The Parasite Problem | Chris Olson

So I don't know if you know this, but it's an interesting fact—it's an extremely interesting fact in my estimation. Do you know that sex itself evolved to deal with parasites?

I did not.

Okay, so here's the idea. I mean, I don't know if there's—there are very few truths that are more fundamental than this one. Parasites are typically simpler than their hosts, so they can breed faster. What that means is that in an arms race between hosts and parasites, the parasites can win because they breed faster. So they can evolve faster.

Sex evolved to confuse the parasites. Imagine that the best way for your genes to replicate themselves would be for you to breed parthogenetically. You just clone yourself. There's no reason for a sexual partner when you have one; half your genes are left behind. That's a big cost to pay if the goal is gene propagation.

The parasite problem is so immense that sexually reproducing creatures—and that's the bulk of creatures that there are—are willing to sacrifice half their genes to mix up their physiology so that parasites can't be transmitted perfectly from generation to generation. So the parasite problem is so immense that it caused the evolution of sex, and creatures will sacrifice half their genes to prevent it.

What that implies is that we have this whole new digital ecosystem, right? Which is a biological revolution for all intents and purposes; it's a whole new level of reality. The parasite problem is very likely to be overwhelming. I mean, we have police forces, we have laws, we have prisons to deal with parasites in their human form, but now we have a whole new ecosystem that is amenable to the invasion of the parasites, and they are coming like mad.

I mean in all sorts of forms. We don't even know how extensive the problem is to some degree because there's not just the criminals that you talk about—they're bad enough—but we also have the online troll types who use social media to spread derision, and to play sadistic tricks and games, and to manipulate for attention.

We know that they're sadistic, psychopathic, malevolent, and narcissistic because the psychological data is already in; they fall into the parasite category. We also have all that quasi-criminal activity, like pornography. It's certainly possible that if the internet, in some sense, is a new ecosystem full of new life forms, that it could be swamped by the parasites and taken out.

That's what you'd predict from a biological perspective, looking at the history of life. This is an unbelievably deep and profound problem.

See, I kind of think this is one of the main dangers of this untrammeled online criminality—that societies themselves tend to undergo revolutionary collapse when the parasites get the upper hand. It's definitely the case that by allowing the unregulated flourishing of parasitical criminals online, we risk destabilizing our whole society. Because when those sorts of people become successful, that's very bad news for everyone else. It doesn't take that many of them to really cause trouble.

So anyways, that's a bit of a segue—well, it's pretty fascinating. A couple quick points here.

So one, the primary concern for the entities in digital is on their content versus the consumer. There's content adjacency; the largest flag we have for content that's brought by third parties that's going to run on someone else's content is the Israel-Hamas conflict. The reason for that is less about having a person get upset than it is for having a large brand—like Coca-Cola or Procter & Gamble—have other content that's going to run near that Israel-Hamas context, right? Just in vicinity.

Yeah, yeah, that is worrying about pixels or perhaps the name of a corporation more than the impact on the grandmother, right, who's going to be hit in the next impression with the crime.

So we're still in a net spot within the tech infrastructure where those who would provide the capital to provide us with all of those free services are dominating the conversation. That's part of why a government needs to step in and say we're going to focus on crime. What that also does, when getting back to parasitic evolution, is what's the sacrifice that big tech, digital media, and the corporates—the brands—are going to make in order to protect grandmothers?

Right now, the bigger concern is about what might be fake because it's wasting a penny or a fraction of a penny when a pixel is delivered to an end device. The spend is about monetizing each individual, you know, niche to pixel that's going to run in front of us versus the consumer.

I think this is an incredibly myopic viewpoint. Digital safety for the brand is about making sure the picture of their product is in a happy location while grandmothers are losing bank accounts. I think that evolution is going to require a sacrifice.

I think the companies that engage in digital safety—and many big tech and digital media companies go way out of their way to do a good job protecting people—ultimately, they're going to win. Because the relationship with us is going to be so much significantly better and protected and trusted that they're just going to wind up interfacing with us better than those who are trying to protect their own.

Right, right, right, right—now that's an optimist.

Well, that makes sense to me. That's an optimistic view because, I mean, fundamentally, what makes companies wealthy reliably over the long run is the bond of trust that they have with their customers, right? That's what brand—really, that’s what a brand's worth is in the final analysis.

I mean, Disney was worth a fortune as a brand because everybody trusted both their products and the intent behind them. So that's a very hard thing to build up, but it is the basis of wealth. I mean, trust is the basis of wealth.

So it's interesting to contemplate the fact that that means that it might be in the best interests of the large online companies to ensure the safety of the people who are using their services rather than the safety of their products.

That's a good—that's an interesting thing to think about.