“Politics is not supposed to be a team sport.” —Unknown
“Politics is not supposed to be a team sport.” —Unknown
“People are package deals; you take the good with the confused. In most cases, strengths and weaknesses are two sides of the same coin.”
—Steve Jobs
What if we made all advertising illegal?
[…]
The financial incentives to create addictive digital content would instantly disappear, and so would the mechanisms that allow both commercial and political actors to create personalized, reality-distorting bubbles.
Clickbait, listicles, and affiliate marketing schemes would become worthless overnight. Algorithm-driven platforms like Instagram and TikTok that harvest and monetize attention, destroying youth, would lose their economic foundation.
[…]
Removing these advanced manipulation tools would force everyone—politicians included—to snap back into reality. By outlawing advertising, the machinery of mass delusion would lose its most addictive and toxic fuel.
—Kōdō Simone in What If We Made Advertising Illegal?
#SocialMedia #Technology #Communication #Politics #Philosophy
Einstein's Three Rules of Work: 1) Out of clutter find simplicity; 2) From discord find harmony; 3) In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.
—John Archibald Wheeler
Parts of this quote are sometimes incorrectly attributed to Einstein himself. Wheeler is summarizing Einstein, not quoting him.
I do not like that man. I must get to know him better.
—Unknown, dubiously attributed to Abraham Lincoln
A film’s need to entertain has obscured the reality about change. Montages set an expectation that personal transformations are practically microwaveable; just find the right mentor, find the right program, make the perfect plan, do it a few times, and you’ll reach your goal. I call this the montage fallacy.
[…]
The truth to personal transformation is much more boring—and ugly—than a montage will let on. You show up every day. You mostly make small gains, and experience the occasional leap—and persevere through setbacks. You have to choose the things you prioritize, which means you’ll decide to give up things you want to do.
—Herbert Lui in Montage fallacy
Do social media platforms and news websites really need comments sections? I don’t think so.
“The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking.”
—Albert Einstein
“We are drowning in information, while starving for wisdom.”
—E. O. Wilson
#AI #Belief #Business #Communication #Philosophy #Politics #SocialMedia #Technology
I'm struck by this point made by Josh Faga in his article Starving for Wisdom:
It used to be the case that we had to make up our mind about something. But, the advent of modern mediums has been so successful at packaging intellectual positions into digestible vitamins that they have essentially “made up our minds” for us.
We don't make up our minds at all. Instead, we are presented a pre-packaged intellectual position that the medium we consume it over conveniently places into our minds for us; a process not too dissimilar from placing a CD into a CD player. Then, also not too dissimilar from a CD player, when in the appropriate situations, we are conditioned to push a button and “play back” the opinion that was burned on the CD.
To complete the feedback loop, whenever we 'play the songs' on our CD players, we are rewarded by those that have the same CD. We regurgitate the opinions and information we consume to the group of people that have also consumed it and receive our reward for having successfully consumed and spit back what we have 'learned'. This process is at the bottom of our ideologically possessed and polarized political landscape. We are educating, organizing, and rewarding ourselves for simply putting a CD in a CD player and pressing play.
#Belief #Communication #Philosophy #Politics #SocialMedia #Technology