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> People with power and wealth could still be toppled when you exposed them to the truth. How in the fuck does that even come close to happening today? I have

> People with power and wealth could still be toppled when you exposed them to the truth. How in the fuck does that even come close to happening today? I have doubts that this happened regularly in the past, usually wealthy/powerful were allowed to be toppled by their enemies. I don't know the details of how Weinstein got toppled after so many years of being protected, but my gut says that the people who were protecting him no longer felt like it was worth it to continue. In revolutions, it's not the people that overthrow the dictator, it's the court/army which allow the people to overthrow the dictator, in order for them to install a new dictator[0]. > How do you overcome marketing that is engineered to exploit the psychological vulnerabilities you are not even aware of? Become more aware of your vulnerabilities so as to be aware of when you're being exploited. I recommend mindfulness and then making note of when you're being triggered in either a positive or negative way. If you know the enemy and yourself, you need not fear the result of a thousand battles[1]. > How do we patch our society and governing systems from being pwned? As these systems become more complex it requires more energy and complexity to maintain the systems, this additional complexity creates a larger attack surface and more internal fragility. Solving these problems requires more energy and complexity, exacerbating the problem and delivering diminishing returns on additional complexity. Systems should to be designed to collapse in a way that minimizes losses of knowledge (especially of why they collapsed) and with mechanisms to recover quickly using the accumulated knowledge to build more robustness into the new system, this would be an anti-fragile system. Centralized, too big to fail, institutions (Facebook, et al) are a major component of fragility in our current systems[2][3][4]. I think you can avoid the marketers and advertisers by learning how they operate, nobody gives away shit for free, so anybody that claims that is either a marketer/advertiser trying to lure you into a bait/switch or is using you as the product (TANSTAAFL). Be flexible and avoid lock-in to any single service/company, always be ready to drop a service when they start acting against your interests or the interests of society as a whole. [0] CGP Grey, Rules for Rulers - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs [1] Sun Tzu, Art of War - https://sites.ualberta.ca/~enoch/Readings/The_Art_Of_War.pdf https://sites.ualberta.ca/~enoch/Readings/The_Art_Of_War.pdf [2] Joseph Tainter, Collapse of Complex Societies - http://wtf.tw/ref/tainter.pdf http://wtf.tw/ref/tainter.pdf [3] Nassim Taleb, Antifragile - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antifragile https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antifragile [4] JP Crutchfield, The Hidden Fragility of Complex Systems - http://csc.ucdavis.edu/~cmg/papers/FOCS.pdf http://csc.ucdavis.edu/~cmg/papers/FOCS.pdf

jonbarker 9y ago
I feel that Jared Diamond's book Collapse belongs on your list of references https://archive.org/stream/CollapseHowSocietiesChooseToFailOrSucceed/Collapse-_How_Societies_Choose_to_Fail_or_Succeed_djvu.txt https://archive.org/stream/CollapseHowSocietiesChooseToFailO...
- gooseus 9y ago
  Amazingly, I haven't yet read any of Diamond's work, though I think I have this on my bookcase. I know that Tainter has criticized him some for cherry picking in order to support his presuppositions, specifically regarding his Easter Island ideas. I think he talks about it a little bit on this Omega Tau podcast: http://omegataupodcast.net/184-societal-complexity-and-collapse/ http://omegataupodcast.net/184-societal-complexity-and-colla... It's on my personal list still though, get around to it eventually.
  - jonbarker 9y ago
    I like his methodology, mainly because of a couple reasons. 1) We don't have that many civilization level societies to study in history, and 2) no society specifically sets out to implode, in fact there is tremendous benefit in not doing so. So even if we only had one collapse to study, we probably should do so and learn as much as we can from it, careful not to put too much value in the 'this time it's different' thing for our own prospects.
oldsklgdfth 9y ago
I appreicate your thorough response and giving me all these resources to dig through. I think that in the past you had to be a very intelligent machiavellian-type dude to stay in power and it was a constant struggle. You probably had to be a very good at reading people and understanding their psyche. But there are only so many such guys and they can only manipulate so many people. I think technology has given people with power and money the ability to automate influence on a much larger scale for cheap. Not that technology is bad. Technology makes hard problems easier. It can make all those things that a smart person had to constantly work on repeatable and consistent. When i think of data mining the last thing on my mind is product ads. I think gerrymandering. I tip my hat to the evil genius that figured out how to draw districts like that. I bet you could get most of that data from people's facebook. Even without that though, using other data you could get. And even if you dont have any digital data available, you can probably be classified based on a few facts. And......your vote is null now. What I struggle with is the fact that now influence is global and widespread and I can't for the life of me figure out how that gets reigned in. It's kinda mindblowing.

jonbarker 9y ago

I feel that Jared Diamond's book Collapse belongs on your list of references https://archive.org/stream/CollapseHowSocietiesChooseToFailOrSucceed/Collapse-_How_Societies_Choose_to_Fail_or_Succeed_djvu.txt https://archive.org/stream/CollapseHowSocietiesChooseToFailO...

gooseus 9y ago
Amazingly, I haven't yet read any of Diamond's work, though I think I have this on my bookcase. I know that Tainter has criticized him some for cherry picking in order to support his presuppositions, specifically regarding his Easter Island ideas. I think he talks about it a little bit on this Omega Tau podcast: http://omegataupodcast.net/184-societal-complexity-and-collapse/ http://omegataupodcast.net/184-societal-complexity-and-colla... It's on my personal list still though, get around to it eventually.
- jonbarker 9y ago
  I like his methodology, mainly because of a couple reasons. 1) We don't have that many civilization level societies to study in history, and 2) no society specifically sets out to implode, in fact there is tremendous benefit in not doing so. So even if we only had one collapse to study, we probably should do so and learn as much as we can from it, careful not to put too much value in the 'this time it's different' thing for our own prospects.

oldsklgdfth 9y ago

I appreicate your thorough response and giving me all these resources to dig through. I think that in the past you had to be a very intelligent machiavellian-type dude to stay in power and it was a constant struggle. You probably had to be a very good at reading people and understanding their psyche. But there are only so many such guys and they can only manipulate so many people. I think technology has given people with power and money the ability to automate influence on a much larger scale for cheap. Not that technology is bad. Technology makes hard problems easier. It can make all those things that a smart person had to constantly work on repeatable and consistent. When i think of data mining the last thing on my mind is product ads. I think gerrymandering. I tip my hat to the evil genius that figured out how to draw districts like that. I bet you could get most of that data from people's facebook. Even without that though, using other data you could get. And even if you dont have any digital data available, you can probably be classified based on a few facts. And......your vote is null now. What I struggle with is the fact that now influence is global and widespread and I can't for the life of me figure out how that gets reigned in. It's kinda mindblowing.