alt Hacker NewsIf we taught systems thinking in schools things like internet age verification would never get past being an idea on the back of a napkin. People struggle to consider the second-, third-, and nth-order effects of anything so asking them to consider what else might happen if we bring in laws and technical mechanisms to 'protect the children' is unfortunately too a big leap for a lot of them. Most people are bad at spotting causal links between parts of a system, and people who are good at it exploit that.
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In fairness, the evidence is that people already pretty firmly against things like chat control and the will to push it through tends to come from the political circles more than popular belief it is a good idea. I expect that if the measure itself went to a general vote, the majority would be against it once they have to deal with a specific proposal. It takes repeated pushes by the authoritarians looking for an opportunity to get things like speech controls or privacy violations through and the politicians mysteriously give up trying to roll it back no matter what the public pressure might be.
That being said, any expectation of thoughtfulness at all makes politics frustrating. Even basic things like why people keep making small random changes when most of these problems and solutions haven't changed in more than 2 millennia. And there is a pretty easy consensus to come to about what works. The repeated failures of authoritarianism to get to a good place are so consistent it is wild that people keep trying it.
If we taught systems thinking in any educational setting, and it took hold for a significant portion of the population, we would have already transcended into immortal thinking energy beings and age verification debates would be irrelevant....
Well we teach people the health benefits of physical activity school but many don't continue with it.
“Age verification” isn't a problem in itself, the problem is how it's done. They could issue a physical id card with a cryptographic chip and do the age verification in a zero-knowledge fashion and it would be perfectly fine.
The problem is the lack of thinking about the solution and just handwaving “age verification” as a political posture, which is why we end up with half-baked systems.
Do you (or anyone else) have a good resource for learning systems thinking? I might have some from working in SE and just observing the world, but I've never studied it
No, we have any number of social constructs around 'age and responsibility' - driving, alcohol, pubs, porn, excessive violence and so much more.
It's bereft to suggest that we wouldn't nominally have those in the digital world.
And, people are concerned about nth order effects, it's a huge point of debate.
Yes - there is a huge slippery slope argument to be made, but it's an argument ... to be made. There are all sorts of ways of doing this.
Journalists are supposed to be helping the people by doing it.
>> If we taught systems thinking in schools things like internet age verification would never get past being an idea on the back of a napkin. People struggle to consider the second-, third-, and nth-order effects of anything
Does this not imply we also wouldn't get the internet because people would have considered the damage it would also cause?
Most people just want to blame someone else of their problems
You can exploit both ways.
> If we taught systems thinking in schools things like internet age verification would never get past being an idea on the back of a napkin.
What about climate change and the current mass extinction?
And those that are keen to make some noise about it are labelled as being conspiracy minded or against the safety of children.
It causes a situation where because of the potential backlash, even if they are right, few people will come to the defense for fear of being ostracized as well.
Almost anything can be a slippery slope to almost anything. We'd never get anything done.
I know systems thinking, and am in favor of a version of these types of legislation. Give me your best argument from systems thinking, and I'll give you a thoughtful reply.
Systems thinking?
Dude, more that 2 thirds of black kids can barely read [1]
[1] https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/reading/nation/groups/?gra...
> If we taught systems thinking in schools things like internet age verification would never get past being an idea on the back of a napkin.
But why would we do that?
If we taught people how to think, they wouldn't sit their toddlers down in front an iPad for 8+ hours a day to entertain (read: keep them occupied and quiet) them with YouTube videos, sign them up for a Facebook account before they could wipe their own butts, etc.
The sad irony of this age verification thing is that if we had a decent society and parents with common sense, age verification wouldn't even be a topic.
Having grown up through the early-ish days of the web, I'm still surprised the internet in general didn't get an 18+ age rating almost immediately.
Though I suppose that may have something to do with households in the early days having at most one internet connected device even if they were well off, so society could get away with blaming parents for not monitoring kids' use.