I’ve had post-election thoughts percolating, and the sense that I wanted to synthesize something about this moment, but politics per se is not really my beat. This is about as close as I want to come to the topic, and it's a sidelong thing, but I think the time is right.

It's time to start thinking again about neutrality.

Neutral institutions, neutral information sources. Things that both seem and are impartial, balanced, incorruptible, universal, legitimate, trustworthy, canonical, foundational.1

We don’t have them. Clearly.

We live in a pluralistic and divided world. Everybody's got different “reality-tunnels.” Attempts to impose one worldview on everyone fail.

To some extent this is healthy and inevitable; we are all different, we do disagree, and it's vain to hope that “everyone can get on the same page” like some kind of hive-mind.

On the other hand, lots of things aren’t great [...]

---

Outline:

(02:14) Not “Normality”

(04:36) What is Neutrality Anyway?

(07:43) “Neutrality is Impossible” is Technically True But Misses The Point

(10:50) Systems of the World

(15:05) Let's Talk About Online

---

First published:

Source:

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

---

Images from the article:

Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.