE CAN SEE HOW NO CHOICE REALLY CHANGES ANYTHING IN A WAY THAT WE HAD ONCE BEEN ABLE TO HOPE AND BELIEVE.
We know, in our 40’s, that we can make changes, and that they will never be what we had hoped they would be. Reach exceed grasp. Hopelessness. Blah blah blah. Not saying anything new here. People have made this observation before.
So why do I mention this. Well, I mean _look_ at the median age in the United States. It’s like 38? 39? We still have energy, enough to fully take on board and _Feel_ the awfulness and disappointment.
Good news, tho. As you get older, you care less.
On a totally unrelated note, this is probably the real reason advertisers don’t advertise to people over a Certain Age in general, and why so many of us look at the ads that _are_ aimed at this past one’s 40’s age group and shake our head at Who Are These Ads For Anyway.
This is very recent and very science-y! It is even specific to twitter. Hard to beat this for relevancy!
From the abstract:
“Norm learning overshadows reinforcement learning when normative information is readily observable: in ideologically extreme networks, where outrage expression is more common, users are less sensitive to social feedback when deciding whether to express outrage.”
Insensitivity to context and feedback creates control problems for sure. This may be the _best_ description I’ve ever seen of what I think of as the Tiger Dismount Problem.
Also — unrelated to above, but relevant to outrage:
The social world of humanity and just the world in general has a lot of pretty awful aspects. I mean, we all die. There’s a lot of pain. There’s a lot of random. Rocks are hard. Gravity works. Etc. It’s bad. When we are young (and for the purposes of this discussion, young ends sometime _before_ age 40), we have some energy and optimism and belief that we can make things better or find a better place, at least for ourselves if not for everyone. When we are older (and we’re going to assume that older starts around 50, without claiming that 50 is “old” because I don’t want anyone here saying, oh, you don’t know what _old_ really is, you youngster), we have _less_ energy, and we are far less able to sustain the belief that we can make things better for anyone with any reliability because we have way too much personal experience of trying and it not going the way we had hoped.
During one’s 40’s (and yes, this period goes younger AND older, but really, that decade), we still have a fair amount of energy — for some people, this is _peak_ energy years — and the world still sucks, and we are at kind of still point on the pendulum where we can see clearly _and with energy_ the absolute pointlessness of it all AND WE CAN SEE HOW NO CHOICE REALLY CHANGES ANYTHING IN A WAY THAT WE HAD ONCE BEEN ABLE TO HOPE AND BELIEVE.
We know, in our 40’s, that we can make changes, and that they will never be what we had hoped they would be. Reach exceed grasp. Hopelessness. Blah blah blah. Not saying anything new here. People have made this observation before.
So why do I mention this. Well, I mean _look_ at the median age in the United States. It’s like 38? 39? We still have energy, enough to fully take on board and _Feel_ the awfulness and disappointment.
Good news, tho. As you get older, you care less.
On a totally unrelated note, this is probably the real reason advertisers don’t advertise to people over a Certain Age in general, and why so many of us look at the ads that _are_ aimed at this past one’s 40’s age group and shake our head at Who Are These Ads For Anyway.