Conversation

Then again, as suggests, instead of lamenting the #EpistemicCrisis and decrying #EpistemicVandalism, maybe we should try to appreciate the upside in the end of “epistemic monoculture”?
Quote Tweet
The only additional key point is that arguably the deepest epistemic damage which proliferating #deepfakes will produce is not that they will enable the propagation of falsehoods, but rather that they will enable the baldfaced denial of truths.
Show this thread
1
5
Replying to
I don’t think it will evolve this way. This is open-loop extrapolation and people are already starting to adjust responses (cf: Covington high case). Crywolf effects. When you’re conditioned to distrust a signal source you don’t just freeze in stasis. You adapt.
1
2
Replying to and
The thing is, FUD created by a bad actor goes away when the bad actor leaves the scene. But FUD created by technology agency expansion is a cry wolf story with no specific untrustworthy shepherd boy for the villagers to tag. So behaviors shift.
1
1
Replying to and
Older generations circle wagons around their ingroup epistemes. Younger ones adopt new mitigating behaviors that are a mix of more conservatism (default skeptics, checking up on snopes) and operating off a smaller knowledge base (Talebian strategies).
1
2
Replying to and
I don’t even think there is a real epistemic crisis yet. We’re learning that we need consensus reality only in a few critical cases like vaccination where there are material consequences (loss of herd immunity) to epistemic pluralism.
2
1
Replying to
Yeah, and a few others, like nuclear weapons controls, global warming, pandemic response, etc. To which one might reasonably react: “Well, ok, but other than THAT, Mrs Lincoln, how was the play?”
1
Replying to
I actually don’t think climate change or nuclear power count! Both are examples where almost all agency is with a few small groups capable of unilateral action. The key is to ask: how is agency *other than speech* distributed. Pandemic response is in between.
1
Replying to and
People whose main mode of agency is talk and persuasion — you and me included — systematically overestimate how important that mode is in almost everything, and especially in adversarial coordinatedaction. Mostly noise and fury signifying nothing.
Replying to and
Talk I suspect is primarily a multiplier of existing consensus. A way for people who already agree on big things to agree further on details. Mass media created theater of fictive agency around ex-ante “debate” that never really existed among true adversaries to any great extent
1
1
Show replies