Is the Greatest Threat to Humanity Something Called an Algorithm?
Algorithms used in social media are not tuned for what is best for society. They don’t ask themselves, “Is this true?” or “Will this information help or hurt humanity?"
https://open.substack.com/pub/thomhartm ... dium=email
"For hundreds of thousands of years, it was scouts, neighbors, and family members reporting predators or prey, animal or human, just around the other side of the mountain or on the perimeter of the nighttime fire, that kept our ancestors safe.
Over the millennia, we developed elaborate social constructs or “rules of society” to enhance our confidence in the information we’re getting from our fellow humans, because that information may be essential to our survival.
When important information is twisted, distorted, or lied about it can put us at risk. And that’s what’s happening right now across multiple social media platforms,"
The Hartmann Report
Is the Greatest Threat to Humanity Something Called an Algorithm?
Algorithms used in social media are not tuned for what is best for society. They don’t ask themselves, “Is this true?” or “Will this information help or hurt humanity?"
Thom Hartmann
Nov 28
54
11
"The man who coined the term “virtual reality” and helped create Web 2.0, Jaron Lanier, recently told a reporter for The Guardian there’s an aspect to the internet that could endanger the literal survival of humanity as a species. It’s an amazing story, and I believe he’s 100% right.
Humans are fragile creatures. We don’t have fangs or claws to protect ourselves from other animals that might want to eat us. We don’t have fur or a pelt to protect us from the elements.
What we do have, however, that has allowed us to conquer the planet and survive for eons is our interconnection with each other, something we generally refer to as society, community, and culture."
"Humans are social animals. Our ability to share information with each other in ways that are meaningful and credible has been the key to our survival.
For hundreds of thousands of years, it was scouts, neighbors, and family members reporting predators or prey, animal or human, just around the other side of the mountain or on the perimeter of the nighttime fire, that kept our ancestors safe.
Over the millennia, we developed elaborate social constructs or “rules of society” to enhance our confidence in the information we’re getting from our fellow humans, because that information may be essential to our survival.
When important information is twisted, distorted, or lied about it can put us at risk. And that’s what’s happening right now across multiple social media platforms, causing people to question global warming and other science (Covid vaccines, for example) while engaging in behavior destructive to a democratic, peaceful, functioning world.
These rules or Commandments about truthful communication are at the core of every religion, every culture, and every society from the most technologically sophisticated to those “primitives” still living in jungles, forests, and wild mountain areas.
They’re built into our deepest and most ancient oral traditions, stretching back to dim antiquity, known by every person in every culture around the world.
We in western culture can all recite the story of The Little Boy Who Cried Wolf, Eve’s lie to her god about consuming the forbidden fruit, and the consequences of courtiers’ lies about The Emperor’s New Clothes. Every other culture on Earth has their versions of the same stories.
We know, remember, and pass along these stories because truthful information is essential to the survival of family, tribe, community, nation, and ultimately humanity itself."
"Click on a post about voting and the algorithm then leads you to election denial, from there to climate denial, from there to Qanon.
Next stop, radicalization or paralysis. But at least you stayed along for the ride and viewed a lot of ads in the process": that’s the goal of the algorithm.
Algorithms used in social media are not tuned for what is best for society. They don’t follow the rules that hundreds of thousands of years of human evolution have built into our cultures, religions, and political systems.
They don’t ask themselves, “Is this true?” or “Will this information help or hurt this individual or humanity?“
Instead, the algorithms’ sole purpose is to make more money for the billionaires who own the social media platform"
Trump: “We had the safest border in the history of our country - or at least recorded history. I guess maybe a thousand years ago it was even better.”
Some corporate psychologist probably determined that it increases impulse buying or something.
