Books

Welcome @henryfarrell!

Henry is a professor of international affairs and author of several books, including the award winning Of Privacy and Power. 

He has agreed to do an AMA for the /books channel.

Reply with your questions (please make sure to tag him so he can easily find them)

Building /bright-moments - minting onchain art IRL | /purple #15 | FID 129 #magikarp

Rome, Metropolitan City of Rome Capital, Italy

@henryfarrell in your essay 'No exit' you state, "To promote open inquiry and free, market-based technological progress, you need an open society, not one founded on the enemy principle.”

How does one encourage Silicon Valley and its echo chamber to participate in legitimate discussions when 'alternative' media apparatuses are used largely to foment what Marc Andreessen describes as 'availability cascades' and effectively gaslight 'enemy' opinions?

My response to Marc would be "physician, heal thyself!" I think that there is plenty that is wrong with mainstream media, and many very stupid things that are published. But frankly, I think that Marc needs to get over it, and to recognize that everyone is prone to availability cascades and obsession with the "current thing," including him. As, for that matter, am I. And that we are all over inclined to treat as malice or base irrationality what is rational, even reasonable, to believe, if you start from a different place.

For better or worse, this pain and mess is unavoidable. If you want to live in a free and open society, you have no choice but to endure it. When Silicon Valley thinkers fantasize about the exit door, it’s hard to avoid the impression that they would dearly prefer not to have to put up with disagreement. That is an unsurprising human reaction. None of us love being contradicted, and we are all individually incapable of seeing the huge flaws and mistakes in our views of the world."

We are all subject to what cognitive psychologists call the "fundamental attribution" problem and more specifically the belief that the actions of people we don't like are malignly motivated and intended to hurt us. And that we are uniquely rational, but our adversaries are irrational idiots, where they are not positively wicked. We all need to realize that this is part and parcel of our cognitive architecture, and not, usually, the architecture of the world we live in. The essay I wrote tries to take a different approach - it does not attack Marc et al. as wicked or stupid, but instead suggests that their thinking and action points in directions that go contrary to their expressed philosophy. I may not have done this well! - it is trying to model other people's thinking. But I believe that doing that will get us a lot further than dismissing the other side as gaslighters, idiots, or worse, which is the unfortunate habit that we revert to without constant vigilance.

As the conclusion of the piece states, "the open society is inevitably vexing. It is full of people who disagree with you, who have different aspirations and understandings of how to reach them, who will criticize you, annoy you, and make you generally unhappy. You can respond by pointing out the multitudinous ways in which they are wrong, and seem to be readily taken in by obviously ludicrous beliefs. They can respond by pointing out your own particular stupidities and flaws, almost certainly with equal justice.