SpaceXponential
@spacexponential
Conscientious Questioner
SpaceXponential
Political scientist Russel Hardin (2002) argues that trust is really about encapsulated interest, i.e., a kind of closed loop of each party’s self-interests. Like the real estate agent who sells a house at a reasonable price not because she cares about the client but because her commission is directly tied to the sale price, the drug dealer also... See more
JENA MARIE ESPELITA • TRUSTING A TRUSTLESS NETWORK. The Paradoxes of Trust in Blockchain Technology
...The dart guns of social media give more power and voice to the political extremes while reducing the power and voice of the moderate majority. The “Hidden Tribes” study, by the pro-democracy group More in Common, surveyed 8,000 Americans in 2017 and 2018 and identified seven groups that shared beliefs and behaviors. The one furthest to the... See more
Jonathan Haidt • Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid
This is nothing new in the physical social world, but it is revolutionary in the digital social world, where groups and shared messenger threads have historically always been communal spaces.
Cult leaders are their own moderators
Cult leaders need mechanisms for elevating and blessing followers, as well as mutually reinforcing power
Cults need... See more
Cult leaders are their own moderators
Cult leaders need mechanisms for elevating and blessing followers, as well as mutually reinforcing power
Cults need... See more
The Information • Clubhouse and the Future of Cult-Driven Social Platforms
We reached a head at a certain point. Our disagreements with Stuart were about what type of person should be on the platform, what they should be doing, and what’s allowed. We wanted anything to be allowed and there not to be a hierarchy, or telling someone what’s important or not. Stuart was very much the opposite, and he wanted to control the... See more
Laurel Schwulst • Charles Broskoski on self-discovery that happens upon revisiting things you’ve accumulated over time
Epistemology and
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
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
This, I believe, is what happened to many of America’s key institutions in the mid-to-late 2010s. They got stupider en masse because social media instilled in their members a chronic fear of getting darted. The shift was most pronounced in universities, scholarly associations, creative industries, and political organizations at every level... See more
Jonathan Haidt • Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid
It’s important that people—actual individuals—are doing the work for themselves to decide how exactly they want to group information together, because it’s this exercise that hones a person’s unique intuition. It’s personal intuition that gives a piece of information a unique shape to live in, and it's the many connected shapes that make Are.na
... See more