The Price of Attention, Live Not By Lies, & The Dark Side of Smart | Feeding Frenzy 43
Feeding Frenzy is a weekly post that is a collection of knowledge to absorb. Every week you can expect something worth listening to, reading, watching, and pondering. Think of this as a boost of the signal above the noise!
In this edition, we have Zahed Amanullah on Your Undivided Attention explaining counter-terrorism campaigns and hunter and conservationist Steven Rinella on the Tim Ferriss Show. Worth reading, we have an essay 'Live not by lies' by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and 'The Dark Side of Smart.' Rounding out the week, we have a quote from F. Scott Fitzgerald and, as always, more for you to explore.
Tag us in your favorite content in the week!
Worth Listening
25-Your Nation's Attention for the Price of a Used Car | Your Undivided Attention
In this podcast from the Center for Humane Technology, host Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin expose the hidden designs that have the power to hijack our attention, manipulate our choices, and destabilize our real-world communities—joined by Zahed Amanullah, who is a Resident Senior Fellow at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, where he runs counter-terrorism campaigns. His organization received $10,000 in ad credits from Facebook for an anti-extremism campaign; they were able to reach about two-thirds of Kenya's Facebook users.
It shows how much reach that an average citizen and extremist groups have to target particular populations by extension. They only used about $10,000 in ad credit to make this happen, which is insane if you think about it, and you don't need a lot of work; you don't need to have a high budget to make this happen.
Furthermore, there's no checks and balances; as long as you can put up the money, you can run ads. And so that's where this conversation goes for me. And for a final note here, the Center for Humane Technology is also the group that funded the social dilemma movie. If you're interested in that film, you'll be interested to hear more about this entire podcast. Not just this episode in general, but diving into all of their content.
Steven Rinella on Hunting (and Why You Should Care), Reconnecting with Nature, Favorite Trips, and More (#470) | Tim Ferriss Show
This podcast will make some people feel many feelings, positive or negative, given the hunting topic. I've followed Steven Rinella for a while now, and he is an avid bow and arrow hunter and just an avid Hunter in general and, by extension, conservationist.
He's just one of the people that you can tell—the reverence he has for nature. And even though he is a Hunter, it's not to say he's like the stereotype of Elmer Fudd, which I think many people who think of hunting would assume that's what most hunters are like character-wise. I think if you have preconceptions about what you expect hunting to be. This podcast will be significant for you. They go into in-depth detail of why hunting and conservation are linked because the people who buy licenses and gear all go towards funding conservation.
Worth Reading
Live not by lies | Alexander Solzhenitsyn
"The simplest and most accessible key to our self-neglected liberation is this: personal non-participation in lies. Though lies may conceal everything, though lies may control everything, we should be obstinate about this one small point: let them be in control but without any help from any of us."
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was a Russian novelist, philosopher, historian, short story writer, and a political prisoner. Solzhenitsyn was an outspoken critic of the Soviet Union and Communism and helped raise global awareness of the Soviet Gulag forced-labor camp system. While 'Live not by lies' is a critic of the Soviet Union, I see a parallel of this in the modern era with social media's cancel culture. This essay was recommended on Bret and Heather 50th DarkHorse Podcast Livestream: Stop Being Shocked & Live Not By Lies. While researching this, I came across this commentary from Evolution News as well.
The Dark Side of Smart | Nautilus
"Human intelligence is incredibly useful but it doesn't safeguard you against having false beliefs, because that's not what intelligence is for. Intelligence is associated with coming up with more convincing bullshit and with being a better liar, but not associated with a better ability to recognize one's own bias. Unfortunately, intelligence has very little influence on your ability to rationally evaluate your own beliefs, or undermine what's called "myside bias."
After all, when you do well in anything, you start believing that you understand something at a deeper level than other people, which may be right.
But there's this idea that never to assume What you know, and what you hold to be true, to be exactly accurate. And when you read a piece like this, it's what I asked myself, what am I convincing myself of? Or have I checked myself on this belief? And so it, it causes some pause and reflects here.
I find that ability to reflect on your current state of awareness. I believe that intelligence is just like horsepower. If you want to use a technology reference, intelligence is a faster CPU or faster memory speed. All you have is more horsepower at your disposal to understand things more quickly, but you can be really intelligent and have terrible beliefs.
Worth Watching
How Spongebob Explored Existential Nihilism
This video is fantastic; as someone who grew up in the late 90s and early 2000s, my friends and I still quote Spongebob regularly. Nevertheless, to have such a thought out examination of existential nihilism explored in a child's cartoon.
I couldn't help but share it here. I think it's worth just noting that a well-crafted story can embed higher-level concepts that make it accessible to even the youngest audiences. It's not to say that was the point per se, but if you are primed to take something away from anything.
Be it a kids cartoon, a song, a book, a movie. You can take something of value away from just about anything you watch. You have to be willing to go just below the surface.
Worth Pondering
"The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed idea in the mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function."
F. Scott Fitzgerald
This week is a wrap and plenty to chew over for this week! Feel free to let us know any thoughts and suggestions that may contribute to these posts. It may pop-up on Feeding Frenzy or develop into a full-fledged article of its own.
Stay curious, and have a great week!
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Today on the podcast, we are joined by Joe Jackowski. Joe is a Marine Corps veteran and current graduate student at Vanderbilt University in the Cognitive Psychology in Context program. His primary interest is meaning in life, which broadly extends to problems in ethics, A.I., and culture.
In this episode, we sit down to discuss his first long-form article on his new sub stack, Apotheosis: A Philosophy for Influencers