4 ms·

You're not the only one - I've had this sense of a slow, but inescapably-accelerating epidemic for awhile now. Tuesday before last was not a shock. It feels li

by MandieD 10y ago

You're not the only one - I've had this sense of a slow, but inescapably-accelerating epidemic for awhile now. Tuesday before last was not a shock. It feels like we're slowly falling off the trajectory of the Renaissance and Enlightenment; avoiding fatalism about that is my main challenge right now.

pjc50 10y ago
Two driving factors, I think: dominance of the advertising industry, and a rise of "wicked problems" with no good comfortable answers. Global warming leads this: would you rather believe we're on an inevitable path to doom, or that everyone is lying to you?
- bduerst 10y ago
  Take a step further: Human attention has become a currency more than ever before, and pandering to human biases is one way media companies have learned to earn that currency. You used to need substantial capital to earn the reputation as a serious news organization, but now the barrier to entry is a vaguely-authoritative domain name and social media accounts.
- VLM 10y ago
  Close. I'm not saying you're wrong but I am proposing a fork from your post in that the really important question isn't "would you rather believe we're on an inevitable path to doom, or that everyone is lying to you?"\ But for the people in charge its more like: "would you gain more authoritarian political power by promoting that we're on an inevitable path to doom, or that everyone is lying to you?" Now lets add another wrinkle... lets say by the magic of groupthink 99% of one population is already a devout member of one belief system. If 50% of climate scientists (small group though they are) were dyed in the wool Republicans then coming out against them would cost votes prestige and power. But if they already are indoctrinated to hate you and your race and your religion and your group, you don't lose very much in a practical sense by signalling against them. In fact as a member of the opposition you probably should oppose them on general principles and your own group expects you to live up to your ... devoutness. I've seen it, watching people nearby me convert to denialism. I have to admit I agree with them on a lot of smaller details. A fascination with symbolic level commitments that are a rounding error WRT altering the Earth's long term problems but ruin innumerably human lives in the short term. "This symbolic proposal will help absolutely nothing in the long term, but in the short term it'll sure destroy a lot of jobs, jobs for people that our political group are trained to bitterly hate..."
VLM 10y ago
Ideas or memes buzz around like molecules in the air. If their average thermalized velocity exceeds gravitational escape velocity they gradually buzz away and no longer have any interaction with the Earth. Thats why hydrogen and helium are extremely common in the universe as a whole but there's not that much in our atmosphere. At least thats the astronomical analogy. If you atomize a culture and isolate and encourage subgroups to isolate and "other" each other, sort of divide and conqueror strategy on steroids, then you can end up with unconstrained groups that split into completely different cultures. Just like you take a population of one species, isolate two groups, and in evolutionary time (100K years?) you get two species that no longer care much about each other, might even eat each other. The Amish no longer have much if any common ground with the most extreme college SJWs. I'm not sure the SJWs have anything in common with the vast majority of the country, frankly. They've achieved escape velocity and will only wander further and further from the main culture and cluster of other cultures, like every other group thats achieved escape velocity from the main culture. Eventually interactions between people who are both foreigners in their own land will get really weird. Think of muslims with guns at FL nightclubs or with pressure cookers at marathons, my point isn't to be anti-muslim but to point out theres not much common ground anymore when the primary mode of interaction has declined to the level that it involves bloodshed. Once a group achieves cultural escape velocity, woosh, they're no longer part of the conversation, its us vs them yelling time at the best and kaboom bang bang time at worst. Absolute power corrupts absolutely and its not hard to absolute power in the form of political consensus in legacy mass media, academia, hollywood, SV. And with that absolute power comes corruption. Telling the truth becomes an act of disbelief or apostasy, or you can faithfully believe while knowingly lie. Its not just the left, in that any group thats 99% composed of one political group tends to fester and get smelly, there's plenty of this on the right. You can only gain power by a public display of ever more devout true believer statements, truth is gone out the window. Ask yourself if people gain power in academia or the legacy media by telling the truth or by loudly proclaiming their devotion to the political causes that 99% of them share... that's what post-truth world means. A healthy balanced competition would force the truth to make an occasional appearance, but in a polarized consensus of groupthink its just a legacy fable. Remember when that stuff was about the truth? Yeah not so much anymore. Combine the two ideas above and its a real mess. Atomized individuals and groups are broken off into groupthink hubs that rapidly share no common ground or affection with any other group and their interactions are based on gaining internal strength by showing their devout belief by denigrating the opposition. Traditionally this leads to revolution and civil war. I'd be surprised if the 50 states are together much longer. Frankly I can't wait, as the younger I am the better I'll come out in the rebuilding, assuming I survive. I'd rather rebuild at age 50 than age 70, for example.
Grishnakh 10y ago
Exactly. The challenge now is to predict whether society in 50 years is going to look more like "Idiocracy" or "The Walking Dead". Either way, I don't foresee a good future for the human race. Hopefully, in some parallel universe, humans have avoided this fate, and are continuing the trajectory of the Enlightenment, and will proceed to exploring the stars, going where no one has gone before.
- astrodust 10y ago
  Idiocracy is when the stupid prevail. The apocalypse is when only the lucky, tenacious and smart survive. I'm not sure which is worse.
- x2398dh1 10y ago
  But that proposition, which is that the world will necessarily become a worse to a hyperbolic degree, is also misinformation. You can't, "predict" a future society 50 years from now with that level of precision.

by MandieD 10y ago

pjc50 10y ago

Two driving factors, I think: dominance of the advertising industry, and a rise of "wicked problems" with no good comfortable answers. Global warming leads this: would you rather believe we're on an inevitable path to doom, or that everyone is lying to you?

bduerst 10y ago
Take a step further: Human attention has become a currency more than ever before, and pandering to human biases is one way media companies have learned to earn that currency. You used to need substantial capital to earn the reputation as a serious news organization, but now the barrier to entry is a vaguely-authoritative domain name and social media accounts.
VLM 10y ago
Close. I'm not saying you're wrong but I am proposing a fork from your post in that the really important question isn't "would you rather believe we're on an inevitable path to doom, or that everyone is lying to you?"\ But for the people in charge its more like: "would you gain more authoritarian political power by promoting that we're on an inevitable path to doom, or that everyone is lying to you?" Now lets add another wrinkle... lets say by the magic of groupthink 99% of one population is already a devout member of one belief system. If 50% of climate scientists (small group though they are) were dyed in the wool Republicans then coming out against them would cost votes prestige and power. But if they already are indoctrinated to hate you and your race and your religion and your group, you don't lose very much in a practical sense by signalling against them. In fact as a member of the opposition you probably should oppose them on general principles and your own group expects you to live up to your ... devoutness. I've seen it, watching people nearby me convert to denialism. I have to admit I agree with them on a lot of smaller details. A fascination with symbolic level commitments that are a rounding error WRT altering the Earth's long term problems but ruin innumerably human lives in the short term. "This symbolic proposal will help absolutely nothing in the long term, but in the short term it'll sure destroy a lot of jobs, jobs for people that our political group are trained to bitterly hate..."

VLM 10y ago

Ideas or memes buzz around like molecules in the air. If their average thermalized velocity exceeds gravitational escape velocity they gradually buzz away and no longer have any interaction with the Earth. Thats why hydrogen and helium are extremely common in the universe as a whole but there's not that much in our atmosphere. At least thats the astronomical analogy. If you atomize a culture and isolate and encourage subgroups to isolate and "other" each other, sort of divide and conqueror strategy on steroids, then you can end up with unconstrained groups that split into completely different cultures. Just like you take a population of one species, isolate two groups, and in evolutionary time (100K years?) you get two species that no longer care much about each other, might even eat each other. The Amish no longer have much if any common ground with the most extreme college SJWs. I'm not sure the SJWs have anything in common with the vast majority of the country, frankly. They've achieved escape velocity and will only wander further and further from the main culture and cluster of other cultures, like every other group thats achieved escape velocity from the main culture. Eventually interactions between people who are both foreigners in their own land will get really weird. Think of muslims with guns at FL nightclubs or with pressure cookers at marathons, my point isn't to be anti-muslim but to point out theres not much common ground anymore when the primary mode of interaction has declined to the level that it involves bloodshed. Once a group achieves cultural escape velocity, woosh, they're no longer part of the conversation, its us vs them yelling time at the best and kaboom bang bang time at worst. Absolute power corrupts absolutely and its not hard to absolute power in the form of political consensus in legacy mass media, academia, hollywood, SV. And with that absolute power comes corruption. Telling the truth becomes an act of disbelief or apostasy, or you can faithfully believe while knowingly lie. Its not just the left, in that any group thats 99% composed of one political group tends to fester and get smelly, there's plenty of this on the right. You can only gain power by a public display of ever more devout true believer statements, truth is gone out the window. Ask yourself if people gain power in academia or the legacy media by telling the truth or by loudly proclaiming their devotion to the political causes that 99% of them share... that's what post-truth world means. A healthy balanced competition would force the truth to make an occasional appearance, but in a polarized consensus of groupthink its just a legacy fable. Remember when that stuff was about the truth? Yeah not so much anymore. Combine the two ideas above and its a real mess. Atomized individuals and groups are broken off into groupthink hubs that rapidly share no common ground or affection with any other group and their interactions are based on gaining internal strength by showing their devout belief by denigrating the opposition. Traditionally this leads to revolution and civil war. I'd be surprised if the 50 states are together much longer. Frankly I can't wait, as the younger I am the better I'll come out in the rebuilding, assuming I survive. I'd rather rebuild at age 50 than age 70, for example.

Grishnakh 10y ago

Exactly. The challenge now is to predict whether society in 50 years is going to look more like "Idiocracy" or "The Walking Dead". Either way, I don't foresee a good future for the human race. Hopefully, in some parallel universe, humans have avoided this fate, and are continuing the trajectory of the Enlightenment, and will proceed to exploring the stars, going where no one has gone before.

astrodust 10y ago
Idiocracy is when the stupid prevail. The apocalypse is when only the lucky, tenacious and smart survive. I'm not sure which is worse.
x2398dh1 10y ago
But that proposition, which is that the world will necessarily become a worse to a hyperbolic degree, is also misinformation. You can't, "predict" a future society 50 years from now with that level of precision.