--- > The fundamental problem, as I see it, is not that social media *misinforms individuals* about what is true or untrue but that it creates *publics with malformed collective understandings*. - [View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jh5fr9htqj5xefd6836p9xs8) --- > The problem is that actual individual citizens are biased and, on average, not particularly knowledgeable about politics. This mismatch between rhetoric and reality has created opportunities for a minor academic industry of libertarians and conservatives arguing that democracy is unworkable and that we should rely instead on well informed elites to rule. The problem with this elitist case against democracy is that elites are just as biased, and furthermore are liable to use their greater knowledge to bolster their biases rather than correct them ... So what can we do to ameliorate this problem? Making individuals better at thinking and seeing the blind spots in their own individual reasoning will only go so far. What we need are better *collective* means of thinking. --- > There are sharp limits to *individual* human cognition, but we have invented *collective* means to think better together. ... Markets, bureaucracies, and indeed democracy can all serve as collective means of problem solving and compensation for individual deficiencies, under the right circumstances. --- > In short, the technologies through which we see the public shape what we think the public is. And that, in turn, shapes how we behave politically and how we orient ourselves. - [View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jh5g63g14h6ep33k9nf9p66p) --- > Bringing this all together, *the technologies through which we see the public shape how we understand it*, making it more likely that we end up in the one situation rather than the other. ... Many of the problems that we are going to face over the next many years will stem from publics that have been deranged and distorted by social media in ways that lower the odds that democracy will be a problem solving system, and increase the likelihood that it will be a problem creating one. --- > The result is that particular taboos (incest; choking) feature heavily in the presentation of Internet porn, not because they are the most popular among consumers, but because they are more likely to convert into paying customers. This, in turn, gives porn consumers, including teenagers, [a highly distorted understanding](https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/article/2024/sep/02/i-think-its-natural-why-has-sexual-choking-become-so-prevalent-among-young-people) of what other people want and expect from sex, that some of them then act on. > Something like this explains the main consequences of social media for politics. The collective perspectives that emerge from social media - our understanding of what the public is and wants - are similarly shaped by algorithms that select on some aspects of the public, while sidelining others. - _Tags_: `favorite` --- > This isn’t brainwashing - people don’t have to internalize this or that aspect of what social media presents to them, radically changing their beliefs and their sense of who they are. That sometimes happens, but likely far more rarely than we think. The more important change is to our beliefs about *what other people think,* which we perpetually update based on social observation. When what we observe is filtered through social media, our understandings of the coalitions we belong to, and the coalitions we oppose, what we have in common, and what we disagree on, shift too. - [View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jh5xzxg5cvk3sg8xa5tseyr3) --- > Comrade Secretary delivers a speech on “The Dangers of American Imperialism.” Then all the comrades in the room express their opinions. All, but Comrade Kowalski. It is late Friday night, and everyone wants to go home, yet Comrade Kowalski remains silent. Finally, Comrade Secretary turns to Comrade Kowalski, “Comrade Kowalski, I delivered my speech, all the comrades expressed their opinions, and you, you say nothing. Don’t you have an opinion?” To which Comrade Kowalski sheepishly replies, “Oh, Comrade Secretary, the opinion I do have it. But I do not know if I agree with it.” - [View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jh5y7qt7d8v8betk7bg1sd5d) ---