The Information Game is Rigged

Readers! Welcome to CipherTalk. This week’s newsletter explores:

• Information is a Rigged Game: The relentless flood of news and opinions have made us spectators in life, rather than active participants.

• The Death of Specialization: The drivers that caused the Industrial Revolution have fundamentally changed. AI and emerging technologies now do specialized tasks better, faster, and more accurately than any human ever could.

• Social Media and Information Bubbles: Today, information platforms push us toward a new kind of specialization—not of skills, but of knowledge. Just like financial bubbles, inflated perceptions mask underlying risks. And when our bubbles burst, we’re left to grapple with a reality we didn’t see coming.

• Reclaiming Control in a Changed World: To stay relevant demands a broader understanding of global forces. If we ignore this, we’re handing over control to decision-makers who don’t have our priorities in mind—leaving us to deal with consequences we didn’t choose.

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Happy reading.

Every moment, we’re hit with a flood of news, opinions, and analyses. By the time we grasp one piece, the current has shifted, and we’re again underwater. Information has become a game of tease—designed to push us away, to make us spectators instead of players. It’s changing how we understand the world and molding our next moves.

Information used to be a tool, something you use to build. But now? It’s mostly noise. Global trends that affect us all—how our world is changing, how our economy ticks—are buried. If we try to plan something meaningful—a career, a business, a future—we’re left dizzy, stuck in this whirlpool of facts, half-truths, and predictions.

But the truth is, we can play a key role in this game. And the more we understand, the more we’re enabled to actively participate. Otherwise, the house wins. It consolidates power in the hands of a few decision-makers, while the rest of us struggle to keep up—left with the consequences of decisions we didn’t make, of changes we may not even be aware of.

The world is changing. Think about it: the skills you trained for, the job you’ve got, the market you’re invested in—it is all shifting underfoot. Industries are reworking their foundations. Technology keeps reshaping the tools we use and the markets we rely on. We can ignore it, pretend this shifting ground is solid, but sooner or later, it’ll catch up with us. So, knowing what’s really going on, and understanding the consequences of these shifts, shouldn’t be optional. It’s the only way to keep our footing and maintain some semblance of control. Without it, we’re drifting at the mercy of trends and decisions made by people we don’t know, with priorities we might not agree with.

The problem with information systems today—and largely social media, since that’s where the world majority of information is being consumed—is that they’re built to feed into our human desire to match like-with-like and bond over niche information. Social media feeds this mindset, siphoning us toward specialized knowledge. Platforms give us endless content that reinforce our interests, letting us dive into ultra-specific communities and feel at home in an echo chamber of like-minded opinions. It’s engaging and comfortable, but it’s holding us back. Just when the world is demanding we broaden our view—necessitating it, to stay competitive—we’re wrapped up in a world where our only view is the one we already agree with.

Social media: Queen of the Information Game

Social media exploded in popularity because it enables us to connect across borders, in a way the physical world never could. It taps into a very human, psychological need to find community—people who think like us and share our interests.

What I haven’t heard discussed, though—and something I believe to be critical—is that social media is, in essence, a new kind of specialization: not of skills, but of information. We can explore our own niche interests like never before, build communities past generations couldn’t dream of. But there’s a trade-off. While we’re exploring what we care about, we’re also cutting ourselves off from the other side of the conversation. Our niche specializations and communities also blind us to alternative ideas and broader trends.

This “bubble effect” parallels that of financial bubbles—think of the dot-com crash or the 2008 housing market collapse. In financial markets, bubbles form when everyone keeps buying into the same ideas or assets without checking the underlying reality. Prices inflate, risk builds up, until eventually, when reality hits, the whole thing crashes. Information bubbles work the same way. When we consume only what aligns with our existing beliefs, the perspectives we’re exposed to inflate and distort, creating a false sense of reality. Our social feeds reinforce our views, piling on more of the same, until we’re living in a world that feels perfectly tailored to us. But it’s not real. And just like a financial bubble, this “information bubble” isolates us from the broader picture. The longer we stay inside it, the bigger the crash when reality finally breaks through.

Now, I know the value of specialists. They get things done and know more about certain fields than generalists ever will. But here’s the thing: when we focus too narrowly, sooner or later we hit a blind spot. By buying into these information bubbles, we’re exposed and vulnerable to what we can’t see coming. When you lose sight of the bigger picture, you’re setting yourself up for a steep fall.

One key example of the information game and its bubbles: the rise in domestic terrorism. At time of writing, we’re only days away from the U.S. presidential election. The stakes are high; regardless of who wins, the effects will ripple across global economies and personal lives. Less than a week ago, the think tank CSIS published a report on a huge ideological shift in the U.S. The stats are chilling: in the past five years, anti-government terrorist attacks and plots have nearly tripled compared to the previous 25 years combined. And nearly half of those recent attacks are driven by partisan motivations.

Social media and digital platforms play a massive role here. Extremists are using these platforms to share propaganda, spread misinformation, and even organize. This is one of the darker sides of the social media bubble, where people get pulled into ideological corners and become more radicalized. And while the full impact hasn’t yet played out, we’re already seeing violence, threats to polling places, and attacks on officials. It’s a harsh reminder of how our “communities” on social media can backfire.

While this is on the extreme end of the consequences of our information systems today, I bring it up because it speaks to something deeper about how we consume information. It’s siloing us into “like versus like,” grouping us with people who think the same and shutting us off from opposing views.

The death of specialization

For centuries, specialization has been the driver of our economy. This was the engine behind the Industrial Revolution: if everyone mastered a small piece of a bigger machine, that machine could move mountains. We still have this mindset today, thinking that honing a specialized skill will keep us relevant in a complex world. But everything has changed. If you’re banking on your niche skillset keeping you safe, think again. This “specialization is key” mindset is going to pit us directly against the technologies that are literally being built to beat human intelligence.

The truth is, specialization—the thing that created the middle class, that transformed societies—is being outpaced by technology. Being a specialized cog in the global economy doesn’t guarantee anything anymore; automation and AI can handle repetitive or even complex tasks faster than we ever thought possible. Technology has fundamentally shifted what it means to create value. 

Unfortunately, the mechanics of social media works today play right into the trap. This information game is built to keep us hooked on the things we already care about, wrapping us up in echo chambers that reinforce what we believe and know. Meanwhile, the alternative isn’t any better. Traditional media is outdated—not necessarily because it’s irrelevant, but because it’s far too general. It doesn’t answer the same “So what?” or “Why should I care?” as our favorite content creators. Traditional media simply does not go deep enough into our niche interests to hold our attention. Cue social media. And broader issues, larger trends? They fade into the background. But the problem here is real. When we don’t think critically about areas outside our narrow view, we relinquish control—others decide our fate in those realms. And we’re left in the wake of the consequences.

Grappling with agency (and breaking the silos)

When we see only what we want to see, we miss the full picture. We trade broad understanding for depth, diversity of mind for communities of comfort. This isolation breeds distrust of otherness: a psychological threat to our ideas and niche circles. We’ve created a bubble—an information bottleneck—blinding us to the outside world. In that blindness, we surrender decision-making power about anything beyond our bubble, leaving ourselves to face the consequences of risks we never saw coming.

I’m reminded of a quote from George Orwell’s 1984: “Until they become conscious they will never rebel.” What happens when we surrender control over our choices and beliefs? Our agency—the freedom to think, act, and choose independently—is crushed.

Today, the two key determinants of agency are technology and global affairs. Shifts in these fields impact how we see the world and our ability to influence what happens next. If we ignore this information, these trends, we leave decisions in the hands of others. It’s a stark reminder that if we isolate ourselves, we let others define what we know and what world we live in. We won’t even realize we’ve lost our freedom to choose, and may wake up one day in a reality shaped by others, that we didn’t agree to.

The narrow views presented by the Information Game aren’t enough anymore. Specialization will soon fail us; AI can and will handle the niche trends and deep specializations for us. The fact is, if we want to add value beyond what technology can do, if we want to maintain any agency over our lives and futures, we need to step back and see the bigger picture. We need to be more than our specialized communities and information bubbles. We need to commit to understanding the broader world so we can synthesize information, anticipate risks, and plan for the future—with all its complexity in mind.

So, where does that leave us? If we want to add real value in a world that’s advancing at this speed, we need to develop something deeper: a core understanding of how the world’s shifting, not just in our chosen field but in the broader sense. We need to understand three main things if we’re going to stay in the driver’s seat.

• First: We need to know what technology is out there, what’s coming next, and what it means for each of us personally.

• Second: We have to pay attention to power dynamics—who’s making decisions, what their priorities are, and what consequences those decisions will have.

• Third: We need to keep an eye on the trends, especially the ones we want to shape for ourselves (before someone else does).

If we want control over our lives, to want to stay engaged and make choices that are our own, we have to understand the trends and forces that are pulling the strings. The pace of change isn’t going to slow down. It’s accelerating. Awareness is the only way we can keep an active role in our lives and our future. Without it, we’re puppets as someone else pulls the strings.

Don’t be the puppet.

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This is the reason I’m building CipherTalk. I want a space where we can connect the dots in a way that actually matters, where we can bring in broader context without drowning in the currents. CipherTalk is about staying aware of what’s really happening—not just what’s trending on your feed—because if we don’t, then we’re just riding along with decisions someone else has made for us.