I think the most important thing about this era is to understand how the fuck this happened. I have no answers and have never heard anything convincing. I think if humanity lasts long enough, hundreds of years of scholars will be trying to understand it. Most people on earth could’ve predicted most of this shit, yet no amount of spreading that knowledge made a fucking difference. If nothing else, this tells us how unbelievably irrational humans are.
I have a pretty good idea how it happened, I just have no idea how we can guardrail our human weaknesses against every single entity committed to exploiting those weaknesses in new and inventive ways so that they can gain power over others.
We had this entirely new thing come into our lives where we could get mental stimulation on-tap anytime we want, perpetually and it fucked everyone’s minds, we lost our attention spans and learned to fear each other as organized groups worked tirelessly to change our thinking and behavior, either for commercial purposes or for social/political agendas, and it worked spectacularly because we had no idea what “the internet” does to a human brain until someone makes the internet and does it all to us.
Social pressure holds communities together, as primitive as it is, it’s a system we’re designed to work within, and as we’ve given up community outside influences are replacing it with incel-forums, loot-boxes, 24-hour news feeds, same-day shopping and and endless stream of jokes, memes and voices each desperately trying to get your attention, and getting just enough that you don’t look away or question your own capacity to question.
And of course it doesn’t help that actual bad people are doing things like indirectly paying millions of people in developing nations to spread propaganda across the US for retweets and clicks because it’s just enough money to make a career for someone in India or Philippines.
You’re right about all of this. What I can’t fathom though – is that in the past, facts mattered. A lot. How did all of the propaganda literally erase that entirely? That’s what I cannot figure out. It’s not like the internet invented the concept of the lie. Before social media, at least most people would have some skepticism and if nothing else, ask their smart friend. How the hell did that go away?
How did all of the propaganda literally erase that entirely?
I struggled with this also around the pandemic watching people deny reality, and my result is that in my adult life I have been re-black-pilled by depressing new knowledge about the human species:
We are not a logic, rational creature. Our brains are not machines for working out problems, they’re machines for telling stories to create a coherent narrative. And that narrative doesn’t need to follow rules of reality, it just needs to tie ends together. This is why you ruminate and get depressed about things that aren’t real or have already happened, this is why people will cheer for their wrestlers while also knowing it’s scripted, this is why people can get into positions at the height of power by just saying “I’m the best at this.”
We are massively vulnerable to cognitive dissonance, and once again, the only thing that has kept this in check for the majority of human society has been social pressure to know the rules.
The rules have changed over the centuries, but they’ve at least required the members of the community to know how to distinguish things that are against the rules from things that are allowed, and with this comes critical thought (for self preservation) and pondering one’s choices (for self preservation) and the desire to conform and adapt to the will of the people around you (for self preservation.)
When you take away the community and the pressure for survival, people can just live with whatever stories run wild in their minds, without consequence. The rest of us just hit the “mute” button or walk away and go be alone in our own universe of our own choosing. We’re all guilty of doing this about something, at some point, and when you get millions of people doing this at all once, you no longer have “objective reality” you have millions of Main Characters not caring about consequences for choosing to believe in things that run against reality.
We are not a logic, rational creature. Our brains are not machines for working out problems, they’re machines for telling stories to create a coherent narrative.
I gotta push back against this. It’s much more complicated than this. Humans have a complex brain, with some parts matching this description perfectly, and others that do not at all. If we were not capable of both being rational and prioritizing facts, we’d probably still be roughly the same as chimpanzees. Instead, we developed incredibly complicated systems for accomplishing long term goals, and throughout human history, cooperation based on rational thought has played a huge role in the direction our species took. Hell, without that ability, there probably wouldn’t have ever been a coherent ruling class. They wouldn’t have been able to put all the pieces in place to hoard wealth indefinitely.
What I see now as a distinct change is that rational thought just literally gets turned off at will, at any moment. In the past, 98% of people would watch a video of a crime and agree at least roughly on what happened. Now people literally seem to deny what their visual cortex perceives in favor of something they heard already. That is new.
Every single fucking thing Trump has done I predicted and warned people about and got shadowbanned across half the goddamn internet for it.
Okay great we were warned, let’s stop whinging about the idiots of the past and start working to convince today’s idiots.
I think the most important thing about this era is to understand how the fuck this happened. I have no answers and have never heard anything convincing. I think if humanity lasts long enough, hundreds of years of scholars will be trying to understand it. Most people on earth could’ve predicted most of this shit, yet no amount of spreading that knowledge made a fucking difference. If nothing else, this tells us how unbelievably irrational humans are.
I have a pretty good idea how it happened, I just have no idea how we can guardrail our human weaknesses against every single entity committed to exploiting those weaknesses in new and inventive ways so that they can gain power over others.
We had this entirely new thing come into our lives where we could get mental stimulation on-tap anytime we want, perpetually and it fucked everyone’s minds, we lost our attention spans and learned to fear each other as organized groups worked tirelessly to change our thinking and behavior, either for commercial purposes or for social/political agendas, and it worked spectacularly because we had no idea what “the internet” does to a human brain until someone makes the internet and does it all to us.
Social pressure holds communities together, as primitive as it is, it’s a system we’re designed to work within, and as we’ve given up community outside influences are replacing it with incel-forums, loot-boxes, 24-hour news feeds, same-day shopping and and endless stream of jokes, memes and voices each desperately trying to get your attention, and getting just enough that you don’t look away or question your own capacity to question.
And of course it doesn’t help that actual bad people are doing things like indirectly paying millions of people in developing nations to spread propaganda across the US for retweets and clicks because it’s just enough money to make a career for someone in India or Philippines.
You’re right about all of this. What I can’t fathom though – is that in the past, facts mattered. A lot. How did all of the propaganda literally erase that entirely? That’s what I cannot figure out. It’s not like the internet invented the concept of the lie. Before social media, at least most people would have some skepticism and if nothing else, ask their smart friend. How the hell did that go away?
I struggled with this also around the pandemic watching people deny reality, and my result is that in my adult life I have been re-black-pilled by depressing new knowledge about the human species:
We are not a logic, rational creature. Our brains are not machines for working out problems, they’re machines for telling stories to create a coherent narrative. And that narrative doesn’t need to follow rules of reality, it just needs to tie ends together. This is why you ruminate and get depressed about things that aren’t real or have already happened, this is why people will cheer for their wrestlers while also knowing it’s scripted, this is why people can get into positions at the height of power by just saying “I’m the best at this.”
We are massively vulnerable to cognitive dissonance, and once again, the only thing that has kept this in check for the majority of human society has been social pressure to know the rules.
The rules have changed over the centuries, but they’ve at least required the members of the community to know how to distinguish things that are against the rules from things that are allowed, and with this comes critical thought (for self preservation) and pondering one’s choices (for self preservation) and the desire to conform and adapt to the will of the people around you (for self preservation.)
When you take away the community and the pressure for survival, people can just live with whatever stories run wild in their minds, without consequence. The rest of us just hit the “mute” button or walk away and go be alone in our own universe of our own choosing. We’re all guilty of doing this about something, at some point, and when you get millions of people doing this at all once, you no longer have “objective reality” you have millions of Main Characters not caring about consequences for choosing to believe in things that run against reality.
I gotta push back against this. It’s much more complicated than this. Humans have a complex brain, with some parts matching this description perfectly, and others that do not at all. If we were not capable of both being rational and prioritizing facts, we’d probably still be roughly the same as chimpanzees. Instead, we developed incredibly complicated systems for accomplishing long term goals, and throughout human history, cooperation based on rational thought has played a huge role in the direction our species took. Hell, without that ability, there probably wouldn’t have ever been a coherent ruling class. They wouldn’t have been able to put all the pieces in place to hoard wealth indefinitely.
What I see now as a distinct change is that rational thought just literally gets turned off at will, at any moment. In the past, 98% of people would watch a video of a crime and agree at least roughly on what happened. Now people literally seem to deny what their visual cortex perceives in favor of something they heard already. That is new.
Intentional psyop