(Note: Leaders please supplement this Ingredient with updated information regarding how modern communication tools are playing on the worst of human instincts, and doing us harm) 

Contentions of absolute truth to be challenged: 

(Participant Cards)

• Misinformation is being spread across the internet like wildfire. 

• The Internet for the first time ever puts a microphone in the hands of those who wish to do us harm, and enables them to do just that, providing an audience which they never had before. 

• The extremism on the internet is bait for people to overreact and counter-react with extremist views of their own.

• This is causing us to become divided more than we’ve ever been before

Class discuss the following quotations are from the article:  “Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been so Uniquely Stupid,” by Jonathan Haidt, The Atlantic

“Recent academic studies suggest that social media is indeed corrosive to trust in governments, news media, and people and institutions in general.”

“When our public square is governed by mob dynamics… we get a society that ignores context, proportionality…”

“Being online did not make most people more aggressive or hostile; rather, it allowed a small number of aggressive people to attack a much larger set of victims.”

“Twitter can overpower all the newspapers in the country so truth cannot achieve widespread adherence.”

‘firehose of falsehood’ tactic pioneered by Russian disinformation programs keep Americans confused, disoriented, and angry … artificial intelligence is close to enabling the limitless spread of highly believable disinformation.” 

“We are immersed in an Information World War in which terrorists, and ideological extremists sow discord and erode our shared reality”

“research showed that posts that trigger emotions – especially anger at out-groups – are the most likely to be shared.”

“Social scientists have identified at least three major forces that collectively bind together successful democracies: social capital (extensive social networks with high levels of trust), strong institutions, and shared stories. Social media has weakened all three.”

“[Social media users] became more adept at putting on performances and managing their personal brand – activities… that do not deepen friendships in the way that a private phone conversation will.”

“One of the engineers at Twitter who had worked on the ‘Retweet’ button later revealed that he regretted his contribution because it had made Twitter a nastier place … ‘We might have just handed a 4-year-old a loaded weapon.”

“It was just this kind of twitchy and explosive spread of anger that James Madison had tried to protect us from as he was drafting the U.S. Constitution … [He] knew that democracy had an Achilles’ heel because it depended on the collective judgment of the people, and democratic communities are subject to ‘the turbulency and weakness of unruly passions.’ … The tech companies that enhanced virality … brought us deep into Madison’s nightmare.”

“Social media has both magnified and weaponized the frivolous.”

Resources:

Jonathan Haidt, The Atlantic, “Why The Last Ten Years of American Life has been so Stupid!” 

Article, Richard Gingras

Book, Chaos Machine, Max Fischer