Is There a Better Way to Modify Social Media?

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Noah Smith on Twitter has been emphasizing the superiority in social media contexts of community moderation. Jack Dorsey also has made very clear that he thinks now that their problem was they were too opaque and they were trying to do a top down rather than having community moderation. It's that top down thinking you can predict everything belief that just gets you in trouble with all sorts of complex systems whether it's a car or university or a social media platform. I think there's a clearly a flaw here in the idea that you just assume everything will be easy which is why bureaucracies are horrible.

Welcome to that beloved Mindscape annual tradition, the Holiday Message. An opportunity for a quicker and less-well-thought-out solo episode to round off another year. Ironically, this year the theme is the importance of slowing down and thinking things out really well! Illustrated by two things that have been on my mind: a couple of internet/tech kerfuffles (Elon Musk buying Twitter, Sam Bankman-Fried and the collapse of FTX), and the distinction between foundations of physics and “regular” physics. See if you can dimly perceive the thread that ties them together.

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