Yes. The Horror. On Quillette, Vincent Harriman and David Kopel worry about "How Availability Cascades are Shaping Our Politics."
Well duh, fellahs! Humans are social animals; we take our cues from our fellows and the people that don't are clinically insane. But, like everything, politicians and culture vultures and priests take advantage of that. They often submit to the temptation for money, power and the love of beautiful women.
When all available information seems to indicate that everyone is falling in line with a certain belief, we may be under the influence of an “availability cascade.” Today, our politics and public discourse are being poisoned by availability cascades. Thanks partly to partisan domination of the media and academia, many people are being pressured into publicly espousing beliefs that are not their own.
Well, bust my buttons! I had no idea!
Look. We humans are social animals. The point of that is that we obtain information and ideas from others -- steal 'em fair and square. That is why, e.g., we how have LED lights in our homes instead of good old-fashioned tungsten lamps. Or good old-fashioned Standard Oil lamps like you see in western movies. Or candles like you see in modern series about the Victorian era using modern low-light video cameras.
But how do we figure out which ideas are good and reliable and which ideas are just lies and clickbait put out in the interest of some political or cultural power base?
We don't.
Yep, it's tough. We humans lurch from one mistake to another, and if we are lucky, really lucky, the mistakes are small ones rather than catastrophic disasters with a gigantic butcher's bill to pay.
This means that, time after time, we gullible sheep are led into disasters by confidence men and tricksters. And yes, every politician and journalist is a confidence man and a trickster, especially including Donald Trump and Joe Biden and all the media ships at sea. And especially the journalists giving us the latest from the Daily Sewer about how Donald Trump is in league with the Russians, but how a Joe Biden that has actually taken money from Russians and Ukrainians and Chinese through his bagman Hunter is just middle-class Joe.
Yeah! But what do we do about it? Well, we could start by reducing the power of government, dear educated Gentry. Because then the effect of each availability cascade, or media panic, or political campaign would be limited to the fact that politicians and activists had only a limited power to screw up our lives with the latest lie.
Oh dear, I forgot. What would be the point of a government with limited power if it didn't have lots of lovely Jobs for Gentry? Sorry I spoke.
Here's an idea. All these Trump rallies, Trump Car Parades, Trump Boat Parades are also "availability cascades." Someone started a Trump Parade on Facebook months ago and now every Tom Dick and Harry wants to organize a Trump Parade, complete with flags and banners and good cheer and laughter. So are the Trump "availability cascades" good or evil?
I was watching an interview of Trump rally attendees: one was a retired plumber, another a single-mom with a business, another a Hispanic family with a family business.
These people are anybodies, that have created a small world for themselves that works for them and theirs.
But that doesn't work for educated Gentry that have gone through the full education system with advanced degrees. An advanced degree sets you up for some sort of formal job in a hierarchy where specialized knowledge is required. But without that hierarchy with its specialized jobs you are just another educated yokel at Starbucks looking to create a niche for yourself.
Do you see the Horror in the situation of the highly educated person? You are nothing unless the society has provided an abundance of nice comfy Jobs for educated Gentry. God forbid you should have to go out into the world and discover some useful work on your own.
Look at the situation of our latest conservative hero, Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett. Justice Barrett has always been the model student: top of her class; clerking for Justice Scalia; law professor at Notre Dame Law School; federal appeals court judge; and now Associate Justice of the US Supreme Court.
But what if Barrett had had to find her way outside the established institutions, creating a job by her own intelligence, using some instinct that sniffed out a service that wasn't being met?
Something outside the "availability cascades" of politics, established institutions, media, and Daily Sewers?
OK, she would have done fine. But we wouldn't see her name up in lights.
See, my belief is that the real work of the world goes on outside the media and the established institutions, From Zero to One, as Peter Thiel has it.
If you like, the real work of the world is to start a new "availability cascade" inventing something useful that nobody ever thought of before. I think of young Jack Rockefeller the store clerk looking at those barrels of oil out back. Or What Do You Care What Other People Think by Richard Feynman.
Or, like the Trump voter, you can just be a plumber, just start your own little business, that never really amounts to much but does put bread on the table and does give you a certain dignity.
Honest toil indeed. But where is the ambition, the honor, the vanity in honest toil?
The decision is clear. Either start your own "availability cascade" or follow someone else's "availability cascade." You make the choice.
No comments:
Post a Comment