Criticizing The Social Dilemma in Quillette
We are proud to see Ray Percival’s critique of the Netflix smash hit documentary The Social Dilemma, wherein a set of tech luminaries describe the dark reality and apocalyptic vision of social media behemoths. Ray’s piece, published in Quillette, is a condensed version of an article that is twice the length. We plan to publish this longer piece in the coming weeks.
If you are looking for fresh perspective on the question of social media’s impact on our lives, Ray is your man. He describes how a democratic space is not the ideal we should even strive for, since majority rule can silence the innovative minority voices that are necessary for progress, even for democracy itself. He compares Big Tech data gathering algorithms to those of a well-trained parrot, which is entertaining and surprising, but not necessarily nefarious. Perhaps most interesting of all, he breaks down the threat of runaway ideologies and fake news by asking about the rate at which these movements gain and lose members. Cults can last a long time even if their members drop out rather quickly, so long as they attract new converts at an equal rate. Fake news can also persist for some time in the most rational society, as long as it takes a while for citizens to adjudicate on specific claims.
These ideas apply well beyond the domain of social media, and dip into our understanding of how knowledge and expertise actually function. Ray’s book The Myth of the Closed Mind follows these questions to their philosophical roots, and applies them to all walks of life. Written in 2012, Ray anticipated our current environment in a similar way that Martin Gurri did in The Revolt of the Public. Both identify the value of expanded criticism that the web brings and the necessity of disruption, though they disagree in their visions for how this should play out.
In his conclusion, Ray shows how the luminaries of The Social Dilemma, as well as adjacent thinkers like Shoshana Zuboff (The Age of Surveillance Capitalism) and Yuval Noah Harari (Homo Deus), better fit the picture of the forces they claim to oppose. By reining in the web according to their prescription, we risk impeding autonomy and flourishing, not fostering it.
