Stampede Theory: Human Nature, Technology, and Runaway Social Realities explores the biological, evolutionary and technological systems that drive troubling patterns of behavior among groups while also proposing actions to combat harm. The book discusses different ways that living beings coordinate and how the emergence of communication technologies has changed behaviors. As the problem of echo chambers and misinformation grows, it is crucial to understand underlying causes and provide solutions—this book does just that by pulling from multiple fields to produce a coherent story about how social realities are created and how they can create resilient communities or reinforce damaging beliefs.
This interdisciplinary approach rests on three primary pillars: 1) How information systems affect the distribution of ideas, information, influence and belief; 2. Technology-mediated communication between individuals and groups, from stories pressed into clay tablets to “likes on social media; 3) The sociology of behavioral bias in groups ranging from teams to nations. Because of its interdisciplinary foundations, the book includes chapters that address behavioral economics, cults, artificial intelligence, and the individual psychology of belief. This will be a valuable resource for a range of readers, from political and social scientists to decision-makers in government and business, scientists in the fields of machine learning and AI, and more.
I Theory 1. From the Serengeti to the Ecclesia 2. Deep Bias 3. Humans and Information 4. Human Belief Spaces 5. Influence + Dominance = Attention 6. Hierarchies, Networks, and Technology II Practice 7. Interview with a Biased Machine 8. The Spacecraft of Babel 9. Influence Networks and the Power of Money 10. Cults, Hierarchies, and the Doomed Voyage of the Pequod 11. Escaping Cults, Deprogramming, and Diversity 12. Population-Computer Interfaces 13. Belief Geography and Cartography 14. Belief Stampedes 15. Future Cartographers 16. Epilogue 17. Definitions
Dr. Philip Feldman has spent most of his career building technology for people to use: graphical interfaces, robots, even exercise machines that play video games. He has degrees in art and ecology, as well as a PhD in Human Centered Computing. He has 12 patents, and his academic research focuses on how technology affects why people believe things and how populations make decisions. He has developed several techniques for polling populations using large transformer language models, which allow the latent beliefs of a group to be explored. Dr. Feldman has been a developer and entrepreneur, helping to start small companies that range from medical to virtual reality. He is currently a research professor in Information Systems at the University of Maryland Baltimore County where he studies how to build diverse and resilient systems and that can improve the way we communicate with each other through our ever-present devices.
