Individuals can be smart. But, a large group is always mediocre, an average. Small groups are the sweet spot for greatness.
It’s human nature to overestimate that which favors us. We each overestimate how smart we are and the how smart the group is. Much in human history is based on not caring about the odds. Even Hans Solo doesn’t want to know.
In the situation you present, very shallow propaganda is quite effective if the target can be saturated with it. Another example, humans enjoy simplicity. A false dichotomy can be maintained for millennia: It’s current governance or worst fears manifest.
I regurgitated four basic books and a movie reference. Read these ones:
In The Engineering of Consent, 1947, Bernays described the theory of modern propaganda developed and implemented primarily by Nazi Germany. In Manufacturing Consent, 1988, Herman and Chomsky describe how the principles have been implemented in US mass media for economic control.
Since 1988 we’ve had mass computing, the internet, and now applications of AI. The history and structure will give lived experiences roots and facilitate communication.
And chop the wood, and have a little fire for when it gets cold at night and hunt for deer with a bow and arrow. And have a little drone network watching the surrounding woods, so that when Trump’s lackies try to come for me, I can see them coming and run into the woods behind the house and hide in safety while the booby traps get them.
I know, I thought about it, too. It gets more attractive with every few weeks that goes by.
One of my absolute favorite part of the wild, semi-hallucinogenic nature of the Lord of the Rings books and why I like them so much better than even the perfectly serviceable epic fantasy of the movies, was the trees.
You may already know this, but in the books, it’s not quite so simple as some trees can walk around, and some are normal trees. It’s like… all trees exist on a spectrum. Almost all of them are sleeping and stationary almost all of the time. But that’s not their only mode. When they are roused, which takes quite a lot both in terms of events and in terms of time, they become different. Not just some special trees, but all of them, although some are more lively and rousable than others. Only the special ones have eyes and branch-arms and stuff and can get up and be mobile, but all of them are rousable.
When Saruman starts woodchippering his way through the forest, killing trees on an industrial scale, they don’t really get roused up enough to be cognizant of it for quite a while. They’re just wood, after all, just normal trees, almost all of them. But after it goes on for a while, and the ones of them that can walk around and talk start to discuss the problem and how it’s for serious something that they can’t take lightly, the level of activity they can display – all of them, not just the special ones who can walk around – slowly gets to be greater, as they start to get roused to action about it.
There’s an orcish army, during the big fighting that starts to develop among the mobile types of creatures, and they have to go through a forest to get where they’re going. And it’s not really clear what happens, but this ungodly screaming and clashing sound starts to come from the direction of the forest, and then dwindles, and then goes away. And nothing of the army is ever seen again. They’re just gone. The whole fuckin army just like it never was.
It doesn’t end there. The war continues, and there’s a sort of foggy period in the weather, and when the sun starts to burn away the fog, the forest is just in a different place, overlapping with Saruman’s big factory and fortress. The trees are growing in among all his stuff, busting through the paving-stones and cracking through the foundations of his buildings and their solid stone walls, with thick roots stronger than anyone could cut through with any metal tool. The whole fuckin place is ruined, like a tree buckling through the sidewalk, or the foundation of a house, or a water-pipe, effortlessly.
But they’re just trees. They weren’t there before the fog rolled through, but now they are, and his fortress is smashed to bits with their roots growing through it now.
Science educators continually tell us that distances of millions or billions of miles are incomprehensible by human minds. If that’s true, then a nation of millions or billions of people is even more incomprehensible, and we need to reduce the size of our groups before things will start making sense again.
Individuals can be smart. But, a large group is always mediocre, an average. Small groups are the sweet spot for greatness.
It’s human nature to overestimate that which favors us. We each overestimate how smart we are and the how smart the group is. Much in human history is based on not caring about the odds. Even Hans Solo doesn’t want to know.
In the situation you present, very shallow propaganda is quite effective if the target can be saturated with it. Another example, humans enjoy simplicity. A false dichotomy can be maintained for millennia: It’s current governance or worst fears manifest.
I regurgitated four basic books and a movie reference. Read these ones:
In The Engineering of Consent, 1947, Bernays described the theory of modern propaganda developed and implemented primarily by Nazi Germany. In Manufacturing Consent, 1988, Herman and Chomsky describe how the principles have been implemented in US mass media for economic control.
Since 1988 we’ve had mass computing, the internet, and now applications of AI. The history and structure will give lived experiences roots and facilitate communication.
“A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it.”
Was that Men in Black, 1997, Agent K or On Liberty, 1859, John Stuart Mill?
The fuck cares. I started with Picard and Asimov.
This is why I want to fuck off to the woods and never deal with them ever again. Humans just aren’t worth the trouble.
And chop the wood, and have a little fire for when it gets cold at night and hunt for deer with a bow and arrow. And have a little drone network watching the surrounding woods, so that when Trump’s lackies try to come for me, I can see them coming and run into the woods behind the house and hide in safety while the booby traps get them.
I know, I thought about it, too. It gets more attractive with every few weeks that goes by.
If you make friends with the woodland creatures you won’t need the drones. They’ll let you know when someone’s coming.
One of my absolute favorite part of the wild, semi-hallucinogenic nature of the Lord of the Rings books and why I like them so much better than even the perfectly serviceable epic fantasy of the movies, was the trees.
You may already know this, but in the books, it’s not quite so simple as some trees can walk around, and some are normal trees. It’s like… all trees exist on a spectrum. Almost all of them are sleeping and stationary almost all of the time. But that’s not their only mode. When they are roused, which takes quite a lot both in terms of events and in terms of time, they become different. Not just some special trees, but all of them, although some are more lively and rousable than others. Only the special ones have eyes and branch-arms and stuff and can get up and be mobile, but all of them are rousable.
When Saruman starts woodchippering his way through the forest, killing trees on an industrial scale, they don’t really get roused up enough to be cognizant of it for quite a while. They’re just wood, after all, just normal trees, almost all of them. But after it goes on for a while, and the ones of them that can walk around and talk start to discuss the problem and how it’s for serious something that they can’t take lightly, the level of activity they can display – all of them, not just the special ones who can walk around – slowly gets to be greater, as they start to get roused to action about it.
There’s an orcish army, during the big fighting that starts to develop among the mobile types of creatures, and they have to go through a forest to get where they’re going. And it’s not really clear what happens, but this ungodly screaming and clashing sound starts to come from the direction of the forest, and then dwindles, and then goes away. And nothing of the army is ever seen again. They’re just gone. The whole fuckin army just like it never was.
It doesn’t end there. The war continues, and there’s a sort of foggy period in the weather, and when the sun starts to burn away the fog, the forest is just in a different place, overlapping with Saruman’s big factory and fortress. The trees are growing in among all his stuff, busting through the paving-stones and cracking through the foundations of his buildings and their solid stone walls, with thick roots stronger than anyone could cut through with any metal tool. The whole fuckin place is ruined, like a tree buckling through the sidewalk, or the foundation of a house, or a water-pipe, effortlessly.
But they’re just trees. They weren’t there before the fog rolled through, but now they are, and his fortress is smashed to bits with their roots growing through it now.
LotR is some fuckin great, great stuff
I shuddenly remembered my Charlemagne; Let my armiesh be the rocksh, and the treesh, and the birdsh in the shky.
‐ Men in Black (1997)
Science educators continually tell us that distances of millions or billions of miles are incomprehensible by human minds. If that’s true, then a nation of millions or billions of people is even more incomprehensible, and we need to reduce the size of our groups before things will start making sense again.
The example I like for this is the US federal budget.
$5m is about 15 good homes.
$1b is about 3000 good homes.
We don’t deal with things more expensive than a good home. And, 3000 is already a hard number to envision.
$1b is a remarkably hard number to wrap one’s head around.
Right? I just learned the upgrades to the Minuteman nuclear missiles will cost $98.5 billion, out of a $1.5 trillion force modernization package.
If humans can’t understand the scale of the universe, how is anyone supposed to understand the scale of the US budget?
Why does Defense, the largest trillion, not simply eat the other billions?