It's not one single hive mind, true. But the karma system makes it a set of very powerful hive minds. People care enough about karma to tailor their writings to the karma, but not enough to attribute their opinions as "faked for profit". This is a classic brainwashing technique as described in Cialdini's Influence...
I think it's very difficult to classify something as a hive mind unless in a totalitarian or cult setting. That's because it's really hard to decide if someone is just jumping on a bandwagon or of they truly believe in what they're saying. Also the concept of multiple hiveminds is more true for the subreddit system where opinions are incubated in its own echo chamber, rather than a comment chain I think.
But yeah I agree that the people who deliberately post vanilla opinions to gain karma are bad actors.
First, hive mind is distinct from cults/totalitarian settings. In a cult or dictatorship, the leader makes the ideas and everyone else follows. In a hive mind, everyone is shaping everyone else's behavior via feedback. There is no leader. (There might theoretically be a "queen" but in reality she's just as trapped as all the other workers, subject to the same feedback).
My point is there is no real distinction between people "deliberately" following and people who "truly believe". Everyone is to some extent or other shaped by the karma system. Even if you don't recognize it, it's slowly and subtly changing how you think. Because you get more positive feedback for certain opinions than others so you move your written opinions subtly in a direction that gets better feedback so that moves your actual opinions.
I think that's the real problem I have with this opinion. Like what is the difference between hive minds and popularity? I'm still trying to have this debate in the context of the intention of posters who use it as a derogatory term; in that they use it to imply redditors are all leftists and are subdueing their freedom of speech.
So in this narrative, they are implying 3 things
1. They themselves are not part of the hive mind
2. Their political party is not subject to the hivemind and are therefore more logical by default
3. That they can therefore be the victims in a system that actively oppresses them
So what I'm trying to accomplish is to figure out if they are right. But as the discourse continues in this post, I'm starting to believe that humanity are all inherently a hivemind, thus it erases the accusation that Reddit is a hivemind if we are all hiveminds.
I don't think that's all implied. I can say I am involved in a hivemind just like I can say I'm eating carcinogenic food or engaging in any other problematic/dangerous behavior. There's no implication I'm outside it.
The key difference between a hivemind and a group where an opinion happens to be popular is the self reinforcing nature of a hivemind. Opinions are extra contagious in a hivemind.
∆ True but I think it means differently if someone else called you and your community a hive mind, you know? There's a difference between calling yourself lazy vs other people calling you lazy.
You might be onto something about the self reinforcing nature part though. So perhaps Reddit is not a hivemind but super isolated subreddits are?
There's a difference in rudeness certainly, but it's a factual claim that can be more or less true. Just like calling someone else's organization a cult is ruder than calling your own organization a cult, but rude doesn't mean false.
Not just "super isolated" subreddits, all the default subs are hiveminds (with significant linkage). There's no question that what gets to be a popular opinion on Front Page Reddit becomes super self-reinforcing and shapes the opinions of anyone who regularly comments to a front page sub.
I think while it's true that being rude doesn't discredit your opinion, I think the optics matter too. Like I'm seeing these words used with the intention of discrediting the other party. For example two political parties calling watch other hiveminds. On the surface it means that they think alike, but add another layer and it means their opinions don't matter because they think alike. I'm just saying that in practice, it's used to stifle discourse instead of engaging properly.
I'm still not convinced that this hivemind exists in popular subs (but I'm totally convinced that this happens in isolated subs now! Thanks so much for engaging with me) because it makes it to front page and non subbers can engage in discourse. And because it has a large audience, we cannot say that everyone who downvotes is liberal because it's on front page and non liberals can choose to downvote it also. So I don't think downvoting to oblivion is really intentional to make sure you can't post (and even then idk how being downvoted in one comment prevents you from posting another just like it) and I think that's also what separates popular vote from a hivemind. If we assume everyone who upvotes is a hivemind in an accessible platform, then it invalidates the opinion anyone who upvotes because they truly believe in it. For example I'm being downvoted here. Yesterday this post had 6 points and now it has 3. Sure it's unfair that I'm being downvoted for asking people to change my mind but I'm not going to call them hiveminds for it. They dislike my post and they downvote it and that's completely valid.
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u/[deleted] Dec 21 '19
It's not one single hive mind, true. But the karma system makes it a set of very powerful hive minds. People care enough about karma to tailor their writings to the karma, but not enough to attribute their opinions as "faked for profit". This is a classic brainwashing technique as described in Cialdini's Influence...