Easy to forget just how 'not talked or thought about' this kind of thing was just a decade ago.
Entryism, false flags, gatekeepers, psy ops - go back a few more years, gay ops and mass surveillance. All totally outside the awareness window.
I feel similarly hopeful. The first step to getting *out* of the old paradigm is having enough people understand the game and so being able to call out the cheap tricks various bad actors are likely to pull in a given situation ahead of time.
yes yes yes! a lot of people who knew this stuff a decade ago look at this without much hope, "they will just keep changing the techniques they use", but I think this doesn't have to be true. I think there are ways to make unfakeable signals, and to look for them & demand them.
Community Notes is one such example of a system of transparency. And we know it is because (1) it regularly called out propaganda that elon musk was spreading, on his own posts (2) he eventually started fighting back & removing some of these notes, compromising the system.
When I look at something like the NYT podcast having comments turned off (on spotify, last I checked) I see a desire to spread information with no accountability. There's a way of opening up comments, seeing a lot of negative ones, and also counter-washing it with fake positive ones, but that doesn't matter: we can have systems that let me see the comments ONLY from people within my trust network. My friends, and specific bloggers & sources, across the internet.
The bedrock of our survival here is I think knowing that we CAN find truth, about any *thing* we care about, even if we can't find the truth about *everything*
there's an XCKD at the very end of this post you might like that depicts this "can't answer every question, but can answer any question" (which you could add pics in substack replies)
Easy to forget just how 'not talked or thought about' this kind of thing was just a decade ago.
Entryism, false flags, gatekeepers, psy ops - go back a few more years, gay ops and mass surveillance. All totally outside the awareness window.
I feel similarly hopeful. The first step to getting *out* of the old paradigm is having enough people understand the game and so being able to call out the cheap tricks various bad actors are likely to pull in a given situation ahead of time.
yes yes yes! a lot of people who knew this stuff a decade ago look at this without much hope, "they will just keep changing the techniques they use", but I think this doesn't have to be true. I think there are ways to make unfakeable signals, and to look for them & demand them.
Community Notes is one such example of a system of transparency. And we know it is because (1) it regularly called out propaganda that elon musk was spreading, on his own posts (2) he eventually started fighting back & removing some of these notes, compromising the system.
When I look at something like the NYT podcast having comments turned off (on spotify, last I checked) I see a desire to spread information with no accountability. There's a way of opening up comments, seeing a lot of negative ones, and also counter-washing it with fake positive ones, but that doesn't matter: we can have systems that let me see the comments ONLY from people within my trust network. My friends, and specific bloggers & sources, across the internet.
The bedrock of our survival here is I think knowing that we CAN find truth, about any *thing* we care about, even if we can't find the truth about *everything*
there's an XCKD at the very end of this post you might like that depicts this "can't answer every question, but can answer any question" (which you could add pics in substack replies)
https://defenderofthebasic.substack.com/p/geoffrey-hinton-on-developing-your
This is incredible.
Oh the irony
Seeing journalists as lawyers is very interesting, and made me think of this: https://x.com/cremieuxrecueil/status/1890585863379120530