Patrick Ward

Patrick Ward

@pdw.bsky.social

optimistic problem solver

251 followers61 following304 posts

Patrick Ward
@pdw.bsky.social

More legibility leads to less discretion. Written laws increase the legibility of power, reducing the discretion of those who wield power. The internet makes communication more legibility, as messages are easily stored, copied & shared. This decreases the discretion of (strategic) communicators.

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Patrick Ward
@pdw.bsky.social

James Scott's Seeing Like a State is the best starting point for thinking about the societal implications of legibility more generally. It's a great book, too.

Patrick Ward
@pdw.bsky.social

More legibility leads to less discretion. Written laws increase the legibility of power, reducing the discretion of those who wield power. The internet makes communication more legibility, as messages are easily stored, copied & shared. This decreases the discretion of (strategic) communicators.

View full thread
Patrick Ward
@pdw.bsky.social

It's not just the internet (and electronic communications more broadly) that increases legibility of communications. The nationalization of print & broadcast media (staring pre-internet) also limited space for differentiated messaging and tended to make it riskier.

Patrick Ward
@pdw.bsky.social

More legibility leads to less discretion. Written laws increase the legibility of power, reducing the discretion of those who wield power. The internet makes communication more legibility, as messages are easily stored, copied & shared. This decreases the discretion of (strategic) communicators.

View full thread
Patrick Ward
@pdw.bsky.social

"microtargeting doesn't work nearly as well as it used to. The internet is everywhere and forever, and anything controversial you say to one group will likely escape containment and go viral," McArdle notes in reference to the Jaguar and Bud Light marketing fiascos.

Patrick Ward
@pdw.bsky.social

More legibility leads to less discretion. Written laws increase the legibility of power, reducing the discretion of those who wield power. The internet makes communication more legibility, as messages are easily stored, copied & shared. This decreases the discretion of (strategic) communicators.

Patrick Ward
@pdw.bsky.social

It seems it’s probably worth spending some time on here now. I dabbled with BlueSky throughout 2023, but I’ve been away for almost a year—what’s the best way now to find Twitter follows and other connections?

Patrick Ward reposted

qntm
@qntm.org

Replying to @qntm.org

Ideas are carried, embodied, spread and advocated for by humans. Also, some of the most important ideas are not very memetic. Like, "everybody should have enough food to eat" and "libraries are good and should be free" If you want your idea to win, you have to do the leg work

Patrick Ward
@pdw.bsky.social

Most of Apple’s success over Microsoft came from shielding users from scary/alien error messages like this

Jay 🦋@jay.bsky.team

idk what you guys did but one of your hellthreads broke the app, and unlocked a new error message. congrats! 🎉

Patrick Ward
@pdw.bsky.social

These replies are why Elon bought Twitter

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias.bsky.social

My job is to write about politics so naturally no matter what I say someone or other will think I’m wrong and say so, but I actually find it pretty unpleasant to have a bunch of anonymous strangers writing about how they’d like to kill me.