Links to Consider, 11/23

David Epstein and Daniel Coyle; Erik Hoel quits academia; Renee Diresta on social network flocking; Misha Saul on cultural norms; John O. McGinnis on the youth vote

David Epstein

interviews Daniel Coyle, who says,

safety is not about wrapping people in fleece and making them comfortable. Rather it’s about creating conditions where you can be uncomfortable together. Where minority viewpoints are unafraid to speak up and be heard. So on a deeper level it’s really about curiosity and humility. In great groups, people aren’t behaving like rugged individualists; to the contrary, they’re always looking for opportunities to give and receive help.

Coyle also says this:

I think it’s possible to draw a straight line from [Lance] Armstrong to the brashness of Travis Kalanick, Adam Neumann, Elizabeth Holmes, and others who made their brands (and billions of dollars) by generating the same mythos: I am different. I am smarter and hungrier than the rest… I am destined to succeed. And they all ended up, like Armstrong, taking the long fall and proving that they were, in fact, destined to fail.

I don’t have to say who recently can be added to this list.

Erik Hoel writes,

I’ve come to believe I can do more original and meaningful intellectual work outside of academia. For, to be honest, when I look back at my career and the things I’m most proud of, I did the majority in spite of the strictures of academia, not because of them.

Renee Diresta writes,

the Trending Topics feature not only surfaces trends, it shapes them. The provocation goes out to a small subset of people inclined to participate. The user who receives the nudge clicks in, perhaps posts their own take — increasing the post count, signaling to the algorithm that the bait was taken and raising the topic’s profile for their followers. Their post is now curated into their friends’ feeds; they are one of the seven birds their followers see. Recurring frenzies take shape among particular flocks, driving the participants mad with rage even as very few people outside of the community have any idea that anything has happened.

The problem to be fixed is the medium, not the messages.

Trying to litigate rumors and fact-check conspiracy theories is a game of whack-a-mole that itself has negative political consequences. It attempts to address bad viral content — the end state — while leaving the network structures and nudges that facilitate its reach in place.

Pointer from

Rob Henderson

You can also read an interview of Renee Diresta by

Yascha Mounk

. I personally did not get as much out of this compared with her essay.

Also from Rob Henderson,

Kvetch

(Misha Saul) writes,

Culture also guides you with strange long-ago-forged nudges to get you over blind spots. You don’t know you want grandkids when you’re 20. The challenge is you’ll want them in 30 — 40 years. Tell that to a 20 year old and he may have trouble hearing you over the cacophonic need to fight and f*ck. So how do you set the right behavioral cadence for that? What can bridge decades long blind spots? Cultural norms to marry and bear children. The payoff will come.

Speaking of misguided young people, John O. McGinnis writes,

When I get together with friends, the conversation often turns to their children’s political views, which are almost always significantly more liberal than theirs. Sometimes, their children’s stances are so far to the left as to baffle them. The daughter of one friend supported prison abolition, but she could not explain to her father how this policy could possibly work in practice. But everyone over 18 has a right to vote, regardless of their ability to explain their political program.

The outcome of most enduring concern in Tuesday’s election was the Left’s total victory among the young. About 60 percent of those 18- to 29-years old voted Democratic.