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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 10, 2022

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I think it goes beyond just the human machine relationship to systems; but also and much greater throughout all the human systems that we come in contact with. We are subjected to numerous black boxes that operate on rules and systems too complex to understand. It's impossible to even understand the human systems on a meta level as subjects like economics and sociology etc are extremely imprecise and often proven wrong. It seems we are walking blindfolded whist tripping on LSD with only a peephole to see towards the future. A large part of what we see and hear is influenced or even created within this human / technological system, what we experience as human beings is dictated by editorial or algorithmic biases decisions outside of our control.

The reason why the 'Nigerian Prince' spam emails were full of bad grammar and spelling mistakes was not because the authors were stupid semi-literate Nigerians; it was instead because they used the mistakes to filter out the truly gullible and stupid from the rest of the population. If you're spamming 10,000,000 you only need 0.01% of the stupidest to find a lot of marks. Social media on modern algorithms already sorts people towards the content that they want to interact with, that suits their proclivities. The most commonly used social media platform by young people is Youtube, with 95% penetration, which is considerably higher than often maligned platforms such as TikTok, with the algorythm itself finding and feeding marks to the relevant content producers of all shades.

This is the environment that is shaping both our perceptions and the very world that exists around us at the same time. A machine/human system metacognition that is shaping our very sense of the world around us at the same time as it shapes that very world. As we increasingly integrate AI into our businesses, governments and other organisations, we are increasingly becoming a party to and a part of 'the machine'; however, this isn't a new phenom, but a continuation of an already existing one. We are vulnerable to this system because we accept it as part of our lives, so we must at least try to understand the consequences and risks of what we are plugging ourselves into.