Thread by @davetroy

1/Mini-theory on why Jan6 and Putin's war failed (or at least fell short so far): the radicalizing information environment that led them to think these actions were a good idea also shielded them from all the information that would temper their actions.

2/This results in failure mode of "they can't succeed, but they will do a massive amount of damage in trying."

This is why it's important to get into the headspace of radicalized actors/groups. It's not about "what makes sense in reality" but "what do they think they're doing."

3/Reports indicate that Putin's pandemic isolation may have shielded him further from input, which allowed his darkest thoughts and most ambitious fantasies to fester and flourish.

But I think this same thing happens to people across society these days.

4/It's incredibly easy for any of us to get into solipsistic information environments; indeed the "Block" button is something of a survival tool these days, but it comes at the expense of a diversity of views.

That in turn leads to cognitive errors; sometimes massive ones.

5/I believe Jan6 and Putin's War are two examples of this class of cognitive error. I wrote about this phenomenon a couple of years ago, in the political organizing context.

davetroy.medium.com/to-progressive…

6/And the failure is exactly the same: radicalized info environments lead to cognitive errors, which make people attempt things that will fail, but do a lot of damage in the process.

The fact this failure mode is so persistent across many examples these days suggests that it...

7/may be something endemic to a highly networked society, that we can now recognize much more quickly and guard against.

Because it leads people into psychotic unreality. The Jan6 insurrectionists and Putin made massive errors about the nature of reality and what would 'work.'

8/I'll let readers look for other examples and evaluate for themselves, but this also points to depleted cross-cutting social ties that have led to political division + endorsement of violence, as @LilyMasonPhD has noted in her work.

Something to monitor; we can learn from this.

This can also be seen as a re-articulation of the classic organizational failure about "bad news not flowing upward to the leader." Certainly we see this with folks like Zuckerberg.

I also wrote about this issue in relation to Twitter here.
davetroy.medium.com/a-warning-abou…

Also will note: I have replies from non-followers on this turned on to prevent trolls and grandstanders from hijacking my distribution. If anyone wants to send feedback or countering views, my DM's are open. Twitter should consider facilitating this more.

It is not reasonable to have to choose between totally public hijacking of distribution and snarky one-upmanship, or private feedback. The Hide Reply feature is good, but it pisses people off. @TwitterDesign I think this could be an area to improve.