Zero Day Exploits for Humans

 I saw an interesting speech by James Lindsay to the EU parliament where he tried to draw all the threads of the culture war together and call it marxism.  One of the main points he was trying to make was that "woke" was a movement by "them" that was covert marxism with an American spin.  The core idea was that marxism has "adapted" and is now going to attack America and Europe. 

It was a really well constructed speech but his argument had a bunch of flaws. 

The first was that there was a "THEY".  Some coordinating authority or centrality to the effort.  I think the truth is only in the minds of the people who feel under attack.  Its like someone has a feeling of vulnerability and suddenly they invent a boogie man to blame it on.  It grows in their imagination and they give it a face built out of all their worst fears and all the bad stories that they have ever heard and it becomes the stuff of nightmares.  They can't un-see it... because its their personal monster. 

 I would argue that this whole shitstorm is not coordinated (honestly suprising ... but I will get to that).  Its an emergent set of patterns that are emerging in many places, and communication technology is allowing them to cross fertilise ideas and strategies.  

Mobs form because there are the elements of a mob already present and some situation or events bring them together and the mob dynamics build.

At some point someone (a politician or something that walks and talks like one) is going to clamber to the front of the mob and retcon a false narrative over the mob that gives it legitimacy and authority to do what they want.  But until that happens, its just a mob waiting to happen. 

The question is rightly, why is there a mob waiting to happen? 

I think the dirty secret is that there is always a mob waiting to happen, even in the most perfect of societies.  I think this is one of the secrets that the current chineese government has validly identified and seeks to counter by always being so concerned about public stability and calm.  As the inheritors of the revolution, they know very well that people will form a mob and once that dynamic gets going, there is going to be a few nails getting hammered. 

So, why a mob?  What is the inherent characteristics of a mob that is so... human?  

Anonymity!

Anonymity is one of those weird social moments that change people.  For someone who does not experience anonymity very much or at all, its habitual to always have their social face on.  They act as though people who matter are watching!  They act as though there is consequence to their actions!  

This is generally true enough that it keeps most people in check.  They moderate their behaviour to the standard they have been taught/conditioned and has worked successfully in their context.  

Then give them a sneak peek of anonymity... and usually nothing happens.  It takes a long time for conditioning to fall away.  However, its interesting how people seek anonymity and deal with it. 

People go traveling and on holidays to "go somewhere new".  They move house and jobs to "start a fresh".  And when they arrive they are anonymous.  No one knows them, they have no identity and can be "who they want to be".  (Except for local law and customs... etc)  So sometimes they "go a little crazy" or "act out".  Try watching a show like "Banged up Abroad" or any of the stories about tourists doing silly things in distant lands.  They think they have found a hack that will let them act without consequence on their identity "back home". 

Also consider people in an existing society who are "invisible" and without distinct identity.  They can do things that others cannot and the risk/reward ratio is substantially different. 

So the question is, what do people do when they are anonymous?  

Explore.  Depending on how complete their conditioning is, they may continue doing the same habitual things or they might not.  If the conditioning is incomplete, they will start to "try new things". Explore opportunities that they perceive in the environment. There is no "reason" not to.  They can stay in bed all day... or eat toast with their fingers.  Like children in a new place they will explore and test their boundaries.  This is basic human survival skills... figure out where the good stuff is, figure out whats a threat... get comfortable. Repeat. 

However, people with "baggage" also want to unload. This might be fast or slow, it might be positive or negative. People let out their issues in different ways.  If the opportunity arises, they may let out stuff that they have kept repressed for a long time.  Repression takes energy and chips away at their wellbeing over time,...so this can be very confronting to release for the individual.   Nothing like letting go of personal hygiene. 

 

The point of a mob however, is that the mob forms around an event or situation. The situation has an emotional loading inherent.  Where this is a positive situation, the mood of the mob will be positive and re-inforce that.  Where the mood is negative or can be turned negative, the dynamic will escalate the negativity. 

So, if you are a revolutionary and you want to do some casual destruction, find a group of people with any sort of issue and use that to form the mob.  If you can get the mob to form, then you can harness the energy of the mob and turn its attention on a target you can link to the grievance.  The more vague the grievance, the more people will self-adopt your description to fit their individual situation.  They will start to recruit more people to the mob and every one of them will choose to believe that the mob is somehow on their side.  

The feeling of belonging. 

A good mob feels like its on your side.  When life has got you down and a bunch of people seem to all be commiserating with you about your particular problem... it can feel good.  Finally your being recognized.  You have shared problems. The weight is lifted a little.  Vague promises are told (often by the individual to themselves).  Excitement and euphoria quickly follow.  People will do all sorts of things to keep that feeling going. Belonging and meaning are very attractive when you have been starved of those feelings. 

If you look around at any group, you will always find someone who does not feel like they belong or don't really have a place (or especially don't have a winning place). Every pile of humanity has people at the bottom. 

So all you need is a group of people who feel a bit dissatisfied with their lot and a situation that they can rally around and a few loud voices to egg them on. Now pick a topic they have in common and talk about that, once they agree, pick an enemy and blame them for the topic. Ta da! Mob creation 101.

Now lets look at "Activists".  These are the "loud voice" element.  They are the self-elected "leaders" and "Spokes-people".  They are the ones who chant the message and set the tone.  They are always near the front of the mob, but not in the front row where the cannon fodder stand.  (That's where the truly stupid gather)

The interesting thing about "Activists" is that they become the leaders of the mob.  And eventually, they have to figure out what to do with the mob.  

During a revolution a bloodthirsty mob is a very handy thing for someone who wants to change the world.  They can be used in all sorts of ways.  But eventually the situation goes from revolution, to starvation and people have to start putting food on the table again.  Even revolutionaries like eating. 

So the bit after the revolution always has some sort of "disposal" process for the mob.  Look back through history, there are very few bloodthirsty mobs that have been successfully turned into a peaceful population.  This is because the very nature of a bloodthirsty mob is that it gets a taste for the darker aspects of life.  This is very hard to turn off.  The people who self select into the most extreem elements of the mob tend to not want it to end.  This is their moment, suddenly it all feels good. Why would they stop and go back to a menial job? 

So after the revolution, the mob either gets liquidated or scattered (and quietly liquidated) or hopefully just dies during the revolution... one way or the other, the problem gets solved. 

The activists however, are the mouthpeices and survivors.  They are the ones who are cunning enough to get to the front of the mob and give it guidance. After the revolution, they are the ones who the mob looks to for organisation as they have been doing that up till now.  Think of it as a battle field promotion based on competence. 

In the even that the activists are a positive group, they go on to form a positive society.  In the even they are carrying some unhealthy traits (paranoia, narcissism, greed, lust etc) then they form the society in their image.  

Again, history provides us with endless examples.  

Why is any of this new? Well, clearly its not. The only new thing is the context that the revolution is currently being fought in. 

The US has not had a revolution in some time... nearly 4 years or so.  

The interesting thing about a democracy is that the cyclical nature of the election cycle tends to let the mobs form and dissipate their energy every few years.  I think this is actually the reason why democracies last so long rather than anything to do with votes or rights.  The fact that they go through a small controlled revolution a few times a decade lets most people work through this cycle enough times that they get sick of it and realise that they are not going to get their problems solved this way.  Theoretically, each election results in some redistribution of power and resources and life goes on. 

The problem comes when the election cycle is corrupt and constantly reinforce the inequity and failure of the society.  This lets the unresolved grievances build up and makes the ground fertile for anyone to do a bit of recreational mob building.

Another thing that history tells us is that corrupt societies where there is a lot of difference between those who have and those who have not tend to be very ripe for revolution.  Look at every monarchy or aristocracy ever.  They only existed as long as they could keep their populations divided and powerless.  Once some mob formed and started to self-organize, and a few random mouthpieces popped up and agreed on some vague ideas, it was on.   

I don't think its hard to see the seeds of discontent in a number of the current democratic countries in the "west" at the moment. 

There is a lot of people who are feeling left out and rejected in society, ironically they are often wealthy and succsesful in comparision with their ancestors.  But humans will human. 

Now look at the mouthpieces who are trying to unite the mobs.  Look at the "common themese" they are using to pull the mobs together.  Look at the really vague narratives of "what comes next".  Notice any patterns? 

Same strategies, same techniques.  Same hacks that have always worked. 

Coming back to the speech by James Lindsay.  I think the main mistake he is making is that he thinks this is a marxist revolutionary thing.  It's not marxist, its just revolutionary.  

These are the same emergent strategies that have worked in every revolution ever.  

Hey kids don't like the status quo?  You angry about stuff?  Lets criticize the old way because that's where the stuff comes from.  Now lets reform the world! 

There are endless variations on this patterns but they all have the same basic format.  Mob + mouthpiece.  The mob will self form when the social pyramid gets too deep and the top forgets about the bottom.  The mouthpieces are always around because stupidity is not evenly distributed.  

I think the most amazing thing at the moment is just how many different mobs are in the formation stage in the US at the moment.  There are so many different grievance groups who have been magnified into being by technology.  All of them are being horrible to each other at the same time and fighting for ascendancy.  The range of shouty mouthpieces who are self-electing to be the brains of the operation is also quite impressive.  I think its been clear to everyone for a long time that the final element is long overdue for revolution.  The top of the pyramid has completely lost touch with the reality of the bottom.  

I tend to think that this is the prime reason we are seeing all this bubbling up.  I am certainly not the first commentard to point out this, so its not particularly hard to spot.  But like any slowly collapsing structure, there is not really any way to stop it.  A phrase always comes back to me... "Seeds of its own destruction".  There is a certain inevitability about the whole thing.  Some sort of historical renewal that was always going to happen. 

The fun thing to remember is that this is not the first time this has bubbled up in the US.  There have always been some pretty big scars in that culture to exploit. And there is never a shortage of shouty mouthpieces who are willing to take a run at the big chair... so perhaps its just going to keep going until they either get so broken down that someone keeps them down or just the wheel will turn again and off they go.  

I strongly think that the difference between a revolution and a non-revolution is probably leadership.  They have had a run of bad luck with a succession of weak leaders and corruption of their institutions that has chipped away at the faith and ability to move forward. Now they just seem to be doing self-destructive circle work as they chew their own legs off to try to get away from themselves.  Anyway, renewal brings hope... come the man, come the day... something or other.  

 

 

 

 

 

How virtual is your world?

 It occurs to me that while we all have a part of our lives that is imagined, technology has enabled a greater percentage of that to be manifest in various ways. 

So the question is, has this changed in any material way? What proportion of peoples lives were previously lived in their imaginary world?  

The majn thing that has changed is the fidelity that the virtual can be manifest with virtual environments and the social networks that allow recruiting participants with similar interests. 

Infinite dating

In previous generations, the "dating phase" of an adults life, started in late teen years and ended with marriage.  Job done.  

The interesting thing to note is that its during this phase that young adults, particularly women, were most able to be commercialized.  They were most likely to be pressured into purchasing stuff to increase their social success and also had access to resources that were not otherwise committed to hearth and home. 

So... why not extend the "dating phase" longer.  Keep people single and not committed to ownership of things like houses or children will make them endlessly vulnerable to all the social marketing and products, while maximising the resources they have to pour into these markets.

Congratulations you won high school

 If you consider high school as an environment, then it makes sense that some people will be more adapted to it.  I guess different school systems would reward and punish various "success" strategies... but you get the idea. 

The key point is, when a person (child/teenager whatever) completely specialises in all the skills that it takes to be a winner at highschool.... then what? 

How are they going to deal with a change in environment?  Do they have the ability to change?  Is there a sunk cost that they have had to pay to climb the social ladder at highschool?  Have they spent all their social capital (or other capital) to finally be the top of the social hierarchy? 

What is it that they have actually won?  Mating rights?  Power?  Authority?  Hmmm... not really.  Since school is an artificially limited social system, some of theses things are not availible to win... so what? 

Practice at "the real world"? Not quite... but close. 

Anyway,  once they leave school, they need a similar environment to operate in or all their skill and investment will count for nothing.  Lets look around for an environment where they might be able to succeed... perhaps the "modern dating" environment?  Perhaps social activism?  Perhaps politics. 

So nothing particularly insightful yet.  Now consider how dating has been "extended" from a brief part of the teenage to marriage transition in previous generations to now an extended "dating" phase that seems to last from late teenage to late fifties for some people.  I have been watching a few videos on the "wall".  The idea that older women who have not successfully paired up are reaching a point where their options seem to be exhausted.  The point being that the behavior that makes them successful in the temporary nature of dating and hook-ups seems to be similar sorts of behavior as the social climbing that happens in some schools. (Allegedly)

So if someone is very good at meeting, engaging with, dating and moving on from partners and can harvest resources, social capital and entertainment from the process while avoiding all the downsides (socially speaking) of pairing up and quitting the social game... and they finally reach "the wall" without having been out of the game... have they won?  Are they so specialized to the "dating/hookup" environment that they have maximised their return and rewards from the environment?  They have certainly (as an individual) survived and from a certain point of view, they have "thrived". 

From a biological perspective, failure to reproduce is generally considered to be failure.  However, the rules of the modern dating game seem to be "those who can churn through the maximum number of "dates" ("bodycount") and maximise the throughput of resources into the service industries that support the "game".  Perhaps also some sort of score based on the social media metrics.  This kind of equates to the "attention"/ "notoriety"/"popular" kind of social status metrics from highschool.  

Anyway, you're fifty, never married, no kids, a bodycount in the hundreds (or higher) and you're well know and have high social media metrics.. Congratulation's, you've won dating!

Enjoy the spoils of your victory.

Modern Dating as Entertainment Industry

 I have been watching a trash bin load of video's on the "Modern Dating/Manosphere/Trad/The Wall"  topics and while its a fascinating spectator sport, its a bit sad. 

 It all seems simple enough fun, but very clearly the players don't understand the game.  And lots of people are getting hurt.  That's not funny. 

In all the videos I have seen and all the "think pieces" on the topic, I have never seen anyone bring it all together. There is a great deal of people talking past each other and associated confusion and schadenfreude... but no clarity on the why or how.  Lots of various forms of confusion. 

 

So, from my point of view, this whole pile of mess is based on a simple concept.  The commodification of life into "entertainment". 

Completely selecting for form over function.

All the current dating apps are essentially supplying "romance" at the click of a button.  The emergent behavior of the market place has selected for more and more people and features that amplify this  property.  Then add on the amount of online content generated from the use of "dating" to generate entertainment content and it becomes a self-reinforcing spiral. 

 So we now have a loud part of a generation(s) of people who treat dating and relationships as a form of entertainment. 

I think this has a whole slew of causes and contributing factors and additionally a lot of complex outcomes. 

Causes and history. 

I think that looking backward, there are plenty of other instances of this kind of pattern.  If we look at victorian nobility and the culture of their lives, they were able to spend the majority of their time simply pursuing entertainment and diversion.  This lead to the "fashionable" young and wealthy being fairly useless and childish and the eventual downfall of the nobility as a strong cultural bastion. 

The interesting thing to note and contrast is that the easy life of the nobility still had some limits.  Women especially were still very conscious of the effects of pregnancy.  This intrusion of reality into an otherwise boundary less lifestyle placed a limit on the sprial of excess and exploration. 

There were other natural and social limiting pressures that impacted on the spiral of behavior in Victorian wealthy and elite classes.  The supply of resources was often not as infinite as the childish gambling, spending and consumption of the individuals desires. 

 Health, pregnancy, accident, crime and age were also limiting factors.  Social acceptance and exclusion also mitigated a range of excesses.  The justice system was also often a limit, although wealth could insulate some people from those consequences.

 

If we look at the easy life and consequence free existence that is sold at the moment. (The reality is still going to vary for individuals)  there are less natural limits to peoples behaviour. 

The natural limits are still: 

The availability of food and the ability to have it delivered in highly urbanized areas means that this is almost a non-issue to this generation. Its only in areas where the food supply is uncertain or the individuals personal resources are not up to the task that this issue is even discussed.  Consider the "food desert" conversations that are going on in the US at the moment to see the effects of this issue catching up with some sectors. 

The availability of healthcare, cosmetic surgery, makeup, insurance etc means that apart from time and inconvenience, these former natural "consequences" of behavior are almost eliminated as a consideration before embarking on some adventure.  Birth control is obviously a part of this but will be discussed specifically below. 

The social consequences of behaviour have also been stripped away in all sorts of ways.  There is almost no "social memory" for many individuals because they live in an almost anonymous way.  They are not part of a general community or self-select to join a specialist behaviour based community that will not censure their excessive behaviour.  The internet has allowed people to find and inhabit virtual communities that do not limit their behaviour and exist within them. 

There is constant pressure on real world institutions at the moment to reduce and remove anything of consequence that particular virtual communities find limiting on their "freedoms".  The majority of the culture wars in the US can be seen through this lens as the common factor. 

Gender was a natural limit on behaviour until it came under sustained attack in the recent past.  This has evolved in a number of ways, but the foundation movement was on the concept of "limits" to accepted behaviour for particular individuals based on gender norms.  This fight has pulled in all sorts of social issues and moments and generated all sorts of strange and in many ways horrific outcomes.  But the basic issue has been the removal of limits to behaviour.  

The interesting thing is that from the point of view of someone who is not engaged in a lifestyle where gender norms make sense, these limits are irrelevant and really are limiting their ability to live their lives.  

The most interesting thing however is to map their lives and behaviour and see how much of it exists in the virtual community they are conceptually living their life in.  The obvious contrast would be to map their life and see how little of it is still being lived in the "shared reality" that we call "meat space".  

I think the most interesting aspect of this is that this whole shitshow is an emergent phenomena of the virtual worlds enabled by technology and the current generation is simply adapting to their environment. I think this shows just how much the environment really drives culture and society (I suspect this would come as a suprise to some people but it seems obvious to me) 

This is really the only new thing. People have always created and occupied fantasy worlds that overlap with the shared real world.  Storytelling, literature, dance, art, games, fashion, ideology, roleplay, clubs, secret societies, us and them, all these things have enabled people to live with one foot in their imaginary world while their bodies existed in the "real".  

Technology has magnified this feature of humanity almost from day 1.  Any labour saving device, trick or strategy gave people a little bit more time to spend on whimsy and flights of fancy.  This free time turned in recreation, which turned into an entertainment industry.  This is simply a natural evolution of the entertainment process as more human limits have been circumvented or overcome. 

The wealthy urban life is so safe, well fed, serviced, powered and coddled that a person can exist, mold themselves and their environment to fullfill very elaborate fantasies now.  

 But the removal of some limits means that we can now more clearly see the next ones.  

Age, fertility, health, physiology, lifespan, speed to interface with the virtual, quality of the virtual experience, virtual senses, need to eat, sanitation etc...   

 

However, there are lots of people desperately trying to solve these problems as I type.   

Now to bring this all together.  

"Modern dating" is a shitshow because its has turned dating into an entertainment for bored people.  The only problem with this is that the majority of people involved are not aware of this, so they are being taken advantage of.  

This is why very superficial people are self-selecting to participate.  The essential characteristics are that particpants be "attractive", "responsive" and "quick to change partners".   This maximises the capital throughput.  

Like any casino, the game is always rigged for the house.  The house is selling the dream of connecting with someone, while maximising the time players stay in the game.  

I think the marketing machine has crafted a better message for women to draw them into the machine simply because with the removal of children from the system, women now have essentially a whole lifetime where they need to entertain themselves.  The marketing machine has also had more success at commercializing women across their whole lifespan.  

Men and boys on the other hand are slightly harder sell simply because of some of the natural limitations that are still in play.  Unless boys are visually "attractive" they are very hard to commercialize as a commodity.  If your dating platform has condensed the whole "first impression" down to a second or two before the buyer swipes, then visual appeal is the only currency.  This is selecting for very photogenic candidates or deception.  (Hence the grooming, makeup, filters and cosmetic surgery markets catering to men)  Think about the proliferation of automated photo filters and other "enhancement" tools that are saturating the marketplace to provide competitive advantage(or the illusion of) to participants. 

Some of the other pressures are to increase the "responsiveness" of the product.  All the candidates are now required to have multiple channels of communication and have the ability to engage in multiple parallel communications at the same time.  This has spawned a whole slew of technologies to try to reduce the friction around how useful and functional the DM or "direct message" functionality is on all the ecosystem of products that support this marketplace.  Some are provided free to the participants while others are sold to them so they can participate faster. 

The last aspect is how rapidly the casino can get players back into the game.  Consider how much media pressure and self produced user content is being generated about "changing partners", "divorce", "ghosting", "speed dating", "cheating", "child support", "family courts", "welfare" etc etc etc.  All these talking points are manifestly ways to reduce the friction of participants getting back into the game.  

Is any of this actually new?  As usually, this stuff is just a manifestation of human nature meeting limitless capitalism in a 4D environment.  The constant pressure against limitations for how to exploit human nature on one hand, vs the limitless humans expressing that nature within the context of any given environment.

The same rules will apply.  Environment is defined by the limitations.  Human nature is all the possible combinations of behavior possible within that environment.   Capitalism is the interaction of all the humans within that environment with each other subject to the limitations of the given environment.

Politics/ideology/religion/society is simply the imposition and enforcement of limitations by humans on other humans in addition to those of the physical environment. They are still limitations on behavior.

Ethics is just telling everyone how the game works so they can feel like they are choosing how to play. At what point is free will an illusion?  The point where your behavior meets a limit and you experience an unexpected consequence.

Journalism is the pointing and laughing bit.  

Ok, a bit too abstract perhaps.  

The point I think I wanted to make is that once you see this whole shitshow through the lens of "entertainment" and "recreation" it all becomes predictable.  But like a lot of entertainment, if you peek behind the curtain, the spell is broken... so most people don't really want to peek.  (or wish they didn't... cause you know about human nature and telling people not to do something for their own good...)  ignorance makes a lot of this possible. 

The problem with ignorance is that you often get surprised.  "Entertaining" surprises are enjoyable, while "disappointing" and "hurtful" surprises are not.  Kind of another aspect of human nature that is pretty self explanatory.  My point is that a lot of people who are playing the game are ignorant and are getting surprised in ways they are not enjoying.  

So, on one hand, we could fiddle with the amount of ignorance in the player population, but that would probably reduce the amount of players.  (See any of the shit ton of videos on line that are in various ways trying to "educate" the players.  Soooo many... and from so many angles) So there is no incentive for the platform managers to mess with the ignorance level, especially before they have the players money.  Parents on the other hand can tell their kids as much as they like... but ignorant children is kind of the grease that keeps the whole world moving... so good luck with that.  I think its one of those human nature limitations that we are still trying to figure out how to overcome. (Education is a bit of an attempt but has been trying to chip away at the problem for a long time and keeps getting re-purposed for other sometimes contradictory purposes) 

The ignorance issue also comes full circle and ends up bumping into the age issue.  You can only sell ignorant people the magic of the game as long as they are ignorant.  This precious ignorance seems to fade over time, especially as people still have biological clocks that are ticking away (no matter how much the medical suppliment/fertility industry wants to pretend otherwise) so eventually people are retiring from the game and no longer participating.  They are also demonstrating what happens when you play the game too long or quit playing.  (MGTOW, The Wall etc) 

As the beneficiaries of the game have increasingly enjoyed its benefits, they have continued to push against the limitations that seemed to be constraining their behavior.  So consequence and the short term cost of playing has been continually reduced in some legal contexts.  This has twisted the tail of the political class and thought leaders and observers.  Many of whom are not clearly benefiting from the game, but are chasers of fashion none the less.  

This has resulted in more and more people being sucked into the game involuntarily.  Simply from lack of apparent options.  There is all sorts of indirect push-back to this with various anti-whatever groups self-orgnaising and being demonized by the game owners and ignorant players. Nothing particularly surprising there. Again, this is just an aspect of the ignorance that any game requires.  Ignorant people like what they like and taking it away from them (or appearing to threaten it will cause push back... simples!) 

One of the unintended consequences of the game is the removal of children and families from the conversation landscape.  The whole game is based on people being in a permanent state of childless wealth and ready to mingle.  This has created the emergent phenomenon of  seemingly "anti-family" byproduct of the game.  This is the interesting nature of emergent phenomenon.  They are still very hard to predict except in retrospect.  

Hindsight shows us the road by which we have reached this point in perfect clarity.  We now have nearly two generations of people who have for "reasons" checked out of forming and succeeding at "families".  By this I mean the loosely groups LGBTQI groups, add in the "incels", involuntarily childless, anyone broken by the divorce industry, family courts etc etc.  There are all sorts of limitations that have been removed that are facilitating new and emergent behavior that do not result in successfully raising the next generation. 

This is all wonderful for the dating game as there is no natural drain on resources (families and children used to consume the majority of adults resources)  so the game now gets all that time, energy and money.  However, its a bit short term as many exploitative capitalistic systems are.  Indirect effect of this is the incessant attempts to "broaden" the market into other countries, other cultures and import more and more people into countries with legal environments that are kind to the game.  

Any of these limitless spiral systems inevitably turn into black holes that suck in everything around them and become all consuming.  I suspect that there are plenty of historical examples of the same sort of excessive cultures completely collapsing when they reached a tipping point and ate their own heads. This pattern does not have to be exactly the same as the cultural spiral that the US is currently sinking under, in the past it was simple stuff like food spirals or disease spirals that smashed cultures.  However, I suspect that situations like the fall of the roman empire and the fall of the aztec empire were cultural death spirals in part due to the lack of limit on behaviours that opened up a massive vulnerability which was then exploited by some other group or disasterous incident.  Not sure that it matters and this is not trying to be some list of historical arguments.  The point is that a cultural spiral without effective limits becomes all consuming.

Right now the US is wrestling internally between the existing social institutions that create and enforce limitations and the industries that are trying to push away the limits to their growth.  This has kind of been a pattern in their extreme capitalism model. So this is not particularly new, it just so happens to be a bubble that has been consuming the cultures ability to reproduce very directly. Many of the western cultures have similar emergent spirals so its not that the US is unique, its just that within the regulatory environment and the extreme capitalism system, its formed this particular death spiral. 

The question is if they can recognize it and pull out of it.  There is no sign that any of the other first world countries have discovered the solution so its possible the US will be the first to fall off the cliff... but none of the others are currently showing a way other than following it.  This includes China, as it has its own variation of the same death spiral because its population is subject to the same Pandoras box problem as the US.  There are a thousand differences but at the root they both have the same problem.  Declining birth rate.  The US just has this death spiral going on in its urban and elite classes, while the Chinese seem to be unable to recover from the previous birth control policies.  Different but the same...ish. 

I doubt even the Indians will be able to avoid it... however they are culturally at a different place than either the US or China so they will have a longer time before it bites them and they may be able to turn the ship. 

The fundamental problem is that families are not cool because everyone has one.  Once you see one of the cultures start promoting celebrities based on their strong families and number of children then have and their success at raising them to be good citizens, you will know they have cracked the problem, but currently its the opposite.  People are celebrated for individual reasons and discouraged from anything to do with families, commitment, long term life plans and especially children.

There are so many messages in our society that are undermining and attacking these topics.  The result is a population with large segments of its people debating and avoiding creating the next generation. 

End of society....eventually.

 

 

 

 

Bandit Culture

 I watched an article by Thomas Sowell https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FT4NQ9D0M6w&t=3053s

looking at the origin of some of the culture groups in the US.  He is interested in the topic as it relates to some of the current culture groups in the US. 

I found it interesting as it posed a question about what happens when immigrants bring particular cultures into a country.  I don't think this is a particularly unique idea as I think I have seen it talked about many times.  Essentially, culture clash. 

The specific issue that I found interesting was the line that was drawn between the origin of the culture groups that Thomas was talking about.  The groups origins were in the disputed lands between England and Scotland and in what is now Northan Ireland.  My grasp of historical geography might be a little rough but the point was that the immigrants were drawn from regions with a long history of lawlessness and conflict.  The resulting group of people carried with them a set of behaviours that were shaped by the environment they were drawn from. Namely, lawlessness, vigilantie justice, preoccupation with honor, no work ethic, no savings or investment, no enterprise, gambling, dueling, racing etc. 

These behaviour patterns all make sense in a context of conflict, raiding, short lifespans, etc.  When life is short, cheap and brutal... people adapt to it.  Not ideal but realistic. 

As an aside I remember somewhere a report on the behaviour of elephants changed when they were under pressure from hunting and poaching.  Again they adapted due to the stressful environment.  Behaviour that would have been seen as undesirable in a more relaxed and bountiful environment were selected for and re-inforced by practice. 

Where am I going with this?  Bandit Cultures....

So I was wondering what it would take to convert someone who was raised in a bandit culture to the cultural practices of a more prosperous law abiding culture?

Can you just put someone down in a new context and hope they .... get the idea?

I would suggest that people coming out of prison are a good example of where this does not work.  Immigrants who have survived in harsh environments or indigenous cultures with collectivist survival skills are going to find it difficult to live by a set of principles and rules that they have not been educated in.  Most cultures do not have a manual, trying to help someone get the idea... even when everyone want it, is going to be hard work. 

How can it be done?  Perhaps the same way we should raise children?  Cause basically all children are bandits... and some of them turn out ok.  

A instruction, forgiveness, repetition, praise when they succeed, correction when they fail.

The purity spiral

 I saw a piece on YT explaining the concept of the "purity spiral" as an explanation for radical political group formation and radicalisation.  In this case it was talking about extreme political views in America.  

Its interesting as the speaker did charcterize the social dynamic fairly well but I thought it might be worth drilling into the pattern a little more. 

The basic idea is that the dynamic is formed when you have an "in group" whose members are competing to be "more pure" or "more virtuous", "better than" or "more correct".  The rewards for winning the competition is something meaningful within the group ideology.  More love, more respect, leadership, power etc.  

The reward system within the "in group" also has to be a zero sum game or worse.  So the awarding of that "thing of value" to one member also means its removal from another.  In the more vicious pattern, the loser does not just lose the value but gets a negative "punishment" or social black mark/scar/social credit score/isolation/demotion etc.  The addition of a punishment for losing creates a multiplier effect in the competition.  

In contrast "gentlemanly" competition is asymmetrical.  The winner gets applauded and the loser(s) also get celebrated for competing.  Basically, everyone gets some amount of positive outcome. 

While in toxic competition, the winner gets something of value transferred from the loser AND the loser gets additional punishment. This increases the cost of competing, which results in more spectators than competitors.  It also promotes competitors only getting into the competition when its un-equal as "fair fights" become much higher risk.  So tricks, antagonising, bullying and set-ups are the more frequent ways to initiate the conflict.  Ignorant competitors will get pushed or manipulated into the competition before they understand the odds are against them, while the senior/more experienced players have a low risk of losing and a consumate higher reward. 

This kind of toxic competition can be found in all sorts of places in popular and historical media. 

Now back to the "purity spiral".  The second essential dynamic of the purity spiral is the so called "Shaving off" of fallen former members of the "in group" and casting them out into the "out group" or other.

This reveals the various status levels within the group.  There is the powerful elite who are the center of the group. They are the ones who are vested with the power and authority and are usually the "winners" of all the competitions. These are the "rulers".  

The other part of the movement is the "flock".  These are the members who form the mob, but have no power.  So called "flying monkeys", they will exercise the will of the powerful, under fear of exclusion.  These are the "ruled".  If they can mount a successful competition with one of the rulers, they can move up the status hierarchy, but usually the power inequality between the rulers and the mob is so great that its impossible unless the ruling member becomes vulnerable through some accident or incident.  Then they can be torn apart by the mob and replaced. 

This keeps the ruling group focused as they know the mob is always ready to tear them down, but the thing that keeps the mob in discipline is the threat of being "cast out"/exiled/rejected etc.  The so called "shaving off" of anyone who wanders away from the mob or shows undesirable traits, such as independence or "wrongness".  These people are publicly destroyed and stripped of any possible virtues ("character assassination") as an exercise in both raising the fear level of the mob and removing any possible reason any of the mob might be tempted to separate and follow the cast out member into the wilderness.   

The interplay of these particular group behaviours works to keep the mob under the control of the vested authorities in the group and the vested authorities at the mercy of the mob.  

Its interesting to look at historical and current ideological movements and see these behaviours manifest.  The speaker I was listening to cited George Orwell's Animal Farm and a video of Iraqi dictator Sadam Hossain consolidating his power as examples.  

Its interesting that a number of the major religions have all these dynamics encoded into their practices as either historical or as current practice. Its probably pretty easy to find these dynamics in use in tribal societies and any number of historical kingdoms, current day political parties, current political movements, American "Business Culture" practices (Which were derived from East Asian business practices)... pretty much all over where people are forming groups and ruling each other. 

I think the key differences in the "Purity Spiral" dynamic is the nature of the ideological content that the group has formed around.  When the topic of the group is social virtue as is currently being manifest in the gender wars and social justice wars being fought in the American Media/Politics, the only thing that can be competed for is the ownership or authority over the debated "virtues", as expressed by the group members.  Finding new and more extreme ways to signal these virtues is the only effective means of "winning" a competition fought on these grounds.  The other aspect that ramps up the competition is the fact that the mob is so magnified by the social media platforms and recruited from a much larger audience than could otherwise be assembled in a physical "group".  An interesting aspect is also the currency of these groups is "attention". Power is quantifiable in "clicks", "shares", "likes", "followers", "retweets" and other metrics as expressed by the social media platforms.  These are the only way that the mob has to indicate judgement or effectively "vote" for winner of a "competition" between fragments of ideology (and thus the person who is projecting that fragment/thought/meme/action etc). 

 

I'm not sure that any of this is new.  I suspect the same dynamics have been played out since time began for control over groups and membership in groups.  They are all the same mechanisms we find littered through history.  You can observe them form in the school yard as children discover them and figure out how to use them.  The only difference here is the magnifying effect of technology as its being applied in conjunction with these group dynamics.

 

Childlessness and the search for purpose

Just watching the battles between the "modern" vs the "trad" women across social media. 

On one hand you have all the advocates of freedom, fluid identities, speed dating, casual sex etc in the "modern" camp,  while on the other you have the "trad" who espouse traditional family values... which looks like some fantasy roleplay from 1950's Americana.

Let's just start by laughing at both of them. 

The modern group are characterised by their juvenile pursuit of selfish satisfaction without boundaries.  The whole philosophy is about self.  Make yourself happy, follow your own path, discard anyone who disagrees with you, seek your own pleasure, work on yourself blah blah blah.  How many ways can you re-package selfishness and sell it to children.  Somewhere Jiminy Cricket is getting ready to give Pinochio a giant smack across the back of the head. 

The interesting thing is that we are really only reaching the end of the first generation to try this life strategy.  I think it started with the free love and first wave feminism in the 1970's.  They broke away from the horror that was suburban America and tried to create a new way.  This drew from all sorts of radical ideas and started this particular social experiment.   The problems they were reacting to were real and only got worse through the 80's and 90's in middle America.  The age of greed and personal satisfaction were megaphoned by the all saturating media machine and the boundless greed of the political class to exploit social trends for their own benefit. 

Well those people are well into retirement/old age now.  They have almost completed their journeys and are only now able to share the wisdom of what they experienced along the way.  

If you look carefully, there are still two distinct groups within that cohort.  Those who chose a family and those who did not. 

Those who chose the family and went the hippy route took their kids and went "alternative" in all the different variations that idea encompasses.  For many of them, this created an interesting group of kids but they were still "outsiders" to society.  Fringe dwellers.  For some of them who mixed drugs and more extreeme practices, it just destroyed their children. 

But this is the nature of adaptation.  Its only the ones on the outside of the group who have the "nothing to lose" mentality and can pull away from a dying society/group and strike out anew.  They see a future.

Contrast this with the group who chose the childless life paths (or had it forced upon them) who are now well into old age.  Those who collected money along the way are able to purchase care and attention in the high end retirement system, while those who chose the poverty route are dying under a bridge somewhere alone and un-remarked. For them, there is no future, nothing matters. 

And so we get back to sharing wisdom... 

What do they say when asked about their lives? What do the next generation see when they look at them?  The thing is that very few people are willing to say that they made terrible mistakes and wrecked their lives. Most people can only focus on what they think are the best parts of the path they walked... simply because that's all they know.  They cannot tell a different story, they have nothing else to sell.  

On one hand we have the selfish ones who lived a life dedicated to themselves and their pursuit of whatever freedom or bullshit philosophy caught their attention.  They tell the story of wandering around, having adventures, taking drugs, having "moments", going to concerts, meeting "interesting" people etc etc.  When you cook it all down, they simply entertained themselves as best as they could through the long dark of their life. They drifted.  None of it is reproducible.  There is no plan or framework that can be passed on to anyone so they can reproduce the life that was had.  It was all happenstance and accident. Its only the survivors who claim that it was "amazing"... but there were plenty of folk walking the same path that fell along the way.  Its not a formula for a successful life.  There is no measure of succcess, there is no measure of failure... its simply entertain self.  The only measure is internal. Am I happy? Did I get my sugar today? Who sold me my sugar today?

On the other hand you have those who chose family... however well they may have done that...they focused on something other than themselves... even if it was just a little bit.  Those who built more successful families were able to measure their success objectively.  Families are not all the same, some are groups, some are businesses, some are biological families. The pattern repeats.  The stronger "families" are the ones built from biological bonds.  

The family oriented people have purpose shaped by their families.  Their decisions are focused around their families. This is a pattern that parents have passed on to their offspring for a long time. Its a repeatable life plan with infinite variations...but at its core is family.

The interesting point is that the wisdom of either group will emphasis that their life path was the best.

Anyway, the point I'm making is that within the modern vs trad culture battles that are going on are falling around the lines of those who have families and those who don't.  There is a spectrum from tight strong biological families on one end all the way to solitary isolated individuals on the other.  At every point along the spectrum, we see people championing their life choices. Can they all be right? 

The funniest thing is watching the politicians flitting from one group to the next trying to tell them that each is right while not getting sprung at the scam.  Now that the social media companies are playing politics too, they are trying to pick favorites or being manipulated into endorsing one or over others. 

Watching the mob turn on one politician after another and tear down one company after another who tries to play the game is endlessly entertaining.  Schadenfreude/epicaricacy seems to have become an international sport. (I assume it always was... but it seems to be loud and public at the moment... your perceptions may vary)

Honestly, I assume that nothing has actually changed because people are still people.  Just the opportunites to interact with each others and the speed of the interactions has been magnified by technology.  People were still able to be dicks to each other in the olden days.  I think the main aspect that has suddenly changed is the way consequences happen currently. Technology has alleviated much of the fear of consequences at the moment.  I doubt it will continue for too much longer as consequences are about the only thing that has ever forced people to resist the urge to be dicks to each other. 

Avoiding consequence is a common thread through history.  Accepting consequences, shouldering responsibility, fate whatever.  The great circle of life is something that you are aware of at some level.  How people deal with it or deny it or avoid it or run from it or live in ignorance of it is the substance of the vast majority of our literature, justice, politics, monetary system and religions.  

Anyway, the morning ramble is about over.  Understanding consequence and your ability to predict it into the future is a great life skill.  I have this theory about the network effect of consequence being a useful measure of human intellect.  How many steps down any chain of consequence can a person predict before their mental model collapses.  How well can they predict all the outcomes of any decision point and how accurately.  Can they play the long game?  Can they play a longer game than another person?  Must build an experiment to calculate this at some point. 

So to bring the ramble full circle. I find it interesting to see people trying to adapt to "modern" life.  I see the "modern" group and the "trad" group both trying to figure out how to live in the current world.  I don't live in America.  I don't live in a highly urbanised environment.  I don't live in a highly social media environment.  I try to limit my exposure to those petri dishes as I think the chaos factor is very high for the minimal rewards. It takes too much energy and luck to survive in those environments and the quality of life you get is so terribly shitty even when you are winning just makes it not worth playing for average people.  Its only those who are damaged enough to think they are a contender who seek out that lifestyle.  Poor bastards.  Smart enough to play but not smart enough to understand its not worth playing... "Its a trap!".

Once you get outside the dense urban areas, I think the speed of life moves at a more reasonable pace for average people and the majority of them are able to succeed with enough spare resources to share with their family, friends and build a healthy community.  That is until the insanity from the urban areas washes over them... but with some resources under your belt and a community around you, you can weather the storm and adapt, while the urban crazies have nothing and no one.  

I should ramble about my new definitions of bandits, nomads and other predatory life styles that I see emerging.  

If you think about it, banditry is a lifestyle of opportunism.  Similarly nomads move around to follow the opportunities in a harsh environment.  (Slash and burn agriculture has the same pattern) 

If you consider the failure of various low touch law-enforcement cities in the US who are experimenting with the whole "defund the police" and thresholds for shoplifting etc, the people who are living in those environments are simply taking advantage of the opportunities in their environment and becoming bandits. The problem is that banditry has no natural limit.  Thieves steal from other thieves and their is inefficient loss and destruction during the process... so no resources or wealth gets created in the process but after a few cycles, all the resources are scattered and consumed by the process.  The pattern winds down into chaos.  

The stage that they are at is where there is a slow withdrawal of inputs into the system with large retailers (and small) leaving the area.  Once there is no trade into the area, then the bandits will start to consume each other.  Hopefully the politicians who created the system get consumed first... but that's generally not how it happens... it always works through the vulnerable first.

The problem that follows is that the bandits then spread.  They travel from their haven out to rob and pillage surrounding areas.  History has lots of examples of bandit havens and governments that lived well off organised banditry.   Will be interesting to see if this happens with the urban bandit gangs.  If they organise and develop their own self-regulation independant of the current local government.