The Social Dilemma: Hear from a Social Network Analyst

I don't claim to be an expert in the field, but I compel you to have a look at 'The Social Dilemma' on Netflix. I did, and I agreed. Having authored almost 5 research papers on the very thing of recommending things and generating influence maximization, I agreed to almost everything they said. They said, there is a revolution going on and all of you are lab rats, they said you should know about it, and you should :)

I have been writing these articles on Fake News and Rumors for a long while now. Writing papers on polarisation, rumors, and have known a part of the problem for a while now. It does make me think about how small actions by me, as a software developer, will have large impacts.

My life goal, or as Stephen Covey calls it, Personal Mission Statement, is to leave a good impact on the people I meet, and at the places I go and I don't want you to be stuck in this rabbit hole of polarisation, procrastination, suffering anxiety, and craving for attention. I am not a psychologist, and I don't understand how minds work, but I know that Belongingness and Esteem have moved a little further down. A great part of the population that doesn't have to think much of the physiological needs, has those things at the very base of their pyramid.

Think about that for a second. If you have the resources, and the language skills to read this, you probably don't have to wake up every day worried about the bottom 2 tiers. How social media is ruining our very existence by manipulating the base of our pyramids is almost a willful ignorance of the capitalism that bakes its bread in the oven of human emotions.

I have gone on a lot of times before about how much impact the kind and the amount of content you consume can change your outlook, but here is a classic example of the power of influence.

Right now, you have a choice of choosing between Team A, and Team B, make a choice and look at the content based on the team that you have chosen, don't look at the other! Look at the photo for 10 seconds, and think about what she is wearing, where she is looking, and come back!

Team A: Go here

Team B: Go here

Now, both of the people, are welcome to look here!

What did you see? If you are like me, and chose team A, now, or a long time back, you would have seen a girl looking to the left, with beautiful features and is around 25 years young.

If you chose the team B, you would have seen an old woman, partially depressed, who has withered of age and is at least 70 years old.

I made this choice 10-12 years ago, in an optical illusions kit that I bought from a local trade fair for 30 Indian Rupees. It still takes me 8 seconds to actually look at Team B's perspective. That is the power of influence. I invite you to look at the other photo and see what the other team is seeing. These are the stepping stones of empathy.

What's scary is the fact that 10 seconds of exposure to one kind of content changes your way of looking at things for an eternity. Imagine giving that power to a dictator, or worse, imagine giving that power to an AI. Ignore it, or embrace it, you have given it that ability.

If I have scared you, I am sorry, let me put it in a better way. Apes, monkeys, and baboons have the same social needs as us. They have the same mental chemical interactions when they interact with people. They roam in bands of around 40 primates, and the one that is accepted by the most, as a leader, most influential, the one that thinks logically, and can better feed the clan. To become the leader of this pack, you need to be socially acknowledged, but when there are more than about 70-80 primates, they usually have competition that ends up splitting them into two separate groups.

Human beings have evolved from that stage, we have organizations that operate at a much higher size. We have a lot more people interacting.

By becoming a larger group as humans, we have become eerily similar the smallest entity of life, the Cell

-Nipun Aggarwal

How like a cell? Well, Mitochondria is the powerhouse of energy! No, really, there are cells that spend their lives doing only one thing (like copying DNA, making energy), but maintaining the cell as a whole in the process. Human beings too, with the advent of such collaboration at scale, have evolved from managing their own food, life, and survival, to interdependent beings. The impact of how positive that is: is on its own, subjective. It is the technology and this human collaboration that has made me wake up every day not worried about how my wheat will be sown, and focus on building creating software for a team, that would be.

Okay then, technology is good, and also bad: What do I do?

Come with me. I have a challenge for you. If you work in the software industry like me. You have to spend 8 hours of time on technology. I assume you sleep 8 hours a day. All you have to do is for every waking hour that you spend on technology, you need to spend half the waking time away from technology. That is if your job requires 8 hours of work, and you sleep 8 hours, you have to spend 4 hours away from any technology. If you pick up your phone for 30 minutes during the rest of the time, increase those four hours by 15 minutes, for an hour, increase it by 30 minutes. Get the point?

I am going to do that, and it is not going to be easy! If you would walk with me, it won't be that hard either. Willing to do that? Comment. Hate the article? Comment. Like the Article? Share. (Not sure if this is the social validation or the social good that I am looking for here? Comment.)

And yeah, here are my articles on fake news, rumors, and stuff like that => Fake News, Google Scholar