epistemics
truth is not the default
epistemics
The cultural wars we’re facing are rooted in epistemological fragmentation. In other words, the differences between how people build knowledge about the world are fracturing the very social fabric of our country.
with so much noise on social media and so many news outlets disseminating contradictory information, citizens are justifiably confused and cynical. Many find it easier to retreat into echo chambers and share misinformation than discern what’s real amid the chaos of the public sphere.
Zac Gershberg • The Paradox of Democracy
Digital technologies ended the gatekeeper era, emancipated authorship, removed the boundaries on discourse and put reality up for grabs. Truth is contested and crowdsourced.
So here’s where we are: caught in a compound crisis where economic stress reduces cognitive bandwidth, reduced bandwidth enables extraction, extraction deepens economic stress, stress plus overload erodes trust, loss of trust prevents coordination, coordination failure leaves problems unsolved, and unsolved problems deepen the crisis.
This isn’t a... See more
This isn’t a... See more
Everyone is Gambling and No One is Happy
When looking at the Mirror World, it can seem obvious that millions of people have given themselves over to fantasy, to make-believe, to playacting. The trickier thing, the uncanny thing, really, is that’s what they see when they look at us. They say we live in a “clown world,” are stuck in “the matrix” of “groupthink,” are suffering from a form of
... See moreNaomi Klein • Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World
AI Is Supercharging the War on Libraries, Education, and Human Knowledge
404media.co
Each of these new systems—Grokipedia, Truth Social’s AI, the parallel media ecosystem they lean on—is a different answer to the same question: who gets to define what’s true? That’s the real battle, now unfolding in the reference layer most people never even see.
Renee DiResta • Source Wars and Bespoke Realities
... See moreBespoke realities are made for—and by—the individual. The collision of the propaganda machine and the rumor mill gave rise to a choose-your-own-adventure epistemology: some news outlet somewhere has written the story you want to believe; some influencer is touting the diet you want to live by or demonizing the group you also hate. Other people,