When you encounter something in a social context, it hits on a completely different set of impulses. You become much likely to believe it. And when that social trigger gets hit, you are just many, many times likelier, not only to believe it and to take it on, but to join in yourself. The algerithm will promote it. You will get lots of likes, and your brain will internalize that reward and say, i have got to get more of that social approval. Because this is winning approval, it must be true. Which, again, is something that we know from some really fascinating studies, can, over a relatively small number of iterations, change not just
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How does more time spent online result in more havoc and social unrest in the world? In just two decades, social media and its addictive components have changed society in unfathomable ways; how we communicate with one another, how we receive our news, how our societies function and how our societies break down. In this episode Max Fisher, New York Times columnist and author of The Chaos Machine, explores how we have been rewired by algorithms which claim to know us better than we know ourselves. Host for this discussion is technology journalist Chris Stokel-Walker.
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