4 ms·

I picture a future with hordes of millions of gullible fools who can be commanded like armies by social media demagogues. I watched a stream of a London anti-l

I picture a future with hordes of millions of gullible fools who can be commanded like armies by social media demagogues. I watched a stream of a London anti-lockdown protest the other day, and that's more or less what occurred to me. https://youtu.be/hy7bmdDGKZ8 https://youtu.be/hy7bmdDGKZ8 The stream is six hours long, but it's packed with moments such as: 35m — Crowd listens to some conspiracy theorist blame all the world's ills on 'Kabalah' 1h 26m — A face-spitting street altercation breaks out between an anti-masker and an alarmed doctor who apparently got caught in the demonstration. 2h 13m — Some insane woman with a bullhorn explains that WiFi and 5g will 'destroy your ovaries' with 'Communism' (or something to that effect, anyways).

api 5y ago
It’s depressing as hell. My political DNA is libertarian but I am starting to wonder if there isn’t a subset of humanity that simply can’t handle this level of unfiltered access to information. Even worse I am having a tough time putting my finger on what the shortcoming of these people is. It’s not IQ as I’ve seen and met quite a few gullible sheep of this sort who would undoubtedly score high. I don’t see a strong correlation either way with intelligence. It doesn’t even seem to be one’s metaphysics or epistemology. I know devoutly religious people as well as mystics and occultist types who are nonetheless not gullible in the way that this crowd is gullible, and I have seen atheists and people with scientific backgrounds who are. Race, nationality, even educational attainment doesn’t seem to map. All that is a bit anecdotal. Maybe there are patterns if you look at enough data. But from what I can see there is just this subset of humanity who easily falls for bullshit when it’s framed in the right way. Anyone can be conned of course, but I mean people who seem to just fill up a syringe with this kind of kool aid and bang it into a vein. A friend of mine thinks it’s a desperate desire to be special that’s rooted in some kind of narcissism. Another less generous opinion I heard on a podcast is that these people know exactly what is being dog whistled in this stuff and they are closet genocidal racists hoping for their revolution.
- smileypete 5y ago
  >Even worse I am having a tough time putting my finger on what the shortcoming of these people is. Polarization is the mRNA of disinformation.
- mistermann 5y ago
  > Even worse I am having a tough time putting my finger on what the shortcoming of these people is. I've been fairly obsessed with this general area for several years now, and I have come to a fairly strong conclusion that the(!) root cause is the nature of human consciousness (and in turn, how individuals perceive & conceptualize reality...or, how the human mind ~renders reality to our consciousness). > It’s not IQ as I’ve seen and met quite a few gullible sheep of this sort who would undoubtedly score high. I don’t see a strong correlation either way with intelligence. It doesn’t even seem to be one’s metaphysics or epistemology. I know devoutly religious people as well as mystics and occultist types who are nonetheless not gullible in the way that this crowd is gullible, and I have seen atheists and people with scientific backgrounds who are. Race, nationality, even educational attainment doesn’t seem to map. While there is surely some variance by various dimensions like these, I have come to the same conclusion as you, this phenomenon does not seem to have a very strong causal relationship with any of these things, as counter-intuitive as that may seem. That said, I think it is possible to start to make some sense out of it if you (even speculatively, as a thought experiment) consider it from the perspective of consciousness (our "reality rendering/generation engine") being the fundamental or primary root cause.
mistermann 5y ago
What illustrated the "can be commanded like armies" idea?
- api 5y ago
  People study the Holocaust all the time. Instead we should study the Rwandan genocide. It’s the best model of what a modern genocide might look like.
subjectsigma 5y ago
The phrase 'hordes of millions' is important to take note of... By the most liberal estimate I saw, there were a few hundred people that attended these protests, the largest single one had a few thousand, overall we can say 10 to 15k across the whole country. That's 0.0002% of Trump's voter base, and 0.00005% of the American population.
- api 5y ago
  Attacks only get better. I also didn't mean to imply it was only Trump voters who were subject to this. That's just the most recent and most extreme example.

api 5y ago

It’s depressing as hell. My political DNA is libertarian but I am starting to wonder if there isn’t a subset of humanity that simply can’t handle this level of unfiltered access to information. Even worse I am having a tough time putting my finger on what the shortcoming of these people is. It’s not IQ as I’ve seen and met quite a few gullible sheep of this sort who would undoubtedly score high. I don’t see a strong correlation either way with intelligence. It doesn’t even seem to be one’s metaphysics or epistemology. I know devoutly religious people as well as mystics and occultist types who are nonetheless not gullible in the way that this crowd is gullible, and I have seen atheists and people with scientific backgrounds who are. Race, nationality, even educational attainment doesn’t seem to map. All that is a bit anecdotal. Maybe there are patterns if you look at enough data. But from what I can see there is just this subset of humanity who easily falls for bullshit when it’s framed in the right way. Anyone can be conned of course, but I mean people who seem to just fill up a syringe with this kind of kool aid and bang it into a vein. A friend of mine thinks it’s a desperate desire to be special that’s rooted in some kind of narcissism. Another less generous opinion I heard on a podcast is that these people know exactly what is being dog whistled in this stuff and they are closet genocidal racists hoping for their revolution.

smileypete 5y ago
>Even worse I am having a tough time putting my finger on what the shortcoming of these people is. Polarization is the mRNA of disinformation.
mistermann 5y ago
> Even worse I am having a tough time putting my finger on what the shortcoming of these people is. I've been fairly obsessed with this general area for several years now, and I have come to a fairly strong conclusion that the(!) root cause is the nature of human consciousness (and in turn, how individuals perceive & conceptualize reality...or, how the human mind ~renders reality to our consciousness). > It’s not IQ as I’ve seen and met quite a few gullible sheep of this sort who would undoubtedly score high. I don’t see a strong correlation either way with intelligence. It doesn’t even seem to be one’s metaphysics or epistemology. I know devoutly religious people as well as mystics and occultist types who are nonetheless not gullible in the way that this crowd is gullible, and I have seen atheists and people with scientific backgrounds who are. Race, nationality, even educational attainment doesn’t seem to map. While there is surely some variance by various dimensions like these, I have come to the same conclusion as you, this phenomenon does not seem to have a very strong causal relationship with any of these things, as counter-intuitive as that may seem. That said, I think it is possible to start to make some sense out of it if you (even speculatively, as a thought experiment) consider it from the perspective of consciousness (our "reality rendering/generation engine") being the fundamental or primary root cause.

mistermann 5y ago

What illustrated the "can be commanded like armies" idea?

api 5y ago
People study the Holocaust all the time. Instead we should study the Rwandan genocide. It’s the best model of what a modern genocide might look like.

subjectsigma 5y ago

The phrase 'hordes of millions' is important to take note of... By the most liberal estimate I saw, there were a few hundred people that attended these protests, the largest single one had a few thousand, overall we can say 10 to 15k across the whole country. That's 0.0002% of Trump's voter base, and 0.00005% of the American population.

api 5y ago
Attacks only get better. I also didn't mean to imply it was only Trump voters who were subject to this. That's just the most recent and most extreme example.