THREAD ON THE SOCIAL DILEMMA

Interesting push back against my critique of the self-important Netflix doc
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1304796478892843010.html
I stand by my conclusion that these self-flagellating programmers are delusional. Evidence in the form of replicable studies for their claims lacking

Remember when Bill Joy of Sun Microsystems said 20 years ago that we would soon be engulfed in nanotechnological gray goo?

In the film @JonHaidt says social media causes teen problems esp. in girls, echoing @jean_twenge from her book iGen. But those studies didn't replicate.

Not only did the studies linking social media/screen time to depression/suicide not replicate, they have since been refuted, as @JonHaidt publicly noted. So his appearance in The Social Dilemma must have been filmed before that. Here are some slides from my lecture on the subject

In fact @JonHaidt sent me his slides & the refutation study, attached here, so don't use his appearance in The Social Dilemma as proof of a causal connection. There appears to be none. If there are newer studies indicating otherwise please send them to me. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/2167702618812727

Another push back I got is that @SamHarrisOrg endorsed the film. I have not confirmed that but if so it would fit his larger fear of A.I. as an existential threat, which I do not share. I explain why in a Scientific American column: https://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/17-03-08/#SCIAM

We devoted an issue of Skeptic to A.I. as an existential threat, in which I explain in much greater detail why it isn't (and, yes, as always, we present the other side's best arguments that it is an existential threat).
https://www.skeptic.com/magazine/archives/22.2/

Finally, cognitive scientist Hugo Mercier refutes the larger claims made in The Social Dilemma with empirical studies showing that social media had next to no influence on fake news, the 2016 election, etc. Here is one page summarizing that data.

In conclusion—the tradition of self-flagellating scientists & technologists is a long one, & doomsayer claims about how this or that technology will be the end of us NEVER PAN OUT. The thesis of The Social Dilemma is flawed & the claims of the participants are wrong.

END THREAD