askchapo

I worry that the internet rather than provide people with access to information is providing people with too much wrong information and has actually resulted in huge swathes of people being turned into piles of brainworms, porn addiction and neuroses the likes of which have never been seen before in history.

I am mixed on this, I feel kinda this way but also literally everyone ever has felt this about their time and new technologies or trends. There is evidence that some people appear to be harmed by the light boxes of dopamine but evidence for broad harms is much less good. I can imagine worlds in which the internet was better, but also ones in which it is much worse. When we do look at stuff like worsening mental health outcomes in younger people it's a giant mess of correlated thing, from soc med to worsening economic outlook, climate disasters, reductions in freedom, reductions in physical activity, enclosure etc. To point the finger at any one and emphasise it feels reductive.

If we have reasons to believe that making a technology is harmful we should not do that, but if a technology is available gatekeeping it behind something unrelated to potential to be harmful (e.g. in the votes case the ability to spin up a server. There is no reason to believe this correlates with sound judgement about exposing yourself to the information) is at best patronising. Generally elites have a really terrible track record of making decisions for other people. So I think once the genie is out of the bottle, absent strong evidence to do so, we need to give people access to it.