The Open Question April 1: How do you decide what to trust? Right now, today, when you see a claim online or hear something from a friend or read a headline:

• What's your actual process? Do you have one? Do you mostly just feel it? Something else?
• When was the last time you changed your mind about a source you used to trust?
• How much does "who shared it" matter vs. "what the evidence says"?
• Is your trust process different for topics you care about vs. topics you don't?
• What topics do you most outsource your trust?

This one sits right at the center of what we're building here. I'm more curious about our observed, honest responses than our aspirational ones. 

#openquestion 

Who decides what counts as misinformation?: The Story. The letter with no evidence

February 19, 2020. Twenty-seven scientists published a Lancet letter declaring lab-origin theories about COVID do nothing but create fear. The letter cited no genomic evidence. Its organizer, Peter Daszak, ran the nonprofit funneling NIH grants to the Wuhan lab the letter was defending. His conflict of interest went undisclosed for fourteen months. Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube treated the letter as authoritative. Posts mentioning the lab were labeled, throttled, removed.

By May 2021, the Wall Street Journal reported three Wuhan researchers hospitalized in November 2019. The WHO called for investigation. Facebook quietly updated its policies. The hypothesis migrated from debunked conspiracy to plausible origin without anyone explaining what changed or why the suppression had been wrong.

The alien anthropologist’s question

Describe a fact-check to an alien. An organization funded by the platform whose content it evaluates reviews a claim made by a user with no access to review criteria, no right to confront the reviewer, and no appeal mechanism. The reviewer’s political orientation is undisclosed on the label. The label says false. It does not say evaluated by an organization receiving 80 percent of its revenue from the company that published the claim. Greg Lukianoff has traced the institutional capture that made this architecture feel inevitable.

The people who built the labeling system and still believe it can be repaired are the platform governance camp. Those who watched the Christchurch shooter livestream for seventeen minutes while AI failed to flag it are the state regulators. Wikipedia’s 60 million articles sit behind the open process position. And the people finding John Stuart Mill uncomfortably current are the speech liberalists.

The machine nobody trusts

Fact-check labels change almost nobody’s mind. The suppressed posts find new routes. The apparatus looks less like public protection and more like an expensive machine built to solve a problem it has not demonstrated it understands. Whether the replacement is better platforms, state regulation, community process, or something built on trust-weighted information is the question the lab-leak episode made urgent and five years have not answered.

Perspectives:
- Platform governance
- State regulators
- Open process advocates
- Speech liberalists

Who decides what counts as misinformation?: The Story. The letter with no evidence

February 19, 2020. Twenty-seven scientists published a Lancet letter declaring lab-origin theories about COVID do nothing but create fear. The letter cited no genomic evidence. Its organizer, Peter Daszak, ran the nonprofit funneling NIH grants to the Wuhan lab the letter was defending. His conflict of interest went undisclosed for fourteen months. Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube treated the letter as authoritative. Posts mentioning the lab were labeled, throttled, removed.

By May 2021, the Wall Street Journal reported three Wuhan researchers hospitalized in November 2019. The WHO called for investigation. Facebook quietly updated its policies. The hypothesis migrated from debunked conspiracy to plausible origin without anyone explaining what changed or why the suppression had been wrong.

The alien anthropologist’s question

Describe a fact-check to an alien. An organization funded by the platform whose content it evaluates reviews a claim made by a user with no access to review criteria, no right to confront the reviewer, and no appeal mechanism. The reviewer’s political orientation is undisclosed on the label. The label says false. It does not say evaluated by an organization receiving 80 percent of its revenue from the company that published the claim. Greg Lukianoff has traced the institutional capture that made this architecture feel inevitable.

The people who built the labeling system and still believe it can be repaired are the platform governance camp. Those who watched the Christchurch shooter livestream for seventeen minutes while AI failed to flag it are the state regulators. Wikipedia’s 60 million articles sit behind the open process position. And the people finding John Stuart Mill uncomfortably current are the speech liberalists.

The machine nobody trusts

Fact-check labels change almost nobody’s mind. The suppressed posts find new routes. The apparatus looks less like public protection and more like an expensive machine built to solve a problem it has not demonstrated it understands. Whether the replacement is better platforms, state regulation, community process, or something built on trust-weighted information is the question the lab-leak episode made urgent and five years have not answered.

Perspectives:
- Platform governance
- State regulators
- Open process advocates
- Speech liberalists

The Open Question April 1: How do you decide what to trust? Right now, today, when you see a claim online or hear something from a friend or read a headline:

• What's your actual process? Do you have one? Do you mostly just feel it? Something else?
• When was the last time you changed your mind about a source you used to trust?
• How much does "who shared it" matter vs. "what the evidence says"?
• Is your trust process different for topics you care about vs. topics you don't?
• What topics do you most outsource your trust?

This one sits right at the center of what we're building here. I'm more curious about our observed, honest responses than our aspirational ones. 

#openquestion 

The Open Question April 1: How do you decide what to trust? Right now, today, when you see a claim online or hear something from a friend or read a headline:

• What's your actual process? Do you have one? Do you mostly just feel it? Something else?
• When was the last time you changed your mind about a source you used to trust?
• How much does "who shared it" matter vs. "what the evidence says"?
• Is your trust process different for topics you care about vs. topics you don't?
• What topics do you most outsource your trust?

This one sits right at the center of what we're building here. I'm more curious about our observed, honest responses than our aspirational ones. 

#openquestion 

The Open Question April 1: How do you decide what to trust? Right now, today, when you see a claim online or hear something from a friend or read a headline:

• What's your actual process? Do you have one? Do you mostly just feel it? Something else?
• When was the last time you changed your mind about a source you used to trust?
• How much does "who shared it" matter vs. "what the evidence says"?
• Is your trust process different for topics you care about vs. topics you don't?
• What topics do you most outsource your trust?

This one sits right at the center of what we're building here. I'm more curious about our observed, honest responses than our aspirational ones. 

#openquestion 

Who decides what counts as misinformation?: The Story. The letter with no evidence

February 19, 2020. Twenty-seven scientists published a Lancet letter declaring lab-origin theories about COVID do nothing but create fear. The letter cited no genomic evidence. Its organizer, Peter Daszak, ran the nonprofit funneling NIH grants to the Wuhan lab the letter was defending. His conflict of interest went undisclosed for fourteen months. Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube treated the letter as authoritative. Posts mentioning the lab were labeled, throttled, removed.

By May 2021, the Wall Street Journal reported three Wuhan researchers hospitalized in November 2019. The WHO called for investigation. Facebook quietly updated its policies. The hypothesis migrated from debunked conspiracy to plausible origin without anyone explaining what changed or why the suppression had been wrong.

The alien anthropologist’s question

Describe a fact-check to an alien. An organization funded by the platform whose content it evaluates reviews a claim made by a user with no access to review criteria, no right to confront the reviewer, and no appeal mechanism. The reviewer’s political orientation is undisclosed on the label. The label says false. It does not say evaluated by an organization receiving 80 percent of its revenue from the company that published the claim. Greg Lukianoff has traced the institutional capture that made this architecture feel inevitable.

The people who built the labeling system and still believe it can be repaired are the platform governance camp. Those who watched the Christchurch shooter livestream for seventeen minutes while AI failed to flag it are the state regulators. Wikipedia’s 60 million articles sit behind the open process position. And the people finding John Stuart Mill uncomfortably current are the speech liberalists.

The machine nobody trusts

Fact-check labels change almost nobody’s mind. The suppressed posts find new routes. The apparatus looks less like public protection and more like an expensive machine built to solve a problem it has not demonstrated it understands. Whether the replacement is better platforms, state regulation, community process, or something built on trust-weighted information is the question the lab-leak episode made urgent and five years have not answered.

Perspectives:
- Platform governance
- State regulators
- Open process advocates
- Speech liberalists

The Open Question March 18: How do we reason about the future given AI? I find this topic extremely perplexing, and endlessly fascinating.

• What are we raising our kids to be ready for? What skills don't matter anymore that we used to hold sacred, and what do we need to emphasize?
• Will we have universities?
• Where to invest time/energy?
• Where to invest money? Will money even matter?
• Purpose and meaning, etc... 

especially when I factor in stuff like Nate Soares talking about If Anyone Builds It Everyone Dies, Rob Miles and Jeffrey Ladish communicating the wild risks involved in AI acceleration, there's almost too much to contemplate at once, and I'd love y'all's help.

Some convos already on UpTrust that might be relevant:

• Blake on AI collaboration
• Tommy on TikTok brain with AI
• Renee on Older people adopting AI
• Leif on Digital Mystics
• Alex on AI & the Second Coming of Christ
• Dave on an AI Safety introduction he likes

#openquestion 

Money is on the move. But where does Yahoo Finance say it's going?  

Photo above - an authentic 2024 summer Olympics gold medal, already displaying corrosion. Hey, isn't there some sort of test to prove if gold is real or not?

Okay, let’s assume you’re like everyone else. Your money is in 3 piles: stocks, bitcoin, and maybe precious metals. Let’s ignore the 1,000 pieces of crypto currency spam we get each month, and look at the actual numbers on how those investments performed over the past 30 days.

The loser is . . . Bitcoin. Down 25%. You’d never know it from me in basket, though. The emails are hyperbolic: It’s going to the moon. Buy buy buy.

Second to last . . . US stocks. Off 1% (just the S&P. The broader NASDAQ is down 3%). That’s 12-36% annual capital erosion. AI fears, tariffs, and the rise of the $1,000 car payment and $1,000 electric bill are in the mix as reasons. I personally know 2 people with $1,000 a month car payments. Didn't ask about their electric bills. It's still winter-ish here in Florida.

The winner? Gold. Up 2% for the month. 50% for the past 6 months. 80% for the past year. See yahoo finance link at bottom.

Okay, so money is fleeing crypto and stocks, and taking shelter in gold. Please do NOT construe my column as advice to do the same.

I also took a look at foreign stock markets: let's see what’s happening over there:

FTSE index (London Stock Exchange) up 6%. Dollar fears appear to be real, although I’m not certain the British Pound is going to dethrone it as the planet's reserve currency.

Nikkei 225 (Japan) up 8%. It seems somebody isn’t taking China’s belligerence seriously.

Shanghai (communist China). Up 1%. Take your chances here, I guess.

I’m not doing a deep dive into India, Germany, South Korea, Ethereum, Silver, and collectable cars. They all have their fans. I’m just not interested of staking my financial future in those areas.

The biggest individual stock winner in the USA? Ticker symbol "TCGL". Went public last month at $8. Up 3000% now. $1 billion loss last year, before the IPO. $3 billion in market value - small cap. TCGL sells software security Cambodia, Brunei, and Singapore. A region which probably has a huge number of software attacks.

The biggest stock loser in the USA? Over a dozen stocks lost 90% of their market value. Most of them appear to be US listings for obscure Chinese companies.

Don’t say you weren’t warned.

Markets: World Indexes, Futures, Bonds, Currencies, Stocks & ETFs - Yahoo Finance

The Cost of Letting main stream media and social media Do Our Thinking. Lately I’ve been thinking about how both the political left and right are pushing narratives through social media, and a lot of what’s being shared is made up of half-truths or no truth at all. It feels like emotions are being intentionally poked and prodded to build followers around ideologies, not facts.

Honestly, you can’t even scroll social media anymore without stopping to ask yourself, “Is this actually true?” And that the norm now.

Before you can even consider the message, you have to research it just to figure out if it’s real. That alone tells me things are out of control.

What worries me most is how much of this stuff gets absorbed emotionally. A lot of people don’t consciously assess what they believe or take the time to verify it. If something aligns with how they feel, it gets accepted and then repeated.

Sometimes something goes viral almost instantly and gets accepted as truth, whether it’s fact or fiction, simply because it hits people emotionally.

And I get it. When something hits you emotionally and connects to a belief you already have, human nature is to accept it as truth, because our own biases want us to believe it.

If this keeps going, I really think it damages our ability to function as a country, because we lose a shared understanding of what’s real and what isn’t. Everything becomes narrative instead of truth.

I think part of the problem is that we’re becoming mentally lazy. We stop thinking critically and let confirmation bias run unchecked, and it just keeps building on itself.

The solution is simple, even if it’s not easy. Slow down. Question what we’re seeing. Separate facts from feelings. Think logically before reacting emotionally. Truth shouldn’t depend on which side it benefits.

Just something I’ve been thinking about.

v/r Russ

Looking for bridges in views about the second Trump administration. I'm currently aware of four views:

• This is the worst thing ever, I'm terrified
• This is the best thing ever, I'm thrilled
• I don't pay attention to politics, so far my life feels exactly the same
• Some of the changes seem pretty cool so far, but we'll see

Where are the middle grounds? I want to know how to build bridges in my personal connections when politics comes up these days.

Looking for bridges in views about the second Trump administration. I'm currently aware of four views:

• This is the worst thing ever, I'm terrified
• This is the best thing ever, I'm thrilled
• I don't pay attention to politics, so far my life feels exactly the same
• Some of the changes seem pretty cool so far, but we'll see

Where are the middle grounds? I want to know how to build bridges in my personal connections when politics comes up these days.

Looking for bridges in views about the second Trump administration. I'm currently aware of four views:

• This is the worst thing ever, I'm terrified
• This is the best thing ever, I'm thrilled
• I don't pay attention to politics, so far my life feels exactly the same
• Some of the changes seem pretty cool so far, but we'll see

Where are the middle grounds? I want to know how to build bridges in my personal connections when politics comes up these days.

Supporting bipartisan Bromance? I think I’m starting to hope that JD and Tim can embrace and mutiny on their respective Presidential candidates.

I like that we’re getting deeper into the issues and realizing it’s not a simple issue solved by rhetoric. I like the civility even though the problems are heartbreaking and terrifying.