The making sense podcast sam Harris just a note to say that if you're hearing this you're not currently on our subscriber feed and will only be hearing the first part of this conversation in order to access full episodes of the making sense, podcast you'll need to subscribe at sam harris dot. Org. There you'll find our private rss feed to add to your favorite podcaster, along with other subscriber only content. We don't run ads on the podcast and therefore it's made possible entirely through the support of our subscribers. So if you enjoy what we're doing here, please consider becoming one the a welcome to the essential sam harris, this Making sense of social media and the information landscape, the guy

of the series is to organise, compile an juxtapose conversations hosted by sam Harris, indisposed big areas of interest, this Is an ongoing effort to construct a coherent overview of sam's perspectives and arguments, the various explorations and approaches to the topic, the realm the agreements and disagreements and the push acts and evolving thoughts which his guests have advanced. The purpose of these compilations is not to provide a complete picture of any issue. But to entice you to go deeper into these subjects. Along the way or point you too, episodes with each featured guest at the conclusion, will offer some reading listening. And watching suggestions which range from fun and light to dense. academic one. To keep in mind for the series

Sam has long argued for a unity of knowledge where the barriers between fields of study are viewed as largely unhelpful artifacts of unnecessarily partition thought the four suit of wisdom and reason in one area of study, natural we bleeds into an greatly affects others. You'll hear plenty of. Cross over into other topics, as these dives into the archives unfold and you're thinking, about a particular topic, may shift as you realize, is contingent relationships with others in this town. You'll hear the natural overlap with theories of moral and political philosophy. Belief and unbelief free will. an artificial intelligence so get ready. Lets me sense of social media and the information landscape one very important update before we jump into this compilation. Since the initial writing and recording of this episode, SAM.

wit twitter entirely recorded a solo episode entitled why I left twitter, which explain his reasoning and thought process for that decision? We of we recommend listening to that? In addition, to the included conversations here then I wish that sam eventually walked away from social media platforms, places an trusting lens over his conversations on the subject from the previous decade, though, as you're here this compilation extends the considered issues of social media. Well. Beyond personal engagement in it to the many ways in which the surveillance economy generally has worked, our politics, social relations and morals psychology? Is Why I left twitter is episode three or four, and now back to the episode.

Social media is one of those topics that everyone seems to have strong opinions about that fact in itself, the dear, that our feelings on just about everything seemed to have gotten stronger in flame by the advent of social media, is something we'll fold into the discussion during this compilation, like about all of us same has gone through and continues to go through Strained relationship with social media, apparently even The most practiced meditated can be hijacked by algorithms that target our propensity for outrage. Adulation, annoyance, discussed the East of social media is strong, but of horse. Social media also has positive potential and its own success stories. There We are an ignoble societal benefits that must be evaluated and considered.

This compilation contains plenty of critique and perspective regarding the darker sides of social media and the ecb model, which has provided at scaffolding The criticism should not completely crowd out or invalidate the defenders and believers and its positive possibilities. we are also going to be situating the social media question in a broader context of the business model, which enables it something that's been called surveillance. Capitalism by its critics and personalized advertising by its more supportive advocates. Will also be zooming in on some of the specific technologies upon which all of this is built The introduction to an episode with jerry lanier, which is klute in this compilation, Sam identified three main lines of inquiry for this topic, the first Is economics and the question of incentives in the face of automation, an artificial intelligence, the sec,

and is politics, and the question of how we can cooperate and co here on ideas in a space were true it is being hollowed out and the third psychology and how attention and well being, are being assaulted by the power of the surveillance economy and social media will be one during through that same road map. Through these clips, their will be a ton of deep philosophical lessons and thought experiments to walk you through in this episode, much of what we'll be tackling is plain for most people to see and experience for themselves. We're going the here, SAM's conversations with defectors from the ranks of the architects of information ecosystems in silicon valley, Tristan Harris and jeering lanier we're going to hear some of sam's conversation and pseudo interrogation of jack dorsey himself. The co founder of twitter. Was also it ceo at the time of their conversation and we're going. here from authors like jonathan height and cast sons who have studied and contain

to investigate. The m acts of social media on individuals and the health of democracy. we are also going to broaden our lens and listen in on a conversation with Zena to factory an author focuses on global movements and geopolitics and consider how social media fuels diverts or other as confuses political efforts and finally, when to tiptoe into the emerging deep, fake technology which threatened the poor even more fuel on the fire of the collapsing integrity of global information, so Let's start with sam talking to Tristan Harris. No relation by the way, Tristan has been called. The closest thing. Silicon valley has to a conscience. Tristan had just appeared and documentary entitled the social dilemma when he spoke to SAM, so much their conversation references, the film, which is certainly recommended viewing for this topic,

done has been laser focused on the problems of social media spending years, working as a designer for google and seeing first hand the potent attention, harnessing techniques that behind the apps on your phone. If you listen to our compilation about artificial intelligence. You'll be familiar with the concern about our strengths and competencies being squash. Technology here you'll Here, Tristan flick that concern around with a sharp observation tuesday. has appeared on making sense twice: this from the more recent conversation from episode to eighteen, welcome to the cold factory was taken from the top here. What's wrong with social media at this point, if you could boil down to the elevator pitch answer. What what is the problem that we are going to him on spool? Let's find because the film actually opens with that

prompt, the blank stairs of any technology insiders, including myself, because I think it so hard to define exactly what this problem is. There is clearly a problem of incentives, but beneath that there's a problem of what those incentives are doing and where the exact harmed show up and the way that we frame it in the film and in a big presentation, we gave a dash of jazz centre back in April. Twenty nineteen to you know a bunch of the top technologists in, and people in the industry was to say that, while we ve all been looking out for the moment when the ai would overwhelm human strengths and when we get the singularity, when with a I take, our jobs won't be smarter than humans. We missed this much much earlier point when technology didn't overwhelmed human strengths, but it undermined human weaknesses and you can actually frame the cacophony of grievances and scandals and problems that we ve seen in the tech industry, from distraction to addiction, to polarization to bullying, to harassment, to the breakdown of truth

all in terms of progressively hacking more and more of human vulnerabilities and weaknesses. So we take it from the top. You know our brains, short term memory system have seven plus or minus two things that we can hold when technologies it's to overwhelm are short term and working memory. We feel that as a problem called distraction. Oh my gosh, I can't remember what it was When I came here to open an email, I came here to go to facebook to look something up and I got stuck down into something else. That's a problem of over roaming. The human limit and weakest have just started are working memory when it overwhelms are don't mean systems and our rewards systems that we feel that is a problem called addiction when it taps into an exploits our reliance on stopping cues. That, at some point, I will stop talking in that's a queue for you to keep going when technology doesn't stop talking, and it just gives you the indefinite bottomless bull. We feel that as a problem called addiction or addictive use when technology exploits our social approval and giving us more and more social approval,

We feel that as a problem called teen depression, because suddenly children are dosed with social approval, every few minutes and are hungry for more likes and comparing themselves in terms of the currency of likes and when technology hacks the limits of our heuristics for determining what is true, for example, that that twitter profile, who just commented on your tweet five seconds ago, that photo looked pretty real, that got a bio that seems pretty real that got ten thousand followers. We only have a few cues that we can use to discern what is real and bots and deep fakes and I'm sure we'll get into Dpt three, actually overwhelmed that human weakness. So we don't even know what's true. So I think that the main thing that we really want people to get is through a series of miss incentives which will further get into

technology has overwhelmed and undermined human weaknesses and many of the problems that we're seeing as separate are actually the same and just one more thing on this analogy, it's kind of like you know. Collectively this digital fall out of addiction, teen depression suicides, polarization, a breakdown of truth. We we think of this as a collective digital fallout or a kind of climate change of culture that much like the oil extractive economy that we have been living in an extractive race for attention. There's only so much when it running out. We have to start fraction your attention by putting your attention to multiple streams. I want you watching an ipad and a phone and the television the same time, because that lets me triple the size of the attention economy, but that extractive race for attention creates this global climate change of culture and much like climate change. It happens slowly, it happens gradually. It happens chronically its this sudden, immediate threat, it's this slow erosion of the social fabric and that collectively we call them at present

Is she human downgrading, but you can call it whatever you want. The point is that you know it if you think back to the climate change movement before there was climate changes it as a cohesive understanding of emissions and linking to to climate change We had some people working on polar bears, some people working on the coral reefs. We had some people working on he's lost in the amazon and it was So we had an encompassing view of how all these problems get worse, that that we start to get changed, and so we're really hoping that this film can act as a kind of catalyst for a global response to this really destructive thing. That's happened to society, ok saw me play devils advocate for a moment. Using some of the elements have already put into play because if you and I are going to impressively agree throughout this conversation on the nature of the problem, but a channeling a sceptic here, is actually not that hard for me to empathize, with a sceptic because

you point out: it really takes a fair amount of work to pry the scales from people's eyes. On this point and in the name, for the problem, though it really is everywhere to be seen. Its surprisingly elusive right idea of you reference. Something, like you know, a spike in in depression and self harmony. suicide, There's no one who's going to pretend not to care at that and then a really just the question of iraq. The cause I'll here and is really a matter of exposure, social media that is driving and- and I think I don't think people are especially skeptical of that- and that that's as a discrete problem that I think most people will easily understand and be concerned about. But the more general problem for all of us is is harder to keep in view, and it's so when you talk about things again, are things you ve already conceited and why so much attention has been a finite resource. Always

and everyone has always been competing for it, so you, but if you're gonna published a book, you are part of this race for people's attention of you. If you will we're going to release something on the radio or television. It was always a matter of trying to grab people's attention, as you say, would try and do a right now with his podcast? So it's when concern through that lends its heart To see what is fundamentally new here right, yes, this zero sum, and then the question is: is it good content or not. I think people want to say right. It's just this is just a matter of interfacing, in some way with human desire and human, carry osity and, either doing successfully or not, and what's so at about really succeeding. You know just fundamentally succeeding in a way that yummy call it addiction, but really is just what people find captivated. What people want to do they want they want to grant their attention to the next video. That is absolutely

enthralling. But the house different from it'll leafing through the pages of a hard copy of vanity fair. At me, in the year nineteen, eighty seven and Elaine that you really want to read the next article rather than work or do whatever else you are you. You thought you were going to do with your afternoon. So there's that and then there's this sense that the fan, good advertising is hidden. Evolved and really that really that the foundation of everything we're gonna talk about? What's about about that? So really, it is a story of ad just getting better. You know I don't have to see ads for tampax anymore right, I'm a guy. They go online and I see ads for things. Probably want were, or nearly want, because I abandoned them in my zappos shopping. Cart right. So it what's wrong with that. I think most people are stuck in that place. Likely just

We have to do a lot of work to bring them into the place of the conversation where the emergency becomes salient, and so yet, let's start their cash. You so much good, stuffed unpack your so the attention economy. Obviously we always had it. We ve got television competing for tension radio, and we had evolutions of the attention economy before competition between books, competition between newspapers, competition between television into you more engaging television to more channels of television. So in many ways this isn't new, but I think what we really need to look at his word: was mediating where that attention, whence you mediating that big word smartphones. We check out check our smartphones. You know a hundred times or something like that per day. They are intimately woven into the fabric of our daily lives and ever more so because of we re establish, a dictionary addictive checking that we have been any moment of anxiety. We turn to our phone to look at it. So it's

intimately woven into where the attention starting place will come from its also taken over our fundamental infrastructure for our basic verbs like. If I want to talk to you or talk to someone else, my phone is become the primary vehicle for just about from many many verbs in my life, whether its wearing food or speaking, to some one or figuring out where to go on and on a map. We are in recently reliant on the central knowed of our smartphone to be around As for where all of our attention goes, so that's the first part of this intimately woven nature and the fact that it's our social, it's part of the social infrastructure by which we rely on. We can't avoid it and part of what makes technical today in a humane is that were reliant on infrastructure, that's not safer contaminated for many reasons that we will get into later. A second reason: that's different is degree of asymmetry between. Let's say that newspaper editors journalists to his writing that enticing article to get you to turn to the next page versus the level of a similar.

free of when you watch a youtube video and you think out his times. Can I watch one video and then I had to go back to work and you wake up from a trance. You know two hours late, or- and you say man what happened to me- I should have had more self control. What that misses is there's literally the Google Google's billions of dollars of supercomputing infrastructure on the other side of that slab of glass, in your hand, pointed at your brain, doing predictive analytics on what would be the perfect next video to keep you here, and the same is true on facebook. You think okay, I've sort of been scrolling through this thing for awhile, but I'm just going to swipe up one more time. and then I'm done each time you swipe up with your finger. You note your activating a twitter or a facebook or a tick tock supercomputer, that's doing predicted analytics, which has billions of data points on exactly the thing. Little keep you here and I think it's important to expand this metaphor in a way that you ve talked about on.

Begin. Your show before about just the power, increasing power and computational power of of ai, when you think about a supercomputer, pointed at your brain, trying to figure out. What's the perfect next thing to show you that's on one side of the screen on the other side of the screen, as my prefrontal cortex, which has evolved millions of years ago and doing the best job can't do: goal articulation, goal retention and memory and sort of staying on task, self discipline, etc so who's gonna win in that battle. Well, good metaphor, for this is let's say you or I were to play gary kasparov at chess, like. Why would you or I lose it's because you know there? I am s board, and I'm thinking. Ok, if I do this he'll, do that, but if I do this hildy this and I'm playing out a few new moves ahead in the chess board. But when Gary looks at that same chessboard he's, playing out a million more moves ahead than I can write, and that's why gary is going to win and beat you and I every single time, but when Gary the human is playing chess against the best.

Supercomputer in the world, no matter how many million moves ahead, that gary can see the supercomputer conceit billions and moves ahead and when he beats gary, who is the best human chess player of all time, he's beaten like the human brain at just cause. I was kind of the best one that we had and so when you look at the degree of asymmetry that we now have when you're sitting there innocuous they saying. Ok, I'm just gonna work one video and then I'm out. We have to recognise that we have an exponential degree of asymmetry, Indeed, no us in our weakness is better than we know ourselves. That part of the conversation set the stage for us well. But we reckon the full. Listen to that episode as sam. Continued to skilfully play devils advocate throughout and allow I trust on to flesh out the nuanced and complex considerations. But Tristan remain steadfast and his effort to sound the alarm about the power of algorithms to target our weaknesses, and so that

where we're going to stay in this track through social media. You her it sam while channeling a sceptical view, point to the economic model that serves as the oxygen that keeps the social media monsters breathing advertising. Here is an open question for the health of democracy and individual psychology. Is there a point into an advertising, can become too effective, and has social media push just over that threshold. Advertising is certainly nothing new, of course, and the profit motive has always encouraged persuasion and attention grabbing wherever possible, but turned back there Lock a few hundred years and imagine a handcrafted colors, the painting The wooden sign hanging of arrival, blacksmith shop in a town square and compare its influence to a perfectly timed snow. Targeted advertisement. That was crafted And custom moulded to your taste in music attraction, color

preference current mood polluter cool persuasion, and just everything else, the law or does seem to suggest, a deep shaft and the power to persuade effectively if there something like an objective measure of the effectiveness of persuasion. Immorally encroaches on a notion of personal autonomy, fair to wonder. If we blown right past it an old adage and marketing that goes like this I know I'm wasting half of my marketing budget. Just don't know which half built in uncertainty, might be eroding in the face of data collecting machines, which promised more and more of a sure thing to advertisers to explore, This area a bit more we're going to hear from Jaron lanier linear the computer scientist and silicon valley pioneer who launched virtual reality, companies in the mid eighties. He was An early wave of bright eyed idealistic technologists,

and he's among those who have since begun to question what they may have been missing when spoke with sam. He had just written a book. which was not shy about its suggestion. It was called ten Governments for deleting your social media accounts right now, for it compilation we're going to be tapping. This interview for linear thoughts on the economic models that are run a mark on the internet, and listen in on some of his nascent suggestions on how different models might improve the situation worse with sam and the near revisiting the early days of silicon valley and the seemingly uncontroversial notion that information should be free. This is from beside one. Thirty six digit, humanism. Many of the worst decisions we ve made here- and this is something you point out in your books in creating this technique- we are not on their face decisions emanated, certainly not sinister decisions, and so and one of the first decision we've made it

is around this notion that that information should be free- and that just seems like a very generous in an idealistic way. To start it seems quite noble. So perhaps we can start here with with with the digital economy. What what could possibly be wrong with information being free right, this idea that information should be free was held in the in the most profound and intense way, was something that was believed so intensely during a period

starting in the eighties and in some ways it still holds for a lot of people and to defy that was very, very difficult. It was painful from my friends who couldn't believe that I was defying it. It was painful for me. I did loose friends over it and on its face it sounds very generous and fair and proper and freeing, but there are put there are proud It was with it that are so deep as to, I think, threaten the survival of our species. It's actually a very, very, very serious mistake so that the mistakes happen on a couple of levels. Here, I would say the first one: has to do with this idea. That information is totally weightless an intrinsically something: that's free in an infinite supply, and that's not true, because information only exists to the degree that people can perceive it and processes,

understand it. It ultimately only has a meaning when it grounds out as human experience the slogan east back in the eighties roofers debating these things is that in for me, She is alienated experience, meaning information is similar to stored, energy that can be released. You put energy into a battery, then you can release it or you lift up a weight, and then you look over the weight and it goes back down and you've released the energy that was stored in the the same way. Information ultimately only has meaning as experience at some point in the future and the problem. experience or maybe the benefit of experiences at its of it's only a finite potential. You can't experience everything, and so, therefore, if you make the mistake of assuming that information is free, you'll have more information than you can experience, and what you do is you make yourself vulnerable to what with it.

denial of service attack in other contexts. Up a denial of service attack means that malicious people, since so many requests to website that its is effectively knocked out off the web, can't reach it any, and every website that you used reliably actually has to go through this elaborate structure of other resources created becoming. like aka, my that defend it from the denial of service attacks, which it is infinitely easy to do but in the same way, when you hear of services like twitter, facebook or anybody can post anything without any cost to themselves and there's no postage an email and everything can just be totally filled up with spam and malicious spots and crap to the right where reality and everything, Good about the world gets squeezed out and you end up amplifying the worst impulses of people. There's no such thing as a free lunch. There's no such thing as free information. There's no such thing is infinite attention

There has to be some way that serious miss comes into play if you want to have anything it's reality or quality or truth or decency, and unfortunately, we have created a world in which that so, but then there's a flip side to it, which is equally important, which is sir, we ve created this world in which were talking about technology, often as something that's, if not opposed to humanity opposed to most of humanity. Well, there's a lot of talk and a lot of this comes from really good technologies. So it's not from like malicious outsiders who are trying to screw us up. It's our own fault, where we'll say well: a lotta, go away because of artificial intelligence, my robots, and that might either be some extreme case where a super intelligent ay I takes over the world and prices of humanity or it might just be that only the most elite, smart techie people are

still needed everybody else becomes. This burden on the state may have to go on some kind of basic income, and it's just a depressing. It's like I think everybody's going to become this useless burden, and so, even if that means, oh we'll all get basic income, we won't have to work for a living there's. Also something fundamentally, dignified, like you, won't be needed, and any situation like that. It's just bound to be a political disaster. an economic disaster on many levels we can go into if it is an obvious. But the thing to see is that this economic, the whole that we, to be driving ourselves into his one and the same as the information wants to be free cause. The thing is, ultimately, all these a eyes and robots and all the stuff they run on information that, at the end of the day, has to come from people and each instances a little different, but for a lot of them, there's input from a lot of people, and I can give you some examples. So if we say that information is free, then were saying in the information age everybody's worthless

so they can contribute to suit from hey sympathetic, the example I like to use as just an entry point of it the idea is that the people who translate between languages, so they ve, seen their careers, be decimal. their tenth of what they were in the same way that recording positions am in oh, get, invest negative journalists and many other classes of of people who have an information product that they have all been kind of reduced under this weird regime we ve created, The thing is in order to run the the so called a translators. That places like being google offer. We have to scrape ten of millions of examples from real life. People translating thinks every single day in order to keep up with slang in public language is alive. The world is alive. You can't just stuff a language later, once you have to keep on refilling it, and so on

totally reliant on the very people that were putting out of work so fundamentally like a form of theft through dishonesty. Ok, so so, we ve hit the ground running here. I want us back up for a second and too spider, perform a an exorcism on some bad intuitions. because I think people come into this way with with trained ourselves to expect. Much of our digital content, to be free and free forever, and it now seems just the normal state of the world and, of course, podcast and blogs, and journalism and ultimately, music should be free or if it's not free, it should be subsidized by ads, and I think it The sense that either tv and radio were free. So there's this this precedent and advertise has its excesses, but I think people feel aware what what's you know what's wrong with add? Some ads are kind of cool well in an amusing and stylish. So live with him for forever

and then there's these other elements like you're having a personal, eyes news feed watch what's wrong with that. Why can't facebook just give me what I want so at last spring this the concept of the role of ads back in here too. Most people have decided that, in the face of this, the way to monetize work and inspire good work is too build an add economy, and this answers the need. Have information, be freight. All of the the young people who who want to get it that way and and internet were now you we who used to be still want to get it that way, and this is something that many of us have a fight against- have been paying attention to the key Sequential of of relying on ads and the united decided that I did. I can't credibly red ads on this podcast. I know that you're you're, more sanguine about the state of podcasting than most

The media at the moment- and I should say as that for many podcast, because I've taken up Dixon against ads on my own pike, ass, many people come to me wanting to. the same, and the truth is I don't actually even know what to tell other podcasters at this point because think I'm an outlier in this space where it with works. For me, I found an audience who and- and some percentage of of the audience will support this work, but it's you mean by no means straightforward to say that that any podcast her who wants to will will find an audience to support their work, and I think that, given the current expectation I think, anyone who does decide to to forego adds, will be an economic price for doing that. I read with with whatever audience at whatever scale given given the expectation that podcast should be free. So it's kind of hard to to advise people. Even when I'm successfully implemented,

ad free model here? Well, I need to correct you about something. My objection is not to advertising, but to continue this behaviour modification by algorithm, wainwright, a very different thing. So, What went overlaps overlaps in one case in that? Well, I saw I'm worried as a pot her about the the behavior, modification or or the perceived behaviour modification that can happen to me as a as eight just a broker of information. I don't you know like a credibility concern. I just can't you know, given what I'm too, trying to do here. I don't feel that I can personally shill for any products, but I think other podcasters can. I, completely convergent with the brand of other pot castors to sail. Listen, the here's, the here's, the greatest juno teacher, I've ever found. You know you, you know you you're gonna, want this t shirt and that that work. I know I've heard some really I'm listening to some of the podcasting

you have to read their ads. Would its clearly bizarre if it's actually kind of entertaining, but the thing is as long as every listener here is the same. Add reynard we can understand. What's going on, that's ok, I mean the reason podcasting still, in my view and unmolested authentic medium is that there are algorithms calculating what somebody here is on a pod cast. It still is, crafted by you and if it includes adds people can tell it includes, as it is. If there is in some met a pod cast, that's taking snippets in creating a feed for people, there isn't some algorithm, that's in at least so far, it is. I got changing what he say with you know, I audio signal processing technology to suit the needs of somebody who's paying from the side. Some advertiser, there's not a calculation of a feed designed by behaviour,

is theorists to change people and as long as it's just a crafted thing. Even if it, and if it includes commercial communication ever think it destroys society, I think it does start try society when everything becomes really manipulative and creeping in a way that people can't possibly follower understand. Then it's to undermine human dignity and self determination, and that's exactly what's going on with social media companies and the way, searches, tristram and of the way up each videos are selected for when fed to admit many other examples and an end. That's that's where we are we have the most serious problem so What is the solution now? What if you could reboot the internet? But how would you do it? I would do if he thinks the first thing I would you is some incur everybody involved are gradually bring money back.

into the world of information instead of expansion, and I think people should be earn able Earn a living when what they add to the network is valuable. I mean right now we are creating the most valuable companies in history based on the information people add to them and meanwhile were creating more and more economic separation. more inequality and obviously I can't go on for when the only way to correct it is to start paying the people who are adding. information. That's the value and grow the pie. It doesn't mean that I think the big tech companies should be shut down or that their evil actually kind of like a lot of them, just means that we have to get back to work, world, where when people add value they get paid for it and honest and of course, so that that the flip side of that is just as netflix prove and for that matter, apple with the app store and many other examples. We have to encourage business models where people pay for what they want. So you know, Google said google should say: Hastert won't be free,

after ten years for going to gradually start removing the free option and what you get in exchange for that is no more commercial bias and crap on our search results. So this is just going to be serving you you're, going to pay for it. Facebook same thing we're going at where we're going to, commit to not having any ads in ten years and yeah you'll start paying for it, but it'll be a great deal to be affordable. You'll get you'll get peak facebook and, just like you got peak tv from places like. Ah you know, H, b, o and netflix we're going to give you peak social media where you can get better information and less crap, but the the the other part of that is a little more complicated, which is If you keep your eye out for a peace, I have coming out with a colleague in the harvard business tree view. Sorry, too, I know it's. A small b but anyway, now after it is the place to start we're starting to two scope out how to do this in much more detail than before, and a lot of it has to do with creating in between institutions.

As of right now, if there's nothing but a bunch of individuals in one giant tech platform like a facebook or google. There's this bizarre situation, where we're petitioning the central authority that we have other power over that we didn't vote for two to police are and speech and to please her behaviour, and it's just not ten. All were demanding authoritarianism. and the way around, that is to create middle sized organization centre analogous to things like scientific journals or universities or trade unions, or many other examples where you can voluntary. You can vote terribly join these things and they collectively bargain, for you say you can get paid decently instead of having a giant race to the bottom and they can become brands in themselves, had enforced quality and become trustworthy, and so we have to create this. This

sense of intermediate structures and remember that in the past, before the internet, the place where excellence and compassion and trustworthiness came from was not the central government declaring it. But rather things like universities and scientific journals and high quality news outlets, developing reputation and being selective and but that was all voluntary voluntary set, was an authoritarian it in an answer. If you have in between sized organizations, you can have all these effects that would go through korean if they were global indirectly from the centre and all of those institutions are exactly the once they were weakened and destroyed when facebooks africanist, move fast and break things, suffer was broken, wealth is in between organisations, and so we have to build them in any way. In order to have this more humane and sustainable internet.

It's worth reminding ourselves after those two clips that social media is not entirely destructive. It has potential to do plenty of good and it has realised some of that potential. There are personal stories of friendships, recollections knowledge, growth, business up, countries and meaningful the change which can credit themselves to the advent of social media, and it can for a valuable, real time information. So what Try are best to emphasise a hope to not throughout the perennial baby, with the bathwater and the criticism on that. I will listen and now to sam's conversation with jack dorothy doors. Cofounded twitter and his cognizant of the monster which has created, and the struggle the harness it for good. Since this conversation with SAM dorsey stepped down from his role as ceo of twitter, though, he still the ceo of square, which is a finance. The tool he also found in wars

the temptation to read into the move away from twitter as admitting defeat and his efforts to attain the beast in this post. Of their conversation, sam and dorsey discuss how twitter has entrenched itself into the political and journalistic environment for better worse, dorsey mentions the echo chamber or filter bubble phenomenon which describe only seeing and hearing news and opinion which coheres with your particular perspective, this nominal intends to warp ones, worldview and exacerbate partisanship after we, from dorsey will offer an alternative analogy which. Maybe even more potent and poisonous tore psychology and democracy. we're going to allow this clip to get into some of the specific policy. Not they get tied when any experiment like social media gets under way. Here is sam with jack dorsey from episode one forty eight received

To massive companies, which at least from them, the public facing view seem. I am opposed in the level of controversy they name they bring to the world and to your life. Presumably may square is eva seems like a very straightforward, successful, noble pursued which about which I can't imagine there's a lot of controversy and further sum then, and then I haven't noticed, but it must be nothing like what you're dealing with with twitter, How're you tree Jeanne. The need survey a big company that has just jane like a normal big company and twitter, which is something which, on any given day can be just freeing up front page news every, where given, how a given the sense of either howitzer, helping the world. Today, the thing at this amazing twitters at its clayton able maybelline area resolutions that we might want to support right or the empowerment

of dissidents and mistresses. One saudi teenager who was eaten tweeting from us a hotel room, the bangkok airport, that her shoes were that her her parents would kill her, and I think it's too much to say twitter may have saved her life. In that case, I'm sure there are many other cases like this where she got she was Asylum and in canada- and so did these. These stores become front page news and then the antithetical story becomes front page news, so we know that you know I says: recruits terrorists on twitter were their fears that misinformation- spread their undermines democracy. And how are you You deal with being a new mosquito and being a ceo and his other channel, which is anything but normal were both companies and both spaces are day credit and have their own share of controversy.

but I find that in the financial realm it's a lot more private, whereas with communication it has to be open and I would prefer them both to be out in the open. I would prefer to work more in public. I'm fascinated by this idea of of being able to to work in public. Make decisions in public make mistakes in public, and I get there Because of my childhood I was, I was a huge fan of punk rock back in the day and night transition that hip hop and dallas me to a lot of open source where people just get up on stage and do there and there are terrible on his arm months later, and there were a little bit better and then a month later, they're a little bit better and we see the same thing with open source which led me to technology all to me. But so I I approach it with with that understanding of that you know we're not here just

make one single statement that stands the test of time, that our medium at twitter is conversation in conversation, evolves and Ideally, it evolves in a way that we all learn from it does not a lot of people in the world today? That would walk away from twitter saying I I learned something, but that would be my goal and we need to figure out what elements of the service in one element of the product. We need to bolster or increase her or china and in order to do that. So I guess in my role, see or twitter its How do I led this company in the open, realising none We're gonna, take a lot of bruises along the way, but in the long term, what we get out of that ideally, is his earnings and trust and

we're not there yet, but the if you'd like to continue listening to this conversation, you'll need to subscribe that sam Harris network once you do you'll get access to all full length. Episodes of the making sense podcast, along with other subscriber only content, including bonus episodes and a amaze, and the conversations I've been having on the waking up app. The making sense podcast is ad free and relies entirely on listener support, and you can subscribe now at sam harris dot, org the.