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Epistemic Commons

A society that cannot agree on basic facts cannot solve any problem at all.

The epistemic commons is the shared pool of knowledge, evidence, and reasoning that a society depends on to make collective decisions. Think of it like a public water supply, but for understanding. When it is clean, people can disagree on policy while still sharing a common picture of reality. When it is contaminated, even agreeing on what the problem is becomes impossible.

Right now, the commons is severely degraded. Algorithmic feeds show different people entirely different realities. Propaganda models optimise for engagement over accuracy. Trust in institutions has collapsed — sometimes for good reasons, sometimes because distrust itself has been weaponised. The result is that millions of people live in information environments so different from each other that productive conversation between them is nearly impossible. They are not disagreeing about solutions. They are disagreeing about what is happening.

This is not a natural disaster. It is the predictable outcome of building information systems around profit and attention rather than truth and understanding. Repairing the epistemic commons does not mean forcing everyone to agree. It means rebuilding shared standards for evidence — so that disagreement can be productive rather than tribal. That starts with each person taking responsibility for the quality of information they consume and share.

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