Internet – Veracity and Virality and Why Everything We do Matters

Namaste, Welcome to SAM-VAD (Together In Conversation). In the last week of May 2026, I shared an excerpt titled ‘Contingent Convergence and Why Every Moment Matters’, which is from the book titled – ‘Fluke’ – Chance, Chaos and Why Everything We Do Matters by Brian Klaas. In his book Brian points that Contrary to our instinctive beliefs, cause and effect are never simple and easy to understand: any specific outcome is dependent not only on what appear to be the major events leading up to it, but also on an array of seemingly insignificant, arbitrary, easily overlooked factors, “flukes”—some under our control, but countless others not. The excerpt highlights that, we, are often oblivious of how small, contingent changes change our lives and shift our societies. Some are random accidents, such as mutations in DNA. Others are deliberate, but minor, decisions we make. They’re happening constantly. We tell ourselves that we’re in control of our lives. The truth is that everything is constantly in flux, including ourselves. We live in a world defined by what we might call contingent convergence, which is broadly how change happens. There is order and structure, but the snooze-button effect is real. That leads to an unsettling, but also exhilarating, truth: every moment matters. Now, SAM-VAD (Together In Conversation) to the ones paying heed, is where we try to draw your attention to things that matter and the importance of your attention, because, ‘Our life’s experience would ultimately amount to whatever we had paid attention to’.

Attention: is as fundamental as food; and we go blundering about, seeking ways to assuage the craving, instead of learning how to provide ourselves with what we need, sensibly and calmly. Once our attention is drawn to the mechanism of why and what we give attention to, it is as if a veil has been stripped off and we become freer in our action and choices. And that is our endavour.

This week I bring to your attention an excerpt titled – ‘Internet – Veracity and Virality and Why Every Thing We do Matters’, which is from the book titled – ‘LikeWar – The Weaponization of Social Media’ by Peter Singer and Emerson Brooking.

This book traces the ways that social media has created a new environment for conflict. Although the truth, in the form of information, is more widely available than ever before, it can be buried in a sea of likes and lies.

Internet – Veracity and Virality and Why Every Thing We do Matters

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