Thinking Ahead with Carter Phipps
Society & Culture
Misinformation. Disinformation. Fake news. Conspiracy theories. These viruses of the information age proliferate with frightening speed on social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, sometimes with serious consequences. Over the past few years, as the scope of the problem has become unavoidable, there has been much debate over how to deal with it, and increasing pressure to do so. Should government regulate these platforms? Should the tech companies regulate themselves? Or is there another way? Avi Tuschman, a silicon valley entrepreneur and pioneer in the field of psychometric AI, believes there is. Last year, he published a paper outlining a bold and creative proposal for creating a third-party reviewing system based on a website everyone knows and loves: Wikipedia. Wikipedia, as he points out, is a remarkable success. It’s accurate to an extraordinary degree. Research all over the world rely on it. And its success is due to a unique formula: a distributed group of non-employee volunteers who write and edit the information on the site and, in conjunction with AI processes, make sure it conforms to the site’s high standards. In his paper, entitled Rosenbaum’s Magical Entity: How to Reduce Misinformation on Social Media, he suggests that we should use “the same open-source, software mechanisms and safeguards that have successfully evolved on Wikipedia to enable the collaborative adjudication of verifiability.”
It’s a proposal that potentially avoids many of the politically tricky consequences of getting government involved in regulating public platforms run by private companies. But how exactly would it work? Where does free speech come in? How much fact-checking do we want on our social media sites? And where do we draw the line between discourse that is merely unconventional and that which is outright conspiratorial? To unpack these questions and more, I invited Avi Tuschman to join me on Thinking Ahead for what turned out to be a thought-provoking conversation.
Amiel Handelsman: Race and Maturity in the American Experience
Brad DeLong: Are We Slouching Toward Utopia?
Steve McIntosh: Does Human Nature Evolve?
Integral Conversations: Culture Wars and Human Progress with Jeff Salzman
Edward Chancellor: Money, Financial Bubbles, and the Price of Time
Tom Mustill: How to Speak Whale
Diana Pasulka: Religion, UFOs, and the Experience of the Uncanny
Meredith Angwin: Energy, Carbon, and the Growing Fragility of our National Grid
Christopher Leonard: Did the Fed and Easy Money Break the American Economy?
Darryl Jones: Roads, Wildlife, and the Future of Conservation
Chris Bache: LSD and the Exploration of the Inner Cosmos
Steve McIntosh: Reconciling American Pride and Shame
Gary Lachman: The Esoteric Undercurrents of Putin's War on Ukraine
Gregg Easterbrook: Promises and Perils of the Blue Age
Mariana Bozesan: Integral Investing in a World of Abundance
Greg Thomas: How Jazz Can Help Us Think About Race
Ross Coulthart: UFOs—Is the Truth in Plain Sight?
Sergey Young: Are You Ready For Radical Longevity?
Steve McIntosh: Building a Post-Progressive Movement
Eric Wargo: A Philosophical and Practical Guide to Precognitive Dreamwork
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
The Modern West
Just Dumb Enough Podcast
Voices of Misery Podcast
House of Whimsical Terror
Stuff You Should Know
Timcast IRL