OMAHA Beach

Is Dead Internet Theory Real?

What Happened, is of those say thousand follow-bots that followed you half of them blocked you on the same day 

Now, The Algorithm disfavours you for three weeks --

So, they know how to Game The System, is The Point --

There are these tricks that they can do based on 

the different you know uh 

The Algorithm is taking the temperature of all the different people and things that are being said on the on on the platform and it's prioritizing according to all those temperature readings The algorithm so they know how to put that's a term we're going to come to regret Existing 

That's right And they're going to put a lighter underneath some of those some of those uh thermometers that are sticking out and heat it up or cool it down uh so that they can create an artificial environment And I hear that they're very good at this I've talked to some people who know some of the the stuff about how the tech works and that the they're very sophisticated Again if you have something like China as a state actor doing this and they have every incentive to we know that they're doing it they could do this very very effectively figure out who within the uh MAGA pantheon of of people with with reach engagement and influence, no enforcement of responsibility anywhere to be seen 

And elevate the ones who are being least responsible and punish the ones who are trying to bring responsibility into the conversation And you can massively contour the online conversation so that people in 'Reality' don't even know what's happening but somehow it's filtering up through everybody else's engagement to where maybe the president's hearing it or the president's adviserss are hearing it or you know Don Junior is picking stuff up from what he's looking to sometimes wise sometimes unwise from this stew of irresponsible elevated and responsible depressed uh algorithmic information sharing ing 

Yeah Well it's a it's a terrifying scenario because huh 

I was talking to someone at a bank yesterday I was locked out of my account after spending two hours getting it unlocked I made a transaction and then it was locked again And with no explanation I just couldn't get into my account Yeah So after some trouble I contacted them again and asked cuz I was going to make a sequence of these transactions I said "Well I'm going to make the same transaction tomorrow." 

I hadn't done anything with the account for a long time so it flagged you know strange activity I said "Well I'm going to do the same thing tomorrow Can you be sure that my account won't be flagged again?" And the answer from the help desk and it was a manager not a first level subordinate was no They had they don't have control over the algorithm is distant as you might imagine 

right and this is this is also this is such an ugly vision of the future 

and wait until AI takes the control of the algorithm till the infinity point past the omega point you can't get it back yeah well we may already be at that place 

yeah well you how much automation is there in the X algorithm plenty plenty right and it's going to be gamed constantly just like The stock market is gamed you know in micro doses 

Yes 

Continually 

Yeah 

So, but the problem See I've I've felt that we're building a new unconscious That's an interesting Well it is it's an externalized unconscious Yeah Because what your unconscious does essentially is filter the world for you Like it prioritizes your perceptions That's how the collective unconscious works It prioritizes your perceptions The probability that you know the mechanisms of prioritization are low Do you understand the philosophical roots of your own priorities probably not Probably not Right Within a very limited So explicitly within a very limited confine --

Well An Algorithm is a Perception-prioritiser --

That's right 

So it's worse than conception Right Something that messes with your perceptions is way more terrifying than something that messes with your conceptions Yeah Right Perceptions I think perceptions are the axioms of conceptions Right That's it's a weird way of thinking about it that an object is an axiom of a concept It's like a a perception is like a crystallized conception It's where you start And then these algorithms prioritize our perceptions of online discourse in ways we don't understand in the least They're like nothing else we've ever encountered They're an alien They're as alien as an intelligence as we're likely to encounter 

Sure 

So and then they're gamed So relentlessly gamed That's right And 

So I don't view the social media environment 

as a place to hang out with my friends; 

I don't view it as the public square --

You know that was The Big Argument, 

"Yeah, Twitter's a Public Square', 

or whatever --Yeah, It's not. 

....I hate to break this to anybody 

who doesn't understand this [YET] --"

"It is a Hobbesian-Nightmare --"

"No, no it's something different -- 

It is Omaha Beach, with 

the machine gun-nests raining 

psychological bullets at you all the time --

It is A Battlefield a hot, 

kinetic active-Battlefield for 

psychological control 

and manipulation; 

It is a propaganda War-space, 

like we've never seen before in The World -- 

So when you interact people say "James, 

the way you interact on Twitter is kind of insane." 

Well it's.. Yeah -- I've got a flack jacket on and 

a helmet and a rifle I don't act like 

I'm walking down the street and going to the bank or going to go to the store and get a croissant Something completely different because I'm on a battlefield So yeah of course I am a little glib or I am a little dismissive or I am a little you know reserved or you know people say things to me and I just ignore them or whatever else 

"How Do You *Know* --

- or *DO You Know* ....? 

-- *How* Do You know that 

*You're a Force for Good?* 

Or Do You *assume* that.....?

I'm -- I'm very *curious* -- 

It's a very hard question; 

What I can say that I'm certain about -- 

somebody asked me something similar a few days ago, is 

"How Do You know that 

You've *escaped* Plato's Cave 

rather than being still *inside* ...?" 

And I said that there's a there's a feature to 'Reality', 

which is first of all that ''Reality'', whatever this word means, 

is True; and secondly that 'Reality' is also coherent because I'm a realist I believe those things so we have to start there I'm a I have a philosophical orientation toward realism So therefore then the moral question is slightly different than the epistemological one but they're similar If 'Reality' is true by definition and is coherent therefore a way you can have insight into that is that the true things that you say interlock with other true things -- 

and you don't hit these contradictory points 

because of the coherence principle; --

So you can guess that you're a Force for Good in a similar way but it's much less clear 

-- You can *pray* that You're a Force for Good. 

....That's The Problem because the real issue is you don't know what propaganda you you've consumed You don't know what propaganda you're you're consuming at any given moment It's entirely possible that you know let's say that there is a as I I posited right that there is a psychological operation to damage MAGA through rampant uh creating a a subculture of rampant anti-semitism or to undermine Trump or whatever its ultimate purpose is I think it's to fragment the political movement and undermine Trump's base of support for whatever else he has to do later in his his his term or possibly for the elections in 2628 and going forward; 

Those kinds of things So you could say okay psychological operation the psychological operation could be in fact exact just to be hypothetical exactly The OPPOSITE of what you think it is --

The Psychological Operation could be in fact that and this is kind of one of the things the anti-semmites will put forward It's very conspiratorial and paranoid and that's where you can start to ask this question is that they want you to think that this is what's going on They want you to think that so see people will reflexively support Israel So Israel is actually the source of the scops not something like you know Iran that's against Israel So you don't know which side of the thing you're on Yeah That's a problem with an emergent lowrust society right when you don't know what's true paranoia emerges to rule Cuz how can it not [Music]