Social media are impeding rationality

I believe that social media, as the primary method of communication between people, does not help them make decisions rationally, and will try to gather a few indications towards that statement.

  • 😲 Information overload

    The sheer amount of information a user faces on any social network I've seen and anyone's using, be it Facebook, (née Twitter), is overwhelming. You can never reach the end of the feed even though you spend way too much time reading it.

  • 🫧 Bubbles

    • To cope with huge volumes of information,
    • and to avoid negative emotion,

    formation of bubbles is hard to avoid.

  • 😫 No reasoning aid

    Theoretically, social networks could help promote reasoning in discussions by technical methods:

    • Argument Mapping,
    • Detection of known systematic fallacies,
    • Promotion of certain common arguments the opponents can agree upon,

    but none of that is done, to my current knowledge.

  • 👎 Low level of discussions

    My personal feeling is that discussions on social media are generally of extremely low quality.

    • People will repeatedly reference statements which long ago have been disproven, and additional effort is required to reiterate on discussing them,
    • Even the simplest, the crudest fallacies like ad hominem are used routinely.

  • 🪫 Polarization

    All of that seems to radicalize people; persons who seemed to be more or less willing to find a compromise will find themselves much more radical after a few web holy wars.

  • 😠 Social network is an agent itself

    • Attempts to regulate the tone of discussions,
    • or to inject some rationality by slapping COVID or climate change related banners on any post which seems to be touching upon the subject,

    make the social network a privileged actor in all discussions on the platform, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

    • Oftentimes, users don't agree with the actions of the network,
    • And even if they do, they feel annoyed seeing the same stupid banners about vaccination time and again, -- what are you going to try convincing me about next Mr Zuckerberg, that 2 + 2 = 4 or what?

Social media are poor tools for rational discussion and decision making, probably because these are not goals towards which social networks are incentivized.