Instagram story viewer> @tobiased> Posts

2.2K

followers

597

following

Author✍️ Outrage Machine: A book about how the internet has broken our brains. Host🎙️ Into The Machine: Reminding you to be on here less.

POSTS STORIES REELS

For those of us concerned about AI safety, this has been a big week. Major news reports on hacking by AI should worry everyone. A lot of folks, including Elon Musk, Sam Altman, and Dario Amodei are worried enough that they think we need to slow the pace of AI development.

In line with this, I’m publishing a conversation on one (arguably edgy) side of the debate — with Nate Soares, president of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute. Nate wrote the book, If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies, along with his coauthor Eliezer Yudkowsky. I wanted to probe the dimensions of his views here, and I think it is a helpful part of the discourse. I do not believe, as he does, that AI is an inevitable doomsday device, but I do think his position is an important one to explore.

I plan to follow up with voices who might counter his particular perspective and legibly suggest the ways he might be wrong. Because I want him to be wrong.
As always, thanks for listening/watching. Link in bio. by @tobiased

That little dopamine hit isn’t a bug. It’s the feature. Now that we know it, what are we going to do about it?

Tobias Rose Stockwell is a designer, writer, and techologist. His expert insights are featured throughout Your Attention Please, unpacking the intentional design behind the dopamine hit; and why these apps are built to keep us hooked. by @tobiased

Does the moral arc of the universe actually bend towards justice?

@sapinker is famous for writing the book "The Better Angels of Our Nature," showing quantitatively how global violence has declined dramatically over the last 1000 years.

People have a lot of criticisms about this idea: pointing to the fact that there are still so many urgent problems to address. That we are not looking at the bad things that modernism has created. That injustice is getting worse.

In our interview I pushed him on this. Not that we are not looking at present horrors, but that social media has broken our ability to agree as to what constitutes a horror in itself. That there are too many confusing narratives to navigate through. That every horrific thing now has someone, somewhere, telling us that it is in fact, a good thing.

He countered that there are fundamental bedrock beliefs among most humans that have changed for the better which we have not given up: Just 100 years ago, war was considered glorious and righteous, while peace was considered wrongheaded and weak. This was a common view.

He argues that while social media has confused us deeply, we still know that some things are very bad that our great grandparents did not. Namely: mass global violence in the name of glory and conquest. Even Trump, with his fervent base, cannot rally to a war on foreign soil longer than 6 months. In his reading, we are simply not as bloodthirsty as we once were.

I hope he's right.

Full episode in bio. by @tobiased

Where do political revolutions come from? When can you be sure that your private grievance is shared? When do you know that an idea has critical mass?

My recent interview with Steven Pinker explores exactly how this works. Link in bio. by @tobiased

There’s a fundamental difference between how social media operates and how science, academia, journalism, and the legal system operate. One amplifies bias, the others try to check it. My interview with Harvard cognitive scientist @sapinker is live now. Link in bio. by @tobiased

$What really matters? What are the problems we should be focusing on as a society? Where should we apply our attention? These are questions that are increasingly hard to answer. In any democracy, we need to know what other people *think* matters, so we can move together. Dictatorships have a different playbook. They use coercive information to force people to think one way — often by obfuscating what everyone else thinks. This makes coordination as a group harder. Today we're stuck inside a system that distorts what other people really think. Social media has broken the contract of common knowledge, forcing us to assume the worst from our compatriots. If you really knew that only a fraction of people believed in the extreme views you see online, would you change your opinion about how bad the world is? Would you have more faith in democracy? This is a conversation I’ve been waiting to have for a long time. @sapinker believes we can fix much of our confusion by understanding the fundamentals of common knowledge. Take a listen. Link in bio. by @tobiased$

Social media can be useful, but needs guardrails.

@cvaldary says no social media before 10am or after 7pm. And she follows that rule with friends, making it a social pact.

Accountability with people in your community.

I think she’s right.

Full conversation with Chloé Valdary, link in bio. by @tobiased

What would it take for you to delete 110,000 followers?

Not ghost them. Not go quiet. But press the button that says you can never come back.

In this episode, I sit down with @cvaldary — who did exactly that.

She walked away from her entire Twitter presence, refusing to participate in the rage bait that’s become standard practice there.

Chloé was one of the good ones online. While everyone was dunking, canceling, and destroying, she walked into the fire offering an alternative: Humanization. Empathy. Reconciliation.

And then she left.

35% of adults are stepping away from social media fire the same reason: To improve their mental health. Who is left? Usually it’s the most outraged. The most extreme. And they own the conversation after that.

This is a discussion about integrity — structural integrity. About what’s lost when the best of us leave these spaces. And what we might build instead.

Link in bio 🎧 by @tobiased

Social media can’t fulfill the human need for connection. It tries to act as a proxy for it, and when it can’t actually meet that deep yearning, byproducts show up.

Outrage is one of them.

We feel fired up. We snap back at people who express ideas we don’t like. And as much as it looks like conflict, we’re still connecting with the person we’re reacting to.

Fighting is a way to connect.

Outrage feels purposeful. It speaks to identity. It helps us find people and form tribes, even on platforms that feel antisocial. Underneath it all, the impulse is still very social.

Full episode with Chloé Valdary.

Link in bio. by @tobiased

Back in 2019 @jonathanhaidt and I wrote a piece in The Atlantic about why it feels like the world is imploding and exploding simultaneously. I still think this is one of the best analyses of the changes to society's cognitive infrastructure that brought us here.

I’m more convinced than ever that there are ways to fix it. My number one recommendation is to Install a screen time blocker. My preference is for an app called Opal, but aggressively limiting your screen time is the primary action you can take now to make a difference in your personal mental health - and the health of society. by @tobiased

Millions of people are already having deep relationships with AIs. Some have blown up marriages, careers, entire lives because of a chatbot. Sam Altman has said this is one of his favorite films, and it’s possible the movie pushed ChatGPT toward this more intimate direction.

We’re still at the early edge of this trend. The tools will only get better.

In 5 years you will probably know someone in a relationship with a chatbot.

Is this a future we want to live in?

I speak with Justin McLeod, the founder of Hinge, about this very strange future.

For the full episode, comment “AI” and I’ll send it to you. by @tobiased

Tobias Rose-Stockwell

@tobiased