On: Revolt of the Public
Episode: N/A
Date: May 25, 2020
Background: Author and former CIA analyst.
Key Takeaways:
- More information = more uncertainty.
- Previous sources of false sense of certainty lose credibility (institutions, people).
- More complexity = easier to break than to fix.
- Easier to figure out what you are against, than what you are for.
- Easier to break the system down, than to figure out how to fix it.
- De-scale = shorter time scale = experimentation = clearer feedback.
- Pursue certainty through trial and error.
- Replicate success, avoid spread of failure.
Key Subjects:
- Industrial age: stable institutions and authority.
- Hierarchies formed that were in line with social and political environment.
- Power structure relied on a monopoly of information.
- Credibility of experts was high.
- Predictions went largely unchallenged.
- Nobody had the ability to talk back credibly.
- [More cohesive population, controlled mass communication channels].
- Current age: stability of institutions and authority under attack.
- Loss of information monopoly.
- Information revolution started around 2001, 2002 (Internet).
- Provided people with alternative information source.
- Credibility of experts started to suffer.
- (Bad) predictions more easily and credibly challenged.
- May tilt balance towards distrust of experts.
- Information revolution started around 2001, 2002 (Internet).
- Increased awareness of elite behavior (transparency).
- Before: elite behaves/are thought to behave according to a higher moral code.
- Now: elite behaves like everyone else (or worse).
- Loss of information monopoly.
- Nihilism: less interest in ideologies.
- Fractured society: loss of general societal cohesion.
- Small world: people have lost many of their communities (church, family, locality, etc.)
- Big world: people are more incentivized (at least on social media) to polarize (shout to get attention).
- No vision, no solutions.
- It’s easier to focus on what you are against than what you are for.
- Tactical freeze: there is nothing to negotiate about (you can’t offer any alternatives).
- [Coming up with a solution is too difficult.]
- [Figuring out how to intervene in complex systems is too difficult.]
- [See also “Complexity — David Krakauer, Part 6“].
- No solutions -> destruction becomes the only viable option.
- It’s not: and therefore give me this.
- It’s: and therefor you have to go (try something, anything, different).
- Desire to purify, cleanse.
- Fractured society: loss of general societal cohesion.
- Need to de-scale.
- Distance.
- Frustration with lack of impact.
- Too many layers of bureaucracy.
- Return to the personal sphere.
- Information and decisions are more closely linked.
- Acknowledge that route to certainty is through trial and error.
- Success can be perceived and replicated.
- Failure does not implicate the entire system.
- Distance.