Slashdot and the Internet Fallacy
It never fails to amaze how often a post about something vaguely international is a siren-song for the insane to start coming out of the woodwork in favor of their ideology of choice. Take, for example, this article on Slashdot about Chinese military-sponsored cyberattacks. Now, some of the comments are valid. Some even bring up good points to contradict the article in question. Most of these comments are modded Insightful, and most are easily viewed when scanning said comments.
My particular example of a good comment that got modded as such is the person who writes, "What's the first rule of hacking? It's 'never hack from from home.' I know I'd make sure I was bouncing off three computers all over the world before I even took a look at a .gov or a .mil, and I bet the Chinese would do the same." My other example of a good comment outlines the causal fallacy of the original article--stating that the original author's rationale is inherently false: "The author says that just because these attacks were disciplined, they had to be military? Does this rhyme with 'Space exploration is both demanding and dangerous. No other nations could do this if they did not have a space shuttle'?"
As for the rest of the articles, and dare I say the majority of Slashdot itself, conversation devolves into the similar battle of mantras. There are those who decry the United States, those who decry communism, those who decry liberalism, and those who argue that it is in our interest of self-preservation to ensure the U.S. is the most powerful, even if it does become corrupt.
Is there something about the anonymizing function of the screen name that creates such a dysfunctional distance in humanity? Or is it merely the fallacy of self-selecting samples? There are obviously biases that would encourage posting on Slashdot, namely, that a prospective member who shares the same elitist attitudes and self-righteous technophilia as actual Slashdot posters would find his or herself welcome. The propensity for any discussion of Apple, Microsoft, or Linux to lapse into arguments over which posters are which companies' "fanboys" is a fantastic example of the inability of humans to rationally discuss anything.
Much like our friend Ghani (link only to her blog, can't be bothered to look up the actual Weeblog post) once commented about the IMDB's discussion boards for Kingdom of Heaven creating a festering cesspool of anti-Islamic sentiment, it seems Internet discussion boards are just as legitimate as they were at the turn of the decade--that is, not.
I would surmise that anyone reading this post in conjunction with my earlier post about Wikipedia has evaluated my stance on the Internet as a communication tool. Odds are, that opinion is correct. I wholeheartedly reject the idea that the Internet has revolutionized communication. Don't get me wrong, it has definitively revolutionized the methods of communication, and likely that impact will grow ever farther-reaching the more time progresses. But the things we say to each other, the tropes and structures we engage in as behaviors and as groups of human beings, are exactly the same as they have always been. Even if we use emails, VoIP, instant-messaging, or videoconferencing technologies, we are still the same apes arguing over the same ground.
I wonder how long it will take people to recognize that it is not the means that needs improvement.
My particular example of a good comment that got modded as such is the person who writes, "What's the first rule of hacking? It's 'never hack from from home.' I know I'd make sure I was bouncing off three computers all over the world before I even took a look at a .gov or a .mil, and I bet the Chinese would do the same." My other example of a good comment outlines the causal fallacy of the original article--stating that the original author's rationale is inherently false: "The author says that just because these attacks were disciplined, they had to be military? Does this rhyme with 'Space exploration is both demanding and dangerous. No other nations could do this if they did not have a space shuttle'?"
As for the rest of the articles, and dare I say the majority of Slashdot itself, conversation devolves into the similar battle of mantras. There are those who decry the United States, those who decry communism, those who decry liberalism, and those who argue that it is in our interest of self-preservation to ensure the U.S. is the most powerful, even if it does become corrupt.
Is there something about the anonymizing function of the screen name that creates such a dysfunctional distance in humanity? Or is it merely the fallacy of self-selecting samples? There are obviously biases that would encourage posting on Slashdot, namely, that a prospective member who shares the same elitist attitudes and self-righteous technophilia as actual Slashdot posters would find his or herself welcome. The propensity for any discussion of Apple, Microsoft, or Linux to lapse into arguments over which posters are which companies' "fanboys" is a fantastic example of the inability of humans to rationally discuss anything.
Much like our friend Ghani (link only to her blog, can't be bothered to look up the actual Weeblog post) once commented about the IMDB's discussion boards for Kingdom of Heaven creating a festering cesspool of anti-Islamic sentiment, it seems Internet discussion boards are just as legitimate as they were at the turn of the decade--that is, not.
I would surmise that anyone reading this post in conjunction with my earlier post about Wikipedia has evaluated my stance on the Internet as a communication tool. Odds are, that opinion is correct. I wholeheartedly reject the idea that the Internet has revolutionized communication. Don't get me wrong, it has definitively revolutionized the methods of communication, and likely that impact will grow ever farther-reaching the more time progresses. But the things we say to each other, the tropes and structures we engage in as behaviors and as groups of human beings, are exactly the same as they have always been. Even if we use emails, VoIP, instant-messaging, or videoconferencing technologies, we are still the same apes arguing over the same ground.
I wonder how long it will take people to recognize that it is not the means that needs improvement.
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