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Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/meirl/comments/koy2cx/me_irl/

In my note, “This is Why We Can’t Have Nice Tweets,”  I suggested that when you mix social media with leaders who have no concerns about spreading lies, violence is inevitable. It seems like it would be true enough, but is it?  The underlying assumption is that violence, particularly group / mob violence,  is a function of the speed at which ideas are spread and communities can be formed.  Whereas in the past this was limited by a variety of physical obstacles, in today’s digital environment, those things happen instantaneously. 

However, there is another factor at play on the path to violence: leaders.

Consider a forest fire: sometimes the underlying conditions are ripe for a blaze to erupt.  There has been no rain and all the wood and natural materials are as dry as can be.  All it takes is a little spark to set the thing off.  On the other hand, an arsonist can also come on the scene and spray gasoline everywhere and be the key factor in getting the blaze started.  I think the question at hand with regard to social media is: has the medium of the internet made the underlying conditions for violence so ripe that we’ve fundamentally reduced the amount of leadership required to get mob violence going?  It’s not to say that social media has no effect (I think it’s made things more dry, to use the metaphor), but has it truly changed the game with regard to free speech and violence?  

It’ll take a lot more research and analysis to even attempt to answer that question well. (if it’s even possible). But I think it’s worth exploring the question so we can at least be clear about the assumptions at play when we talk about regulating speech. 

The Medium:  Does the Internet Make Speech Inherently more Violent? I think the arguments in favor of this are pretty clear so I’m not going to restate them now.  And if this is true the implications are straightforward:  we’ll need more restrictive laws on speech.  But what if the internet has not fundamentally changed the nature of speech? 

The Man: What if the Capitol violence was more a result of a rare ability that leader’s like Trump have to motivate and inspire action?  Of course, social media played a part, but can we say for certain that had this occurred 30 years ago there would have been no riot?  I’m not so sure.  In this scenario it would still be right to shut Trump down, BUT it doesn’t mean we need to fundamentally change the rules of social media or free speech in general.  Censorship becomes a much more narrow proposition (in theory at least).  Here’s a good thread that expands on this point.  It defines what happened as an “omega” event.  Something extremely difficult to predict, and therefore difficult to protect against (and to be clear, this was easy to predict in weeks leading up to the riot. But not necessarily 4 years ago.)   
https://twitter.com/yishan/status/1348549664245628928?s=20

One caveat to all this is that it’s not an either/or situation by any means.  There can be social movements that grow from ground up because the cause is so clear and people need little motivation from a leader to act. And of course, leaders have stirred people to violence well before the internet was around.  Social movements, violent or otherwise, are a combination of bottoms-up actions and inspiring leaders.  But the question at hand is whether the internet has made the quality of leadership materially less important in that equation.  

I think if we’re going to be serious about policy on this front we have to be clear about the assumptions we’re making.  And I’m not so certain that the internet has made speech inherently more violent.   I think the question deserves much deeper consideration before we jump to that conclusion.  

Perhaps it was inevitable.   

This past week Twitter  banned Donald Trump.  Then Facebook and other platforms followed soon after.  Then there were cries of 1984 and that our 1^st amendment rights were at grave risk.   Are we moving towards that type of dystopian future? I think you need to look at two questions:  1)  Does Social Media inevitably lead to violence?  2) Is it a direct trip to 1984 if these companies start restricting  what people can say and do on their platforms?

1984 vs. 2021

My initial reaction to the Trump ban was “Good.” Kind of like that feeling of relief when a drunk heckler is finally dragged out of the room.  But of course, then the broader considerations start to kick in: Is this going to be a slippery slope? Can we trust corporations to do the right thing most of the time?  The answers are complex.  It is not going to be resolved with answers as simple as “private companies should have the discretion to do whatever they want” or “any type of ban is a violation of free speech or civil liberties.” We’re in new territory here (which gets to my second question below). 

But to those concerned about free speech let me just say this: We’ve only had the freedoms of the internet for maybe 20/30 years (and things like twitter and Facebook for about 15 of those).  Prior to the internet, people were not calling the US a repressive, Stalinesqe regime. Quite the opposite in fact.  Speech, in particular the ability to broadcast widely, was highly constrained by a few institutions like the major TV networks, publishers and newspapers, and then FCC regulations on top of that (remember Howard Stern?) Even with the Trump bans in place, he still has way more options to get his message out to the public today than he did 15 or 30  years ago.  

Social Media and Violence:

But I don’t deny that the path to 1984 is still a real possibility.  So I think you need to look at the  risk of keeping these platforms completely open.  Which gets to the question of whether violence is inevitable in that case.  I think the answer is Yes.  

The internet, and social media in particular, enable immediate communication with everyone, everywhere at all times.  In the past you might have believed the election was stolen.  But you would have been pretty isolated or maybe had a small group of people nearby to discuss it with.  With the internet, you find and form communities instantly.    The algorithms do accelerate this community building, but the root issue is that supporters of the most fringe theories and extreme beliefs can now find each other and build actual movements.  I’d wager that the mob that stormed the capitol this week came from all over the country, not just one town.   

Can the Show Keep Going On?

And therein lies the problem:  You’re always going to have people seeking conspiracy-theory type answers;  and there’s always going to be leaders that are willing to indulge them.  Let those two mix for long enough and violence seems inevitable to me. 

The sad thing is that for each fringe group looking to do violence, there’s probably thousands of peaceful groups and millions of people who are just happy to find communities that share their completely benign fringe quirks and interests.  The internet has been a boon for them.   But then people like Trump come along and abuse the system. But at some point the hecklers just get too numerous and loud, and the club is forced to just shut down. 

So, is moderation required? I think Yes. Can we remove the hecklers and keep the show going on? I think so.  Is it going to be easy? Absolutely  not.  

I tell myself that I want to avoid new year resolutions because they don’t work.  But part of me also thinks I’m avoiding them because I don’t want to put in the discipline to make them work.  Of course things like “lose weight” or “stop drinking” tend to fail when not executed in a systematic way, but there are more practical or workable resolutions that can 100%  be executed if done in a thoughtful way.   The hard part is deciding on what to do prioritize and make the effort.  Decisions.

This past year I kind of made a resolution to do 1 post a month.  I kind of kept it, at least started one post per month if not completed in the  month, but in December, for some reason I didn’t even start. I kept putting it off.  Barely even touched my writing, which was going in a pretty good direction throughout November. Not sure why.  I did enjoy it, and it’s where I want to be long term.

So what’s going on? Some thoughts:

1. Fear of Failure: I feel like this lurks forever in the subconscious.  You can’t fall if you don’t try.  I know consciously that trying and failing is valuable  in itself; I know that if I want to have any sort of professional outcome for writing I need to start somewhere; yes consciously I know exactly what I need to do, how do it,  and why to do it. Yet it doesn’t happen.
2. Fear of Wasted Time: This is less about the failing directly, more about the fact that I know it will hours and days of time to write something that is just crappy.  Let alone any good.  And given the odds of anything material coming out of this, is it worth the time?  This pairs with other career progress and the fact that I could be spending that time working on something else advancing those career interests which I know would have a more direct impact. Or at least a higher likelihood of impact.
3. Laziness: The least subconscious of all. I simply don’t have the willpower or desire to do the work.

Perhaps there are other things as well.  But what is interesting is that I’m fully capable of overcoming those 3 blockers when not in the pursuit of writing: I’m happy to test, fail and learn at work; I waste tons of time in pursuit of things that don’t advance any material objectives for me (and I’m not talking about TV or stuff like that, I mean actually idle time like on twitter or the internet), and I’ve done all sorts of things that require lots of initiative and the opposite of laziness.  So what to conclude?

What”s interesting is that this kind of the opposite of situation as the tragedy we see in Moby Dick: Rather than continuing on a path one knows will lead to bad things; one is avoiding a path that will lead to good things. It’s not about persisting in self-destructive behavior, but avoiding self-improvement behavior.   But is it as simple as why people avoid the gym or eat poorly when they know it’s bad? Is it just a matter of motivation?  Perhaps.  When people pursue self-destructive behavior it’s usually because that behavior is the “easier” path or, in the case of Moby Dick, a strong internal drive pushes them despite what the intellect might say.  In the self-improvement view, it easier to avoid the fear or be lazy, and than do what the intellect says as well. So in both cases effort and the right incentives are required to make progress.   It’s an interesting topic, worthy of further analysis, and perhaps a story.

Decisions. Regardless of all that, perhaps I have not made the formal decisions to spend my time in these pursuits.  Similar to the concept of “affirmations” that Scott Adams talks about, making the decision more concrete, somehow, could lead to more actions.

What’s required is a plan.  And a system. A New Year’s Resolution: not to write more, but to develop a system that works for me to write more.  Even if I don’t finish my stories in 2020, let’s call it a success if I can develop a system that gets me writing or making progress writing on a regular basis.

 

 

I heard Sam Harris use that phrase first on Eric Weinstein’s show.  He was referring to Republican Party in the age of Trump, I believe.  The specific context doesn’t’ matter, the phrasing was perfect and was generally referring to the fact that Politicians often engage hypocrisy, often quite transparently. (Although in the particular case he was talking about the flavor of hypocrisy was indeed quite “Delicious”).

Hypocrisy in politics is interesting; a similar dynamic to the Lying stuff I wrote about last month.  It’s supposed to be a bad thing, yet there are few there a few real consequences to it. Particularly in politics.

However it’s different than lying because there’s much less of a gray area in hypocrisy.  It’s pretty black and white.  The magnitude of hypocrisy can vary, but there’s no concept of “white lies” or anything like that with hypocrisy.   There can be nuance in a position, but at the end of the day you’re either saying one thing and acting another way, or not.

And yet again, despite the fact we as society  denote Hypocrisy as a bad thing, we generally don’t treat it that way.   People’s reputations can suffer if they are frequent hypocrites, but there’s a good amount that is generally tolerated, particularly in politics.

In the political context I find this particular interesting: on the one hand they should be the most susceptible to suffering the consequences of hypocrisy. After all, aren’t they elected based on what they say they will do?  I’m not sure any politicians have ever been elected by promising to weigh each decisions based on the specific context and go with the best option available.  On the contrary, they need strong positions and want to be seen holding those position for long amount of time.  When a politician talks about “evolving” their views they are mocked.

Similar to the lying analysis I suggested, where we generally OK if politicians live because the ends justify the means. With hypocrisy, as long as the politician still seems to be promoting the interests of the voter, the particular acts of hypocrisy are not discrediting. To use a concrete example: if a politician runs on a platform of being “Pro-life” and then votes to confirm a judge that is “Pro-choice,” only the voters who cared about abortion strongly would be upset. If people voted for this person based on their position on taxes, and that position remained consistent, the hypocrisy on abortion would not be a big deal.

You might argue that such hypocrisy might cause concern for a voter: couldn’t their issue be next?  That would certainly be a rational approach, but my point is that we already see this happening all the time. Politicians are regularly proven hypocrites, yet get re-elected.  So while some concern should warranted in theory, in practice it doesn’t seem to trigger any changes in elect-ability.

The broader point of both of these posts is that in practice lying and hypocrisy are more of relative negative traits as opposed to absolute negative traits. Yet as a society, we tend to hold them up as absolute flaws. I think the “ends justify the means” explains our treatment our politicians. and people in power generally.  However, I think there is a more charitable explanation when it comes to how we handle regular people in these situations. We all know that “Pobody’s Nerfect.” With hypocrisy, we know intuitively that holding clear positions is way easier said than done. There’s lots of gray in reality, and while it simplifies things to attempt to hold clear moral positions, in practice it is quite challenging. And people change as well. So in practice, we forgive ourselves these hypocrisies.

 

 

In about a year from now we’ll be smack in the middle of the political season. And not just any political season, but a Presidential Season. And not just any Presidential Season, but the TRUMP political season.

And one of the main topics of discussion will be lies: Trump will decried as a liar and it will be offered as a key rationale for why he should not be President. Yet, this was all there in 2016 and he still won.   We’d like to think Lying is a disqualifying action, but the reality is that Politicians lie because it works; people just don’t reject candidates for lying.

In the Trump world, there’s a discussion about the magnitude of lying.  From his book the Art of the Deal:

“The final key to the way I promote is bravado. I play to people’s fantasies. People may not always think big themselves, but they can still get very excited by those who do. That’s why a little hyperbole never hurts. People want to believe that something is the biggest and the greatest and the most spectacular. I call it truthful hyperbole. It’s an innocent form of exaggeration—and a very effective form of promotion.”

Note how he goes from playing to “people’s fantasies” to an “innocent form of exaggeration.”  And “Truthful Hyperbole” …a newspeak classic.  It kind sounds coherent, but breaks down once you think about it.  It is an illogical concept, to be both truthful and hyperbolic at the same time.  But people would like to believe that there can be a type of truth in exaggeration. In reality, it’s just, as Trump himself notes, playing to people’s fantasies.  People often want to believe exaggerated versions of things, and therein lies an opening for folks like Trump.

But to my first point, we’re not talking about exaggeration, we’re talking about lies. And there is a distinction.  There’s a spectrum of deception and at some point hyperbole or little “white lies” crosses a line and becomes something society deems really bad.   My Hebrew School teacher once told us that when the 10 Commandments said, “thou shalt not lie,” it wasn’t referring to telling someone politely that you liked their cooking or a new jacket they just bought when it wasn’t in fact true.  Where those acceptable lies turn to bad lies is unclear, but I think it has something to do with intent: intentionally misleading people, causing harm–this is all wrapped up in the unacceptable type lying.  Yet Politicians still lie with intent to deceive almost exclusively, and they’re not not rejected by the people for it.

I believe the answer is pretty simple: as Machiavelli observed, if people desire the ends, they will ignore the means.  And at the end of the day people value the end goals of their politicians way more than principles of honesty.  Perhaps this is obvious.  Yet we hear constant criticisms of lying politicians as if their lies themselves are enough to discredit them.  You’d think people would realize lying doesn’t matter…

There’s two takeaways I have from this: I think we need to change the way we criticize Politicians when they lie.  If we want to be effective against lying, we need to change the critique from “you’re lying, therefore you should be disqualified” to something like “you’re lying to make your point, why can you use just use the real facts?.”  The narrative needs to move past the lie, treat is a OK, but the lowest form of argument.

And, more interestingly, I’m struggling with the question of: maybe it’s not so bad that Politicians lie.  The results of elections have major impacts on our lives, life and death in some cases, shouldn’t we use any means possible to succeed?   Because it’s not just politics where lies are acceptable, it’s throughout all life.  I’d rather fight the battle with lies than violence.  If the people can’t see reality for what it is, then truth won’t do much anyway.  More to think on this last one.

Back when the Internet was becoming a major part of society, there was a common concern that  it would usher in an era of ephemera: that the continuous flow of information and entertainment would provide us endless distractions and take away our ability to focus on things for extended periods of time; that our capability to remember things would decay as we google away for forgotten facts–memory becomes a second class need.

However, in an odd twist, the age of ephemera has also led to an age where the past is never really forgotten. In analog days, things said or written years in the past would often stay there: written words lost in the piles and files of ever increasing physical documents.  Things said would remain within a smaller circle of people and be difficult to really break through to the whole of society.  To be clear, it wasn’t so much that past dissolved or ceased to be, but that the effort required to bring things from the past to present in a meaningful way was extremely high.  As result, in Analog days, the past generally stayed the past.

That’s changed. The effort to find a few words in massive of pile of documents has been reduced to a few keystrokes; and the spreading of tales of one’s past can instantly be shared with the entire world with the tap of button.  So we have to reckon with questions we’ve never really had to reckon with before as society: what from the past can be forgiven? And what must be a permanent scar? And, and much more difficult question: do we have different standards for different people?

For this post I’m more interested in that last question: Regardless of what society deems forgivable or not, should there be different standards for people given things like their backgrounds or their contributions to society?

I think we’ve implicitly answered “Yes” in general to Different Standards, however we haven’t defined the different thresholds. A figure like Harvey Weinstein was shunned for his abuses of power while Michael Jackson is still generally accepted.  Arguably Jackson did much worse than Weisnten, but Jackson has given society way  more gifts, and his talents way more clear, than Weinstein.  Or take a figure like Bill Clinton, John. F Kennedy, even Martin Luther King Jr. all figures that are generally lauded for their political / social contributions, yet in private have done things that would of us would consider unacceptable had our close friends or family committed them.

I won’t do a deep dive in this post of all the recent folks who’s pasts have been exposed and how society has dealt with them (A good idea for a follow up though, note to self self). Yet I will say that I’m not sure of the answer whether society should give folks that contribute so much, more slack for the past (or even present) sins.  It’s a new world for sure though, that should be considered.

I recently moved into the suburbs. I was filled with lots of anxiety as we drew closer to the the move date: I had been living in New York for almost 20 years from college through work..  I had a good, convenient situation in my apartment in Brooklyn.  Things were going pretty well.

On the other hand, the apartment was small, the schools are questionable in the city and the end state was always to be some type of house.  My wife and I always wanted to space that comes with a house.  So we made the decision, and bought a house.  It’s pretty much got everything you could ask for: a lot of space, great location for commuting and general walking in the town, small quiet block. Yet, I was filled anxiety and sadness as got closer to the move date.  And even after we moved in.  Did they we make the right decision? Did we move too soon?

The grass is always greener, big life changes are always hard and emotional.  But I wonder if there is something else going on.  It’s not just the change that causes anxiety, but what this move means from a life perspective:  it’s highlighting that perhaps the first part of my life, the individual part, the youthful part, is coming to a close as the second part, the family-raising and middle age towards old age part is now here.  I have passed a certain life milestone and there is perhaps a unconscious notion that I am closer to death than life.

This doesn’t have to be a negative thing.  One can few the overarching arc as having peaked and continuing on a descent. OR one can view the arc as having reached a bottom and starting now on the path up: there’s way more opportunity ahead of me than behind me.  Much more to accomplish; much more to experience with family.  The transition is always hard, but if you’re going to shift to a brighter future, than a transition must be made.   It always comes back to the Dostoevsky quote about a “kernal of wheat” dying to allow for growth and change.  But the death of anything is hard, which comes back to that Jack Bogle quote in my book “Press on Regardless.”  It’s an age-old truth that improvement only come from suffering and pain and fear, not through continuous stream of happy, un-stressful activities.

When you work in an organization, big or small,  you will inevitably encounter a process that doesn’t make sense.  Maybe it’s inefficient, or uses an old, outdated technology or is simply illogical.  You will wonder why the organization continues in this path when there’s clearly a better way!  The answer is not always straightforward.

The general intuition is that it’s some form of Organizational Inertia:  People have been doing things a certain way for years and its works “good enough”.  Most people in the company recognize there is better way, but the effort to change the process would not be worth the improvements from the new process.   It’s only when there’s major issues, or new leadership with lots of energy, that enough force can be applied to break Organizational Inertia and implement the better way.  This is probably the explanation for the majority of cases.  However there can also be a Strategic Reason for that an organizations to move slowly when considering a change to a seemingly inefficient process: they need time to allow the hidden value in the process to emerge.

Think of a process almost like a tradition.  While one may argue traditions exist because of  cultural inertia, there’s another perspective that would argues traditions carry non-obvious values.  This is generally the driver of the Conservative approach to change: we’re not always aware of the complete value or benefit a tradition delivers, so we should be slow to change it.   You could say there’s a kind of natural selection / evolution for a society with regard to tradition.  If a tradition has accompanied a society’s success, then it will continue to survive.  If a culture adopts a certain adopted a process or institution, it might be because its the best option and time tested, even if there are obvious flaws.

So too with company process. As shitty as one may be, it could be the best option and time tested.  The justification for the process might live be hidden, but material edge cases or non-obvious downstream impacts of a process.  So being slow to make changes provides the organization with time to undercover some of these things. Time for the people involved to raise their hands or time to do research on the potential impact.  Time to understand if the results of the process were delivered as result of or in spite the bad parts.