My research generally focuses on topics in social and political epistemology. One overarching interest I have is in trying to understand the various impediments to the formation of true and accurate (political) beliefs we face as epistemically non-ideal agents who exist in social, epistemically non-ideal contexts. For instance, I’m interested in exploring the epistemic challenges posed and exacerbated by the increasing popularity of the Internet and social media, and in trying to figure out what, if anything, can be done to meet those challenges. I’m also interested in questions concerning the epistemic value of democracy, especially those raised by the existence of a generally epistemically flawed and politically polarized electorate.
"The Epistemic Harms of Digital Political Influence Campaigns" (under review)
This paper concerns the kind of microtargeted political influence campaigns that have been made newly feasible thanks to the increasing popularity of the Internet and relatively recent developments in the information and psychological sciences. I try to establish that such campaigns are distinctively epistemically problematic, which I do by articulating some of the individual- and group-level epistemic harms that they threaten. I argue that such campaigns threaten to encourage in the individuals that they target the development of a variety of epistemic vices and the atrophying of certain epistemic capacities. I also argue that such campaigns pose a threat to democracy (construed as a group political decision-making process) and its ability to produce epistemically valuable outputs, which they do by virtue of their pernicious effects on democratic deliberation.
“Perverse Incentives and Political Testimony on Social Media” (draft available upon request)
In this paper, I argue in support of two theses relevant to the alarming proliferation of political misinformation on social media. The first says that the incentive structure generally found on social media sites encourages ordinary political partisans especially to perform what amount to unreliable acts of testimony concerning political matters. The second says that, granted the truth of the first, ordinary consumers of social media typically ought to try to avoid and reduce their exposure to the social media-mediated political testimony (i.e., the politically relevant posts and reposts) of their politically partisan peers. While it of course doesn’t make for a silver bullet, I contend that the widespread adoption of this norm would plausibly help significantly reduce the spread of epistemically toxic content over social media.