Thanks! Now fixed. I've written this before, but it bears repeating. I LOVE when readers catch these sorts of stupid mistakes, because, even though its a little embarassing at the time, it mostly prevents me from embarassing myself in the same way going forward! So feel free to keep up the good work.
This does not surprise me. Many people vent on social media about frustrations regarding right and wrong which they have not received satisfactory resolution of from the "justice" system....often because of the costs and power imbalances involved. People use it as a way to talk about and live out "fantasies" that they wish could happen but which they would never actually implement due to the means required and consequences involved. Sadly, this does indeed rev up and give support to those prepared to act on these fantasies. A good comparison would be to look at decades of incitement via the media and educational system of Palestinian antisemitism and violence against Jews. Hamas is the result of creating a majority that is prepared to accept the use of such violence to achieve goals that are NOT achievable by other means.
The Effect of Deactivating Facebook and Instagram on Users’ Emotional State.
Hunt Allcott and colleagues report findings from two randomised experiments testing the effect of social media deactivation on users’ emotional state before the 2020 US election. They find that users who deactivated Facebook experienced a 6% improvement in an index of happiness, depression and anxiety, while those who deactivated Instagram experienced a 4% improvement.
Btw, Andrey Mir and Martin Gurri write excellent books and Subsacks about the influence of social media on our (and on our traditional media's business mdels) beliefs and behaviours.
"People high in RWA scored lower on the Permissive Murder scale than did those low in RWA. Explaining this unexpected relationship will have to await future research."
So...why was this an unexpected relationship? It's exactly what I would have predicted. High RWA correlates with law & order.
The victim in question may not have elicited RWA antipathy, whereas a "legitimate" target from an RWA perspective may have elicited a similar response.
e.g. Trump parses the world in expressions that are value judgements void of analysis. As such values become a heuristic, a short cut. Rather like favouring system I vs system II or dichotomous Empathy/Antipathy.
Yes, that is indeed our post hoc interpretation. Going in, I think most of us would have predicted that, in general, people high in authoritarianism (either side) were less likely to support democratic principles in concrete instances. However, it probably does indeed depend on the partisan specifics of that democratic action.
It would have been my propter hoc prediction. Here’s why: the assumption on the left is that guns cause problems. What they really mean is that people having ready access to guns cause problems. But it’s likely that not just most, but overwhelmingly most gun owners are legal owners.
As far as I can tell, there is yet to appear a single NRA member having committed a real gun related crime. And that represents nearly 6 million people, each of whom probably average owning 5-10 firearms. I can’t tell you that no NRA members voted for Biden or Harris, but I can comfortably assure you that damn few did.
The Social Media generation seems also to be afflicted with a bad case of black-and-white thinking (or Comic Book morality), where nuance is obliterated, every party to every dispute is either Good or Evil with no shades of gray and no larger context, and if anyone in their social circle doesn't vehemently denounce the same person or thing at the same time, they become the one who must be denounced.
I don't think people were meant to live inside a glass panopticon, it is inducing a collective nervous breakdown (esp among young women), which is leading to a collective social breakdown. The digital mob is the enemy to comity and sanity and society but it is most dangerous to the members of the mob themselves—the modern information ecosystem is like drinking from the sewer and is poison for the soul. People are so addicted to their devices and they make us all so angry and addled and anxious that it will feel like a great relief sometime in the near future when AI does all our thinking for us.
Social media plus constant internet access plus these surveillance/slot machines we carry in our pockets and sleep with at our heads just might be impossible to reconcile with civilization or a free society.
It is rotting every brain, mine too, one at a time.
Agreed, plus I would add that young persons have higher levels of Dark Triad personality characteristics and less real-world experience. This makes them particularly vulnerable to overreacting to the perpetual stream of daily outrages that course through social media algorithms.
It's not a coincidence that there were such things as Hitler Youth, Mao's Red Guard and Pol Pot's army of child soldiers. Young people have great zeal and energy but little wisdom and experience and thus are easily manipulated by older opportunists. And throw in our constant stream of crowd-sourced moralism where it's (supposedly) easy to judge who is good and who is bad while knowing you'll be rewarded w higher status in your tribe if you give your life to the cause—thus it becomes easy to create a generation of "activists" who know everything except who's pulling their puppet strings.
PS - A decent written recitation on The American Political Party of Violence https://torrancestephensphd.substack.com/p/the-american-political-party-of-violence
Enjoy
II think it’s “sow” discord, like seeds.
Thanks! Now fixed. I've written this before, but it bears repeating. I LOVE when readers catch these sorts of stupid mistakes, because, even though its a little embarassing at the time, it mostly prevents me from embarassing myself in the same way going forward! So feel free to keep up the good work.
I know as a writer I often make mistakes in getting out posts.. so I always appreciate feedback. Much cheaper than hiring an editor.
This does not surprise me. Many people vent on social media about frustrations regarding right and wrong which they have not received satisfactory resolution of from the "justice" system....often because of the costs and power imbalances involved. People use it as a way to talk about and live out "fantasies" that they wish could happen but which they would never actually implement due to the means required and consequences involved. Sadly, this does indeed rev up and give support to those prepared to act on these fantasies. A good comparison would be to look at decades of incitement via the media and educational system of Palestinian antisemitism and violence against Jews. Hamas is the result of creating a majority that is prepared to accept the use of such violence to achieve goals that are NOT achievable by other means.
This track's title only needs a tiny adjustment and perhaps another verse:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHzfhU8t5i8
The Effect of Deactivating Facebook and Instagram on Users’ Emotional State.
Hunt Allcott and colleagues report findings from two randomised experiments testing the effect of social media deactivation on users’ emotional state before the 2020 US election. They find that users who deactivated Facebook experienced a 6% improvement in an index of happiness, depression and anxiety, while those who deactivated Instagram experienced a 4% improvement.
https://www.aporiamagazine.com/p/round-up-does-feminism-induce-a-backlash?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=828904&post_id=164465596&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=6mos7&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email#:~:text=Users%E2%80%99%20Emotional%20State.-,Hunt%20Allcott,-and%20colleagues%20report
Btw, Andrey Mir and Martin Gurri write excellent books and Subsacks about the influence of social media on our (and on our traditional media's business mdels) beliefs and behaviours.
"People high in RWA scored lower on the Permissive Murder scale than did those low in RWA. Explaining this unexpected relationship will have to await future research."
So...why was this an unexpected relationship? It's exactly what I would have predicted. High RWA correlates with law & order.
What am I missing?
The victim in question may not have elicited RWA antipathy, whereas a "legitimate" target from an RWA perspective may have elicited a similar response.
e.g. Trump parses the world in expressions that are value judgements void of analysis. As such values become a heuristic, a short cut. Rather like favouring system I vs system II or dichotomous Empathy/Antipathy.
Yes, that is indeed our post hoc interpretation. Going in, I think most of us would have predicted that, in general, people high in authoritarianism (either side) were less likely to support democratic principles in concrete instances. However, it probably does indeed depend on the partisan specifics of that democratic action.
It would have been my propter hoc prediction. Here’s why: the assumption on the left is that guns cause problems. What they really mean is that people having ready access to guns cause problems. But it’s likely that not just most, but overwhelmingly most gun owners are legal owners.
As far as I can tell, there is yet to appear a single NRA member having committed a real gun related crime. And that represents nearly 6 million people, each of whom probably average owning 5-10 firearms. I can’t tell you that no NRA members voted for Biden or Harris, but I can comfortably assure you that damn few did.
The Social Media generation seems also to be afflicted with a bad case of black-and-white thinking (or Comic Book morality), where nuance is obliterated, every party to every dispute is either Good or Evil with no shades of gray and no larger context, and if anyone in their social circle doesn't vehemently denounce the same person or thing at the same time, they become the one who must be denounced.
I don't think people were meant to live inside a glass panopticon, it is inducing a collective nervous breakdown (esp among young women), which is leading to a collective social breakdown. The digital mob is the enemy to comity and sanity and society but it is most dangerous to the members of the mob themselves—the modern information ecosystem is like drinking from the sewer and is poison for the soul. People are so addicted to their devices and they make us all so angry and addled and anxious that it will feel like a great relief sometime in the near future when AI does all our thinking for us.
Social media plus constant internet access plus these surveillance/slot machines we carry in our pockets and sleep with at our heads just might be impossible to reconcile with civilization or a free society.
It is rotting every brain, mine too, one at a time.
Agreed, plus I would add that young persons have higher levels of Dark Triad personality characteristics and less real-world experience. This makes them particularly vulnerable to overreacting to the perpetual stream of daily outrages that course through social media algorithms.
It's not a coincidence that there were such things as Hitler Youth, Mao's Red Guard and Pol Pot's army of child soldiers. Young people have great zeal and energy but little wisdom and experience and thus are easily manipulated by older opportunists. And throw in our constant stream of crowd-sourced moralism where it's (supposedly) easy to judge who is good and who is bad while knowing you'll be rewarded w higher status in your tribe if you give your life to the cause—thus it becomes easy to create a generation of "activists" who know everything except who's pulling their puppet strings.