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Elon Musk as educator
- Thread starter MoireBass
- Start date
Twitter/X is so dominant in the online world of short form social media communications that they're a virtual monopoly. If you get kicked off of Twitter/X, then that automatically puts severe limitations on the amount of public exposure your ideas receive.
Whoever is in charge of that company has a lot of power to decide what ideas do or don't get discussed by the public at large. By changing their posting policy to be more inclusive, they're allowing for more content and making more ideas available to the public. If anyone is offended by those ideas, then they can just not look at them.
Or better yet, if you feel those ideas are harmful, then you can use the opportunity to argue against them.
If Elon Musk opens up a new school, it would be only a tiny fraction of a percent of schools available. It's not like you're at some kind of disadvantage in society if you don't get to go there.
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It's fine to be unhappy with it, but it's not like it wasn't happening until Musk bought Twitter and then he provided a place for it to be shared globally. In fact, if Twitter was shut down and zeroed out tomorrow, it's not like all those things we don't care for would go away. They'd show up somewhere else or intensify where they are happening already.
-Mike
I will comment on the Twitter-X/free speech thing: I am a big believer in free speech, which is an especially sensitive topic on college campuses, where I work. I deeply believe that the best response to bad ideas is better ideas and that censorship is self-defeating.
However, where a social media corporation is concerned, it is not quite as simple as that. The reason why not is algorithms, and scale. Algorithm-driven social media companies do NOT provide open platforms where all ideas can be shared and considered on their merits. Their business model works by elevating and promoting the posts that generate the most "engagement." Human psychology being what it is, the kind of material that generates the most engagement is the most divisive, outrageous, and provocative - not the most reasonable or valuable.
Also, the capability of the technology to saturate our mental attention space also means that it causes our social reference instincts to misfire. We tend to think something is true or moral because we hear lots of other people saying so. This is practical enough in small, face-to-face communities that have to cooperate to survive together. But the mass participation of social media throws it wildly out of proportion.
That's why it is utterly morally irresponsible to do what Musk did with Twitter. If he turned off the algorithm altogether, maybe it wouldn't be so bad. But that's not what he's done. Instead, he's re-opened the floodgates to every bad actor to leverage tech to flood the field with BS, so that ideas with merit cannot get a hearing above the roar of the flooding excrement. What he's doing in the name of free speech is actually the opposite of enabling free speech. If he's as smart as everyone says he is, he knows exactly what he's doing.
However, where a social media corporation is concerned, it is not quite as simple as that. The reason why not is algorithms, and scale. Algorithm-driven social media companies do NOT provide open platforms where all ideas can be shared and considered on their merits. Their business model works by elevating and promoting the posts that generate the most "engagement." Human psychology being what it is, the kind of material that generates the most engagement is the most divisive, outrageous, and provocative - not the most reasonable or valuable.
Also, the capability of the technology to saturate our mental attention space also means that it causes our social reference instincts to misfire. We tend to think something is true or moral because we hear lots of other people saying so. This is practical enough in small, face-to-face communities that have to cooperate to survive together. But the mass participation of social media throws it wildly out of proportion.
That's why it is utterly morally irresponsible to do what Musk did with Twitter. If he turned off the algorithm altogether, maybe it wouldn't be so bad. But that's not what he's done. Instead, he's re-opened the floodgates to every bad actor to leverage tech to flood the field with BS, so that ideas with merit cannot get a hearing above the roar of the flooding excrement. What he's doing in the name of free speech is actually the opposite of enabling free speech. If he's as smart as everyone says he is, he knows exactly what he's doing.
In fact, I'll add on here: the early pioneers of social media in Silicon Valley boasted that they were developing a technology that would transform culture, that would transform the very way people think - and they seem to have succeeded. It's only after it unleashed horrible effects (mass shootings, violence worldwide) and people started calling for control and accountability measures (that would take a bite out of their profit growth targets) that they started to backpedal and say they didn't have any influence, that's just unfortunate human nature.
Way back in the 60s or so, CS Lewis wrote a book called the Abolition of Man. It's been a while since I read it and I should revisit it, but he was reacting to the growth of modern psychology and such in tandem with changing social mores. He envisioned these two lines converging; on the one hand, the emergence of a privileged elite whose "freedom" meant that they were unbound by any constraint of tradition or morality: and on the other, the increasing perfection of methods of psychological manipulation, to the point that the population could be made to do whatever the masters of these methods wished to mold them for. Lewis imagined these two trends converging, until a day would arrive when people could be made to do anything by other people who would have no constraint whatsoever on what they might wish to be done.
It's a terrifying and apocalyptic concept, and of course over-schematized and fantastic. But watching the role of algorithmic social media in modern society, I do feel like we're flirting with something very similar to an actual abolition of humanity.
Way back in the 60s or so, CS Lewis wrote a book called the Abolition of Man. It's been a while since I read it and I should revisit it, but he was reacting to the growth of modern psychology and such in tandem with changing social mores. He envisioned these two lines converging; on the one hand, the emergence of a privileged elite whose "freedom" meant that they were unbound by any constraint of tradition or morality: and on the other, the increasing perfection of methods of psychological manipulation, to the point that the population could be made to do whatever the masters of these methods wished to mold them for. Lewis imagined these two trends converging, until a day would arrive when people could be made to do anything by other people who would have no constraint whatsoever on what they might wish to be done.
It's a terrifying and apocalyptic concept, and of course over-schematized and fantastic. But watching the role of algorithmic social media in modern society, I do feel like we're flirting with something very similar to an actual abolition of humanity.
The thing about guys like Elon is that they’d trade it all in to be perceived as funny and/or cool. But they know they never will be.
Absolutely 100% accurate. I would also say the Pandemic accelerated these effects. I really encourage folks to read, or listen to, Doppelganger by Naomi Klein.
I just get the feeling there may be a method to his madness, so to speak.
The privatization of American schools is a major threat to the viability of democratic society.
I’m in full support of options like homeschooling and a diverse set of options outside of public schooling.
But I think many Americans don’t realize that the school system that has been in place in basically its present form for 100 years is in danger of evaporating while it is gradually converted into profit until there is little left.
I’ve been an urban ELA educator for 25 years and hold Masters and Doctoral degrees in education so what I am speaking about comes from long experience and observation.
Much of what you will see is gradual conversion over to for-profit online learning in Math and Reading. If you are in a white or suburban community and don’t see this happening yet it is because the inroads are first being made in schools in communities of color.
I can be given to overstatement, but I don’t think my sense of what is happening and where this is going is far off at all.
Musk isn’t innovating, he’s just diversifying his portfolio into a growth market that is also probably a tax shelter.
I’m in full support of options like homeschooling and a diverse set of options outside of public schooling.
But I think many Americans don’t realize that the school system that has been in place in basically its present form for 100 years is in danger of evaporating while it is gradually converted into profit until there is little left.
I’ve been an urban ELA educator for 25 years and hold Masters and Doctoral degrees in education so what I am speaking about comes from long experience and observation.
Much of what you will see is gradual conversion over to for-profit online learning in Math and Reading. If you are in a white or suburban community and don’t see this happening yet it is because the inroads are first being made in schools in communities of color.
I can be given to overstatement, but I don’t think my sense of what is happening and where this is going is far off at all.
Musk isn’t innovating, he’s just diversifying his portfolio into a growth market that is also probably a tax shelter.
...and this FACT should terrify everyone.
I’m expected to fork over about 15% of instructional time for the year to a company owned by Warner Discovery (60Bn market cap 2023) where they are forced to read articles where a little moving window limits the number of words they can see. It scrolls and the goal is to accelerate.
it’s like a scene from “A Clockwork Orange”. The articles are about things like BitCoin. Teachers (and the district admin, I think) are not allowed to see the articles the children read.
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Alkali Ike
Gold Supporting Member
- Jan 1, 2011
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Sounds like a high school “speed reading” elective class I took around 1970.
Of course it is. But it’s real.
I have been actively fighting this kind of thing for a dozen years, at the sacrifice of my career path and to some extent my personal health due to the stress of it.
DiabolusInMusic
Functionless Art is Merely Tolerated Vandalism
The guy who has been tied to Ghislaine Maxell and whose own kids hate him? Yeah... not sure putting him around more kids is a good idea.
Compared to what?
Can you name any time in history when the big ideas that were discussed in the general public weren't overwhelmingly shaped and manipulated by a tiny minority of media gatekeepers?
I would argue that right now, there is a greater access to a diversity of ideas than ever before.
Thats not to say there aren't significant flaws. For one thing, the inherent nature of the Twitter-X platform means that it appeals to the lowest common denominator. It embodies the very definition of "The dumbing down of society" because it requires that every complex idea expressed on the site must be condensed into a virtual post it note.
But algorithmic flaws and all, Twitter does exist in this form, and it's the dominant method of putting ideas out into the public arena, like it or not.
So the question is: do we want it to be run by people who arbitrarily censor content based on whom they agree with and whom they don't, or by people who are more inclusive and allow a greater diversity of opinion?
What's interesting to me is the fact that so many people are rooting for X to fail. Frankly, I wouldn't mind if that did happen, because it would end their virtual monopoly and hopefully a variety of other platforms will move in to fill the void.
As far as I'm concerned, the more ideas that are readily available to the public, the better - including ideas that are offensive, stupid, or even hateful. Let's get them out in the open where we can see what they are discuss them honestly and judge them on their merits, not on how they make us feel emotionally.
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They’ve thrown out the books in every library in each of the high schools in the city where I teach. Connecticut’s largest.
Free access to information is circling the drain in our society.
I skimmed some of your post, but my takeaway os that you’ve bought into the idea that this new internet thing is something that it in reality is not.
It reads you. You don’t (really) read it.
The information pipeline, while I. Some senses vast, is throttled at many choke points
Imagine trying to start a political movement that is against the interests of these giants…! It will never happen. Not in my lifetime.
