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  1. Feb 1
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  2. Love the idea that history did not build up from the individual to the society (tribe, country, company), but the other way around: the individual could only emerge because a well structured society allowed it to.

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  3. Pet theory: Twitch is popular largely because it's an intimacy substitute. Someone talks to you from their bedroom, unconditionally, for however long you want, and with no effort required.

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  4. Summary Availability cascades are extremely powerful mechanisms that determine what ideas dominate in society. They work by combining the proliferation of specific information and social pressure in a runaway self-reinforcing cycle.

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  5. What are historical examples? Edward Bernays, the GOAT of Availability Entrepreneurs. As Freud’s cousin, he exploited his ideas to create the PR industry, the idea of “lifestyle” products, and sway elections. Documented in The Century of the Self:

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  6. Meta Ironically, the paper is itself an availability cascade for available cascades that exploits the availability heuristic: “Offering recent examples of availability cascades that have resulted in socially harmful regulatory responses, we shall propose institutional reforms…”

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  7. Social availability errors: When availability cascades create "widespread mistaken beliefs”. “The resulting mass delusions may last indefinitely and produce detrimental laws and policies."

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  8. Politicians riding runaway availability cascades “To avoid charges of insensitivity, even to avoid having to justify an unpopular position, [a politician] may make speeches and promote policies that convey deep concern about a waste spill that he actually considers harmless.”

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  9. Runaway availability cascades If momentum behind a cascade is high, some people may avoid speaking out against it or even actively support it despite knowing they are inaccurate or outright wrong.

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  10. Public vs private preferences divergence When cascades have a lot of momentum individuals may hide their private preferences if they go against the cascade. Some would argue this happened in the 2016 presidential election.

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  11. Problems for democracy “The argument thus far indicates that "public opinion" about the regulation of risks (the distribution of public policy preferences) constitutes a highly problematic basis for government policy.”

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  12. “Populist Firestorms and Democratic Risk Regulation” “Availability cascades create serious problems for democracy… They create a danger that apparently democratic outcomes will rest on misinformation”

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  13. Manipulation of political institutions “A special-interest group supplies information to members of Congress, who hold hearings... journalists help spread the message... citizens join the fray... laws or regulations are adopted... instigating fresh opportunities [for] uproar"

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  14. Manipulation of the media “A common method for triggering availability cascades is for a group to pass carefully sifted information to selected journalists... The information will often contain grains of truth, but it may also harbor biases, even outright fabrications.”

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  15. Availability campaigns: “Pressure groups… seek to instigate availability cascades." “A common tactic is to produce a headline-grabbing uproar by dramatizing a problem.”

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  16. Availability entrepreneurs: “Activists who manipulate the content of public discourse [and] strive to trigger availability cascades likely to advance their agendas"

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  17. There is an open market for availability cascades “The underlying social conditions thus create what one might call an availability market… the concept of an availability market suggests… competition among availability entrepreneurs”.

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  18. Stories ("the availability heuristic") are the basic building block of availability cascades: “A pervasive mental shortcut whereby the perceived likelihood of any given event is tied to the ease with which its occurrence can be brought to mind”.

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  19. Availability cascades = informational cascades + reputational cascades ”Individuals endorse the perception partly by learning from the apparent beliefs of others and partly by distorting their public responses in the interest of maintaining social acceptance"

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  20. 2) Reputational cascades: “People ordinarily want to be perceived as standing on high moral ground, so in the presence of sufficiently strong pressures, they adjust their expressions accordingly.” Both elements become more powerful the more widespread the cascade.

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