As most followers of this site are aware, for the past 15 years I’ve been pretty focused on the energy/climate/money nexus as I believe this ‘infrastructure’ will define everything about our future. These are the foundational things from which everything else will flow. While this is true, last year I came to realize that in order for discussions, plans or constructive response to happen on these – and many other issues – we first need a functioning information ecosystem.
Twitter/Facebook/Tiktok are not only products that we use, they have become the central information processing units that make our society function… but they’re not acting in the best interests of making society work. If people can’t access or believe in the same facts, or don’t even read the same news, or constantly filter the messenger before the message, we will be in a perpetual cultural argument, with no one speaking the same language. Aka we will be lost without even discussing the real issues of our time.
My guest this week is Tristan Harris, co-founder of The Center for Humane Technology and featured in the film The Social Dilemma. Tristan and I discuss the role that social media is playing in our increasing aversion to science and facts, and what might be done about it going forward. Tristan believes we need to fundamentally change “engagement” as the central signal & incentive for what to amplify, which is sorting culture-wide for what lights up our limbic system and emotions, to something more akin to wisdom” and collective intelligence being the incentive that drives the behavior for a new info ecosystem.
This is a front and center issue – made even more central with Elon Musk’s recent purchase of Twitter which occurred after we recorded this week’s podcast. Please give it a listen, and let me know what you think.
https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/episode/16-tristan-harris
Nate, loved the interview. I have been following Undivided Attention for a while since my wife was talking to them about ghost writing a book. That story on Taiwan is amazing. I have listened twice and am trying to find some folks in Montpelier to see if we could pull off a scaled down version to re-invent local governance.