alt Hacker NewsIs hate, fear, or envy by themselves wrong, or only wrong when misdirected?
What if social media and the internet at large is now exposing people to things which before ha been kept hidden from them, or distorted? Are people wrong to feel hate?
I know the time before the internet, when a very select few decided what the public should know and not know, what they should feel, what they should do and how they should behave. The internet is not the first mass communications, neither are social media or LLMs. The public has been manipulated and mind primed by mass media for over a century now.
The largest bloodshed events World War I and II were orchestrated by lunatics screaming in the radio or screaming behind a pulpit, and the public eagerly being herded by them to the bloodshed.
This comment isn't in opposition to yours, it's just riffing on what you said.
> Is hate, fear, or envy by themselves wrong, or only wrong when misdirected?
I think they are natural feelings that appear due to various reason. People struggle for centuries to control their impulses and this was used for millennia in the advantage of whom could manipulate them.
The second world war did not appear in a "happy world". It might even have started due to the great depression. For other conflicts, similarly - I don't think situation was great before them for most people.
I am afraid that social networks just expose better what happens in people's heads (which would be worrying as it could predict larger scale conflicts) rather than making normal people angry (which would be solved by just reducing social media). Things are never black and white, so probably is something in between. Time will tell if closer to first or second.