Google, democracy and the truth about internet search

[PeaceBaby]

I'm in agreement here. Google is not impartial in any way, though they take pains to portray themselves that way. What I take issue with is their using that "impartial" image as a shield to abdicate responsibility. Which leads to the question: What, if any policy, could be used to address this? Putting aside the question if there's any political impetus to implement it, what can be done to prevent such fiddling while Rome burns?

Yes, I hear you. In some ways, what's happened is that Google failed to realize the lengths people will go to in order to "game" their algorithm. I do think Google was more sincere at one point in time. People are the issue too. Google created a set of rules to follow in order for websites to be ranked, but there are so many ways to circumvent that or take shortcuts. Some folks go for a "churn and burn" style of making websites, setting up sites that will only make money for a few months at best from natural search.

The only thing to fix such a thing is that Google has to get competitive about delivering the best search engine results possible. The most significant factor that will force them to do this is a challenge to their core business, natural search, imo.

In the meantime, use Bing. They are the closest competitor atm at 4% of market share.

Search engine market share worldwide | Statista

 

[nonsequitur]

Yes, I hear you. In some ways, what's happened is that Google failed to realize the lengths people will go to in order to "game" their algorithm. I do think Google was more sincere at one point in time. People are the issue too. Google created a set of rules to follow in order for websites to be ranked, but there are so many ways to circumvent that or take shortcuts. Some folks go for a "churn and burn" style of making websites, setting up sites that will only make money for a few months at best from natural search.

The only thing to fix such a thing is that Google has to get competitive about delivering the best search engine results possible. The most significant factor that will force them to do this is a challenge to their core business, natural search, imo.

In the meantime, use Bing. They are the closest competitor atm at 4% of market share.

Search engine market share worldwide | Statista

I'm wondering if the best strategy is to use Bing though. They also use tracking and if/once they reach a certain size they'll be open to exactly the same problem as Google. Where there's a market to be gamed, people will step in. I'm using Duckduckgo. 5 Alternative Search Engines That Respect Your Privacy But as you said, the competition needs to reach a certain size to force google to re-examine what it's doing.

For those who are as worried about tracking as I am (but less so about the digital space being gamed), here's a good resource to get around that while continuing to use common search engines: How to Stop Google, Yahoo & Bing from Tracking Your Clicks

 

[PeaceBaby]

I'm wondering if the best strategy is to use Bing though. They also use tracking and if/once they reach a certain size they'll be open to exactly the same problem as Google. Where there's a market to be gamed, people will step in. I'm using Duckduckgo. 5 Alternative Search Engines That Respect Your Privacy But as you said, the competition needs to reach a certain size to force google to re-examine what it's doing.

You can block ads in a variety of ways, use the Tor browser for privacy (which had an announced vulnerability last week as did Firefox but I haven't checked yet to see if a fix has been released) and surf on a VPN. I should make a comprehensive post sometime on the topic, and you know, I think there's one around here too. I will look for it.

 

[Coriolis]

I'm wondering if the best strategy is to use Bing though. They also use tracking and if/once they reach a certain size they'll be open to exactly the same problem as Google. Where there's a market to be gamed, people will step in. I'm using Duckduckgo. 5 Alternative Search Engines That Respect Your Privacy But as you said, the competition needs to reach a certain size to force google to re-examine what it's doing.

For those who are as worried about tracking as I am (but less so about the digital space being gamed), here's a good resource to get around that while continuing to use common search engines: How to Stop Google, Yahoo & Bing from Tracking Your Clicks

I use Duckduckgo also, and for the same reasons, but there is more to all of this than tracking. That being said, more and more people nowadays seem unwilling to put out even modest levels of effort to avoid being tracked, and to retain control of their information and their choices, at least as much as possible. That just facilitates the gaming of digital space.

 

[nonsequitur]

You can block ads in a variety of ways, use the Tor browser for privacy (which had an announced vulnerability last week as did Firefox but I haven't checked yet to see if a fix has been released) and surf on a VPN. I should make a comprehensive post sometime on the topic, and you know, I think there's one around here too. I will look for it.

I would use Tor but it's blocked where I live (should tell you something about the govt here). I already use a VPN with my incognito browser, but am under no illusions that it's completely anonymous.. Would greatly appreciate such a post!

I use Duckduckgo also, and for the same reasons, but there is more to all of this than tracking. That being said, more and more people nowadays seem unwilling to put out even modest levels of effort to avoid being tracked, and to retain control of their information and their choices, at least as much as possible. That just facilitates the gaming of digital space.

Yes, when I tell my colleagues/family about what I do to avoid getting tracked, I get treated like I'm wearing a tin foil hat. They take the attitude that "if we don't do anything wrong, it's no problem to give out our data". I don't do anything incriminating either, but am very very concerned about how my information might be used to manipulate me.

 

[Merced]

Here's an example: what if, when you went to the library, you were met with ads at the door, that the librarians were paid incentives to recommend to you one book over another but you didn't know that, and that some of the books on the easiest shelves to reach or on the first floor were the ones that paid the most money to be there? That you didn't realize some people used every advantage they could, even those against the "rules" to make sure their books were the ones you saw? And every time you saw those books, never mind checked them out of the library, they made money from that too. And that no one actually checked that any of these so-called "best books" were true or accurate in any way? That's kinda the environment social media most profits from, and although Google has supposed quality scores, they profit from this model as well. All of those websites too that you see linked on FB, the ones that make you click 5 pages to view the whole story, with some garbage feel-good content or "controversial" news story -- they generate revenue on a CPM (cost per thousand) model, meaning someone gets paid just because you potentially SAW the ad, never mind clicked on it. Lots of people have no awareness of how this works or how deep targetting and retargetting works based on your seach history. All data-mined and every penny squeezed out of the study of human patterns.

You know when you have a word on the tip of your tongue but you can't quite find it?

Practices you described in that example are far from new. There's a word for that type of marketing that has existed for decades. Everything around us, both technological and not, is strategically placed. Walmarts, Walgreens, CVS, they are arranged the way they are because of convenience and how quickly you can see certain products. It's pretty manipulative but all marketing is in some way, shape, or form manipulative. They are hitting the notes you didn't even know you wanted to hear.

This being transferred to the world wide web does not shock me. It again makes me ask why should a company stop doing something that works because it works better for then than others? Gatorade, Hershey's, and ESPECIALLY Coca-Cola do the exact same thing.

 

[Poki]

Here's an example: what if, when you went to the library, you were met with ads at the door, that the librarians were paid incentives to recommend to you one book over another but you didn't know that, and that some of the books on the easiest shelves to reach or on the first floor were the ones that paid the most money to be there? That you didn't realize some people used every advantage they could, even those against the "rules" to make sure their books were the ones you saw? And every time you saw those books, never mind checked them out of the library, they made money from that too. And that no one actually checked that any of these so-called "best books" were true or accurate in any way?

That's kinda the environment social media most profits from, and although Google has supposed quality scores, they profit from this model as well. All of those websites too that you see linked on FB, the ones that make you click 5 pages to view the whole story, with some garbage feel-good content or "controversial" news story -- they generate revenue on a CPM (cost per thousand) model, meaning someone gets paid just because you potentially SAW the ad, never mind clicked on it.

Lots of people have no awareness of how this works or how deep targetting and retargetting works based on your seach history. All data-mined and every penny squeezed out of the study of human patterns.

But the question is...do i enjoy what they push on me? If i dont, i will find something else preferable. That is the ying to the yang.

I dont personally care about money its a ying and yang to me...i dont care about principle. Its not an Fi vs Ti thing either. Its a perception within the person...perception is focused as opposed to big picture when it comes to principle issues and Fi. *cough* what some deem as "values".

 

[Poki]

My cookies and history are cleared on browser exit and i dont stayed logged into google as i search nor do i use chrome.

I also prefer knowledge as opposed to reading for opinion. I build my own opinion, which means i will expand out beyond media and tie it with actual facts. For example...i watched Trump speeches and looks at his exact words and tone and built an understanding of media and trump using a compare and contrast with my own impression, its like a back and forth balance of multiple layers and levels. I do that with everything.

 

[PeaceBaby]

You know when you have a word on the tip of your tongue but you can't quite find it?

Practices you described in that example are far from new. There's a word for that type of marketing that has existed for decades. Everything around us, both technological and not, is strategically placed. Walmarts, Walgreens, CVS, they are arranged the way they are because of convenience and how quickly you can see certain products. It's pretty manipulative but all marketing is in some way, shape, or form manipulative. They are hitting the notes you didn't even know you wanted to hear.

This being transferred to the world wide web does not shock me. It again makes me ask why should a company stop doing something that works because it works better for then than others? Gatorade, Hershey's, and ESPECIALLY Coca-Cola do the exact same thing.

I agree that marketing is not new, and emotional manipulation to encourage you to buy things is not new.

The difference however is that you know they are companies trying to sell you something. The library is not a venue where you would possess a similar expectation. Regular people think of Google as that helpful librarian trying to lead you to knowledge. And of course we know the librarian has an opinion too, but that influence is more measured and studied as a balance point in how she will help her patrons. Google's delivery of results is (ironically because it's math and therefore should be less so) more biased and they've come up with many add-ons and contortions to the algorithm to try to account for that and be less so, with a wide variety of results. They're tweaking it all the time.

It's one of the reasons why dmoz and the bestoftheweb directories started years ago, to add a human factor to the vetting of web results. Buuuut, they also fell apart for a bunch of reasons but to me mainly because only a handful of people relative to the population were vetting and controlling the results. For dmoz, back-door deals where you could pay off the person in a category for a backlink ... botw since they too needed to become a revenue generating entity and paying for links is never unbiased.

And the practices I described - they've been transferred from being knowledge available to only a handful of specialized marketers to the knowledge of the internet marketing masses. Copywriting techniques in the hands of many become manipulation on a mass scale. It's knowing enough to be dangerous. It's the origin of all of these clickbait headlines and so much more.

But the question is...do i enjoy what they push on me? If i dont, i will find something else preferable. That is the ying to the yang.

I dont personally care about money its a ying and yang to me...i dont care about principle. Its not an Fi vs Ti thing either. Its a perception within the person...perception is focused as opposed to big picture when it comes to principle issues and Fi. *cough* what some deem as "values".

What do you mean exactly Poki? I'm not sure what your point is.

For me, it's driven by principle because Google started as a librarian and became a salesperson. And not a classy salesperson, more like the used car cliche salesperson in a nice suit. Google is the primary "library" people are using, and it's the only one most people know exist. Another library would be a help.

It's fascinating in a way to witness the exploitation of search engine results and social media adverts, but the door was opened to that because of that desire to make money, gobs and gobs of it. And I've made a lot of money from running sites with advertising myself, so I've been a part of that, for right or wrong, better or worse. I can play the game, but regular folks don't even know that Google is one.

 

[cascadeco]

It is free speech, but Google is not impartial in any way, never has been. Partiality is integrated into the very design of how the ranking algorithm sorts search engine results for any particular keyword. One of the known key factors is based on the idea of popularity, of both quality and quantity of links to pointing to any particular web property. Since when is popularity a high probability of quality in any environment, after all? Oh sure, Google blathers on about high quality content, but they happily raked in the cash on "made for Adsense" sites for years. Now they have imposed some higher bars for quality, since it suits them, and they continue to generate massive revenue too from the Adwords program showing you paid results at the top and bottom of your search engine results. hehe impartial Google is not.

Thinking that Google has high quality search engine results has been a fiction for a very long time. When Google introduced the concept of Adsense back in 2003 it was very apparent then that profits were going the key motivators from that point forward. Facebook joined the party and social scores from these sites started to infiltrate the algorithm as well. The city you link in the article above no doubt generates most of their revenue here, since Facebook has been allowing (what I have seen as) far lower quality scores for ads they permit to be seen on the platform -- and for the last year in particular. It's the almighty buck that drives the car and is basically the equivalent of Google profitting from their paid ads platform for all of these years. Who cares about quality while you amass revenue? Then, after the money's been raked in to provide stability, well, let's worry about a little integrity once the dust has settled.

The same thing is tied into any search engine platform on individual sites, too. As a simple example, the art site I sell things on has been up and running for years. The sellers who got on board fairly early on in the game have a much higher likelihood of landing at the top of any results list, as the company is in the interest of maximizing its sales, and it's going to push the known sellers at the top of the list. Some of these are quality, some of them are highly mediocre. There are thousands of better pieces that don't sell. It's part of the nature of any business however, so it's just a bit of reality. There are a key probably hundred or so people who make multiple sales daily as a result, and the tens of thousands of everyone else are rarely seen. It's the same story on any selling platform, after all, someone is gonna show up at top, and everyone else falls somewhere below. All of it is based on popularity. What has been proven to be sellable? (though I realize this is off topic to OP, sorry)

 

[1487610420]

How long has the concept of a job been around? Rude awakening sheeple...

 

[SearchingforPeace]

I posted this February, but it fits this thread. How the internet flips elections and alters our thoughts | Aeon Essays

...

We predicted that the opinions and voting preferences of 2 or 3 per cent of the people in the two bias groups – the groups in which people were seeing rankings favouring one candidate – would shift toward that candidate. What we actually found was astonishing. The proportion of people favouring the search engine’s top-ranked candidate increased by 48.4 per cent, and all five of our measures shifted toward that candidate. What’s more, 75 per cent of the people in the bias groups seemed to have been completely unaware that they were viewing biased search rankings. In the control group, opinions did not shift significantly.

....

Does the company ever favour particular candidates? In the 2012 US presidential election, Google and its top executives donated more than $800,000 to President Barack Obama and just $37,000 to his opponent, Mitt Romney. And in 2015, a team of researchers from the University of Maryland and elsewhere howed that Google’s search results routinely favoured Democratic candidates. Are Google’s search rankings really biased? An internal report issued by the US Federal Trade Commission in 2012 concluded that Google’s search rankings routinely put Google’s financial interests ahead of those of their competitors, and anti-trust actions currently under way against Google in both the European Union and India are based on similar findings.

....

Mind control is real. Advertising works to manipulate us and control us....and Google is trying to shape our perceptions....

 

[Coriolis]

But the question is...do i enjoy what they push on me? If i dont, i will find something else preferable. That is the ying to the yang.

I dont personally care about money its a ying and yang to me...i dont care about principle. Its not an Fi vs Ti thing either. Its a perception within the person...perception is focused as opposed to big picture when it comes to principle issues and Fi. *cough* what some deem as "values".

Sure - I know enough not to respond to seller sales tactics when they are not selling what I want (helps to go in with a specific list). But I prefer not to be constantly having to ignore or filter out their commercial propaganda. It is litter on the mental landscape for me; distraction I neither want nor need. I do my best IRL to avoid commercials of all sorts except in print, e.g. the Sunday paper, where I can pick and choose which ones to read, and peruse them for as much or as little time as I like.

My cookies and history are cleared on browser exit and i dont stayed logged into google as i search nor do i use chrome.

I do the highlighted as well, and I don't even have a google account - or facebook, twitter, pinterest, etc.

 

[nonsequitur]

But the question is...do i enjoy what they push on me? If i dont, i will find something else preferable. That is the ying to the yang.

I dont personally care about money its a ying and yang to me...i dont care about principle. Its not an Fi vs Ti thing either. Its a perception within the person...perception is focused as opposed to big picture when it comes to principle issues and Fi. *cough* what some deem as "values".

The thing is - this leads to the "echochamber" effect, doesn't it? If your search results are tailored to what they think is "of interest" to you, naturally you'll get results that support your views. This is done to make money, because if you find stuff that you like and want to read about further, you'll click - generating ad money for google.

I agree that marketing is not new, and emotional manipulation to encourage you to buy things is not new.

The difference however is that you know they are companies trying to sell you something. The library is not a venue where you would possess a similar expectation. Regular people think of Google as that helpful librarian trying to lead you to knowledge. And of course we know the librarian has an opinion too, but that influence is more measured and studied as a balance point in how she will help her patrons. Google's delivery of results is (ironically because it's math and therefore should be less so) more biased and they've come up with many add-ons and contortions to the algorithm to try to account for that and be less so, with a wide variety of results. They're tweaking it all the time.

It's one of the reasons why dmoz and the bestoftheweb directories started years ago, to add a human factor to the vetting of web results. Buuuut, they also fell apart for a bunch of reasons but to me mainly because only a handful of people relative to the population were vetting and controlling the results. For dmoz, back-door deals where you could pay off the person in a category for a backlink ... botw since they too needed to become a revenue generating entity and paying for links is never unbiased.

And the practices I described - they've been transferred from being knowledge available to only a handful of specialized marketers to the knowledge of the internet marketing masses. Copywriting techniques in the hands of many become manipulation on a mass scale. It's knowing enough to be dangerous. It's the origin of all of these clickbait headlines and so much more.

Yes, this is what is disturbing to me. Marketing - making ads, showing them on TV, we're well aware that we're being sold something. When our entire digital space is shaped to support our views, encourage consumerism and take out drive our thoughts in a certain direction - all the while being given an illusion of choice - that's when it gets disturbing. That's what horrified me. If it's driven by "markets" that are easily manipulated using fake sites/articles, facts don't matter. Double/triple-checking for multiple sources doesn't matter. Our impression of evidence is driven wholesale in a certain direction when for e.g. 9/10 search results suggest something - even if historically speaking whatevery they claim has no basis in fact and is simply opinion. It's psychology hacking at its most primitive. We tend to conform to what we observe, and what we observe (on a medium that most of us spend 11 h a day on U.S. Adults Spend 11 Hours Per Day With Digital Media [CHART] ) can be hacked purely for the sake of profit. How can anyone not be concerned?

I posted this February, but it fits this thread. How the internet flips elections and alters our thoughts | Aeon Essays

Mind control is real. Advertising works to manipulate us and control us....and Google is trying to shape our perceptions....

Yes. I'm suspicious of both traditional media and online media.

Sure - I know enough not to respond to seller sales tactics when they are not selling what I want (helps to go in with a specific list). But I prefer not to be constantly having to ignore or filter out their commercial propaganda. It is litter on the mental landscape for me; distraction I neither want nor need. I do my best IRL to avoid commercials of all sorts except in print, e.g. the Sunday paper, where I can pick and choose which ones to read, and peruse them for as much or as little time as I like.

I do the highlighted as well, and I don't even have a google account - or facebook, twitter, pinterest, etc.

I don't think that I'm able to filter it out completely. There are lots of things that get lodged in the subconscious even as we skim text/expressions/faces, and this affects our emotions and behaviour. http://www.nature.com/articles/srep08478 It's simply how the brain works, it's not possible to filter everything we perceive, and this forms the basis of subconscious prejudice. What Drives Subconscious Racial Prejudice? - Scientific American Blog Network

I don't have facebook or tumblr anymore, never used pintrest, but have been using twitter. I also used google for years and am still using gmail.

 

[1487610420]

The thing is - this leads to the "echochamber" effect, doesn't it? If your search results are tailored to what they think is "of interest" to you, naturally you'll get results that support your views. This is done to make money, because if you find stuff that you like and want to read about further, you'll click - generating ad money for google.



Yes, this is what is disturbing to me. Marketing - making ads, showing them on TV, we're well aware that we're being sold something. When our entire digital space is shaped to support our views, encourage consumerism and take out drive our thoughts in a certain direction - all the while being given an illusion of choice - that's when it gets disturbing. That's what horrified me. If it's driven by "markets" that are easily manipulated using fake sites/articles, facts don't matter. Double/triple-checking for multiple sources doesn't matter. Our impression of evidence is driven wholesale in a certain direction when for e.g. 9/10 search results suggest something - even if historically speaking whatevery they claim has no basis in fact and is simply opinion. It's psychology hacking at its most primitive. We tend to conform to what we observe, and what we observe (on a medium that most of us spend 11 h a day on U.S. Adults Spend 11 Hours Per Day With Digital Media [CHART] ) can be hacked purely for the sake of profit. How can anyone not be concerned?


Yes. I'm suspicious of both traditional media and online media.



I don't think that I'm able to filter it out completely. There are lots of things that get lodged in the subconscious even as we skim text/expressions/faces, and this affects our emotions and behaviour. http://www.nature.com/articles/srep08478 It's simply how the brain works, it's not possible to filter everything we perceive, and this forms the basis of subconscious prejudice. What Drives Subconscious Racial Prejudice? - Scientific American Blog Network

I don't have facebook or tumblr anymore, never used pintrest, but have been using twitter. I also used google for years and am still using gmail.

Because it's irrelevant fear mongering. Getting what I want is what I want. Not getting means spending more time, not efficient. I don't Google to get my world views shaped, but to solve problems.

 

[Poki]

It's something that many of my peers (and I) have been talking about for a while - there's this article here about the probability of a certain job being automated within the next 10-20 years What Jobs Will the Robots Take? - The Atlantic

I'm in the "highly skilled" group, but even so, I can see where aspects of my job can be replaced by computers - in fact, I can see many areas where the computer would do a better job that I ever could because of big data. It's a whole new challenge and the stress to adapt and create a niche that can't be automated is huge. There's not much point in celebrating a certain factory "keeping" 10,000 jobs when automation can replace 2,000,000 jobs. What about amazon? They employ packers at minimum wage or lower, and squeezing everything out of them for a profit margin - all the while out-competing brick-and-mortar retailers on price and putting them out of business. Think of what happened with auto factories when everything was done by machines. There's even robotic surgery that has lower risk than "ordinary" surgery now. How will all of these technologies reshape the job market, and what does that mean for education and training systems that were designed for the 80s?

These are things that I've been thinking about for quite a while now. There's no point in blaming people for not keeping up - I personally feel like I'm barely keeping apace with the advances, and I'm hardly what one would call "uneducated" or "unskilled".

I forgot who i was talking about, but they said this is a scenario geared towards socialism. A handful work and make fortunes and doles out percentages to others who either dont work or work little. Rich are still incentivized because they make the most, and others dont have a job because they have been automated. I know there are alot of details, but it just seems like a system that would be financially logical. Now whether it would work emotionally is a different story.

 

[nonsequitur]

Because it's irrelevant fear mongering. Getting what I want is what I want. Not getting means spending more time, not efficient. I don't Google to get my world views shaped, but to solve problems.

How is it irrelevant when people are increasingly unable to tell apart "fake" news from real news, and make voting decisions based on what they believe to be true? Most Americans Who See Fake News Believe It, New Survey Says - BuzzFeed News It may very well be that you don't use google (or any search engine or social media) to answer questions about the world and obtain information about various subjects, but 74.3% of consumers do. 74 percent of consumers use Google search, 60 percent own Gmail accounts Does your vote count more than their's? Is this effect on such a large proportion of the population "irrelevant fear mongering"?

I forgot who i was talking about, but they said this is a scenario geared towards socialism. A handful work and make fortunes and doles out percentages to others who either dont work or work little. Rich are still incentivized because they make the most, and others dont have a job because they have been automated. I know there are alot of details, but it just seems like a system that would be financially logical. Now whether it would work emotionally is a different story.

In U.S., 55% of Workers Get Sense of Identity From Their Job | Gallup 55% of US workers gain a sense of identity from their jobs, so you can imagine that even if there was a welfare state in which people were able to survive (while only the rich made money), there would be all sorts of social problems that would form from losing a sense of purpose. These are questions that definitely need to be addressed.

 

[1487610420]

How is it irrelevant when people are increasingly unable to tell apart "fake" news from real news, and make voting decisions based on what they believe to be true? Most Americans Who See Fake News Believe It, New Survey Says - BuzzFeed News It may very well be that you don't use google (or any search engine or social media) to answer questions about the world and obtain information about various subjects, but 74.3% of consumers do. 74 percent of consumers use Google search, 60 percent own Gmail accounts Does your vote count more than their's? Is this effect on such a large proportion of the population "irrelevant fear mongering"?



In U.S., 55% of Workers Get Sense of Identity From Their Job | Gallup 55% of US workers gain a sense of identity from their jobs, so you can imagine that even if there was a welfare state in which people were able to survive (while only the rich made money), there would be all sorts of social problems that would form from losing a sense of purpose. These are questions that definitely need to be addressed.

welp, sux 2 b in that murcan%

 

[Poki]

How is it irrelevant when people are increasingly unable to tell apart "fake" news from real news, and make voting decisions based on what they believe to be true? Most Americans Who See Fake News Believe It, New Survey Says - BuzzFeed News It may very well be that you don't use google (or any search engine or social media) to answer questions about the world and obtain information about various subjects, but 74.3% of consumers do. 74 percent of consumers use Google search, 60 percent own Gmail accounts Does your vote count more than their's? Is this effect on such a large proportion of the population "irrelevant fear mongering"?



In U.S., 55% of Workers Get Sense of Identity From Their Job | Gallup 55% of US workers gain a sense of identity from their jobs, so you can imagine that even if there was a welfare state in which people were able to survive (while only the rich made money), there would be all sorts of social problems that would form from losing a sense of purpose. These are questions that definitely need to be addressed.

Thats something we have evolved to define ourselves. It would be a culture shift which isnt a bad thing. Maybe if we taught people to do things for themselves and those around them we would actually be a closer connected society as opposed to a purpose of leaving our family or those we care about so we can provide money. Maybe we could find a purpose that was a choice and want l, and not a need. Freedom to figure out what that is without getting stuck in what we dont. I see alot of change, but like most things, not much is perfect at first.

Or maybe we can just all become on huge pokemon go society. Which jobs dont seem to stop that type of stuff anyway.

 

[nonsequitur]

Thats something we have evolved to define ourselves. It would be a culture shift which isnt a bad thing. Maybe if we taught people to do things for themselves and those around them we would actually be a closer connected society as opposed to a purpose of leaving our family or those we care about so we can provide money. Maybe we could find a purpose that was a choice and want l, and not a need. Freedom to figure out what that is without getting stuck in what we dont. I see alot of change, but like most things, not much is perfect at first.

A job/career is a means to express and challenge ourselves. If there's a culture shift towards service in society/social roles, even if we're not getting paid but are able to survive in a communistic sense, it would still be a "job" that supports our personal and psychological development. Even hunter-gatherers left their families/homes to support the community. Ultimately, it's still about serving community, social and personal needs. Having a "job" or a "career" just means that there's a hierarchy/ladder to climb, an external indication of growth and status. In the absence of religious/tribalistic rites of passage that used to signify progress of an individual and acquiring responsibilities, the need for identity/sense of status remains unfulfilled. It also means that society becomes - not free - but statist. The status quo is preserved indefinitely, few join the elite, no one moves up or down on their own power/initiative. I do not want to live in a world like that.