Sublime
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Martin Gurri • Revolt of the Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium
I think today the variance of weirdness is increasing. Conformists can conform like never before, due say to social media and the Girardian desire to mimic others. But unusual people can connect with other unusual people, and make each other much weirder and more "niche." For instance, every possible variant of political views seems to be "out ther... See more
Noah Smith • Interview: Tyler Cowen, economist and public intellectual
Most of this came to him in the mid-1980s, when Mr. Goldhaber, a former theoretical physicist, had a revelation. He was obsessed at the time with what he felt was an information glut — that there was simply more access to news, opinion and forms of entertainment than one could handle. His epiphany was this: One of the most finite resources in the w... See more
nytimes.com • Opinion | Michael Goldhaber, the Cassandra of the Internet Age - The New York Times
cleverest observer. Consider
Martin Gurri • Revolt of the Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium
Social media algorithms identify our politics and then shepherd us into a hermetically sealed bubble, framing our worldview through a window of rage and extremism.
Scott Galloway • No Mercy / No Malice
clever people sought to measure, in data bits, the amount of information produced in
Martin Gurri • Revolt of the Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium
People dramatically under estimate how many decisions one has to make before shipping the v1 of even the simplest product. They all seem obvious in retrospect, but so, so much thinking had to happen to ship something like "press a button, get a ride."
Monopolies are bad. Violence is bad. Monopolies on violence turn out to be one of the best ideas ever. Go figure. #ThinkingIsHard
That experiment failed. Humanity does not want to be a global hive mind. We are not rational Bayesian updaters who will eventually reach agreement; when we receive the same information, it tends to polarize us rather than unite us. Getting screamed at and insulted by people who disagree with you doesn’t take you out of your filter bubb
... See moreNoah Smith • The Internet Wants to Be Fragmented
