How Algorithms Eliminate Nuance and How this Impacts Our Ability to Regenerate the Planet

If you live on the west coast then you’re no stranger to shades of grey. Both a colour and achromatic non-colour, grey deserves its own tone dictionary for its variance. We typically flee to the outdoors for sunsets, but we’re less likely to bathe in wonder over sheets of sleet. Yet, when I’m out in the surf and contemplating a full grey canvas, I often think that this scenario puts our brains into a meditative state - where the focus on the all-encompassing slate creates inner calm. Perhaps because there’s less to take in, we’re not overloading the grey matter in our brains, which processes stimuli into information.

I’ve been thinking about grey and its relation to the world we live in, and the reality that not everything is black and white. There is nuance everywhere in differing degrees, just like grey itself and the way it shows up. To achieve truly regenerative results on earth, we need a nuanced over a polarized approach to understanding issues and potential solutions. For instance, addressing unsustainable and unethical mining practices that are acquiring metals for clean energy infrastructure, the fact that a product can be certified organic but still abide by industrial practices that degenerate the land and soil, or that when done right palm oil can be sustainable as it requires less water, land, and energy than other plants that produce oil (but, for the vast majority of production, is massively destructive).

I’ve been learning about how algorithms impede our ability to have a multifaceted comprehension of issues. In social media, algorithms are largely designed to favour the elimination of nuance, and, instead, prioritize conflict as well as black and white thinking. According to Richard Reisman, “Social media algorithms favor viral content and conflict generation because that increases engagement — increasing ad views, and earning them added billions in revenue. How then to change the algorithms? Once the platforms are motivated to filter the content they distribute for quality, they will do better at it. Google’s original search algorithm proved decades ago that the internet can select for quality and nuance by harnessing the subtle signals of vast numbers of human users — and can do it at internet speed. But the obscene profits of the ad model were too seductive, so quality no longer mattered and was lost.” On top of supporting the capitalist system of exponential growth and earning corporations billions in revenue, studies also show how algorithms impact our ability to think freely, creatively, and redemptively.

 The algorithms themselves are not to blame, according to Hannah Fry, author of Hello World: Being Human in the World of Algorithms “Algorithms are being used to help prevent crimes and help doctors get more accurate cancer diagnoses, and in countless other ways. All of these things are really, really positive steps forward for humanity. We just have to be careful in the way that we employ them. We can’t do it recklessly.”

Leadership Coach Carey Nieuwhof outlines multiple challenges we face that current algorithm systems contribute to:

“1. YOU LOOP INTO DEEPER CONFIRMATION BIAS

As your choices narrow and you click more, your decision-making ability deteriorates because you see more of what you already like/believe/accept.

Algorithms don’t challenge confirmation bias, they fuel it. Essentially, the algorithm keeps feeding you more you.

2. YOU BECOME MORE TRIBAL AND EXTREME

So where is our current tribalism and extremism coming from? As the middle disappears from politics and people seem to be increasingly left or right, conservative or progressive and extreme.

You click on one story about the alt-right or socialism (pick your extreme) and five more appear next time you’re on the platform. Click on a few more, and descent down a wormhole begins.

Similarly, if you follow your more conservative or liberal friends, again, more suggestions of similar ideological/theological/philosophical pop-up.

Before you know it, your whole world thinks the same, believes the same and acts the same way you do, and perhaps in more extreme ways.

3. YOUR CHOICES USUALLY END UP BECOMING MORE LIMITED, NOT GREATER

Think back to the day when you had to purchase music, as in specific music, to listen to what you wanted to hear (or rely on radio to play your favourite song).

You saved up your money and purchased a physical CD, cassette or album and listened away. The iPod changed that a little bit as purchases moved from physical to digital, but what totally changed the game was streaming. Now, for a dozen dollars or so a month, you can theoretically listen to anything from anyone anytime.

Except, if you’re like me, you don’t.

The same is true of online shopping, video, TV shows, movies, social posts etc: you don’t actually get more choices, you get fewer because the algorithm is designed to feed you things it thinks you like so you’ll stay on longer, buy more, and click more often.

4. YOU LOSE THE ABILITY TO THINK FREELY 

All of this challenges your ability and my ability to think and choose freely.

Again, ask yourself whether your views have calcified or whether you’re still learning and growing from a variety of sources? If your world-view collapses because you’re open to dialogue and other ideas, your worldview wasn’t that strong to begin with. And if you have to defend it by getting angrier and louder, you’re probably speaking to an ever-dwindling circle of people.”

WHAT CAN WE DO?

I believe we need more nuanced perspectives to regenerate the planet, to see all sides of issues, and to find common ground amongst each other - which has NEVER been so important.

• Read, listen and watch far and wide! Embrace interdisciplinary learning by soaking up knowledge from different disciplines, genres, sectors, etc. This includes taking a chance to understand differing perspectives other than our own. It was suuuper hard for me to listen to a podcast on why a lot of clean energy is dirtier than we think, but I know I needed to do it to understand how we can make the green energy revolution truly regenerative.

• I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again - we need a system overhaul. This includes massive tax reform that taxes the extremely wealthy, which will disincentivize the current money hoarding system. This also means holding corporations accountable for the pollution, degradation, and exploitation they cause - which will also disincentivize an algorithmic system that favours sensational clickbait that’s purely cash motivated.

• Holding respectful conversations with people who have differing opinions than us. I have a great article on how to have productive environmental discussions that you can read here. When we do this, we break out of silos and confirmation bias.

• Not accepting what is widely assumed. This includes norms, stereotypes, and harmful narratives - like “we’re in the apocalypse” or that environmentalists and artists will always starve and be poor (I used to believe this and have since gotten out of this poverty mindset.) As Carey states, “again, widely accepted current thinking will get reinforced by algorithmically driven sources. It becomes a confirmation bias, a feedback loop that self-perpetuates.”

• Be skeptical of social media and mainstream news, period, and be wary of how much time is spent on these channels. They are owned by massive corporations that are structured to increase their capital and fatten the pockets of their shareholders. As an alternative for gaining quality information, I love going for walks outside and listening to podcasts that host people with different trains of thought. This, paired with just being outside..brainstorming, feeling, and thinking for oneself is powerful and necessary for overcoming the limiting nature of current algorithms. It is, for instance, how I came up with this post hehe.

• Richard Reisman also shares this solution: “change the incentives that will motivate platforms to redesign algorithms to filter for nuance — and against incivility and hate speech. As long as social media’s financial incentives favor engagement (or “enragement”) over quality, its filtering algorithms will be designed to be favorable to messages of hate and fear. As long as that happens at Internet speed, bolted-on efforts to add back nuance and limit conflict will be futile. We will waste time and resources with little result, and democracy may drown in the undertow. How can we swim out of this tide?

  Change the incentives. What we need is a subscription model that makes the user the customer. People should pay for the services they enjoy, with some of that cost defrayed by compensation that is given for their data and their attention. Today, as is often said, users (and their data) are the product, and the true customers are the advertisers.”