Jay Friedenberg

In this chapter we discuss the role of free speech and its importance in countering lies and hate speech online. Free speech is necessary but by itself cannot counter the level of polarization and disinformation we see today. The leftist approach to this problem is governmental regulation of social media companies. We examine several proposed regulatory approaches and comment on them. Following this we look at the barriers to changing contemporary social media. A market-based solution is to structurally redesign these platforms to incentive truth over hate and diversity of opinion over two-sidedness. Several experimental platforms have been tried, including Polis, Kialo, and Bluesky, whose features are described. This is followed by other cultural, economic and future-facing innovations. We conclude with a proposal for gameifying social media that can overcome some of the problematic issues associated with these platforms.

In this chapter we discuss the difference between tyranny of the majority and tyranny of the minority. A first step to preventing either is to redesign existing political institutions. We therefore examine each of the major components of the U.S government, summarizing their functions, problems, and making suggested reforms. We then do the same for parliamentary systems of the sort found in Europe and elsewhere. Following this we look at alternate forms of democracy. These are more experimental systems that have yet to be adopted at a national level. They include methodologies that foster forms of deliberative democracy, liquid delegation systems, quadratic voting, citizen assemblies, and prediction markets. Education is critical to an informed electorate, but educational institutions have yet to do an effective job in countering nefarious politicians and disinformation on social media. Democratic information systems that are unbiased and non-partisan include the Society Library's Internet Government Project and the Great American Debate project, which we describe. We conclude with a discussion of the role science can play in the political process.

Digital propaganda is widespread across all social media platforms and in many cases is unintentionally spread. Most people are currently incapable of determining what is factual and what is not on these networks. A number of studies suggest we have entered a period of "truth decay" where facts have been replaced by opinions and subjectivity. Disinformation online is a major contributor to societal polarization and has contributed to a distrust in established organizations like the press, academia, and science. It has been used to great effect by dictators and autocrats who use it to gain supporters and maintain their positions of power. Stopping disinformation will require changes to how social media companies operate, support for legitimate news organizations, and the use of encryption, blockchain and AI technologies. It will also require changes to the educational system which focus on how to evaluate information online.

Dictators use propaganda for a variety of purposes, but prime among these is to gain supporters. These supporters can then bring the leader to power either by force or through more democratic means. The result of the propaganda in every case polarizes the society either into the autocrat's self-defined group or into a group of those who are seen to oppose him. In this chapter we discuss polarization and its relation to autocracy and disinformation. We start by defining different types of polarization, paying special attention to the political and economic types. We examine the psychology behind it, looking at some of the personality differences between conservatives and liberals. The research on the psychology of hatred is presented. The latter part of the chapter is devoted to ways of stopping polarization whether they be political changes, bridge building efforts by various organizations, or educational efforts like critical thinking.

Authoritarianism is on the rise globally and poses a serious threat to civil society. We define this term and show the difference between old- and new-school autocrats. Historical data demonstrate a developmental course for how autocracies start, persist, and end. They also show democracy occurs in waves, rising and falling at different periods over time. Much research attention has focused on right-wing authoritarianism. To balance this, we detail features of the left-wing version as well and its relation to postmodernism. We then look at the authoritarian personality type and how easy it is for a would-be dictator to hijack populist sentiment and dismantle democratic institutions. Polarization, political capture and economic inequality are highlighted as three key factors that explain democratic erosion in the U.S. and around the world. We conclude with suggestions for how to stop dictatorships and reform societies to make them more resilient to autocratic takeover.

Politics is a complex subject. There are many ways of governing with numerous types and subtypes. In this paper we attempt to first simplify politics by defining its main features. We show that political ideologies can fit into a dimensional space and define three major contemporary styles. Following this we compare and contrast fascism and communism and introduce totalitarianism using North Korea as an example. We then turn our attention to democracy, showing that the strength and weakness of democratic institutions lies in how they deal with diversity. The classical liberal approach is presented as a model for effective democratic governance. We end with the current most serious threat to democracy: populism and nationalism. These are both forms of tribalism that pit group identity against individualism. Dictators succeed by appealing to tribalist tendencies. Democracies can win only if they are representative and pluralistic.

The field of value alignment, or more broadly machine ethics, is becoming increasingly important as artificial intelligence developments accelerate. By ‘alignment’ we mean giving a generally intelligent software system the capability to act in ways that are beneficial, or at least minimally harmful, to humans. There are a large number of techniques that are being experimented with, but this work often fails to specify what values exactly we should be aligning. When making a decision, an agent is supposed to maximize the expected utility of its value function. Classically, this has been referred to as happiness, but this is just one of many things that people value. In order to resolve this issue, we need to determine a set of human values that represent humanity's interests. Although this problem might seem intractable, research shows that people of various cultures and religions actually share more in common than they realize. In this book we review world religions, moral philosophy and evolutionary psychology to elucidate a common set of shared values. We then show how these values can be used to address the alignment problem and conclude with problems and goals for future research. The key audience for this book will be researchers in the field of ethics and artificial intelligence who are interested in, or working on this problem. These people will come from various professions and include philosophers, computer programmers and psychologists, as the problem itself is multi-disciplinary.

What is art? What is beauty? Why are we driven to create? People have been struggling with the answers to these questions for millenia. In this book Jay Friedenberg examines age old and contemporary responses to the perceptual and performative side of aesthetics. The work is wide-ranging in scope, addressing all forms of art including painting, photography, writing, film, music, theater, dance, and more. Issues are examined from multiple perspectives with separate chapters on history, philosophy, mathematics, physics, psychology, and neuroscience. This beautifully illustrated book can be read by a general audience or used as an undergraduate or graduate textbook for courses in art history, aesthetics, or media studies.

What does it mean to be human? Philosophers and theologians have been wrestling with this question for centuries. Recent advances in cognition, neuroscience, artificial intelligence and robotics have yielded insights that bring us even closer to an answer. There are now computer programs that can accurately recognize faces, engage in conversation, and even compose music. There are also robots that can walk up a flight of stairs, work cooperatively with each other and express emotion. If machines can do everything we can, does that mean we are machines? This book examines whether an artificial person can be constructed and if so, what that might tell us about our future and ourselves. Different human capacities such as perception, creativity, consciousness, social behavior, and free will are described in separate chapters. Technological advances in these areas are summarized and compared to our own abilities. The book adopts a multi-disciplinary approach, with a naturalistic perspective drawn from biology and psychology matched against a technological perspective based on computer science and robotics.

This book is a collection of essays written on a variety of topics relevant to the future of humankind. The chapters are organized foundationally starting with how it is we can know and understand reality. This is followed by descriptions of future technologies and the new science that will drive them. Then we take a look at ourselves, how smart we are and how intelligent our machines may become. The final sections paint a larger picture, examining civilization with a focus on what we’ve done wrong historically and how we may correct such mistakes.

We live in the digital age where our sense of self and identity has moved beyond the body to encompass hardware and software. Cyborgs, online representations in social media, avatars, and virtual reality extend our notion of what it means to be human. This approachable book looks at the progression of self from the biological to the technological using a multidisciplinary approach. It examines the notion of personhood from philosophical, psychological, neuroscience, robotics, and artificial intelligence perspectives, showing how the interface between bodies, brains, and technology can give rise to new forms of human identity. Jay Friedenberg presents the content in an organized and easy-to-understand fashion to facilitate learning. A gifted researcher, author, and classroom teacher, he is one of the most influential voices in the field of artificial psychology.