Our attention is increasingly controlled by predictive algorithms. These algorithms feed us with content that slowly but surely smooth out our little quirks and extravagant ideas. Those odd edges and turns that make us humans with personality. By slowly shaping what we think, they flatten and simplify complex and often paradoxical ideas that otherwise would have emerged in our minds.
Tribalism, rage, oversimplification, left vs right, us vs them, the formulation of an enemy. These all grab our eyeballs in the service of advertisements. If social media is free, it is because we are the product being sold.
The consequences to our public discourse are unsettling. Attitudes on transgender rights predict with high accuracy attitudes towards climate change –two completely unrelated issues. To acknowledge complexity and nuance, to listen to different points of views, to uphold the principle of charity — these are all skills that we are losing. And democracy cannot survive when we no longer listen to each other.
In the age of the surveillance capitalism, to develop habits of mind that make us adopt heterogeneous views makes us unpredictable. It confuses the algorithms. It restores the humanity in us. It makes us more free.