Tristan Harris and Joe Rogan Discuss “The Social Dilemma” in Depth

Tristan Harris:

The film, "The Social Dilemma," is really about how it makes the worst of us rise to the top, right, so our hate, our outrage, our polarization, what we disagree about, black and white thinking, more conspiracy-oriented views of the world Qanon, Facebook groups, things like--that and i can we can definitely go into there's a lot of legitimate conspiracy theories i want to make sure I'm not categorically dismissing stuff--the point is that we have landed in a world where the things that we are paying attention to are not necessarily the agenda of topics that we would say in a reflective world is most important.

Joe Rogan:

There's a lot of conversation about free will and about letting people choose whatever they choose, whatever they enjoy viewing and watching and paying attention to, but when you're talking about these incredibly potent algorithms and the incredibly potent addictions that the people develop to these these things . . . and we're pretending that people should have the ability to just ignore it and put it away right and use your willpower.

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Joe Rogan Look at this [pointing to website news], Apple working on its own search engine as Google ties to be cut soon. I started using DuckDuckGo for that very reason. Just because they don't do anything with [your data]. You know, they give you the information, but they don't they don't take your data and do anything with it.

Tristan Harris Let's say we get all the privacy stuff perfectly, perfectly right, and data protection and data controls and all that stuff. In a system that's still based on attention, in grabbing attention and harvesting and strip mining our brains, you still get maximum polarization, addiction, mental health problems, isolation, teen depression, suicide, polarization, breakdown of truth, right? So we really focus in our work on those topics because that's the direct influence of the business model on warping society.

We need to name this mind-warp when we think of it, like "the climate change of culture. We think these seem like different disconnected topics, much like with climate change. You'd say like, Okay, we've got species loss in the Amazon, we're losing insects, we've got melting glaciers, we've got ocean acidification, we've got the coral reefs dying, these can feel like disconnected things, until you have a unified model of how emissions change all those different phenomena, right? In the social fabric, we have shortening of attention spans, we have more outrage driven news media, we have more polarization, we have more breakdown of truth, we have more conspiracy-minded thinking. These seem like separate events, and separate phenomena, but they're actually all part of this attention extraction paradigm, that the company's growth--as you said--depends on, extracting more of our attention, which means more polarization, more extreme material, more conspiracy thinking and shortening attention spans.

Because we also say if we want to double the size of the attention economy, I want your attention to be split into two separate streams. Like I want you watching the TV, the tablet and the phone at the same time, because now I've tripled the size of the amount of extractable attention that I can get for advertisers, which means that by fracking for attention and splitting you into more junk, so attention that's "thinner." We can sell that as if it's real attention, like the financial crisis, where you're selling thinner and thinner financial assets as if it's real, but it's really just a junk asset.

And that's kind of where we are now, where it's sort of the junk attention economy. Because we were we have shortened attention spans and we're debasing the substrate of that makes up our society because everything in a democracy depends on individual sense-making and meaningful choice, meaningful for you, meaningful independent views. But if that's all basically sold to the highest bidder that debases the soil from which independent views grow, because all of us are jacked into this sort of matrix of social media manipulation, that's ruining integrating our democracy. And that's really, there's many other things that are ruining and hurting our democracy. That's a sort of invisible force, it's upstream, that affects every other thing downstream. Because if we can't agree on what's true, for example, we can't solve any problem.

Joe Rogan Your organization highlights all these issues in an amazing way. And it's very important. But do you have any solutions?

Tristan Harris It's hard, right? So I just want to say that this is as complex a problem as climate change, in the sense that you need to change the business model. I think of it like we're on the fossil fuel economy and we have to switch to something beyond that thing, right? Because so long as the business models of these companies depend on extracting attention, can you expect them to do something different?

Joe Rogan You can't, but how could you? There's so much money involved and now they've accumulated so much wealth that they have an amazing amount of influence.

Tristan Harris And the asymmetric influence, can buy lobbyists, can influence Congress and prevent things from happening. I think we're seeing signs of real change. We had the antitrust case that was just filed against Google. In Congress. We were seeing more hearings . . .

Continue ReadingTristan Harris and Joe Rogan Discuss “The Social Dilemma” in Depth

Glenn Greenwald, Co-Founder of The Intercept, Resigns To Maintain Journalistic Integrity

I have been in the process of writing an article that I will title, "Everything Is Becoming Religion." This morning, while writing, I noticed that Glenn Greenwald has resigned from The Intercept, a news organization he co-founded. Here is an except from Greenwald's announcement:

The pathologies, illiberalism, and repressive mentality that led to the bizarre spectacle of my being censored by my own media outlet are ones that are by no means unique to The Intercept. These are the viruses that have contaminated virtually every mainstream center-left political organization, academic institution, and newsroom. I began writing about politics fifteen years ago with the goal of combatting media propaganda and repression, and — regardless of the risks involved — simply cannot accept any situation, no matter how secure or lucrative, that forces me to submit my journalism and right of free expression to its suffocating constraints and dogmatic dictates.

Greenwald's resignation comes on the heels of his riveting three-hour conversation with Joe Rogan earlier this week. During that discussion, Greenwald (and Rogan) aimed Greenwald's criticisms at our most prominent legacy media outlets across the entire political spectrum. And now our social media overlords are actively getting into the game. Three hours is a lot of time, but I would urge you to watch every minute of this. It would be a small investment, given that this discussion offers an accurate diagnosis of America's Dys-information Pandemic and some moral clarity about what needs to happen going forward.

Our prominent legacy news outlets have become sad jokes with regard to many critical national issues. Our "news" is now pre-filtered to protect us from basic facts and it treats thinking as though it is a team sport, much like the dogma people are offered in churches. It treats us like we are babies, as though we aren't able to think for ourselves. Our prominent legacy media outlets have so thoroughly choked off meaningful non-partisan information and discussion that this has ripped open up a dangerous information chasm---many of us now inhabit only one of two mostly non-overlapping factual worlds. This has, in turn, led to two exceedingly disappointing choices for President of this Duopoly. If I needed to hire an employee for any type of job in any business, I would never hire either of these candidates and neither would you. But this is where we are, unable to talk with one another about this sad situation with nuance. In fact, too many of us have been convinced that we should hate each other for having differing opinions, even when we are mostly "on the same side of the aisle."

Somehow, there are many Americans who are still convinced that they can uncritically sit back and "turn on the news." What they will actually be exposed to, for the most part, is reporters who are afraid to ask the same basic questions on the job that they actually and instinctively do ask each other in private. Instead of informing us with a wide range of facts and opinions, they are driven to please their bosses and audience. This is not news. This is Not-News. This parallels the deep dysfunction driven by social media, an issue address in the excellent new documentary, "The Social Dilemma."

We now have a News-Industrial Complex that is driven by money and ideology instead of integrity and courage to engage with inconvenient facts. This system is designed to please you, to give you more of what your intuitive side, your System 1, craves. Once you have this epiphany about what is really going on, you will no longer be able to stop seeing it. If you continue watching the "news," you will increasingly think, "Garbage in, Garbage out." It will increasingly realize that prominent legacy news outlets are fucking with our brains to make money and steer elections. Once you have this epiphany, you will experience a greatly heightened annoyance at what passes for "news" Once a critical mass of people have this epiphany, this will be our first step in a long slow recovery.

Continue ReadingGlenn Greenwald, Co-Founder of The Intercept, Resigns To Maintain Journalistic Integrity

Facebook Muzzles Brett Weinstein

This action by FB should send a shockwave through America. Brett Weinstein is a good-hearted and extremely thoughtful voice that we desperately need. The curtain has now been pulled back and we can see that Private-Owner Social Media Wizards can flip a switch to cancel anyone without any stated reason. This comes on the heels of Brett's recent muzzling by Twitter, apparently for his spot-on criticism of our precious political duopoly.

So where is one supposed to lodge a complaint once FB and Twitter have both decided to become supervising nannies regarding the *content* of one's posts?

We are moving down an extremely dangerous slippery slope.

Continue ReadingFacebook Muzzles Brett Weinstein

Deborah Tannen’s Observation that The Argument Culture Has Been Brewing for a Long Time

Deborah Tannen, The Argument Culture (1998), well before social media took over:

This is not another book about civility. “Civility”suggests a superficial, pinky-in-the-air veneer of politeness spread thin over human relations like a layer of marmalade over toast. "This book is about a pervasive warlike atmosphere that makes us approach public dialogue, and just about anything we need to accomplish, as if it were a fight. It is a tendency in Western culture in general, and in the United States in particular, that has a long history and a deep, thick, and farranging root system. It has served us well in many ways but in recent years has become so exaggerated that it is getting in the way of solving our problems. Our spirits are corroded by living in an atmosphere of unrelenting contention— an argument culture.

The argument culture urges us to approach the world— and the people in it— in an adversarial frame of mind. It rests on the assumption that opposition is the best way to get anything done: The best way to discuss an idea is to set up a debate; the best way to cover news is to find spokespeople who express the most extreme, polarized views and present them as “both sides”;the best way to settle disputes is litigation that pits one party against the other; the best way to begin an essay is to attack someone; and the best way to show you’re really thinking is to criticize.

Our public interactions have become more and more like having an argument with a spouse. Conflict can’t be avoided in our public lives any more than we can avoid conflict with people we love. One of the great strengths of our society is that we can express these conflicts openly. But just as spouses have to learn ways of settling their differences without inflicting real damage on each other, so we, as a society, have to find constructive ways of resolving disputes and differences. Public discourse requires making an argument for a point of view, not having an argument— as in having a fight."

Continue ReadingDeborah Tannen’s Observation that The Argument Culture Has Been Brewing for a Long Time

The Effects of the FB Filter-Bubble re Attitudes of Trump Voters

On Facebook, I recently posed a Tweet by Chloe Valdary, a kind-hearted even-keel peace-making thinker who is most definitely not pro-Trump.  She is willing to call out problems on the political left as well as the political right. I find her opinions thoughtful and instructive.

Here is how I introduced Chloe's Tweet (above) on FB:

I won't be voting for Trump, but I'm still concerned he might win re-election. I think many people feel similarly -- otherwise, why do so many people keep talking about the election and the polling? I've often wondered why so many people will vote for Trump, despite his many cataclysmic negative personal qualities. I'm glad that Chloe Valdary asked Trump voters to respond to her Twitter account by stating why they support Trump. She has received more than 300 responses that I found interesting to review. These responses don't change my mind about Trump, but I do see many Trump supporters in a different light.

In response, I saw a firestorm of anger from people on the political left. People who were angry with me that I would even consider what Trump voters think.  Many of them seem to be assuming that Trump voters are perfectly aligned with Trump. They vented at Trump voters as close-minded people who are, seemingly, identical to Trump in everything they think.

I see a big tent on on the right as well as on the left. Just as there are people who are going to hold their nose and vote for Biden, there are people on the right who are going to hold their nose and vote for Trump. I think it is a worthy project to ask those Trump supporters why they are voting for a man who I find to be so personally despicable. Yes, there are many Trump supporters who I do find deplorable (and some of those people on the left too), but there are many other people (some I know personally) who I like as human beings, who I disagree with on many issues, but who are going to vote for Trump.

Instead of curiosity in reaction to my FB post, I'm seeing lots of hostility for even asking the question, for inquiring. This unwillingness to be curious about the facts troubles me on many levels. In fact, this is self-defeating behavior suggesting an "analysis" that has been contaminated by roiling emotions. I understand the emotions and I understand the stakes of this election, but it seems that many of us could do much better. Rather than being smart, they are getting drunk on anger. They need to listen to Yoda:

“Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.”

“Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny. Consume you, it will.”

Anger… fear… aggression. The dark side are they. Easily they flow, quick to join you in a fight. If once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny, consume you it will, as it did Obi-Wan’s apprentice.

They also need to consider this idea by Sun Tzu, from the Art of War":

If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.

Continue ReadingThe Effects of the FB Filter-Bubble re Attitudes of Trump Voters