@hamishb

The arguments are bullshit. But it's all self-justification and rationalization, for the benefit of a dumb audience, anyone who feels a need for a (flimsy) excuse. Same shit, different fascists.

What matters is, how many Americans will fall for it; how many will resist it; what will Canada do if they start a program of interference, or worse?

I come back to the same two questions:

1. Why do people believe nonsense?
2. Can you dissaude people from believing nonsense?

2.a. Can you persuade people to replace nonsense beliefs with good ones: theories consistent with empirical facts?

2.a.i. Can you persuade people that empirical validation matters? Or that it even exists?

As long as people are free to believe what they want, and their motivations are to feel better, or self-treat their paranoia, or whatever other irrational needs drive them, they aren't likely to start acting rationally.

If the world is full of people who are increasingly irrational, desperate, impatient, anxious, scared, angry, delusional, and otherwise prone to erratic impulses… bad things will continue to happen, and they will get continually worse.

So we should figure out how to address this irrationality, I think. Not that's there's much hope. Generally, it just has to burn itself out, like a wildfire.

Too much of the current cultural dynamic is driven by widespread false beliefs about widespread false beliefs. Everybody believes falsehoods about other people believing falsehoods. It's misinformation about misinformation. It's nonsense to the second power.

This problem may be worst on the right, but it's also ubiquitous on the left, in the centre, and everywhere else.

It's not just one nonsense pandemic. It's a whole host of them.

We can't accomplish anything in this quagmire of bullshit. But instead of dealing with it, we're just amplifying and speeding up the production of bullshit.

It strikes me as self-destructive. Cultural suicide.

Do too many cooks spoil the broth? What about too many cultural engineers (technicians, programmers, witch doctors)?

The more I think about the nature and implications of culture, for our collective fates, the more unnerved I get.

Culture is a never-ending experiment. We all live inside it. Everyone influences it, to varying degrees. But no one truly understands. Nor can they: it's too big, too complex.

Likewise, no one can truly control it. Though many try. Using any and all methods, up to and including violence and war.

A few people have tremendous influence. Yet, their efforts rarely have the results they expect, or desire. Everyone is constantly, often uhappily, surprised by how culture changes.

The more we try to change one another, the more the outcomes deviate from our wishes. But still, we try harder, and things get increasingly chaotic and unpredictable.

Is a different approach possible?

@psf

Could a programming language also be considered in light of this principle?

Minimal syntax? Minimal lexical tokens? Focussed on a particular kind of task or problem?

What about data types? Surely there are refined, precise, and specific data types (including classes), but also bloated and complicated ones? And thus a relationship between those types and the programs which operate upon them?

One might consider—and judge—larger applications by the degree to which they honour—if not exhibit—distillation. An application meant to interat with large data models must have a large and diverse set of functions, modules, or sub-programs.

But maintaining a clean separation between the smaller operations, which could be highly distilled, and the larger management tasks, could improve the orderliness and comprehensibility of the composite application.

Sometimes, your enemy’s enemy is also another enemy of yours, wearing a mask of friendliness.

My only advice, to anyone and everyone, is to learn more about the people and things that impact you, and those around you.

Learn how systems work. So that you are less likely to get harmed by them. You might even find a way to contribute. It might help you. It might even make the system better, and less likely to harm others.

Ignorance is a failure mode.