Hard To Believe, Yet True

Despite the recent economic problems demonstrating that those in charge are not sufficiently competent and that our information is largely false, nevertheless it is likely that people will react to the statements in my blog with "this is hard to believe". Here is why they react that way:

Human beings start out in life with the impression that people in authority are competent.

This is because almost any parent knows more about the world and life than their children, at least until high school age (and usually beyond that). Just having gone through most life experiences before, gives a parent an overwhelming advantage in knowledge of the best course of action. And at home and in school, parents and teachers go to lengths to establish that authorities know best for everyone - because such an attitude is necessary for them to be able to effectively do their jobs.

So, human beings are all conditioned early in life, to believe that authority figures know best, and are competent at what they do.

And, for simlar reasons as the above, authority figures want to preserve this impression in the adult population, and go to lengths to give an impression of competence - using sales techniques and communication media to do so. This is why the lack of competence of most of our authorities and managers is not known to most people, and is rarely taken into account in any planning or overall philosophy.

Furthermore, the one thing that most hides the general incompetence of human beings in current human society, is their general competence in past eras that focused on the physical world.

In other words, it seems hard to believe that modern human society contains vast amounts of false information, because humans continue to survive, reproduce and flourish. However, that is because their methods of survival were developed over several millions of years, and are not dependent on any of the aspects of modern human society.

Consumable products are produced using the same basic methods, now instinctual, developed for hunting and gathering over millenia.

And, whenever an individual's or a group's survival is challenged, they stop their normal social interactions and activities, and focus on using their excellent human survival skills to correct the situation. Then, they go back to modern human activities.

Even in modern society, a human's basic requirements are food and shelter/clothing, the creation of which now occupies a small portion of the time of human beings. Thus, all the rest of their activities can be failures, and all their information be false, and as long as they have 3 meals a day, and can sleep in shelter, then the rest of their live can be represented as whatever the most successful propagandists of society say it is.

The Myth of Rational Thought

Due to survival instincts, humans always:
- React to their immediate environment (this includes communications from other humans about events elsewhere)
- Think linearly about one thing that is the focus of their thought
- React emotionally based on survival instincts, NOTE that since this is instincual and emotional, it is NOT conscious and since the human mind is exceeding poor at examining its own behavior, no human ever realizes it is doing this. (In fact, examining one's own behavior and the working of one's mind would be exceedingly bad for survival, as it would be a constant distraction from reacting to the environment).

These things happen all the time - 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, in average people, and in brilliant scientists.

The myth constantly being sold to people is that they react rationally to individual events in their life, and to larger events.

The Masking Problem

The major problem of our time is that every solution is now paralleled by the advocacy of its opposite. This is because such advocacy leads to income (and/or power), even when wrong, because people are looking for solutions, and the advocacy of both sides prevents authorities from discerning which solution is a fraud, and which is a solution. Thus, the counter-advocacy itself operates to prevent detection.

This can come about not only due to fraud, but also due to well meaning, but inept problem solving, or else due to holding an "us" and "them" viewpoint that assumes that the opposite of "their" viewpoint must be correct (this results in the opposing viewpoint automatically being posited for any viewpoint of any group that is opposed by another group).

This same effect now also works to bury quality artists amongst a sea of "no talents", because these "no talents" simply mimic the "buzz" and "hype" that used to surround talented artists. One can now find endless enthusiastic rave reviews for artists having no talent whatsoever - which makes finding quality artists actually more difficult than in the days when access to the market was restricted.

We Cannot Recognize A True Answer

I'll start with one of the biggest principles of "why things sometimes don't work", which is also one of the biggest secrets of how modern society works.

Those who don't know the answer to a question, also do not know which proposed answer is correct.

Example : You are walking in a business district, and you realize that you have an appointment at 2 pm, but you forgot your watch. Two men are about to pass you, and you ask for the time. One looks at his watch and says " 1:50 pm " and the other looks at his and says " 2:05 pm ". Are you late ? Which is correct ?

You might guess that the man with the expensive suit and expensive watch might have the more accurate time, but on the other hand, my wife's expensive dress watch is always wrong, while I have had $10 watches that are within a second.

In society, it is not unusual for people to believe the "fanciest" person. A recent study showed that only 25% of the recommendations made by medical doctors have any basis in science whatsoever. But, most people have no way of judging the reliability and accuracy of medical information - any more than they can judge whether their auto mechanic or TV repairman is giving them an accurate diagnosis (assuming that they are not experienced in those fields).

When the question involves such a physical world reality as health or the time-of-day, then a trial and error process allows us to identify reliable sources of information in the long run. But when the question is about a more abstract topic or a more general area, then we often never know whose answer was really correct. Whether it is political leaders, corporate executives, or sports team managers, one cannot rewind time and test different options to see if they would actually have worked out better.

So, our society is filled with convincers, persuaders, salesmen, and marketing consultants, who tell us what is the "correct" answer to our questions. They give the impression of competence, and possess self-confidence, but in areas where there is no quantifiable physical data, that is all they can provide.

Controlling modern human society is about controlling the characterization of the situation.

People who are asking a question, do not know the correct answer, otherwise they would not need to ask. So, they have no real way of recognizing which is the correct answer.
Since human society has been so specialized for 10,000 years, individuals have been dependent on others' correct answers, but have no way to recognize them, until it is too late.

** Perhaps the biggest characteristic of human society is the DENIAL of this situation.

This also applies to the media, who thereby provide vast amounts of information that they cannot verify, since they cannot have expertise in all those areas. Since the entire media is depedent on this fraud, none of them can expose it (or even recognize it) without losing their livelihood. It would undercut the entire concept of the media, who are the only ones who could deliver the message, and so such an action is avoided by rationalizations like "well we do some good, so it is okay in balance".

The more recent media mental technique to avoid this conflict entirely is to "present both sides". This allows the media to avoid any assessment of truth, and allows them to continue in the communication business.

This relegates those issues to the condition of being a sports conflict, causing viewers to take sides, and thus truth is now determined by group affiliation, rather than facts. Thus we affilate ourselves with a group's characterization of the situation. Since those groups are aimed at acquiring influence and power, their characterizations of the situation are entirely formulated to appeal, rather than to be true. The more appealing characterization wins power.

Thus human society is moving towards control by the most appealing characterization of the situation (which is not necessarily the most positive, in fact the most negative usually is the most effective, cf triggering the fire alarm).