The Weird Web We Weave

From Unconventional Ideas to Combating Misinformation: Exploring Society's Strange Ties

We’re keeping it topical in this week’s TL;dr, so you know we’re going to get weird.

We’ve curated three articles that explore peculiar issues facing society today, focusing on creativity, originality, and the interconnected challenges of false information and hopelessness. The first two articles highlight the significance of embracing new ideas and creative thinking, while the third examines the potential impact of false information and hopelessness on the 2024 election and what can be done about it.

How Algorithms Create Cultural Doom Loops

Ted Gioia, in his Substack newsletter The Honest Broker, warns about the risks of avoiding change and sticking to the “safest” path, a process he describes as creating a “cultural doom loop.” Over-reliance on algorithms and familiar patterns stifles creativity and innovation. That’s a GGF No Bueno. Here are my takeaways.

1. The Problem of Generation Loss in the Digital Age: Gioia says generation loss can be illustrated by the party game Telephone, where participants whisper a phrase around a circle, only to have it change by the end due to mishearing and misinterpretation. Each time it’s generated, the information gets a little more corrupted. Gioia notes that “generation loss is built into many of the key technologies of the digital age” with their reliance on algorithms.

   The algorithm is, by definition, a repeating pattern that always looks backward. It does something in the future based on what worked in the past.
   

   So the algorithm that recommends music or videos on a web platform will never deliver a totally fresh and new experience for you. It always gives you something similar to what you consumed last week—or last month, or last year. 
   And, as the cycle repeats, the results get less interesting and more predictable.

   
   In this doom loop, anything exciting or fresh or different is punished—or sometimes eliminated completely. You aren’t even allowed to consider it as an option. 

   
   That’s how the system is built. And here’s the irony—a technology that promises progress actually creates regress. It gives you stale bread when you want a fresh loaf.

2. The Risks of Playing It Safe: The essay warns about the dangers of sticking to familiar strategies. Gioia notes corporations and industries often fail by “maximizing safety,” leading to decline as seen in examples like Sears, Kodak, and Blockbuster. “This is why Hollywood is in a state of crisis right now. They thought the safest strategy was to release proven brand franchise films. But the franchises start to suffer from generation loss—and audiences can smell the rot.” I certainly can. As much as I loved the original with Ryan Reynolds, I’ll pass on spending $11.50 (and at least that much for popcorn and a drink) and 2 hours, 8 minutes watching Deadpool & Wolverine.

3. The Need for Innovation and Change: Gioia argues for the importance of embracing new ideas and breaking out of old patterns, emphasizing that “you can’t build the future if you’re living in yesterday.” He stresses societies must learn from history and push for boldness in addressing the future to avoid cultural and economic stagnation.

I believe this helps us answer many puzzling questions about the history of technology. Scholars have sometimes asked why the Industrial Revolution didn’t happen in ancient Rome or China or the medieval Arabic world—all of which had advanced conceptual knowledge and significant construction and engineering skills. 

But each of these societies was, in some degree, a victim of their own past successes. At a certain point, their respect for the past began to constrain their boldness in addressing the future.

We do well to learn from these situations. In some ways, the more advanced societies are the most vulnerable—because they have the greatest tendency to repeat patterns from a triumphant past.

In other words, don’t be afraid to get weird. Which leads us to the next article.

America the Weird

Writing in The Free Press on Aug. 4, Vivek Ramaswamy discusses the historical and cultural significance of “weirdness” in American society, highlighting how many of the nation’s founding figures were considered unconventional in their time. While I’m no fan of the former GOP presidential contender, Ramaswamy makes some great points in this piece, arguing that being “weird” has been a source of American innovation and progress. He criticizes recent political strategies that paint opponents as “weird,” suggesting this approach undermines American exceptionalism and national unity.

1. Unconventionality is as American as Apple Pie: Ramaswamy highlights the importance of unconventional thinking in America’s founding, noting that figures like Benjamin Franklin and John Adams “were weird” and “didn’t believe in boundaries.” This spirit of innovation and breaking traditional norms has been pivotal in shaping the nation’s progress and character. “John Adams was an abolitionist during an age when slavery was the norm the world over. He was also a self-taught scholar of Hindu scripture and wrote letters to Thomas Jefferson about the Bhagavad Gita. People like Adams made our nation a magnet for minds that were as courageous and bizarre as their own.” 

2. Pot, Meet Kettle: Ramaswamy argues that alleging ‘weirdness’ can be more than a little hypocritical. “Consider the irony of someone like Pete Buttigieg leveling that charge at Republicans. I first met Pete in college and don’t remember him as someone who denigrated people he disagrees with as “weird.” That’s because—sadly—Pete himself was “weird” by the standards of the time: he grew up in small-town Indiana in the 1990s as a gay, ambitious, unusually well-spoken valedictorian at a Catholic school who went on to study at Harvard. Substitute Ohio for Indiana, and Indian-American for gay, and my own journey to Harvard wasn’t that different from Pete’s. He was a senior at Harvard when I was a freshman, and Pete’s ‘weirdness’ is part of why I respected him.”

3. Isn’t Our Diversity Our Strength? Ramaswamy says rejecting unconventional ideas can lead to cultural repression and hinder progress — exactly Gioia’s point. Embracing diversity of thought and the courage to be different is essential for fostering innovation and maintaining national unity. Ramaswamy then discusses the original target of recent denigrations of weirdness in our political discourse.

I consider J.D. Vance a friend. I disagree with him on using the tax code to engineer social policy. I believe some of his pro-family ideas are good solutions, while others are not. But the last week has proven that we are unable to have that debate on the merits when we create a political culture that ostracizes the few who dare to broach conversations that others are unwilling to have. This spirit is the opposite of American exceptionalism: if you don’t care to be outstanding, then why bother standing out?

The second reason this is an anti-American charge is that it denies the possibility of national unity. Calling the other side “weird” is a 2024 version of “basket of deplorables.” Like it or not, each party in the upcoming election is almost certain to win over 70 million votes. If the central argument of each side becomes “the other side is weird,” that’s a good way to make sure that whichever side loses no longer sees itself as part of the same culture or country as the one that wins.

Again, I’m not fan of Ramaswamy. But his last point is spot-on.

Our Twin Crises of Despair and Misinformation

Writing for Brookings, Carol Graham examines the interconnected crises of despair and misinformation in the United States and their potential impact on the 2024 election and democracy. She highlights how declining access to credible information, coupled with increasing despair and mistrust, creates fertile ground for misinformation. The piece emphasizes the need for comprehensive solutions that address both the supply and demand for misinformation by focusing on media regulation, education reform, mental health care, and community engagement.

1. Misinformation’s Threat to Democracy: Graham emphasizes the decline of local newspapers, and the rise of fake news sites pose significant threats to democracy. She points out that “only 1,213 daily newspapers are still operating,” while there are “1,265 fake local news websites,” funded by external sources seeking to influence electoral outcomes. While I worry about fake news local news sites, I’m more worried about what’s been happening in legacy media. Bari Weiss of The Free Press wrote an excellent essay about it.

Bari Weiss: The Era of the Noble Lie

2. Despair and Vulnerability to Misinformation: Graham describes “deaths of despair” and notes “research by neurologists finds that people in despair are particularly vulnerable to misinformation, conspiracy theories, and the radicalization that often results. Skepticism about the value of education, meanwhile, which in part results from despair, is a key factor in the erosion of belief in science. These factors result in a weak base upon which to challenge fake news and rumors, and they all too quickly become ‘the truth.’”

3. There Are No Quick Fixes: Addressing these crises requires multifaceted solutions. Graham advocates for reforming education, increasing access to mental health care, and reviving local newspapers. She cites programs in Finland schools teach young people how to identify misinformation. Helpfully, Brookings has built an interactive which highlights the places and populations that are most vulnerable to despair and information.

In Other’s Words

Investor and mathematician Jim Simons on beauty: 

Be guided by beauty. I really mean that. I think pretty much everything I’ve done has had an aesthetic component—at least to me. Now, you might think, “Building a company that's trading bonds? What’s so aesthetic about that?” What’s aesthetic about it is doing it right. Getting the right kind of people, and approaching the problem, and doing it right. And if you feel that you’re the first one to do it right, that’s a terrific feeling. It’s a beautiful thing to do something right.

Source: Mathematics, Common Sense, and Good Luck (h/t James Clear)

There’s a price to be paid for lack of institutional vision to drive strategy and operations. Example: What is college for? No one seems to know, Derek Thompson writes in The Atlantic.

Goal ambiguity might be a natural by-product of modern institutions trying to be everything to everyone. But eventually, they’ll pay the price. Any institution that finds itself promoting a thousand priorities at once may find it difficult to promote any one of them effectively. In a crisis, goal ambiguity may look like fecklessness or hypocrisy. … Confronted with the Gaza-war protests, colleges are again struggling to balance competing priorities: free speech, the safety of students and staff, and basic school functions, such as the ability to walk to a lecture hall. That would be hard enough if they hadn’t sent the message to students that protesting was an integral part of the university experience. … The ultimate problem isn’t just that too many administrators can make college expensive. It’s that too many administrative functions can make college institutionally incoherent.” 

From author Rob Henderson, who writes about human nature, psychology, social class, and political and social divisions on his Substack, on the distorting impact of news consumption on political perceptions.

The perception gap is the difference between what each political party thinks of the other versus the reality.

Here are a couple of intriguing findings from the study:

• People who read the news have a more distorted view of their political opponents

• Compared with political extremists (who consume a lot of news), politically disengaged people are 3 times more accurate in guessing how their political opponents think

Onward and Upward.