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Architecture of a Rabbit Hole

Polarization is increasing at alarming pace in societies worldwide, threatening the very foundations of democracy as we know it. Social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube are, despite their obvious benefits to individuals and society, among the key drivers of this process. Their business model relies on one simple principle: Keep users online for as long as possible in order to generate maximum ad revenue. Leading them to extreme content is one sure way to achieve this. But how do get people sucked into a world of half-truths, unfounded claims, or flat-out lies?

Deep down into the hole of flat earth

In this project we reconstruct the architecture of a rabbit hole. Our case in point is one of the most bizarre phenomena that in its sheer scale certainly wouldn't exist without social media: the flat earth movement. We follow the path of a hypothetical, ordinary user from their first click on a YouTube-link to them vociferously proclaiming and spreading their newly found belief in their social network. Explaining how the technology of recommendation algorithms works, we aim to show how rabbit holes open and why, once fallen in, it becomes hard to ever get out again.

Raising awareness and rethinking business models

We are all vulnerable to the manipulation of our thoughts and behavior by social media. Most often the changes will be subtle and barely noticeable; but in the long run they threaten to lead us away from seeking truth, accepting uncertainty, and valuing diversity. Our goal with this project is to raise awareness for this daunting process and to engage in a discussion on how social media and its business models can be transformed to develop and not undermine democracy.

Currently, we are thinking of presenting our rabbit hole architecture on a large interactive display. Are you an artist or graphic designer and would like to work with us on this project? Please get in touch!

Conspiracy Theory Battle

Conspiracy theories serve many purposes for those who hold onto them. One is to escape uncertainty. We all have this tendency: When things get really complicated, we long for simplification, for a compelling narrative that clears the mess around us and makes us believe we are in control of our lives again. In order to hold steady in our worlds, most of us can't tolerate not knowing what is what for a long time.

We use the term 'conspiracy theory' here as a placeholder for any form of explaining the world in which actual ignorance is disguised as superior factual knowledge. The term is important in its own right, however, because it points us to the primeval and most toxic simplification of all: The belief that the course of the world is the making of one or more, in principle identifiable agents, of a handful of shady characters, say, with a devious plan to subjugate us all.

The punchline

Such 'theories' have shown in the past to undermine demoQracy ANd they cONtinue to do so today. Thanks to the internet, they build and spread faster than ever before. We think, therefore, that it is past time to learn how to confront them! With our offline event series 'Conspiracy Theory Battle' we aim to create a safe and serious, but also playful space for understanding how conspiracy theories work, how we can react to them, and whether we ourselves may be susceptible to them.

The setup

The setup is simple: Two persons on stage, one tries to win over as many followers as possible for some conspiratorial claim, while the other tries to convince the audience that they cannot possibly be right. The 'battle' is over when one of the two 'athletes' give up or when the bell rings after 20 minutes. Afterwards, we collectively reflect upon what happened onstage, how we reacted to what we've heard, and what the lessons are for dealing properly with conspiracy theorists.

The participants

You! If you want to try and act out a conspiracy theory onstage, email us and we will send you a list of candidate theories.* But note: We don't want people onstage who actually believe in what they are supposed to argue for—this is not about showing someone off. If you would like to try and debunk the conspiracy theory of the night, drop us a line too! But also note: You will only learn what you have to deal with on the night of the event!

The start of this event series is postponed for obvious reasons. We hope to have the premiere in spring 2022 in Berlin—stay tuned!

*Candidate conspiracy theories are those without any racist, anti-semitic, or other discriminatory content.

Ignorance Dinner

We should know. We want to know. We know more than ever before. But what awaits us beyond knowledge? We want to dive down with you into the murky waters of our everyday lives, lull you into a true sense of uncertainty, and ask you: In which situations, in which places, in which topics are you ignorant, insecure, or uncertain? And: How do you deal with it?

The setting: a long dinner table in a public space in Berlin, a group of curious and daring people like you, decent food, good drinks, and a series of interventions by our hosts. While much of what that night brings cannot be known in advance, this much is certain: You will be part of a fun exploration into the fascinating world of human ignorance (no magic show, no kitchen sink psychology session)!

Dates for the Ignorance Dinner will be announced on this website. If you would like to join, email us and tell us a little bit about yourself and why you want to know more about ignorance. Admission is free; food and drinks will be served at cost price.

This series is suspended for obvious reasons. We hope to be back in spring 2022— stay tuned!

Research. Of the serious kind.

The phrase 'the ignorance turn' is evocative of the 'linguistic turn' in Western philosophy; and not by chance. We would argue that studying ignorance has suffered from intellectual inattention—very much like a critical appraisal of language as a potentially deficient means of understanding and imparting reality was largely absent from philosophical debate until the beginning of the 20th century.

Integrating ignorance studies

There are fields with a long history of addressing different aspects of ignorance, such as sociology, complexity theory, decision theory, management theory, risk research, and law. However, the available knowledge about ignorance appears to be rather dispersed and the term itself not well-defined. We thus think that integrating existing research would not only be worthwhile academically. Such an endeavor would also shed light on the epistemological and cultural foundations for an ignorance turn in so called knowledge societies.

Interesting research questions, we think

In the following, we list a number of questions for inter- and transdisciplinary studies on ignorance, we find particularly interesting. Please feel free to email us, if you have any comments or additions. Some time ago, we have tried to secure funding for an international conference on these topics. We still would love to make such an event happen.

Status and roles of ignorance in science: How do different ontological assumptions about ignorance affect the production of scientific knowledge? What are the relationships between knowledge, risk, and ignorance? How can ignorance be used as an asset and a resource? What is the epistemological foundation of ignorance claims? How does science deal with ignorance when examining the future?

Status and roles of ignorance in society: What are the characteristics and functions of different notions of ignorance as a social construct? How do these notions relate to and interact with scientific conceptualizations of ignorance? How does ignorance emerge out of social processes—in particular in communication on social media? Is there an individual right to not know and a social responsibility to know? How is ignorance being used to enforce economic or political interests?

Cultures and practices of dealing with ignorance: What is the state-of the-art of those new modes of knowledge production that are based on a deliberate approach to ignorance? Where is the current debate about Responsible Research and Innovation headed? What are the lessons learnt from risk-based vs. precautionary-based forms of political regulation? What is the current practice of uncertainty management in business? What are non-Western approaches to dealing with ignorance? What is the role of the internet?

Ignorance in science communication: How and when should science communicate ignorance and uncertainty to the public? Is there a liability of science in policy consulting? What are the internal and external drivers when it comes to ignoring ignorance (such as the devaluation of negative results by scientific journals or societal expectations to get unambiguous scientific advice)?

Artificial Ignorance

'I know I've made some very poor decisions recently''when was the last time you heard an AI say that? Yes, right, in 2001, onboard Discovery One when computer HAL tried to talk his human antagonist out of switching him off. During the past ten years of the latest AI hype, however, such kind of self-reflexive remorse was never heard of. Algorithms, instead, grew ever more confident, with human-level accuracy in certain tasks like face recognition being the gold standard.

Biases: the human side of AI

The downsides of these truly remarkable technological successes are, however, meanwhile well known. A face recognition system mistaking a black person for a gorilla and other forms of horrible bias in AI applications have repeatedly made headlines. Facing public outcry, tech companies started taking action by, for example, diversifying data sets. But this can only go so far. The biases of the AI engineers will, in one way or the other, always percolate into their systems.

I don't know if this image shows a cat!

Biases are an expression of ignorance disowned. In this project we begin to search for an AI system that is 'aware' of its ignorance about the world it is operating on. More concretely, we imagine an AI system, which would tell us why a specific decision is hard to make and where the highest uncertainties are. Such a system would not only have obvious practical applications. It might also help us to better understand why we ourselves so often make 'poor decisions'.

What we intend to do

We start our project with researching which technologies exist for coding 'Artficial Ignorance' and who is already working on this. Then we will try to develop a basic concept for the system we envision. Finally, using a very simple task as example, we hope to program our own first ignorance-aware AI. The main field of application we have in mind is policy making for sustainable development.