Some Comments on Truths

This is one of a set of several posts that I am creating together in order to have peace of mind about some pressing matters, primarily focused on current matters American society. It is taking me some time to compose these — I have a feeling that our partisanized atmosphere makes this effort about as effective as Plato’s attempts to philosophize in Syracuse, and I’ve wrestled for weeks wondering if I am simply wasting keystrokes and mental effort. Still, I leave these words with you. I pray that we each find ourselves governed by the best of daimons and that Athene the Savior gives each of us the purifying clarity that we need.

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In the early 2010s, researcher Dan Kahan wrote a piece for Nature, “Why We are Poles Apart on Climate Change.” The article had a moment after the 2016 elections as we uncovered just how much those elections had been driven by algorithmic divisiveness — the replacement of verified narratives with individually-customized fever-dreams — not given to us to show us what is true, but to keep our eyeballs engaged online for ad revenue and our emotions and desires inflamed. The negative impact of ads on our cognitive capacities is why I then decided to commit money every year to keep KALLISTI ad-free.

Kahan, in his essay, wrote:

The trouble starts when this communication environment fills up with toxic partisan meanings — ones that effectively announce that ‘if you are one of us, believe this; otherwise, we’ll know you are one of them’. In that situation, ordinary individuals’ lives will go better if their perceptions of societal risk conform with those of their group.

Yet when all citizens simultaneously follow this individually rational strategy of belief formation, their collective well-being will certainly suffer. Culturally polarized democracies are less likely to adopt polices that reflect the best available scientific evidence on matters — such as climate change — that profoundly affect their common interests.

The climate change issue he discusses above could be replaced by any number of issues, such as the partisanization of masking or vaccines or vehicles or food or pet species, a seemingly endless unravelling of everything in our lives.

There is a lot of peer pressure online to make grand statements, which is an absurd thing to ask of a private person. Becoming aware in the 2010s of the research on hyper-polarization is one of the reasons that, for the most part, I gave up on that by about 2022 or so (after years spent stubbornly resisting the full implications of the evidence due to gathering enough personal experience). In addition, ingroup signaling is a double-edged sword, especially when one holds nuanced positions on some issues.

The most I can offer is an admonition yet again for all of us to watch where we put our attention and for each of us to take a mental step back from what is put in front of us when we engage with social media and the news: Is the sense-making capacity we are deferring to pundits and Influencers actually helpful to us, or is it harmful? Is it helpful or harmful in all cases? On what can we trust someone, and on what can we not? How do we catch ourselves when the algorithms attempt to drive us into more and more extreme and polarized views, and how do we protect our own minds when the public personae we have listened to heedlessly fall into that river of gnashing ghosts? How do we catch ourselves when we betray what is true for what is convenient? Why do so many people believe they are immune from common human failures? In Plato’s Seventh Letter, his truthful words when asked questions by the tyrant Dionysius — risky words — ended “badly,” if by “badly” we mean his physical body was put in harm’s way by his soul’s integrity. What does it mean to choose authenticity?

The Center for Humane Technology has a playlist of short videos that place the stakes in conversation. (Note: They discuss Facebook a lot, but Facebook is really a placeholder example for a broader array of data companies whose inputs are “free” user tools like search or social media, which are designed to be addictive.) Hopefully, with the blessings of Athene the Savior, some sobering water.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3Pb2mJQGJV7bW6BgOjA1_WZ-zubFilao

Here is the one about attention.

And, for the ambitious, a far longer video about what it would mean to apply ethical litmus tests to new technology.

Aligned with what I have written above, I do not have answers to those questions about pundits and Influencers. There is nobody who can adult their way through these for someone but that person alone, drawing on the reservoir of what is good and best within and what is sacred to numerous Gods. The Titans who preside over divisions, while they can harm, can also save; a god who brings plague can also heal; the Earth that swallows our bodies whole at death also gave birth to them. The human instinct that can lead us to harm others can also seed the best of compassion and friendliness.

The Gods are on our sides. They know that each of us will figure ourselves out, be it in this lifetime or the next, and they are patient as we navigate through our lives — no matter what. We each knew the bright joys and rending consequences of our every action before we drank from the waters of Lethe, after all. A unique life with unique challenges in every soul’s unique journey.