alt Hacker NewsI recently saw this https://arxiv.org/pdf/2503.11714 on conversational networks and it got me thinking that a lot of the problem with polarization and power struggle is the lack of dialog. We consume a lot, and while we have opinions too much of it shapes our thinking. There is no dialog. There is no questioning. There is no discussion. On networks like X it's posts and comments. Even here it's the same, it's comments with replies but it's not truly a discussion. It's rebuttals. A conversation is two ways and equal. It's a mutual dialog to understand differing positions. Yes elite can reshape what society thinks with AI, and it's already happening. But we also have the ability to redefine our networks and tools to be two way, not 1:N.
Replies
Humans can only handle dialog while under the Dunbar's law / limit / number, anything else is pure fancy.
I recommend reading "In the Swarm" by Byung-Chul Han, and also his "The Crisis of Narration"; in those he tries to tackle exactly these issues in contemporary society.
His "Psychopolitics" talks about the manipulation of masses for political purposes using the digital environment, when written the LLM hype wasn't ongoing yet but it can definitely apply to this technology as well.
Dialogue you mean, conversation-debate, not dialog the screen displayed element, for interfacing with the user.
The group screaming the louder is considered to be correct, it is pretty bad.
There needs to an identity system, in which people are filtered out when the conversation devolves into ad-hominem attacks, and only debaters with the right balance of knowledge and no hidden agenda's join the conversation.
Reddit for example is a good implementation of something like this, but the arbiter cannot have that much power over their words, or their identities, getting them banned for example.
> Even here it's the same, it's comments with replies but it's not truly a discussion.
For technology/science/computer subjects HN is very good, but for other subjects not so good, as it is the case with every other forum.
But a solution will be found eventually. I think what is missing is an identity system to hop around different ways of debating and not be tied to a specific website or service. Solving this problem is not easy, so there has to be a lot of experimentation before an adequate solution is established.