Crumbling institutions, culture wars, and the dismissal economy (with Ashley Hodgson)

1. Revitalize Institutions: Focus Solutions

When encountering institutional problems like mistrust or capture, shift your focus from dwelling on the issues to actively generating and experimenting with potential solutions. This approach encourages innovative thinking and collaboration to restructure institutions.

2. Improve Epistemics: Address Salience

Recognize that information manipulation often occurs by over-emphasizing certain true facts (salience) rather than presenting false information. Strive to understand how different pieces of evidence are weighed and how to compile diverse perspectives to form an accurate view.

3. Counteract Self-Deception in Decisions

Be aware of the natural human tendency to overweigh positive effects and underweigh negative effects of your own decisions, especially when in power. Actively seek to counterbalance this psychological bias, potentially by involving diverse perspectives or critical self-reflection.

4. Redesign Online Incentives for Empathy

Advocate for or create online platforms and algorithms that reward and uplift individuals who excel at understanding and communicating across differences. This can help reduce societal contempt and foster trust by highlighting empathetic voices, making cross-cultural understanding a developed taste.

5. Manage Information Overload with Boundaries

Instead of dismissing information with seemingly logical but often biased rationalizations, explicitly tell yourself ’that’s not in my wheelhouse’ for topics you cannot genuinely investigate. Establish clear boundaries around what you will pay attention to, acknowledging other issues may be important but not your current focus.

6. Listen to Friends’ Issues

When a friend brings up a topic they care deeply about, especially if they feel personally involved or pained by it, listen to them even if it’s not ‘in your wheelhouse.’ Acknowledge their issue and pain, as dismissing it can hurt relationships, without necessarily researching everything on the topic.

7. Address Contempt, Rebuild Trust

Recognize that people rationally distrust groups or institutions they perceive as holding them in contempt, especially if those groups hold power. To rebuild trust and enable progress, it is crucial to address and mitigate the underlying contempt.

8. Rejigger Economic Investment Mechanisms

Consider new mechanisms for investment in infrastructure, especially in digital industries, that move beyond a ‘one dollar, one vote’ system. Explore models where investment decisions are influenced by broader public needs (e.g., ‘one person, one vote’ scenarios or conditional algorithms) rather than solely financial returns.

9. Utilize Adversarial Academic Models

Experiment with an adversarial academic model, similar to legal courts, where dedicated teams argue for and against a position, and a neutral party arbitrates based on agreed-upon techniques. This could improve truth-seeking, especially for imbalanced issues, by incentivizing rigorous attempts to disprove theories.

10. Be Skeptical of Gamed Metrics

Be aware that metrics used to measure success or performance in systems (e.g., college admissions, corporate performance) can depreciate over time as people learn to game them. Recognize that this gaming can lead to a misallocation of power and opportunity within institutions.

11. Recognize Multipolar Traps in Markets

Understand that powerful entities in markets can face ‘multipolar traps’ or ‘multiplayer prisoners dilemmas,’ where there’s an incentive to do harmful things (e.g., creating addictive social media) to stay competitive. Creative game theory algorithms and institutional redesigns are needed to solve these systemic issues.

12. Be Wary of Algorithms

Be aware that online algorithms may be designed to maximize profit by making users more anxious and manipulable, as insecurity can increase responsiveness to ads. This can make users more reactive to negative content and less open to nuanced discussions, so exercise caution in your online engagement.

13. Exercise Caution with New Technologies

Approach new technologies like DAOs with a blend of hope and skepticism, recognizing that while they offer promise for new governance models, they are in early stages. Be aware of potential pitfalls like projects not finishing, hype machines, or security vulnerabilities, and understand that a robust social and value-based community layer is often needed for success.

14. Seek Balanced Information on Topics

When researching topics where one side is highly engaged with many arguments and the other is less developed, actively seek out or encourage the development of stronger counter-arguments. This helps in accurately assessing the issue rather than being swayed by the sheer volume of information from one perspective.