#badep

The classic example of ‘nudging’ is making a decision ‘opt out’ rather than ‘opt in’ – organ donation, for instance, or indeed the original Google Book Settlement. … These are not con tricks – they’re not even necessarily against our direct interests, although sometimes they can be – but they are hacks for the human mind, ways of manipulating us into particular decisions we otherwise might not make. They are also, in a way, deliberate underminings of the core principle of the free market, which derives its legitimacy from the idea that informed self-interest on aggregate sets appropriate prices for items.

You could argue that that kind of living is what the hearth is, or is for, and the first online communities retained that ethos. They were, in the philosophical sense, naïve: they were unconsidered, did not spend a huge amount of time examining their own meaning. They were just made up of people living, sharing experiences, helping one another, falling in love, rowing and fighting, and so on.

It’s not even clear that the modern mind can exist alone. The development of language requires a partner to communicate with and to act as a check; without someone to talk to, our grip on the meaning of words shifts with surprising rapidity.