4 Comments

I would strongly encourage you to read Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo. It’s a tale, based on actual lives, of poverty and hierarchy and power in the Mumbai slums. You may have a more favorable view of Dan Williams’ inversions to poverty and law breaking once you do.

Expand full comment

I haven’t read Williams’ article, but having read him before, I don’t think he would reject others’ efforts to educate and enlighten those holding wrong beliefs. But it must be through discourse, not authoritarian fatwas. Our purpose should be to wins hearts and minds, not obedience.

Expand full comment

I think it's a subtle difference. In a sense, explaining X will shed light onto ~X and vice versa.

I think the inversion is more about what possible reasons we focus on vs. which phenomena we need to explain

Expand full comment

None of this is really relevant to the misinformation research industry. They aren’t trying to reverse the prevalence of conspiracy theories as much as they are attempting to force feed gender and racial narratives to the general public.

Expand full comment