Hey there!
Just wrapped up our latest episode with Joe and it's got me looking at my phone differently.
We dove deep into something that's been bugging me for months – how did we go from being reasonably good at spotting BS to... well, whatever this is?
Turns out, we've been falling for fake news since literally the beginning of written language. I'm talking about a 1523 pamphlet showing a creature that was supposedly part donkey, part woman, part devil, part bird, floating in the Tiber River.
Martin Luther created this "Pope Ass" to prove how monstrous the Catholic Church was. Spoiler alert: there was no monster. But people believed it because it was printed and printing was new, so it must be true, right?
In a twist that could come out of the modern Republican playbook, fifty years later, Catholics flipped the same fake monster story to attack Luther. Same lie, different target. Sound familiar?
The Pattern That Should Terrify Us
Every major leap in communication technology follows the same pattern. First comes the tech breakthrough – printing press, radio, internet, social media. Then comes a period where people can't tell what's real because they're not used to the new medium yet. Then we get really good at weaponizing that confusion.
The upheaval brings good things; the printing press gave us the Renaissance.
But it also brought the 30 Years' War, which killed 4-8 million people. Radio brought us incredible cultural connection and the War of the Worlds panic when people thought Martians were actually invading.
Of course, those previous conflicts took decades to unfold. The Pope Ass story took 50 years to get weaponized the second time around. Now?
We're running these same manipulation loops in hours.
And 4-8 million deaths over 30 years is bad, it’s nothing compared to what we could unleash today.
When Physics Meets Facebook
"Physics is physics,” you can say what you want, but reality doesn't care about your narrative. You may say there’s no gravity, but there is.
However, when the narrative is spun and twisted, we start taking actions based on the narrative.
We talked about the No Kings protest we attended (incredible energy, by the way – 5 million people versus Trump's squeaky tank parade with maybe 50,000). The contrast was striking: one side dancing and celebrating diversity, the other... well, let's just say the tank crew looked like they'd rather be anywhere else.
But there’s the narrative of the LA protests, which were limited ins scope, but blew out of proportion when the government and media reframed the context. It might have been a couple of blocks, but it becomes the overarching narrative leading to the militarization of LA…
The Question That Matters
Can we evolve fast enough this time? Previous information revolutions eventually led to new institutions and standards – scientific peer review, journalism ethics, and broadcast regulations. But we've never faced technology that could literally end civilization while we're still figuring out how to manage it.
The good news? It's absolutely controllable. Humans built these systems; humans can regulate them. The question is whether we'll choose to do it before the next 30-Year War happens in 30 minutes instead of 30 years.
Also, good news: when you actually put diverse people in a room together (like at that protest), you realize we're all pretty much the same. It's hard to hate people in perpetuity when you see they want the same things you do.
What power dynamics are you noticing in your information diet? Hit reply—I'd love to hear what you're seeing.
Talk soon, Jeff
P.S. Joe's parting wisdom from this episode: "Love each other. Just stop it with the nonsense and start loving each other." Sometimes the simplest advice hits hardest.
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