Dataism

The problem we face with social media is not just spending too much time on our phones. We have a much bigger issue to deal with:

"The problem is essentially runaway extractive capitalism that's treating human beings as a resource and dumping out externalities in the form of a breakdown of truth, a breakdown of democracies, and an inability to work on existential threats like climate change." - Tristan Harris

Many of us have heard of machine learning chess engines that can play moves no human would think of. What if we had a machine learning algorithm that, instead of predicting what the best chess move is, it predicts what the next human move is? What if it predicts what motivates a person to spend money? And what if that algorithm has already been created in an attempt to figure out how to effectively sell as many shoes as possible?

We have algorithms that are attempting to decode the human soul. And the attempts are getting more successful every day.

Zeynep Tufekci TED Talk - https://youtu.be/iFTWM7HV2UI

3Blue1Brown helps us to understand neural networks/machine learning - https://youtu.be/aircAruvnKk

Tristan Harris in a recent conversation on persuasive technology - https://youtu.be/0TZKOuQLMfM

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