SpaceXponential
@spacexponential
Conscientious Questioner
SpaceXponential
Social scientists have identified at least three major forces that collectively bind together successful democracies: social capital (extensive social networks with high levels of trust), strong institutions, and shared stories. Social media has weakened all three. To see how, we must understand how social media changed over time—and especially in... See more
Jonathan Haidt • Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid
The former CIA analyst Martin Gurri predicted these fracturing effects in his 2014 book, The Revolt of the Public. Gurri’s analysis focused on the authority-subverting effects of information’s exponential growth, beginning with the internet in the 1990s. Writing nearly a decade ago, Gurri could already see the power of social media as a universal... See more
Jonathan Haidt • Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid
What Eno likes about 77 Million Paintings is that he has no idea what will appear on screen, nor what aesthetic effects will be produced. "That's pretty interesting. But what interests me more is the way people experience them. My shows are not narratives. Nothing much happens yet people come and stay for hours in a contemplative state. I thought,... See more
Stuart Jeffries • Surrender. It's Brian Eno
Again, as I noted above, Facebook made the 2013 decision to increase the value of newsworthy links for a reason, and in the time since, BuzzFeed in particular has proven that there is a consistent and repeatable way to not only reach a large number of people but to compel them to share content as well. Was Krugman wrong because he didn’t appreciate... See more
Stratechery • Mistakes and Memes
There are a lot of ways that Bohm’s concept of a dialogue influences how I think about building Are.na: the idea of building a shared meaning, of being able to build ideas with other people over time and the way one can refine their own thinking by bouncing ideas off of other people.
Charles Broskoski • Bohm Dialogue
I think we can date the fall of the tower to the years between 2011 (Gurri’s focal year of “nihilistic” protests) and 2015, a year marked by the “great awokening on the left and the ascendancy of Donald Trump on the right. Trump did not destroy the tower; he merely exploited its fall. He was the first politician to master the new dynamics of the... See more
Jonathan Haidt • Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid
Political risks aside, whatever the blockchain of facts could discover about consensus has already been thoroughly demonstrated by Trump Tweets. Trump Tweets have shown us that access to, obviousness of, and even universal agreement on the facts often achieves nothing for public discourse. Everyone agrees on the exact words he said, but their
... See moreMike Elias • Wittgenstein’s Revenge
Quoting Krishnamurti: " I want to do a certain thing in the world and I am going to do it with unwavering concentration. I am concerning myself with only one essential thing: to set man free. I desire to free him from all cages, from all fears, and not to found religions, new sects, nor to establish new theories and new philosophies."