Center for Humane Technology, AI Dilemma and UBI
How Technology is "Downgrading Humans" (Tristan Harris X Capgemini)
Key insights
🌎 "We need a movement to change the culture of technology, similar to the movement for climate change."
💻 The interconnected system of harms caused by technology includes information overload, shortening attention spans, social isolation, teen depression, suicide, and a post-truth world.
🌐 "Human downgrading is the climate change of culture, a system that's degrading our sense making and our choice making at a moment when we need that the most."
💭 The deepest way to intervene in the system is to change the paradigm from which all assumptions, beliefs, and design choices come from.
💻 The minimization of responsibility and commodification of human experience are fundamental flaws in the paradigm of technologists.
💻 Technology companies have a responsibility to design for enhancing people's own capacity for greater sense making and more omni-considerate choice making, rather than narrowing their experience like a sheep.
🤯 The worst case scenario of polarization is constructing a wiring diagram where everyone who feels one way about a topic is exposed day after day to those who feel maximally on the other side, but we can nurture awareness and strengthen existing brilliance to combat this.
🌍 Our problems are getting more complex and our capacity to respond to them is decreasing, making it urgent for us to reverse human downgrading and upgrade our sense-making and choice-making capacity.
The combination of ancient emotions, outdated institutions, and advanced technology requires unprecedented wisdom to guide its power and address the harms caused by attention and surveillance capitalism.
The combination of ancient emotions, outdated institutions, and advanced technology requires unprecedented wisdom to guide its power.
The problem of the global cultural change caused by technology is complex and requires a movement, with only a small number of people in Silicon Valley having the potential to make a significant impact.
The core problem of humanity is the combination of paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and god-like technology, which requires unprecedented wisdom to guide the power, and technology doesn't have to be smarter than humans to cause significant impact.
The diagnosis of overwhelming weaknesses explains the interconnected system of harms caused by information overload, addiction, and fake news, which require a systemic solution to end attention and surveillance capitalism.
The diagnosis of overwhelming weaknesses explains why important problems arise, such as information overload, addictive use, mass narcissism culture, confirmation bias, polarization, and deep fakes and bots.
The interconnected system of harms caused by information overload includes shortening of attention span, social isolation, teen depression, suicide, and a post-truth world.
The addiction problem and fake news problem are connected and part of a larger system called human downgrading, which requires a systemic solution to end attention and surveillance capitalism.
Long-term regulation is needed to address the inflated subprime attention economy and change the paradigm of technology design choices.
The inflated subprime attention economy is a core problem that needs long-term regulation to address the selling of fake clicks, fake attention, and fake reporting to advertisers, as exemplified by Facebook's 900% inflation in one report.
To change how technology is built, external and internal pressure from policymakers, governments, media, public, parents, teachers, employees, and aspirational pressure is needed.
To address the biggest problems with technology, we need to change the paradigm from which all assumptions, beliefs, and design choices come from.
Facebook's goal was to give users what they want, disrupt everything, grow at all costs, and obsess over metrics and engagement.
Technologists' commodification of human experience has led to issues like information overload and mass narcissism, but we should focus on enhancing face-to-face conversations with technology rather than disrupting them.
Technologists' mindset of minimizing responsibility and commodifying human experience has led to issues such as information overload, mass narcissism, and addictive use.
Instead of giving people what they want, we should understand their vulnerabilities and strengthen what we're already good at as human beings.
Face-to-face conversations are effective in building trust and empathy, and we should focus on enhancing this existing brilliance with technology rather than disrupting it.
Urban planners must prioritize enhancing people's sense making and choice making abilities over metrics and narrow experiences, shifting from capturing attention to nurturing awareness and embodying responsibility to enhance wisdom in the attention economy.
As urban planners for the social fabric, we must be conscious of the values we promote and design for enhancing people's capacity for greater sense making and choice making instead of obsessing over metrics and narrow experiences.
Shift from capturing attention to nurturing awareness and embodying responsibility to enhance wisdom in the attention economy.
Information overload is a problem caused by technology's growth at all costs, reinforcing click bait and moral outrage.
Strengthen human brilliance to combat information overload and distraction, and address issues like false urgency and polarization through social wiring and awareness.
The speaker discusses the problem of information overload and suggests exploring a new paradigm to find ways to strengthen existing human brilliance in dealing with it.
Design strategies to strengthen people's natural centeredness and prevent information overload by focusing on human-level solutions and wiring up relationships in a way that supports existing brilliance.
The talk discusses distraction and how to strengthen existing brilliance and nurture awareness, using the example of two people named Nancy and John.
John needs to get a document from Nancy, but he's focused, so we need to manage the global flows of attention in a social way to get it off his mind and not burden Nancy.
False urgency is a cognitive bias that can make people vulnerable, and problems like polarization arise when companies prioritize growth and user satisfaction over truth and responsibility.
To solve polarization, we should identify triggers and vulnerabilities, construct social wiring diagrams differently, and nurture awareness through small group conversations like those facilitated by Living Room Conversations.
Correspondence allows for nuanced discussions, public intellectuals need a better system to avoid trolling, and we must empower individuals to address climate change.
Correspondence between individuals allows for more complex and nuanced discussions compared to social media, which can lead to context collapse and chilling effects.
Public intellectuals engage in respectful, long-form conversations in public, but the current system can be designed differently to avoid trolling and learned helplessness from being bombarded with news feeds.
The constant reinforcement of negative news about climate change through clickbait is not the best way to raise awareness and we should consider providing different news to break the cycle.
Identify vulnerability points where people feel lack of agency and are susceptible to learned helplessness.
To address the urgent and complex problems of climate change, we must empower individuals to make wise choices and engage in collective action, while also reversing human downgrading and upgrading our capacity for sense-making and choice-making.
Public awareness has sparked conversations about fixing cognitive biases and distraction in technology, leading to calls for Facebook to be broken up and Apple's release of screen time features.
Public awareness and carefully crafted phrases like "attention economy" and "time well spent" have led to deep conversations and advocacy for fixing issues related to cognitive biases and distraction in technology.
The co-founder of Facebook suggests breaking up the company due to the rapid rate of change and the "time well spent" debate arose after Mark Zuckerberg's goal for the company in 2018 was to ensure people spent time meaningfully on the platform.
Apple released screen time features on all their devices, while some Facebook employees are standing up for the company's values.
Free speech and paid speech are not the same, and the conversation should focus on how much can change when everyone speaks in a higher language about what that change looks like.
This presentation really says it all. Amazing explanation. Greatly done. Awesome vision that we all humans should work on achieving. It is really needed. Keep it up u guys.
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This is very well constructed and presented. His ability to break down individually the eight issues we must address and work on is absolutely brilliant. Tristan's initial point that electronic technology is tapping into our primordial instincts is so important to recognize. Our prefrontal-cortex, brain activity (developed thru language) is diminishing at an alarming rate. Of course all of these ideas from Tristan were outlined by Canadian Marshall McLuhan 60 years ago (a true genius) but it is people like Tristan and CHT that is bringing all of McLuhan's ideas to light.
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Thank you Tristan this is CRITICAL information to mobilize bright people. Just bums me out to see low views and subscriber counts.
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Thank you so much for your wisdom and understanding of all of this - I had a feeling all along, couldn't figure out why and now it all makes sense. We need to change the paradigm, along with many other things. I hope technology advances in a more humane-focused way in the future. Currently it doesn't look like it though. I hope we can all come together some day and recognize this dilemma as a whole.
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What an absolutely awesome teacher he would make...enhancing young minds in a perfect way
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Wonderful talk with lots of ideas to think about and act!
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To have humane tech we’re going to need humane economics/economic incentives. Only when it is not profitable to mine human attention will these companies stop popping up and growing at the rates they do.
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Thank you Tristan! This is extremely useful! I just wish I had the power to make this go viral!
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Important content needed to be discussed…globally :)
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This is the most important topic of today's era. I'm trying to create an educational platform for the young to understand these points so they don't toss their lives. Public tech companies will compete for the dollar and with each other for their shareholders. Govt. is in bed with big corporations so policy here isn't a choice... until it must be.
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I am crying while my brain is on fire with all that you are offering up. My goal is to get this out to all of my people. I would really appreciate your advice on how to do that? Should we share via email and text instead of social media? I have never shared anything political on my sm for reasons you are outlining here.
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I really love your ideas!! Would be possible create a new plataform to share this informations for more people? Even looks contradictory? It is so important!
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Love this, thank you for sharing.
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I'm going to watch this over 5 times before I understand exactly what he's saying.
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This is the best comment by Andrea Laing not about the internet but about meditation practice. "Attention is the highest currency you have, therefore everybody wants your attention, your friends, television, media etc. Including you. including your own ego, wants your own attention, constantly interrupting you from your passion. Therefore you have to bring it back with your meditation and with your breath 100 times a day." :))))) And as Dr. Joe Dispenza says statistically people lose attention 6 times per minute.
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I want to share some good ideas about what Abraham HIcks said in her seminars, videos... She said people are several times in a vortex or "state of flow" during the day... When they forget of their identity, their importance, their position, but just focus on their job or hobby, without distractions...They are in that state even without realizing it or forcing it. It's an automatic process. But she said if you want to get in a vortex or flow intentionally.... You have to find something "easy" to get there. Well I was thinking something "easy".... means some easy thought or humble thought or 5-minute exercise, or a 5-minute shower, or making coffee, something that is very easy to think about. Or I think something "easy" maybe be also tuning in what you enjoy doing...Some people enjoy doing 10-minute yoga, some enjoy walking in the forest, some enjoy reading articles or listening to music.. And you feel so much passion, the inspiration that nothing may distract you. Because heavy topics usually distract the mind. Heavy goals also distract the mind and if you want to start some project you have to start with an easy mind and easy thoughts, not with doubtful thoughts or a perfectionistic attitude. Maybe it may help you to implement some easy tools that will not be distracting for people but motivating.
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This is all quite good, but this is essentially asking tech companies to teach the population how to be wise, positive, competent, motivated to commit to virtuous life priorities, etc... but this will not occur until the world solves the problem of fractional reserve banking, which basically depletes innovation and motivation for most people to pursue their "positive/wise" desires partly due to the extractive role (taxes, inflation, land/property confiscation) that governments play in society. they take from the producers/creators/innovators of the world while providing nothing even close to that of equal value in return. And to ask tech companies to take the moral high road would reduce their profits, and if policy were to be implemented to try to ameliorate this fact they would still continue lobbying government politicians to retract, revise, reinstitute regulations that will keep them operating at maximum capacity to earn profit. Governments have a monopoly on violence, fiat currency and property and until that changes then any hopes of altering the moral/ethical interests of these companies is highly unlikely. The wealthy pay each other to stay in business and that is the nature of politics, unless the government pays the tech companies to do the right thing they will continue to do the wrong things.
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with a great deal of respect and appreciation for your work Tristan, paleolithic people are not chimps. hunter-gatherers from the paleolythic era were generally biologically the same as us for 300,000 years and likely the same in terms of cognition for at least 70,000 years. the problem with your analogy, despite the power of imagining chimps with nukes for impact, is that it associates hunter-gatherers who still exist today with chimps. which seems to be accidentally quite racist. just suggesting you consider a different way of framing that point. keep up the awesome work. i consider you and Daniel Schmachtenberger the key thought leaders of our time.
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The hypothesis that social media worsen narcissism has been falsified (I am learning this for my social psychology course). The study: 'Narcissism over time in Australia and Canada: A cross-temporal meta-analysis.' *One study (conducted prior to 2007 or so) has seen a 2% increase over generations (it's in my textbook 'Social Psychology' by David Myers), but that finding been critized a lot.
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So what would motivate anyone to create anything like the alternative suggested? What type of a product or service would be created from this. And what would stir anyone to want those products? I see nothing so far. That’s kind of a problem, eh?
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They DO NOT base company activities on SERVING THE USER BUT CORPORATE DATA DRIVEN ADS. you would think listening to critics who see numerous problems would help their model.
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Guys reach out to your local authority 5 people down the line you can be in cryptic on a certain device where there is no way that big tech can detect you, no device scanning, no messing with your apps it’s totally big tech free, you have the whole web hassle free, no more notifications, a peaceful life on the web for all your privicy
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Brilliant. This sounds like Tristan has been learned some Game B things from Daniel Schmachtenburger...
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Ironic how people were on their phones while he was giving this presentation.
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The actual problem to solve: how will Zuck make at least as much if not more money from this new way. Bc if Zuck could make more $$ off this, it would already be set up.
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I would love to see you on Lex Fridmans podcast
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Thanks Tristan!
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C'mon, Man. Just be a realistic one! What goes up must come down, since there's no free lunch and no win-win situation for this one. Tech ("comfortness") will always demand for your privacy and rights.
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It takes a disaster to change things. Technology have the disaster yet to come.
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Le prochain stade d évolution des humains sera le saut Quantique
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We're at the end of this system of things. Just read 2 Timothy 3:1-5.