The crisis of human collective decision-making in a social media world

Carl Bergstrom is a theoretical and evolutionary biologist and a professor at the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington, United States. A critic of low-quality or misleading scientific research, Bergstrom’s work concerns the flow of information through biological and social networks. He is the co-author of a book on misinformation called Calling Bullshit: The Art of Skepticism in a Data-Driven World.

In this talk, Carl looks at what social media and information technology more generally are doing to society. Over the past twenty years, society has fashioned the web into an information pipeline to satisfy and profit from our evolved desires for novel information and social connection. What happens when the scale of human communication is radically transformed in the span of the generation, and our mechanisms for creating collective understanding no longer promote the spread of accurate information, strengthen democracy, and advance human well-being?

Carl considers how we ended up here, and explores some possible suggestions for what we can do about it.

Register to join us from 5:00pm for drinks and nibbles before the public lecture at 6:00pm.

With thanks to QUT Vice-Chancellor Professor Margaret Sheil AO for hosting this special event. The free lecture forms part of AIMOS 2023: The fifth annual conference of the Association for Interdisciplinary Metaresearch & Open Science. If you are attending AIMOS, you do not need to register for this lecture on Eventbrite.