”My argument is that the current structure of public conversation has the same effect on human cognition that a botnet has on a web server. It's simply exhausting you. And an exhausted mind defaults to heuristics and tribal allegiances, aka whatever position allows it to conserve the most cognitive energy.”

”What I do know is that the feeling of being overwhelmed, of never being able to keep up, of having strong opinions about everything and confident understanding of nothing, is not a personal failing. It's a predictable response to an impossible situation. Your brain is being DDoS'd, and the fact that you're struggling to think clearly under that onslaught is evidence that your brain is working normally. The servers aren't broken. They're overloaded. And until we figure out how to reduce the load or increase the bandwidth, the best any of us can do is recognize what's happening and try, when possible, to step away from the flood long enough to do some actual thinking.

”Find some topic you care about. Just one. Resist the temptation to have takes on everything else. Let the discourse rage without you while you spend weeks or months actually understanding something. Read books about it, not takes. Talk to experts, not pundits. Follow the evidence where it leads, even when it's uncomfortable. Change your mind when you find you were wrong. And when you finally have something to say, something you've actually earned through careful thought rather than absorbed from the tribal zeitgeist, say it clearly and then step back.”

”This won't fix the collective problem. But it will fix something in you.”

https://www.joanwestenberg.com/the-discourse-is-a-distributed-denial-of-service-attack/