The moment when I began to fear spiders

When I was in the third grade, I opened a large textbook at random, and what I saw frightened me so thoroughly that it gave me a phobia for the next two decades.

It was a two-page spread of a tarantula — its eight legs were splayed out across the book’s bound center, and above two hairy fangs were eight small eyes staring right at me.

The third grade version of myself yelled, and to this day — if I see a close-up of a spider, I might still yell.

Make no mistake, I know — cognitively — that spiders…

One of the problems we have in these times is that global empathy is on the decline.

A study by Sara Konrath shows the downward trend in empathy is measurably the case, and there are certainly quite a few variables contributing to this phenomenon.

Let’s focus on one — one that we can measure, and one that a professor of Behavioral Science at Berkeley named Dr. Juliana Schroeder has measured.

Could the global transition of communication from speech to short-form text decrease our global empathy?

The answer to this is yes, it could — and Dr. …

Part 3 of a 3 part series — The Perils and Promise of Data

In Part 1, we showed how data can lead anyone, including you, into a state of psychopathy.

In Part 2, we showed how algorithms can lead anyone, including you, into a state of bias.

So what do we do?

In this day and age, there is a lot of pressure to ‘pick a side,’ and if you consume any type of media, it’s often quite easy to do this.

Opposing political figures and pundits say outrageous and reprehensible things, and all you have to do is experience the human emotion of disgust, send out a rage tweet, and there you are — on the supposed right side of history and morality.

But let’s take a step back, and gain insight from someone who was once fully entrenched in the Us vs. Them narrative, an ex-CIA operative named Amaryllis Fox.

…

In the last article, we showed what happens when data strip emotions out of an action

In Part 1 of this series, we argued that data can turn anyone into a psychopath, and though that’s an extreme way of looking at things, it holds a certain amount of truth.

It’s natural to cheer at a newspaper headline proclaiming the downfall of a distant enemy stronghold, but is it ok the cheer while actually watching thousands of civilians inside that city die gruesome deaths?

No, it’s not.

But at the same time―if you cheer the headline showing a distant military victory, it means you’re a human, and not necessarily a psychopath.

The abstracted data of that headline…

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
— Arthur C. Clarke

This quote, often repeated by thinkers like Neil DeGrasse Tyson, is pretty straightforward in its meaning.

But there is a corollary to it, and it is that humans can go beyond first impressions.

To explain this, let’s ask ourselves a question.

Question―If aliens came down and showed us their sufficiently advanced technology, what would happen?

Answer―We’d all eventually know it was technology, no matter how much it looked like magic.

In Part 1 of this series, we discussed bleak fiction―TV shows like True Detective, and literature ranging from Thomas Ligotti to Ian McGuire’s The North Water to Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl.

Why do we love them, and more specifically―why do the bleak worlds they present leave us so happy?

We should feel bad after watching True Detective’s portrayal of a corrupt world that is so pervasively bleak but instead―

There’s a scene in the middle of the first season of True Detective, when the mesmerizingly dour detective Rust Cohle councils his partner Marty’s wife, Maggie.