Peter De Vos

Thank you.

Nice to meet you.

I think it amplifies, like you pointed out, David, I think it amplifies things that we have human tendencies to sort of hang out with our tribe, get sort of climb on the bandwagon.

I think all of those things are human tendencies that at the best of times, they're the kind of things that help us build communities together.

But social media just...

It plays, it just amplifies and distorts things.

And what we're trying to do in this course is give students some sort of personal skills as well as a bit of a worldview on how to not get provoked by this stuff.

Well, I think you're, you're, you're David, you're talking exactly about some of these cognitive biases that I think we, we get into number one is all of our reasoning in the world is kind of motivated by things.

And so, um,

And sometimes the motivations, the things that trigger that motivated reasoning are emotions.

And so a lot of what's being activated these days is emotions.

I'm reminded of this fantastic quote that a biologist, Edward O. Wilson said that, he said that the real problem of humanity is the following.

We have paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and God-like technology.

And I think that describes exactly where we are these days.

Exactly.

I think this quote is probably, I bet you, I don't know exactly the time, but I think this quote is probably from about 15, 20 years ago.

I think we have to be a bit more insightful in terms of what it is that triggers us.

And we have to be a bit more intentional about how we engage with people in the world around us.

Now, I think in the course, we're trying to put this into a slightly bigger perspective too.

We're really trying to give students the tools and perspectives to be productive democratic citizens.