Unreliable Narrators
Now that we all live in a culture where most (if not many) objective truths have been reduced to subjective feelings, we navigate a globalized environment where we are all a species of unreliable narrators.
Sure, we can “know” people relationally and determine the reliability of their closely-held narratives, but increasingly even that is becoming a problem at the localized level, which is the level most of us still live at.
Another, simpler way of putting this is, we are all liars. And in a world full of liars, the most dangerous and courageous person is the one who insists, despite the conditions surrounding them, that 1). there is objective truth, 2). humans, no matter their background, education, or temperament, can know what that truth is, and 3). that subjective feelings about objective truths represent the beginnings of rebellion against the order of reality itself.
It’s no wonder that unreliable narrators–what we used to call liars–are proliferating faster than we can address their lies. The problem, dear Horatio, lies in us, not in the stars.
Secret Kings and Their Marketing Teams
No one is convinced that the social reformer, regardless of ideological, political, or social position, is advocating for all of the “social reform” they’re advocating for, out of some sense of humane magnanimity.
Just as no one is convinced that the businessman, regardless of commitment to sales, investing, or making profit, is advocating for all of the “capitalism” they’re selling and marketing for, out of some desire to destroy, despoil, or ruin.
However, because creatives tend to be socially minded rather than business-minded, they tend to get the last word in describing, defining, and making the myths that the audience believes about not only their motives, but also the motives of their opposites.
Messing With The Clocks
The original reasons for instituting a time change with the clocks may have been stated as being for farmers and agricultural producers to get more done. . However, in the United States, we have passed through the practical reasons for time changes and now are into the more insidious reasons. . Controlling a population is about more than just about launching marketing or propaganda efforts to change minds. It’s also about changing behaviors that people do.
30 Year Technology Adoption Cycles
The Model T was in production for over 19 years.
Sales of color TV sets took 15 to 20 years to surpass sales of black and white TV sets, which took 10 to 15 years to move from being a luxury product to being a home staple.
Outdoor sanitation (that’s toilets, kids) was still a thing in many rural areas into the 1980s. In the United States.
Full-scale Internet adoption has taken 15 to 20 years and still isn’t complete in many places.
LLM adoption and the adoption of the outputs from LLMs (even the ones that we goggle at right now) will take 15 to 30 years to accomplish full cultural adoption.
Both the AI-Doomer and the AI Accelerationist alike need to slow their roll, hold their horses, and wait for the bubble generated by OpenAI being massively overleveraged to burst and for all of the current frothing at the mouth to come back to earth.
Cringe
The era we live in requires us to separate sincerity from what is commonly referred to as “cringe.”
“Cringe” is the emotional reaction of people whose temperament is oriented toward epistemic cynicism, nihilism, and the despair of the typically, perpetually Very Online doomer.
Sincerity is hard to find when the words people write, the videos they consume, and the images and memes they create become substitutes for emotional engagement with other real people.
Olestra, GLP-1's, Nietzsche, and the Continued Search for a Chemical Solution to Human Nature
Two things occur to me:
1). People in online popular culture no longer talk about “body positivity” now that GLP-1 drugs are readily available and have proven to be somewhat effective. However, I remember the coming and going of Olestra, so I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop.
2). There is never going to be a chemical solution to the pile of psychological, emotional, and spiritual factors that cause the differing disorders, pathologies, habits, tendencies, and tics that humans experience as a result of living in a fallen world.
Of course, I am trade-off positive rather than solution positive, because the abyss of human nature is as deep and dark as the abyss Nietzsche rhapsodized about in his various mad warnings.
Absurdity
Sure, the social interactions between people, between people and institutions, and between institutions themselves are absurd.
But pointing out the absurdity doesn’t mean that you’ve solved the problem. It doesn’t even mean you’ve accurately identified the place of trade-off and negotiation. It means you’ve observed like a child, using adult terms to describe your observations, and have decided that serious effort to address absurdity just isn’t in your emotional or intellectual makeup.
Pointing out absurdity is nothing. Presenting the trade-offs as alternatives to absurdity is everything.
Wandering Toward Old Age
“Not all who wander are lost” is one of those classic quotes from a movie you may have failed to watch. It applies in multiple contexts, including the context of aging. Wandering toward old age is the ultimate sign, not only of not being lost, but also a sign of getting ready for what happens next.
Warfare, Terror, Murder & Bloodshed
“…in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock…” - Orson Welles, The Third Man
Amygdalas Running Amoke
The story of technological adoption is a story of change. It’s also a story of amygdalas running amok, forgetting history, appeals to authority, and grifters and hustlers. It always “works out,” and the path of working it out is always hard, bumpy, and unpredictable. We can’t wish that journey away.
Category Errors and Their Discontents
If we are going to rebuild the American project, we all need to do some hard work on thinking about how we think. We’ve got the other categories of thinking pretty well covered (the 4Ws). But how we think always slips past us as humans, revealing our biases, our emotions, and even our deep (or shallow) understanding of human nature. Any social or cultural rebuilding project must start with reconstructing how we think.