🧵 I’ve talked a lot about disordered discourse, conspiracies, polarisation, denialism. But maybe the better question is: why does this keep happening? Why does our shared reality keep fracturing? What are the drivers I talk about as a dimension of disordered discourse? - ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

eliothiggins.bsky.social • 3 days ago

🧵 I’ve talked a lot about disordered discourse, conspiracies, polarisation, denialism. But maybe the better question is: why does this keep happening? Why does our shared reality keep fracturing? What are the drivers I talk about as a dimension of disordered discourse?

Reposted from Eliot Higgins

I've just come back from the Cambridge Disinformation Summit where I gave the opening keynote, titled "Demanufacturing Consent - How Disordered Discourse is Destroying Democracy", featuring everything from Fake Hooves to Jackson Hinkle being the worst.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-FV...

Comments

casualwoke.bsky.social•3 days ago

If we go full Darwin and Maslow, isn't self-preservation hard-wired into our fundamental fight-flight-fright limbic systems?
Philanthropy and altruism seem to appeal to a higher level of species or group preservation.

eliothiggins.bsky.social•3 days ago

Yes, self-preservation is deeply hard-wired, but so are empathy, reciprocity, and social cohesion. We evolved as cooperative beings because survival depended on it.

casualwoke.bsky.social•3 days ago

True. That's a good point.
However, just as Maslow suggested, isn't there a hierarchy of these innate hard-wired traits? Does self-preservation of the individual take precedence over the self-preservation of the species? Is there perhaps a conflict between them causing cognitive dissonance in us?

eliothiggins.bsky.social•3 days ago

Yes, that tension is crucial. Maslow puts individual safety first, but modern life complicates that. We're asked to act like isolated individuals while facing collective crises, climate, inequality, truth itself.

casualwoke.bsky.social•3 days ago

Excellent debate. Thank you.

eliothiggins.bsky.social•3 days ago

That mismatch creates dissonance. We're wired for group survival, but rewarded for personal gain. The result is confusion, anxiety, and a search for simple answers, often through disordered discourse.

eliothiggins.bsky.social•3 days ago

Platforms amplify this by feeding us content that triggers fight-or-flight responses, not long-term reasoning. The more we feel threatened as individuals, the harder it becomes to act as a collective.

eliothiggins.bsky.social•3 days ago

What’s changed is the context: today’s systems often exploit fear responses while suppressing our collective instincts. Altruism isn’t unnatural, it just needs structures that reward it.

casualwoke.bsky.social•3 days ago

Dopamine reward.
All the different levels of hormones and neurotransmitters must also cause inner conflict.
Is there a hierarchy of hormones and neurotransmitters that, too, controls out behaviour at a very fundamental level and is possibly gender specific.

jwharris.bsky.social•3 days ago

📌

janbockaert.bsky.social•3 days ago

📌

avalonne.bsky.social•3 days ago

One of the primary problems is the division between the concept of a meritocracy and its execution. The human being naturally gravitates towards maximum benefit for minimum effort — thus paved the way through influence, wealth ir power to gain even more.

darvitwendy.bsky.social•3 days ago

📌

avalonne.bsky.social•3 days ago

The concept, of course, is romanticised as an excuse for a poor execution.
"Oh, but you didn't work hard enough!"
"You didn't deserve it as much".

It goes beyond corrosive, it's noxious. It's hostile.

"Subscribe to the view or get cast aside."

It's depressing.

krankepantzen.bsky.social•3 days ago

Yes, like so much purposefully and cynically misleading conservative rhetoric, "meritocracy," in general, means little until one works out what one means by "merit," the role of individual control, choice, behavior. The old nobility of Europe was meant to be a meritocracy based on divine evaluation.

wades.bsky.social•3 days ago

Recall that "meritocracy" was a term coined by a person who despised the concept.

"If we could only have a real meritocracy" is a trap. As long as real equality of opportunity is nonexistent, "true meritocracy" can never be realized.

There is nothing broken about our meritocracy, it's just a lie.

avalonne.bsky.social•3 days ago

To be fair to your point, I'm not saying "this is a fake meritocracy" because that would leave room for defining what a "real meritocracy" is.

That would be disorganised discourse.

I'm being more terse and saying "meritocracies don't exist beyond the idea" which is used for conformation/compliance

avalonne.bsky.social•3 days ago

I'm not calling for a distinction between "real _" or "fake _" but commenting that the space between idea and execution is where disorganised discourse thrives: in mythology and misrepresentation, especially when the target audience is unfamiliar with the idea being addressed.

avalonne.bsky.social•3 days ago

Recall that Plato wasn't fond of Democracy, and also identified issues with his proposed alternative: Republic.

Democratic discourse allows for critical analysis and discussion of the gap between execution and idea — oftentimes it was used to bridge that gap and make the idea a reality.

wades.bsky.social•3 days ago

So by definition the notion that our society is a "meritocracy" creates space for the disorganization of discourse?

avalonne.bsky.social•3 days ago

No one's calling anything a meritocracy.

What we are doing is looking at the idea it represents then analysing how it got twisted over time to become a corrosive tool for compliance.

If you fail at something, the idea of meritocracy is applied in its corrosive form to tell you "not worthy."

avalonne.bsky.social•3 days ago

Don't need to tell you that operating in that mindset is inherently cruel, oppressive and dismissive of the simple fact that no life is the same as the next.

wades.bsky.social•3 days ago

*YOU* might not be calling the US a meritocracy.

Plenty of people think that it is, or that it's supposed to be.

pseudonymice.bsky.social•3 days ago

I've noticed "meritocracy" is mostly about regulating a virtual currency of "prestige." A university that primarily depends on the patronage of hereditary wealth needs talented strivers to gild aristocratic diplomas with a presumption of merit, which conceals hereditary allocation of positions.

izzyeviel.bsky.social•3 days ago

Never thought I’d see the Hoof GP being talked about in one of your videos. 😂

eliothiggins.bsky.social•3 days ago

Once I figured out "Fake Hooves" I realised it'll be a mainstay of my presentations on disinformation.

victorytwin.bsky.social•3 days ago

@patricklovellpresentsthecleannewdeal.com

This is extremely important and so much as to why it is difficult to get those #TruthBombs out to the public!!

victorytwin.bsky.social•3 days ago

Because governments have done a shitty job about tackling mis/dis info and it has now become a weapon and through AI controlling algorithms and until this is widely accepted and tactics are taken to prevent and detect have to hope logic will

@ruthbenghiat.bsky.social @cultexpert.freedomofmind.com

nickdevoil.bsky.social•3 days ago

Isn’t it in the nature of shared realities that they fracture? - Gregory Bateson and schismogenesis

honeyless.bsky.social•2 days ago

📌

asnaroo.bsky.social•3 days ago

Also people are greedy little shits with no integrity

j357l.bsky.social•3 days ago

📌

williamstratchey.bsky.social•3 days ago

The stupid internet

j-lastcoolletter.bsky.social•3 days ago

Marking to reread and ponder. 🗿

etenkink.bsky.social•3 days ago

This is exactly the ultimate question to ask: why doesn't our shared Reality converge on a shared Thruth.
Even after millenia of human kind.

tomeco81.bsky.social•3 days ago

We will pay a massive price in decreased prosperity, and undermined security due to the destruction of the traditional genuine media with university-trained journalists. The mob-messaging is a national sec threat. Limiting a platforms' user impact, with district/village filters would be solution.

alherix.bsky.social•3 days ago

Thank you for the great thread. I saw your talk couple of weeks ago and tried to write a note about links with not just Michael Sandel but also Hannah Arendt philosophies. Great to have your summary as a start.

Please carry on the great work and keep sharing. Hope more people get what it takes!

solhog.bsky.social•3 days ago

📌. 🔔😺EH🧵9 ⚙️

loveliberty.bsky.social•3 days ago

Three similar words with different meanings doesn't seem like a good way to transmit information

misinformation
disinformation
malinformation

I suggest using 3 very different words

Error
fiction
manipulation

ellinst.bsky.social•3 days ago

I reject the equivalency of disinformation and fiction. Disinformation is a effort to steer people away from the truth. Fiction is often (not always) used a tool to illuminate the truth. As the quote attributed to many including Picasso goes, "art is a lie that tells the truth".

eliothiggins.bsky.social•3 days ago

It's hard enough to get the community to use the current words correctly without introducing new ones, haha.

lbcwatchuk.bsky.social•3 days ago

May I suggest a correction:

Error
Lying
Lying

fuliginously.bsky.social•3 days ago

♡ your work!

Needs more visibility. Do a book. Go on podcasts. Start a movement. Build an army… of ordered discourse warriors.

eliothiggins.bsky.social•3 days ago

Working on it!

lbcwatchuk.bsky.social•3 days ago

I'm interested in getting involved in this in any way I can. What can I do?

I have a very particular set of skills...skills I have acquired over a very long career.

eliothiggins.bsky.social•3 days ago

Disordered discourse isn’t just caused by bad actors or broken media. It’s a symptom of deeper systems, how we define freedom, success, and identity.

I call this dynamic The Serfdom of the Self, and it grows from two forces: corrosive meritocracy and digital feudalism.

eliothiggins.bsky.social•3 days ago

Let’s start with digital feudalism. In medieval feudalism, peasants worked land they didn’t own, under rules they didn’t choose, for lords who profited from their labour.

Today, we work for attention, on platforms we don’t own, governed by algorithms we don’t control.

peterhagedoorn.bsky.social•3 days ago

Yes, people, always remained slaves, in whatever system we live. In every system an upper class develops. Today Tech billionaires, oligarchs, are dominating the world/politics. They tune the system in such way we all need IT tools, after which they can manup[ilate is in whatever direction they want.

loveliberty.bsky.social•3 days ago

In feudalism everyone had a role in society which they had to accept. There was no choice

You don't have to post on Facebook (or Blue). You don't have an enforced role

The comparison misses the key ingredient which is not who garners the profit, but the legal obligation to comply

eliothiggins.bsky.social•3 days ago

We post, share, build audiences, perform identity. But platforms extract the value, through ads, data, and engagement. We’re visible, but precarious. Empowered, but only within boundaries we didn’t set.

That’s digital feudalism.

julianb77.bsky.social•3 days ago

Where do professional influencers who get a decent share of the value extracted fit in? Do you think that platform algorithms incentivise negative engagement (rage bait, contrariness) thus increase the number and prominence of them? What corrosive effect does this have on the social contract?

eliothiggins.bsky.social•3 days ago

Great question. I think many professional influencers function like favoured vassals in the digital feudal model. They get a cut, but only by aligning with the system’s logic, performance, polarisation, engagement. Algorithms reward emotional extremes, so rage becomes profitable.

eliothiggins.bsky.social•3 days ago

That corrodes the social contract by turning public discourse into competitive spectacle, identity over dialogue, reaction over reason. It shifts influence away from those who contribute to the commons and towards those who can dominate attention, regardless of truth or consequence.

davidnice.bsky.social•3 days ago

Presumably Bluesky still doesn't do algorithms? That's refreshing, but how long will it last?

eliothiggins.bsky.social•3 days ago

They did a blog post describing their approach recently.
https://bsky.social/about/blog/3-30-2023-algorithmic-choice

eliothiggins.bsky.social•3 days ago

Now add corrosive meritocracy.
We grow up believing in meritocracy: work hard, make good choices, and you’ll succeed. But for many people, the promised rewards, security, recognition, belonging, never come.

pettter.bsky.social•3 days ago

Meritocracy is, and was always, and always will be, a lie.

jessethegray.bsky.social•3 days ago

I love this framing. Having worked in a lot of startups, Silicon Valley is one the of the paragons of this mindset. The virtue of the grind and the requirement to blindly conform to it for some promised, distant reward is nearly religious at times

potrzebiesystem.bsky.social•3 days ago

Kinda like… a cult?

leithmotive.bsky.social•3 days ago

Similar to many aspects of early academic life. You work hard on a pittance for a PhD, you work hard on a post doc for slightly more in the hope of getting a lecturer position, and the cycle continues. But there are more PhD positions than post docs, more post docs than lecturers and so on...

loveliberty.bsky.social•3 days ago

There is no 'corrosive meritocracy' in our countries

The major theme of modern life is 'diversity' not 'meritocracy'

The current ideological view is that anyone who calls for meritocracy is a bigot

eliothiggins.bsky.social•3 days ago

Meritocracy hasn’t disappeared, it’s become invisible as ideology. The story we're told is still: work hard, play by the rules, and you'll succeed. But when that promise fails, people are blamed as undeserving, morally, not just economically.

eliothiggins.bsky.social•3 days ago

The logic is simple: if success is earned, then failure must mean you didn’t deserve it.
So we blame ourselves.
Or we blame others.
But always through the lens of merit: who tried hard enough, and who didn’t.

loveliberty.bsky.social•3 days ago

Venture Capitalists (who tend to be competitive, meritocratic & searching for massive success) lose money on many of their investments because most new things fail

Failure is normal

Chance events are a major influence, but lack of skills is more likely a problem than lack of 'trying hard'

eliothiggins.bsky.social•3 days ago

We judge people, ourselves included, not for being unlucky or facing real obstacles, but for not climbing the ladder of wealth, prestige, or visibility.

As Michael Sandel argues, meritocracy turns inequality into a moral verdict. https://www.philosophizethis.org/podcast/episode-201-transcript-bkx3e-37rkx-bpl83-ysc9b