9/ I think we’ve been making the lazy assumption that geographic and social mobility can always be assumed to play a role in how people adapt to digital transformation.
In fight/flight/freeze, we (as usual) neglected the “freeze” demographic. Turns out it’s the most important.
Conversation
10/ Why?
Fight responses tend to drive towards their own resolution naturally, so they don’t grow out of control invisibly.
Flight tends to put people in more adaptive conditions, with atomization being the cost.
Freeze? Problem just grows worse and worse.
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11/ The psychographics of Trump voters is almost pure freeze/Circled Wagons: low mobility, culturally homogeneous, low college education.
Such communities are at the highest risk of radical collective trauma from digital social transformation. Why?
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12/ An Atomized, Resurrected, or Precipitated person largely sees information warfare as confusing FUD and noise, and develops some hygiene practices. All of them have filter bubbles that are *primarily online* and not being reinforced offline.
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13/ Circled Wagon communities on the other hand, are like cognitively aligned magnets. They have an online filter bubble like the rest of us, but it is strongly and powerfully reinforced offline via meatspace interactions with people who all think like them.
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14/ As I’ve been saying since one of my early Breaking Smart essays, geography is the strongest filter bubble (credit for this insight to ). But we now know a shit ton more about why this is and what the consequences are.
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15/ In-person interactions are powerfully human, and add massive weight to belief structures. Picking up a fake news opinion from some rando is one thing. Having it then reinforced by your 10 lifelong neighbors who also picked it up and internally flesh it out... explosive.
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16/ We’ve all seen this. It’s especially obvious in (for example) the things our old relatives forward. Everybody above 70 is apparently on the same email lists and they all live next to each other.
But it’s not a problem of age. It’s a problem of cognitive mobility.
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17/ Cognitive mobility is probably a lousy term but I can’t think of a better one. Something about how much variety there is in the minds that most powerfully reshape/reweight your beliefs.
One in-person interaction counts for like 10-100 online, for the same belief.
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Replying to
that mental image (old person tottering feebly in ideaspace) has stuck with me for a long time. i was much more nimble when I was 18-22 before I had a job + mortgage + bills. was taking harder falls and getting bruised... I have better situational awareness now but less nimble
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