But the goal of disinformation isn’t really around these individual transactions. The goal of disinformation is to, over time, change our psychological set-points. To the researcher looking at individuals at specific points in time, the homeostasis looks protective – fire up Mechanical Turk, see what people believe, give them information or disinformation, see what changes. What you’ll find is nothing changes – set-points are remarkably resilient.

But underneath that, from year to year, is drift. And its the drift that matters.

Source: The Homeostatic Fallacy and Misinformation Literacy | Hapgood

Via:

Most of the reading I’m doing right now in my final weeks of research I’d describe as “contextual” – that is, I’m reading the bestsellers and articles that reflect ideas influencing and influenced by and adjacent to teaching machines and behaviorism in the 1950s and 1960s. Needless to say, I’ve been reading a lot about cybernetics – something that totally colored how I thought about the article Mike Caulfield published this week on “The Homeostatic Fallacy and Misinformation Literacy.” Homeostasis is a cornerstone of cybernetic (and information) theory. And yet here we are, thanks to data-driven “feedback,” all out of whack.

I think there’s something wrapped up in all this marketing and mythology that might explain in part why the tech industry (and, good grief, the ed-tech industry) is so incredibly and dangerously dull. You can’t build thinking machines (or teaching machines for that matter) if you’re obsessed with data but have no ideas.

Source: HEWN, No. 296