Thread by @tristanharris

💥NEW My OpEd in the today's NYTimes: “Our Brains Are No Match for Our Technology.” 🧠

PUNCH LINE: In order to tame Big Tech we must realign it with the values that make us human.

Highly recommend reading & watching videos below in this thread…🧵

nytimes.com/2019/12/05/opi…

The major problem in technology isn't privacy, it's misalignment with our innate psychological vulnerabilities:

As E.O. Wilson said, "The problem of humanity is… We have paleolithic emotions; medieval institutions; and god-like technology."

Tech's most SERIOUS harms occur from undermining human weaknesses…

Cognitive Limits -> 🤯Information Overload
Dopamine -> 🤳Addictive Use
Social validation -> 🤩Mass Narcissism
Confirmation Bias -> 🛸Fake News
Outrage -> 🤬Polarization
Foundations of Trust -> 🤖Bots, DeepFakes

2nd order harms emerge as "digital fallout" from 1st order…

🤯Info Overload -> Short Attn Spans
🤳Addictive Use -> Isolation
🤩Mass Narcissism -> Teen Depression
🛸Fake News -> Breakdown of Sensemaking
🤬Polarization -> Extremism & Distrust
🤖DeepFakes -> Post-Truth World

Together, these make up an *interconnected system* of harms we call HUMAN DOWNGRADING -- mass degradation of our individual and collective capacities, critical to solving ANY of our problems.

It's the climate change of culture – affecting children, shared truth, elections…

As a species, we're creating problems greater than our capacity to respond to them.

If we can't make sense of the world while making ever more consequential choices – we will destroy ourselves.

That's why we *need* Humane Technology.

"Human downgrading" must be an Election 2020 issue. We should pressure presidential candidates to answer how they will address this problem.

Beyond "what's your education plan?"
What's your plan to address "human downgrading"?

Presidents and political leaders everywhere cannot deliver on their promises when technology polarizes, divides and outrages their societies to the point where there is no basis for common ground, or shared truth.

We will need surround sound pressure from policymakers, technologists, shareholders, court cases, etc.

This might mean new laws, a "downgrading" tax on pernicious business models, a specialized agency like a Department of the Attention Economy, new standards and practices.

Two weeks ago, Center for Humane Tech gave an in-depth presentation at WhatsNow in San Francisco on a "Path to Humane Technology" – detailing the OLD paradigm of Silicon Valley thinking that got us here, and a NEW paradigm needed to get us out.

▶️WATCH: youtube.com/watch?time_con…

I highly recommend watching the WhatsNow talk above.

For more, I also recommend listening to Center for @HumaneTech_ podcast, "Your Undivided Attention" where @aza and I explore these issues in detail with experts on attention, propaganda, conspiracies…

humanetech.com/podcast

The ultimate point is this:

"In order to make peace with technology, we have to make peace with ourselves."

We are the only species that can see our own limits, and use that to develop technology that aligns with our WISDOM, not our weaknesses.

nytimes.com/2019/12/05/opi…