A popular topic on this side of the great divide is how much of what we see from the ruling class is directed and how much is emergent. Put another way, how much of it is the result of conscious coordination from some central source and how much is just the mentality of the swarm. Those who like conspiracy theories and simple answers prefer the coordination model, while those with experience in complex human systems prefer the emergent behavior approach.
Of course, both can be true. Elites in the anglosphere have been enamored by what is called nudge theory for a while now. the 2008 book Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness was a big hit with the managerial class, as it suggested a feminine way to compel social behavior. Instead of ordering people around, elites would use their power over the institutions to “nudge” people in the preferred direction with positive incentives, rather than force.
As is so often the case, Nudge Theory is really an old idea tarted up with managerial class jargon that comes from the graduate schools. The tax code in America has been used this way long before the nudge idea. The mortgage interest deduction is a nudge toward home ownership, rather than renting. Business gets tax breaks for capital purchases when the economy is flagging. The government food pyramid is a way to nudge people toward one form of consumption over another.
The food pyramid is a good example of how conspiracy and emergent behavior work together in a mass society. The people behind the food pyramid are the giant agricultural concerns that control the food supply. A high carbohydrate diet is more profitable than a healthy diet, so they bribe government officials and academic researchers to promote the high carb diet. At the same time, people actually believe in the “low fat” diets now so no nudging is required.
We are seeing this with the Covid drama. The inner party has finally realized they have a serious problem on their hands with Covid theater. People have figured out that they can get two weeks out of work by claiming to have Covid, so the great winter sick-out is starting to harm the economy. Of course, the contradictions and lies about Covid are undermining their ability to tell future lies. Biden’s last speech on Covid came with a message to the media to cool it on Covid.
The White House is pushing a message to the media, which they expect the media to blast through their megaphones. You are starting to see planted stories about how Omicron is harmless and a good sign. On the other hand, the hive mind of the media has been tuned to spread fear about Covid. The front page of party organs like the New York Times are organized around Covid theater. The result is a weird whipsaw effect where the message swings wildly back and forth.
Covid theater is useful in exploring the hive mind aspects of this age. All of a sudden, tens of millions of normal people are made aware of the fact that many of their associates are not just liberal, but possibly insane. The people wearing ceremonial face gear are exempting themselves from the normal tribe and declaring their allegiance to the crazy tribe. One sort of emergent behavior, triggered by the Covid conspirators, is causing new emergent behavior among the healthy.
Those big tanker trucks you see on the road are a good model to think about when considering this stuff. Inside those tanks is either compartments or what would look like a baffles if you peeled back the skin. The point of the internal structures is to give the tank rigidity but also prevent the fluid inside from sloshing around. A ton of water sloshing forward when braking would create a tremendous amount of force. The tankers are designed to keep the contents stable in transport.
That is a good way to think of society. The hive mind, the emergent behavior is like the fluid inside one of those tankers. When the ruling class jams on the brakes or takes a sudden turn, general opinion can swing wildling in one direction. The initial Covid panic is a good example. The baffling is supposed to be local institutions, community and the traditions of society. They are supposed to put a brake on the wild swings of opinion caused by the sudden lurching of the ruling class.
This is the proper image for modern America. It is a tanker truck racing down the road half full of fluid. During the Trump years it swung from one side of the road to the other, in part due to the driver and due to the sloshing about inside the tank. The Biden turn at the wheel was supposed to stabilize things, but every reaction on their part to stabilize things has caused a new action inside the tank. Trump enjoyed the ride, while Biden is hanging on like prisoner to the machine he is driving.
The point is, much of what looks like conspiracy is just wild reactions to events that the elites set off by a legitimate effort to nudge society in a preferred direction. Just as war plans do not survive contact with the enemy, elite conspiracies do not hold up very long after contact with mass society. Covid is revealing just how little control our ruling elites have over their creations. They unleashed a panic that has become a bizarre subculture they no longer can control.
This does not settle the question at the start, but it does suggest the question is not all that important. Unless you are inclined to believe that the people “really in charge” are super-geniuses able to play four-dimensional chess, yet not realize you are onto them, it is hard to see the hand of design in the current madness. On the other hand, emergent behavior does not explain the players who are fortuitously positioned to profit from the madness unleashed by our rulers.
Perhaps the way to think about is as a process that evolves and two of the forces driving the evolution are conspiracy and emergent behavior. The former is locked in on short term gain without considering the long term consequences. The later forces are just the normal social forces weaponized by the collapse of that internal baffling that comes from strong local community and traditions. The empire is a runaway train and all of us, the engineers included, are just along for the ride.
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People need to turn off the TV.
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Social media is worse than TV and has been for awhile. Any breed of crazy can find people to reinforce her craziness on social media. Without Facebook and Twitter several of the crazy fads would have already died out. One of the earliest signs to me Covid had triggered something truly crazy in the left was very early on when I read a Twitter thread from the woman who runs Mother Jones. She lived in San Francisco and needed to visit her elderly parents in San Diego. She was asking her followers if it was better for her to fly or drive seven hours. If she drove she was going to wear adult diapers so she didn’t have to risk getting Covid in a gas station bathroom. Most of her replies treated that as a sane idea and suggested she do it.
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Social media is by far the worst, especially for females. TV is just plain unwatchable particularly now with virtually every commercial, no matter what station, populated with various joggers, chinks, pajeets and every other form of mud, with the occasional White. Extremely exasperating.
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Mossad managed to severely hobble the Persians’ centrifuges with a few thumb drives. Why can’t someone permanently nuke the social media sites? And when the next (((Zuckerberg))) tries to build a replacement, do it again until the message is received loud and clear.
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That’s just her playing hero. Look at these great sacrifices I am making! That’s what they all think they are doing. I openly mocked my uncle, retired doctor, early on for wearing a mask alone in his car. I said oh yeah your a big hero like the guys at Normandy. I have never spoken to him again
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Why would anyone downvote turning off the tv?
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There is a sizable contingent on this site and others where hearing something you don’t want to hear invokes a downvote. Doesn’t matter if its true or false. Feelings, nothing more than…feelings.
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the progs ae finding out that reality isn’t like TV. they think they just have to sit in the big chair and shout out orders, and the economy and state will just “work” the way they want. this isn’t like a multiple choice test, you will not get lucky and guess the right thing to do. anything that is not “right” is by definition, “wrong”; and that is a very narrow path indeed. and of course, after a couple of “bad” guesses, you will not be getting back to “right”, ever. and that’s why this madness isn’t sustainable, these bozos really have no clue how to run the place. they are actually going to break the stranglehold of modernity, and free many many people – eventually.
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I agree, but I am also frustrated with how many things these loons have managed to narrate into existence and how much damage they’ve already done. A lot of them may never be fixed or rolled back.
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A major component of the breakdown of the Western political system, especially in the US, is that we have a political class with absolutely no experience in practical matters, such as running a business or even doing actual work for a living. This makes them very easy for the oligarchs (who do have quite a lot of practical experience) to manipulate.
For the super rich, this system is working very well indeed.
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“Those who like conspiracy theories and simple answers prefer the coordination model, while those with experience in complex human systems prefer the emergent behavior approach.”
Bias much?
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how is that statement biased? it looks like “on one hand…on the other” kind of description.
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https://thegrayzone.com/2021/12/24/leaked-files-syria-psyops-astroturfing-breadtube-covid/
They like to use “independent” media voices to push their narrative. I suspected this for a long time, but sometimes it’s hard to prove that a pattern you see has control from the top behind it. Of course the rubes watching and funding breadtube will be slow to see the puppet strings
You see similar with witter when all the blue tick people start pushing the same lines
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Don’t forget the White Helmets’ faked chemical attacks and the Syrian Human Rights Observatory, which is run by some guy in a flat in Leeds, England.
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It’s not just Syria, the breadtube thing is new to me, but apparently is big among UK progs, I watched a few of the trannys videos, he likes to give the impression that it’s an open look at a particular issue, but like the mainstream left, important information or ideas will be excluded the rubes won’t see this because all they read is the Guardian or the BBC, they don’t know what they don’t know
Basically it’s the left for Hillary supporters, the working suckers won’t be getting a pay rise, if he wants better pay, join the millatery and butcher Arabs for the (((empire)))
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So when is this runaway train going to jump the tracks? These clowns are now floating a vax mandate to fly domestically (with fauci admitting it’s just another form of coercion) and (((ezekial emanuel))) is touting removal of fed benefits for the unvaxxed. The dreaded omicron symptoms might include runny nose, sore throat, cough etc. Gee, when have I ever had those symptoms before? The committed covidians lap this swill up, but there’s definitely some conspiracy evil floating around as well. 2022 is shaping up to be more fun and games.
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Going to be fun watching the ultra-woke airlines (one in particular) issue refunds to ticket holders who bought tickets without an expectation of having to share private medical information with a public company.
How is a dictate from a senile old man trump Well established HIPPA laws, or a contracted service law (a seat ticket) even legal? What is the mechanism for verification? What about disparate impact as blacks don’t vax (but they do fly)?
Slosh, slosh, slosh.
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HIPAA laws apply to medical providers, not patients. In essence, the law requires a certain level of security and privacy from doctors. It doesn’t at all require it from patients. The basic principle is that patients can be as public or private about their health as they want, but care providers must be private. Therefore, it’s not ever a problem for a person to broadcast their health issues, should they choose, but it would be a huge problem if a care provider broadcast that same person’s problems. Thus, HIPAA laws would require that an airline, should it want to know someone’s vaccination status, must solicit that status from the patient instead of the care provider. HIPAA doesn’t prohibit the disclosure of medical information, per se, it merely limits and regulates how medical providers share it.
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Yes. This was basically what my employer said when they coerced everyone to get jabbed. Basically, this particular violation of privacy is not a violation of law because we’re demanding you, personally, tell us about this private health matter.
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“What about disparate impact as blacks don’t vax (but they do fly)?”
I live in Mississippi (though I’m not from here) and I often ask myself the question, “What would happen if the government literally, in reality, forced all Mississippi blacks to get vaccinated?” Well, I’m also a school teacher, and my black (male) students ALL know every detail about the old Emmett Till case. In fact we just had this random talk in my fifth period class about 3 weeks ago. They also believe that Whitey, deep down, wants to kill all of them (because Emmett Till dindu nuffin). (They didn’t tell me this in so many words, but the thought was sort of floating around the room. Pretty uncomfortable, actually.)
So; long story short, there is no way the Brandon administration will ever make all American blacks get the jab. If they tried it there would be even more blood in the streets.
My theory is that the screws will be turned on Whitey and we’ll be forced to take it. But the black folk will be “declared vaccinated” by Joe Brandon. White people will accept this “disparate impact” and continue their drudgery until they can get their hands on their 401k money and their pensions.
The long-term effects of eating crap sandwiches can be seen in what happened to the good people of the Soviet Union.
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Totally agree. I’ve thought for some time, there’d be a carve out for joggers and Whitey will bear the brunt. Will actually be surprised if it doesn’t happen. More fallout from worship of the holy jogger.
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The New Democratic platform moved from
“Nudge”
to
“I have altered the deal. Pray I do not alter it any further”
So quickly I barely noticed.
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That feeling when you realize 2022 is “2020, too.”
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I don’t believe elites are 4d chess players, they simply don’t have a consensus on how to run things, that’s why the press can’t make up its mind on which narrative to follow. Not every one of them is in on the vaccines, some want to end the pandemic, others want to make money out of it, others want to reduce the population(yes, those people do exist, it’s not a conspiracy theory)
i also find this sentence to be accurate & funny:
“All of a sudden, tens of millions of normal people are made aware of the fact that many of their associates are not just liberal, but possibly insane.”
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I agree with this and it’s why I’m not quite on board with the idea that that the Bidens and Faucis of the world are just marionettes for some black hand. We are daily confronted with evidence that the leaders of our financial systems, our media, our education industry, and our government, i.e. the Cloud People, are hopeless slaves to emergent group thought. Given that, from where would this cabal of Bond villains perpetuate itself?
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The cabal of Bond villains perpetuates itself at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Tony Fauci’s NAAID, Pfizer, DARPA, and John Hopkins University—-and there is a long list of similarly entitled and entrenched parasites on the human immune system.
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jpb: I think you and KGB are both correct. On the one hand, there IS a certain amount of coordination and behind-the-scenes string pulling. On the other hand, as Zman’s excellent post explores, you have a mixture of official ‘nudging’ and uncontrolled emergent behavior.
But behind it all, I’m continually following odd lines and bits and pieces, seemingly utterly unrelated or contradictory, and tracing them back and finding a similar vortex or two. It’s looking more and more that reality is like one of Glen Beck’s drawings (and he really is nuts).
“elites … simply don’t have a consensus on how to run things”
Diversity is never a strength, but diversity in the ruled or working class can be managed in either federation or empire. Diversity in the ruling class is always a harbinger of death for any civilization.
Many factions of our post-American ‘elites’ have very little in common with each other. They have no fundamental agreement on civilizational mission. The mission which comes closest to uniting them (not ALL are on board) is to loot white civilization before the other factions clean everything out. Climate change and covid hysterias pushed by ‘elites’ can be seen as attempts not only to build preference cascades to stampede us prole cattle in profitable ways, but as attempts to stampede themselves into unity. If they don’t hang together, they will hang separately.
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One very green shoot: prior to the Covid madness I thought the “Don’t Tread on Me” stuff was just residual frontier romanticism, a way to con normies into buying Gadsen Flag mudflaps. But if you look at the way Americans have reacted and resisted compared to the way the some European countries (and old Crown holdings like Australia) just caved, it’s a little heartening. Of course, the media being as duplicitous as they are, they are no doubt underreporting resistance even in supposedly compliant nations. I haven’t been abroad since this started, and short of a mushroom cloud forming over the Sydney Harbor they’re likely to keep it under wraps.
As to the point of whether it’s intentional or not, there’s an old saw about things never going perfectly right or perfectly wrong without a plan. Things went perfectly wrong with the “Two Weeks” of Covid and the Summer of Venerating the Boot-lipped Cro-Magnon formerly known as George Floyd. But it hardly matters. An animal’s intention hardly matters when it has your limb in its jaw. Whether it’s probing, scared, defending its young, or just hungry, you gotta stop it or the damage will just get worse.
How do you stop it? I don’t exactly know, but the enemy is frail and crazy, and even the hordes it imported are turning against it (the male minority cohort, at least). Biden, as Nick DiPaolo observed, is the first man who could potentially be assassinated via loud bullhorn. No, he’s not in charge, but the fact that they even made him the puppet shows they’re incapable of even playing checkers, let alone chess.
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Maybe don’t even try to stop it. Turn on, tune in, drop out.
Two and a half years ago my mother having a cough would not have resulted in large swaths of my family canceling dinner plans and insisting on masks in the house. I could have resisted and called the women braindead and their menfolk pussies, but I’m not playing their game of react-to-the-media. I’m just biding my time until I can find a good opportunity to help tear the whole system apart.
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Marko: Yes – just refuse to play the game. Oh, you can agree and amplify. But simultaneously smile, and continue to do exactly as you please (go around unmasked and unvaxxed).
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Minorities (males and females) are not fighting back but they are simply nodding yes to the authorities while ignoring every rule and doing as they please.
Back in June 2020 the cbc ran a story, basically brown & black people are dying from & catching COVID at an enormously higher rate than white or east asian people.
It’s really the first good look into our 3rd world future. That’s exactly the third world, non white attitude.
White women think they can bark out orders and all the beta men will submit. But we saw this time that only white people, and a few POC midwit strivers reacted.
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There needs to be a caveat.
The United States resistance has been largely regional and often generational. If you take out the South/Midwest and X’ers and Boomers, you see very little difference between Americans and “Americans” and Europeans in their servility.
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Jack Dobson: Agree. We haven’t had any of the mass covid protests in America that I’ve seen regularly in Europe and Australia. Oh, a few small pushbacks in draconian New York, but I don’t give a damn about anyone in New York (sorry to anyone here from there, but not sorry). It’s hard for me to accurately judge just who is and who is not a true believer by their public behavior. All the retail workers here in the DFW area are masked as a condition of employment, and they all have door signs saying mask required if unvaxxed, but there’s no longer any enforcement or an employee making a show of wiping down carts.
I still see some people doing both masking and wiping, generally middle-aged and older Whites or south and east Asian women (but again, I’m not the best judge of age by appearance – plenty of people I assume are my age or older are actually younger, just fatter or frailer and more wrinkled). I also theorize that a certain amount of peer pressure is at work among the younger people – when I first returned to the gym in June about half the people were masked. Now it’s only a tiny handful of south or east Asians.
The contradictions and confusion are a good thing. The Ruling Class controls everything, especially the propaganda organs, and if unified and on the same page they would be far more dangerous. As it is, there are multiple power centers often at odds with one another and sometimes unable to coordinate. The psychosis unleashed with Covid has rattled some of the saner factions, who wanted to depose Trump, snap up goodies and grab power, and then return to normal. It is not possible because the madness is so ingrained and widespread. Again, this is a good thing. We have seen how unhinged and disorganized the enemy is now.
As others have pointed out here, the largely female Cultural Revolution dead-enders eventually had to be shot dead when the craziness was deemed over. While it (probably?) won’t happen here, the Ruling Class eventually will have to use the pimp hand on the Covidians. Mass institutionalization and psychotropic prescriptions probably are on tap.
Finally:
” The mortgage interest deduction is a nudge toward home ownership, rather than renting. ”
This particular nudge has been called off. Ruling Class consensus now is home ownership is evil (for the Dirt People).
“
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Looks like Sloppy Joe’s “vaccine” mandate will go to the Supreme Court. They’ll probably cave. I hope my workplace pays for my weekly tests, because I sure as hell ain’t.
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So… if they insist that you pay for them…. what? You’ll quit?
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Screw it. I’d rather not work, and I bet a lot of productive people feel the same way. Ready to starve and go homeless rather than cuck to the covidians. Life without dignity has no value.
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I mean, these people want me dead anyway, as far as I can tell. Fine, I’m ready to die. Ante up.
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Yes–the only theory I can find that explains the last two plague years is those bastards want us dead!
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I’ve noticed this shift in myself as well. I wonder how prevalent it is in our people, because if there are enough people who would rather die than live under this current regime, they’ve got a serious problem on their hands.
Paintersforms: My husband has to travel for work next week. He didn’t ‘negotiate’ but simply told them he would not fly (it’s an incubator for illness at the best of times, he won’t wear a mask, and chimpouts at the airports and mid-flight are endemic). So he’s driving 2 days down for a 3 day trip and then 2 days drive back. And he’s not taking official leave. Of course, with all the flight cancellations due to purported coof, he jokes he’ll probably end up being the only one there.
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“Just as war plans do not survive contact with the enemy, elite conspiracies do not hold up very long after contact with mass society.”
The life of Napoleon Bonaparte is a really good example of this. In short, his rise to power was only possible because of mass dissatisfaction with first the house of Bourbon, then with the revolutionaries. He was finally done away with once the masses tired of his imperialism. What’s most interesting is that he was, for a time, the most powerful man in Europe, and his influence continues to this day. However, his plans and his opponents’ plans were ultimately made or broken by the masses. It just goes to show that the elites are more akin to stage properties than to gods. They don’t really have much power, they simply act like they do.
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Or Stalin and his attack dog Lavrentiy (sp?) Beria for a more recent example. The communists plans for establishing themselves only worked until a real badass came through. A pair of sick bastards like that could only rise in that type of environment. That metrosexual twerp from South America whose name sounds like a gourd species, Che Guevara, was another one.
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A contemporary example of an ‘elite conspiracy’ and carefully ‘nudged’ emergent behavior that survives today is the AIDS hoax as a trillion dollar tit for scientific and medical research, Big Pharma profit, managerial employment, and bureaucratic power. https://www.amazon.com/Real-Anthony-Fauci-Democracy-Childrens/dp/1510766804
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“…. not just liberal, but possibly insane….”
Love it!
I’ve always understood “emergent behavior” to refer to behavior of complex systems which is not predictable from analyzing the individual lower-level components which make it up.
Included in the notion of emergent systems is that qualities emerge which are unexpected: they exhibit traits and characteristics that weren’t evident in the component systems, or predictable from them.
Thus the concept of emergent behavior necessarily includes the connotation of being new, unexpected, and surprising.
From that it would seem to follow that anyone attempting to manipulate a complex system— for example, rulers who decide to impose restrictions on the behavior of an entire State or Nation, in an effort to slow the spread of a virus— are almost certain to encounter effects they weren’t prepared for: “We never saw THAT coming!”
So suddenly the emergent reality is not just surprising and unpredictable, but baffling: “What the heck do we do next?”
Which would seem to be where our would-be rulers find themselves today.
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The perils of 4-D chess: or “Where TF did THAT come from?”
I’ve always understood “emergent behavior” to refer to behavior of complex systems which is not predictable from analyzing the individual lower-level components which make it up.
Included in the notion of emergent systems is that qualities emerge which are unexpected: they exhibit traits and characteristics that weren’t evident in the component systems, or predictable from them.
Thus the concept of emergent behavior necessarily includes the connotation of being new, unexpected, and surprising.
From that it would seem to follow that anyone attempting to manipulate a complex system— for example, rulers who decide to impose restrictions on the behavior of an entire State or Nation, in an effort to slow the spread of a virus— are almost certain to encounter effects they weren’t prepared for: “We never saw THAT coming!”
So suddenly the emergent reality is not just surprising and unpredictable, but baffling: “What the heck do we do next?”
Which would seem to be where our would-be rulers find themselves today.
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The true story of how the lockdown disaster originated in the science project of a 14 year old girl. https://www.zerohedge.com/political/how-covid-lockdown-fanatics-took-over-world
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jpb: Fascinating. Thanks for the link. Aaaannnnd . . . . it’s a south Asian and a Juice (with links back to Bill Gates). Every. Single. Time.
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Good article, thanks.
Some epidemiologists have been insisting from the jump that:
1) the virus is going to spread: that’s what viruses do. Just like Blacks riot; viruses spread.
2) it may spread quickly, or more slowly. But sooner or later, everyone’s going to be exposed to it. You can slow down the spread, but it’s not possible to stop it.
3) and it could even be the case that a faster spread is better, since natural immunity is achieved sooner the faster the virus spreads.
4) and at the same time it’s spreading, it’s also mutating; again, that’s what viruses do. Generally, they become more contagious but less destructive. So mutations are nothing to worry about.
5) so shutting down the economy, and mandating masks and social distancing, is not just futile—- since it’s not going to stop the virus from spreading— it’s positively harmful: not just economically, but in terms of mental-health: we’re social creatures, prolonged isolation is not good for us.
So: unless you’re in a high-risk category, it doesn’t make sense to worry about getting Covid. It’s very unlikely to kill you.
And if it does…. hey, it was bound to happen sooner or later.
Death will either be extinction— like falling into a deep sleep and never waking up— or the greatest adventure you’ll ever have. What’s not to like?
I’ve noticed a change in COVID response from some of the true crazies.
The COVID-crazy relatives I saw over Christmas were saying that the new rules “don’t make sense”, whereas 6 months ago it was life and death to keep people out of the cookware aisle at WalMart and in the essentials aisles only. They were still afraid of COVID but took their masks off inside.
It’s a very bizarre situation. Would be nice if they realized the joke, but I think it’s really just a sign that the media (and ruling class) narrative is changing.
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They’re also all triple vaxxed
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B125: I still see people masked alone in their cars. There was a lady out walking in the sun yesterday, alone, wearing a mask. And there are still a handful of people at the gym who wear masks (exclusively east or south Asians). As you note, even if they are rational enough to notice that the official rules are nonsensical, they still refuse to let go of their faith in their little paper face diaper. They are so accustomed to compartmentalizing mutually contradictory inputs that cognitive dissonance feels normal and natural to them. And they simultaneously lack the curiosity and independence of thought that might lead them to further question and research the official narrative. They are supremely content in their ignorance.
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I think there is a more fundamental reason for the current madness. Simply put, we are persistently electing actual idiots and crooks to public office. Yes, most of the stooges in DC (and even locally) are merely failed actors and marionettes, but they do tangible harm nonetheless. Why do we keep electing the worse of us? Because of a very low quality electorate (i.e. no skin in the game parasites) and the insidious use of public welfare to bribe for cheap votes. This is a systemic dysfunction problem, not a feature of either biology or hallucination. IOW, the problem is not going to go away easily.
Conspiracy porn is an easy distraction to avoid rolling up your sleeves, and the only value in emergent behavior is when it provides the elites with existential motivation to stampede out of here. Bottom line; we’re not going to talk our way out of the mess we’re in. Only tangible action will suffice.
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I’ve often pondered that question myself:
“Why do we keep electing the worse of us?”
I suspect there are multiple factors, operating together:
1) a dumbed-down electorate, made up of people who are weak on critical thinking skills, quick to form an opinion, and unwilling to change it once they’ve committed to it, and operating out of a limited (and often distorted) knowledge base (see 2 below).
2) an ignorance of history, which (human history) allows us to understand human nature and view human behavior from a broad perspective.
3) a tendency to think in terms of monolithic stereotypes: people, ideas, situations are either ‘good’ or ‘bad’.
4) groupthink, and the tendency to want to believe what others in your circle believe.
5) the subtle power of advertising against those susceptible to it; combined with:
6) the fact that the candidate with the most money can put out the most advertising.
The dumber the electorate, the easier they are to fool. And since PC wokeness is inherently dumbing— promoting untrue “facts” regarding the human condition— things are worse than they’ve ever been.
At least our grandparents had the benefit of good old common sense….
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Ooops!
Sorry about the double-post!
It looked like my OP hadn’t gone through….
I think this is important. Our side gets blackpilled because we sometimes imagine “they” are space-lizard, 8-dimensional chess masters. No, they’re mostly mediocre with some outright dolts.
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They can’t even keep their own creepy love affairs secret.
We have a severe case of Locomotive Breath. As the wise flautist once wrote, ‘ol Charley stole the handle, and the train it won’t stop goin’…no way to slow down.
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Re: the local customs, etc. that used to serve as the ‘baffles’ in this tanker (great metaphor). I look at the neighborhood that I’m in… Those old customs were held in place partly by all sorts of small institutions. We had the Legion, VFW posts, lots of churches, ice cream socials, various fraternal orders, and so forth. Also, our neighborhood was originally populated by VERY blue-collar mill workers from Appalachia.
Now, however, the mills are gone and there are no small local institutions, but instead we have a lot of scientists, academics and med school students. Their behavior is extremely hive-mind, and they lurch from crazy to crazier. The baffles that used to be quite tangible are not visible. You would think that this population of super-duper brainiacs would be skeptical and even-keeled, but no. The COVID hysteria IS their set of baffles, it seems. The crazier the restrictions, the more they ‘lean’ on them like the fluid leaning on the baffle fin.
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