Category Archives: The Liminal Times

The Encapsulation Effect


http://theglutengal.com/radio.php Artificial intelligence was pitched as the great connector. Algorithms would bring together ideas, products, and people that might otherwise remain hidden.

how to buy isotretinoin in canada In practice, though, its most potent effect has been insulation. We are learning to live in capsules of our own making: curated realities arrive not through friction but through code.

The clearest example is news. You don’t need to face a morning paper with stories that unsettle or bore you. Instead, feeds generated by AI-curation systems that hand you headlines most likely to keep you engaged.

The cost of that convenience is obvious: when everyone reads a different paper, shared reality becomes a rarity. One person’s newsfeed may be thick with celebrity gossip, another’s may focus on conspiracy, another’s may read like a political action memo.

None of them, however, offers the messy sprawl of a front page that forces you to glance at events beyond your interests.

That same narrowing logic applies to socializing. Apps once promised to broaden horizons, connecting people across geography and social groups.

Now they rely on AI-matched algorithms that filter potential partners based on preloaded preferences. You may scroll past dozens of faces, but the underlying system has already decided which ones fit the capsule you’ve constructed; your type, your politics, your humor profile, your consumption patterns. Instead of chance encounters across difference, dating becomes a mirror gallery of what you already know you like.

Entertainment only deepens the cocoon. Streaming services no longer just provide access to a library; they nudge viewers toward what their past behavior predicts.

“Because you watched…” has become the cultural tagline of our era. You binge a show, and the system offers five nearly identical shows to keep you in orbit.

AI ensures you rarely stumble onto a foreign classic, an odd documentary, or a genre outside your norm unless you fight your way past the recommendation engine.

Discovery used to happen by wandering aisles at Blockbuster, judging covers, or taking a flyer on a random pick. Now the act of stumbling itself is rare.

Daily life has followed suit. Why go to a restaurant when Uber Eats delivers? Why push a cart down a grocery aisle when Instacart can stock your fridge from your phone?

Convenience has become the enemy of contact. Where once you might have struck up conversation with a waiter or discovered a fruit you’d never tried by seeing it in a bin, the algorithm ensures your order is filled with the familiar. You don’t even need to greet a delivery driver—notifications and tip buttons make the exchange frictionless.

This insulation carries cultural consequences. Democracy depends on common ground: a shared set of facts, a minimum level of interaction across differences.

If AI creates a world where you can tune out news you dislike, avoid neighbors you don’t know, and bypass stores and restaurants entirely, then the rough edges that make society possible smooth away into solitude. Political divides harden not only because people disagree, but because they literally no longer see the same world.

Tthis effect isn’t accidental. AI systems are designed for retention. They feed you more of what you’ve already proven you’ll click, because that maximizes engagement and profit.

And the isolation is profitable. A person who never leaves their house orders more. A viewer who never leaves their lane binges longer. A voter who never challenges their worldview is easier to mobilize.

There are benefits, of course. For the elderly, disabled, or geographically isolated, delivery services and online curation can mean access to necessities and connection otherwise impossible.

But the ease of insulation makes it tempting for everyone. The capsules are cozy.

The question is whether we can build systems that encourage porousness rather than enclosure.

For now, the trend points to the hermetic. Encapsulation is easier than ever, and AI refines it with each click. The paradox is sharp: we have more access to the world than at any time in history, and yet fewer reasons to step into it.

The future will depend not only on how well AI can insulate us, but on whether we find the will to crack open our capsules.

Why Young Men Are Losing Faith in Science

New York Times

By Adam Frank

Dr. Frank is a professor of astrophysics at the University of Rochester.

A few years ago, on a flight, I was seated next to a man in his mid-20s. He looked at the astrobiology textbook I was reading and asked if I was a scientist. When I told him I was, his face lit up and he told me how much he loved science. He listened to podcasts like “The Joe Rogan Experience” and others where scientists came on as guests and talked about quantum mechanics, black holes and ancient aliens.

Encouraged by his enthusiasm, I told him that not everything on those shows was science (case in point: ancient aliens). I advised him to be on his guard. Then, with all earnestness, he told me while I was clearly OK, it was common knowledge that sometimes, on some subjects, science hid the truth. 

After 30 years as a researcher, science communicator and university science teacher, I’ve been unsettled by what appears to be a growing skepticism of science among some of my Generation Z students, shaped in part by the different online cultures these young people have grown up in. While I cannot speak to what happens in every corner of the internet, I can speak to the one I’ve been invited into: the “manosphere” — a loose network of podcasts, YouTubers and other male influencers. I’ve appeared on some of the manosphere’s most popular shows, including Joe Rogan’s. I’ve watched how curiosity about science can slide into conspiracy-tinged mazes rooted in misinformation. And I believe the first step out of the maze for young men begins by reasserting to them the virtue of hard work — an often grueling but indispensable part of finding the right answers in science.

Of course, women can be antiscience just as much as men; for example, some studies suggest women have more reservations about new vaccines than men. But the male tendency to view debates as adversarial contests that must be won at all costs is what may help to create a more alarming antiscience dynamic in the manosphere.

The manosphere can foster genuine interest in science among young listeners. But framing science as a debate to be won makes it easy to paint established scientists as opponents who must be overcome. And one of the easiest ways to win the debate is to suggest scientists are either self-satisfied elites who won’t consider new ideas or, worse, liars who know the truth and are hiding it.

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While there can seem to be a sincere desire in the manosphere to learn more about topics like black holes and neuroscience, discussions in these communities can sometimes devolve into a compelling story about searching for “the truth” about the moon landings, ancient technology and climate change. That powerful story, repeated enough times, can become the background against which manosphere audiences come to see all science.

The way to counter this story is, ironically, already there in the manosphere. Research shows young men and women today want a higher purpose, a call to something greater than themselves. In the manosphere, figures like Jordan Peterson, a clinical psychologist with an immensely popular podcast, speak directly to this desire among young men.

Mr. Peterson has framed virtues like personal responsibility, honesty and a purpose-driven life as qualities that are important to manliness. Those same values surface in other manosphere interests, like rigorous athletic training and disciplined health regimens.

What does not get much airtime, however, is recognition that these are also the very virtues that guide science and its principal values of veracity, accuracy and precision — seeking the right answer. Essentially this is just honesty when it wears a lab coat. Reframing scientific inquiry as another area where these values are lived can help counter science skepticism.

All the scientific marvels on which modern society depends are the fruit of extreme dedication. Rockets, computers and lifesaving medicines all come from decades of effort by scientists hunkered over pages of calculation or the laboratory bench. They required the same tireless, single-minded effort every elite athlete understands. The fringe science appearing in young men’s online social media feeds, however, requires none of that effort. Instead, it stands on proclamations based on profound ignorance and a disinterest in even the most basic scientific principles like those I’m teaching my freshmen this semester.

Good scientists are intimate with the limits of what they know and stand ready to learn in domains outside their expertise. They don’t just claim they are right. Instead, they know the cure for their ignorance is to actively and rigorously test their own assertions. That kind of humility is no different from enduring the hardships required to become a champion middleweight boxer, a great rock climber or a master musician.

It’s time to make that connection explicit, and the best place to start is with members of Gen Z themselves. If I could talk to that young man on the plane again, I would not simply tell him to exercise caution when it comes to fringe experts. I would instead explain the long traditions of scientific discipline and determination that built the jet he’s flying in. Einstein’s relativity, evolution and genetics, climate physics on any planet (even alien ones) — these topics are a thousand times more compelling than faked moon landings because they are not the fever-dreams of hucksters but a direct vision of nature’s outrageous beauty and complexity. Make the effort to walk down that road, embrace its honesty and humility and you’ll be hooked forever.