Into The Machine with Tobias Rose-Stockwell

Episode 1: Is AI Making Us Stupid? A Conversation with Jonathan Haidt

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Sep 18, 2025

In a captivating discussion, Jonathan Haidt, a renowned social psychologist and bestselling author, tackles the pressing issues facing democracy today. He reveals how engagement algorithms distort public discourse and exacerbate polarization. Haidt warns of the developmental crisis stemming from declining attention spans and diminished childhood interactions. He proposes practical solutions like phone norms and age restrictions on social media. Ultimately, he advocates for resilient democratic institutions while fostering cautious optimism for the future.

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INSIGHT

Power Over Agents Warps Users

Power over intelligent servants warps the character of their users.
Haidt compares mass access to agents to historical effects of slavery on enslavers' psychology.

INSIGHT

Attention Is Our Civic Infrastructure

Human attention capacity is shrinking while informational throughput explodes.
Haidt links reduced sustained focus to falling conscientiousness and weaker collective problem-solving.

INSIGHT

AI Risks Losing Core Human Capacities

AI threatens core human abilities beyond rote skills, including thinking and relationships.
Haidt argues outsourcing creative thought and social bonds to AI is fundamentally different than losing calculators.

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Today I’m launching Into The Machine.

My first episode is a conversation with my colleague, social psychologist and #1 NYT bestselling author Jonathan Haidt.

Jon and I wrote a piece in The Atlantic called The Dark Psychology of Social Networks — hoping to add clarity to the debate around social media. AI has changed the conversation. We now find ourselves in a stranger moment with LLMs, asking deeper questions about what these tools are doing to our ability to think.

In this episode we discuss:

* Attention as civic infrastructure: the erosion of sustained focus undermines shared reality, and with it the preconditions for governance, compromise, and democratic legitimacy.

* Engagement algorithms as centrifuges: rather than reflecting consensus, they pull discourse toward the edges, making fringe views appear as if they represent the center.

* Democracies as uniquely fragile: unlike authoritarian systems that can integrate these technologies into centralized control, liberal democracies are structurally more vulnerable to their fragmenting effects.

* Childhood as the front line: the breakdown of “serve-and-return” interactions, compounded by algorithmic feeds, represents not just a developmental crisis but a possible precursor to broader societal instability.

* Human agency atrophied by delegation: when writing, thinking, and decision-making are outsourced to machines, individuals lose the cognitive muscle required for original judgment.

A small ask

The irony is not lost on us in trying to explain/critique the algorithms while we’re dependent upon them to reach the right audience.

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Our next guest is Tim Urban, creator of Wait But Why.

Thank you, as always, for the gift of your attention.

-Tobias

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