roblog

Human attention has become a commodity. Like oil and natural gas, it must be extracted. Instead of mining equipment, the means of extracting attention are algorithms. These algorithms are scientifically designed to tell people what they want to hear and show them what they want to see. Once the attention extraction process starts, it is further enhanced through the generation of emotions, especially outrage. Outrage causes the subjects of the extraction to produce responses, which add to the stream of content that is further used to extract more attention. Another tactic is playing on the natural human fear for the future, through headlines such as, "5 Reasons Why This Event is a Really Bad Thing", "Here's what could happen if so-and-so does this", "Ten Things You Must Know in Order to Survive the Next Hour of your Life". The fact that humans are terrible at predicting the future -- and are repeatedly humiliated when they try -- is beside the point. All that matters is generating attention.

Once a steady stream of human attention has been captured, it is then sold for advertising. This monetizing of human attention has become the primary function of the internet.

Provoking fear, outrage and anger is profitable. Promoting rational discourse, nuanced thinking, logic, reason, and facts is boring, therefore unprofitable.

Human brains did not evolve to be good at discerning truth, but for survival. For example, that rustling sound in the forest could be just the wind, or it could be a hungry lion ready to pounce. In either case, running away is the best choice, even if it is based on mistakenly believing there is a predator when in fact it is just a breeze. That is a case where truth really doesn't matter.

Because truth has been evolutionally secondary, humans have a persistent ability to believe utter nonsense in the face of contrary evidence. In fact, science has shown that humans tend to double-down on cherished beliefs in the face of contrary evidence, being by nature resistant to changing their minds.

Our current media infrastructure exploits these flaws in the human brain in the name of profit, casting aside the hard, thankless and unprofitable work of gathering facts and promoting rational problem solving.

It is a curious fact that one of the few things that "red" and "blue" agree on is that the media has failed our society miserably. I assert this is the predictable outcome of a society that has succumbed to the monetization of attention.