Andrei Stoica

We have to try to cure our faults by attention and not by will.

Instead of withdrawing, I encourage my students to dive deeper, engaging with platforms as if they were close reading a work of literature. In doing so, I believe that we can not only better understand a platform's ideological premises, but also the inevitable cracks in a rigid software logic that enables the surprising, delightful messiness of... See more

The main thing I keep coming back to is that nothing flourishes in isolation. Neurons first evolved around the same time that animals started eating each other: that is to say, the fact that we have thought at all emerges from an evolutionary necessity to be aware of the presence of other animals. That doesn’t mean intelligence has its origins in... See more

Solitarist identity is an example of dichotomous or binary thinking, one of the cognitive distortions that are evidently becoming more common, at least among young adults in the United States, according to George Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt’s analysis in “The Coddling of the American Mind.” Psychologists studying binary thinking have also found it... See more

Once front-running other participants in financial markets or cultural production becomes a common strategy, trends become inefficiencies – temporary blips of difference or spikes in value that are bound for correction. Being early as a meta is replaced by catching people offsides. Betting on the return to the mean.

Rewire your patterns

The most empowering thing I’ve heard is that there is a gap between stimulus and response, and that the key to both our growth and happiness is how we use and expand that space.

Our responses typically come from patterns and scripts handed down from our parents and our pasts. We are not hostage to those patterns, we can update... See more

It doesn’t matter what side you are on. There has to be an orientation towards substantiality. That is the language, and thus expectation, we need to reinforce.