№ 647. Waking Up to Binary Dreams 4

reddit

 

Digital tech doesn’t only erode our attention. It also divides and redirects our attention into separate information ecosystems, so that the news you see is different from, say, the news your grandmother sees. And that has profound effects on what each of us ends up viewing as morally salient.

№ 636. Tall Tales, Broad Allegations, Generalizations and Conspiracies

The Guardian

 

"Further, broad allegations amounting to a generalization that certain corporations allow themselves to serve as dummies for cartels or foreigners cannot hold ground in this Court. These constitute criminal acts. The Constitution requires that judicial action proceed carefully and always from a presumption of innocence. Tall tales of conspiratorial actions — though they may be salacious, make for interesting fiction, and are fodder for social media — do not deserve any judicial action. Broad generalizations of facts without corresponding evidence border on the contemptuous." --- National Federation of Hog Farmers, Inc. v. Board of Investments, G.R. No. 205835, June 23, 2020, Supreme Court En Banc

№ 594. Our Facts, Our Truths and Our Reality

"Without facts, you can’t have truth. Without truth, you can’t have trust. Without trust, we have no shared reality, no democracy, and it becomes impossible to deal with the existential problems of our times: climate, coronavirus, now, the battle for truth." --- Maria Ressa, Nobel Laureate

 

№ 568. Manila Extract 3 (NCR+)

Scout Mag

You're Old Testament.
A prophecy of unsealed
memes and fake news.

You are red-tagged.
A metastasis
hooked on ether.
 
You are Manila.
Hangry for cures
sniffed from dystopia.

 

№ 425. The Social Media Coliseum

The philosophers Justin Tosi and Brandon Warmke have proposed the useful phrase moral grandstanding to describe what happens when people use moral talk to enhance their prestige in a public forum. Like a succession of orators speaking to a skeptical audience, each person strives to outdo previous speakers, leading to some common patterns. Grandstanders tend to “trump up moral charges, pile on in cases of public shaming, announce that anyone who disagrees with them is obviously wrong, or exaggerate emotional displays.” Nuance and truth are casualties in this competition to gain the approval of the audience. Grandstanders scrutinize every word spoken by their opponents—and sometimes even their friends—for the potential to evoke public outrage. Context collapses. The speaker’s intent is ignored.

Christoph Niemann

№ 351. Social Media = Drug

Social Media

“It’s a social-validation feedback loop … exactly the kind of thing that a hacker like myself would come up with, because you’re exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology. The inventors, creators – me, Mark [Zuckerberg], Kevin Systrom on Instagram, all of these people – understood this consciously. And we did it anyway.”

№ 326. Design of the Decades

His proposals:

1. Transparency
2. Accountability
3. Rethink / Redesign