![]() ![]() If a few objects float to the sky, we model those as exceptions - rare events that are important to understand but which represent a tiny slice of the world at large.Īn effective mental model is one that allows us to predict our world accurately, anticipating common occurrences at a far more frequent rate than rare ones. But social media has derailed this cognitive process, algorithmically moderating the information we receive about our society. If most objects we encounter fall to the ground, we generalize and build a mental model of gravity. ![]() We humans evolved over millions of years to trust that our daily experiences provide an accurate representation of our world. This distorts our collective intelligence, making it difficult for society to make good decisions. But it’s NOT the content itself on social media that is causing this problem it’s the machinery of distribution. Now here’s the problem: Social media has distorted the public sphere beyond recognition, giving each of us a deeply flawed mental model of our own communities. It’s within the public sphere that society collectively develops a mental model of itself. And by using this model, we the people are able to make good decisions about our shared future. Political scientists refer to this social world as “ the public sphere” and define it as the arena in which individuals come together to share issues of importance, exchanging opinions through discussion and deliberation. No, I’m not talking about how we model the physical world of gravity. I’m talking about how we model the social world of people, from our local communities to our global society. The problem is that social media platforms have inserted themselves into this critical process, distorting what it means to “perceive our world” and “generalize our experiences,” which drives each of us to make significant errors when we “build mental models” deep within our brains. This is called intelligence.Īnd for intelligence to work properly, we humans need to perform three basic steps: In this way, our mental models become more and more sophisticated over time. They are astonished as their model of gravity fails and their brain has to adjust, accounting for these rare objects. This works well until the infant experiences a helium balloon for the first time. Consider this example: An infant drops a toy and watches it fall to the ground after doing that many times with the same result, the infant’s brain generalizes the phenomenon, building a mental model of gravity. That mental model will allow the infant to navigate their world, predicting how objects will behave when they are toppled or dropped or tossed into the air.
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