The social norm is, i want people to change my mind. The rewards go and flow in the direction of people whose long term reputation is they were the top ranked answer for changing people's minds on various topics. How do you start to build more of them? Part of that is about kind of building the tools and the technical interstructure. But part of it also really is about building the human labor for and recognizing it and supporting it.
You’ve heard us talk before on this podcast about the pitfalls of trying to moderate a “global public square.” Our guest today, Eli Pariser, co-director of Civic Signals, co-founder of Avaaz, and author of "The Filter Bubble," has been thinking for years about how to create more functional online spaces and is bringing people together to solve that problem. He believes the answer lies in creating spaces and groups intentionally, with the same kinds of skilled support and infrastructure that we would enlist in the physical world. It’s not enough to expect the big revenue-oriented tech companies to transform their tools into something less harmful; Eli is encouraging us to proactively gather in our own spaces, optimized for togetherness and cooperation.