Lately I've started to believe that the lack of critical thinking will eventually doom mankind and we're not doing anything about it.
Why logic matters
From the evolutionary standpoint, logical thinking has allowed humans to become the dominant species on Earth despite the physical disadvantages. Instinct and adaptation are just not enough. The ability to make a connection in memory that, within several consequent events, an earlier one causes the later one, and trying to cause it intentionally, has opened a window for creating tools and shelters. By using basic pattern recognition, we've understood that some berries are poisonous, that some metals become soft in fire, that things made out of wood don't sink depending on the shape. We've encoded the information in writing so the descendants wouldn't have to rediscover it. When survival is at stake, learning the truth of how things work is not optional.
There are, of course, some things we historically couldn't know for sure. Why lightning appear, why the Sun is flying, why people with severe injuries never move again. We've made up extravagant theories and cautionary tales, and the most consistent ones became the folklore and eventually religion. For the longest time we've believed that violating certain rules would cause disasters, but with each supposed transgression no divine intervention was observed. Every superstition became a hypothesis to be validated through the scientific method. We've broken the atom, we've sent a probe outside of the Solar System, we've built machines that make other machines. A better understanding of the physical world naturally grants us more freedom within it.
No scientific understanding is complete, of course. A theory is only a theory and awaits to be replaced by a better one. Papers being disproven is not a failure, it's science working as intended by peers superseding one research with another. If something is accepted as a fact, there is generally no good reason to reject it unless there's evidence to the contrary. Things can be uncertain, but there's a difference between making a counterargument and dismissing points one doesn't like.
In the modern world, the demand on thinking increases. House planning, finance management, risk assertion, HR, engineering, choice of production materials, choice of food, choice of social circles. We strive to learn more about the world, because otherwise everything is a hazard to us. Studying allows us to separate imaginary problems from actual problems that intensify over time for as long as they're not resolved.
Even when relying on self-preservation instincts, basic rationality tells us that being in a community is safer and more efficient. This allowed us to isolate tribesmen not only by the factual harm they've caused, but by the potential harm according to their contribution and behavior. It's commonly understood that public stability requires balance between the consensus and individual beliefs.
We've incorporated laws that are intended to be consistent and unbiased. With 'might makes right', the social structure would be changing all the time and require rebuilding everything from scratch on a whim of each new tyrant. On the other hand, 'the needs of many' ensures stability at a risk of stagnation and losing advantageous variety. The current system is not perfect and never claimed to be. But we've learned that by discussing the issues instead of acting on your own we can build trust in an idea of a system that has interests of anyone who chooses to live under it.
One crucial point about ensuring personal and the public's safety is fact-checking. Anyone can say whatever. Anyone can think whatever. But it's dangerous to think something is true or false just because you don't trust anyone who isn't exactly like you, ignoring everyone who can prove your argument has no merit or standing. It's even more dangerous when someone makes a false statement, everyone believes them, and acts accordingly. In the modern age, checking something often requires only a minute of cursory search, but to many even that is too much work. Why research something yourself when an influencer has supposedly done all the research for you. Anti-science and defamation thrive in the lack of moderation, as the entire populace takes something as factual only because someone has shared it, and in turn share it themselves.
Tribal Epistemology
One of the major aspects of human psychology are social needs: safety, knowledge, validation, support. We can't build complex machines alone, and assuring ourselves in our righteousness can only lift doubts for so long. So we form communities, in part, to delegate survival-related tasks, but also to give us the bliss of others approving our life choices.
But we also have little tolerance for when our comfort and harmony is threatened. When someone tells us we're doing something incorrect, it feels less bothersome to avoid hearing from them again, than to think about the risks of long-term consequences. When we feel vulnerable, we seek groups that approve our thinking regardless of its accuracy. If we disagree with a large groupthink, if the opportunity allows, we migrate to a smaller one.
However, more often than not such group formations are self-serving. Rather than to provide a benefit to society as of whole and to its members, these cultures reinforce social alignments, draw the boundary between "us" and "them", and create a faction where subjective truths are the law. You feel welcomed for as long as you follow the narrative. It doesn't matter if the echo chamber is contrarian, tribalistic, or irrational; as long as there's something the members want to be true, the alternative perspectives are kept out.
Communities, villages, fandoms, political parties, are all microsocieties. One can migrate from one society to the other or be a member of many of them. Like living entities, they seek to grow and protect their identity from outside influences. They have authorities, either democratic, representative, or appointed. There are always rules, even if implied. But when everyone agrees on something, one should question who benefits from it. Maybe there's a consensus that suggestions have to follow specific procedures. Or maybe the consensus is that someone outside should be fought against to preserve own honor. Authorities generally don't like when people ask "but why?" or "is it?", and it's a sign that being a member may not be in own interest in the long run.
Dr. Craig Geevarghese-Uffman defines tribal epistemology as a form of groupthink where a community acts as own organism, self-sustaining and confrontational, using circular arguments that self-existence is the merit of belonging. His article talks more about the degradation of Christian communities by the MAGA movement, and I don't know anything else about him, but I believe that this excerpt is of interest here:
"Tribal Epistemology represents a theological mutation that transforms the pursuit of truth into a function of group identity maintenance. In this framework, beliefs, interpretations, and truth claims are evaluated not primarily for their accuracy or faithfulness to divine revelation, but for their utility in maintaining group boundaries, supporting tribal narratives, and reinforcing communal identity. This mutation corrupts both intellectual honesty and spiritual discernment by making group loyalty the ultimate criterion for determining truth. [...] tribal epistemology creates echo chambers where dissent is discouraged and conformity to group narratives becomes more important than fidelity to gospel truth."
—Geevarghese-Uffman, C. (2025). Christianism Lexicon: A Theological & Political Glossary. Common Life Politics. [CommonLifePolitics.com]
Admittedly, the general public is a social circle as well. When you're acting against the common sense, you're seen as a deviant and a threat. This attitude makes it strongly compelling to isolate yourself whenever something goes wrong. But it's important to just consider and admit when you're wrong yourself. The civilization as of whole may be wrong on something, but you can't argue in good faith if you don't understand why are they saying the things they do and they don't know why you say the things you do.
Corruption cores
Political right-wing
The right-wing political thinking is generally described as a position of ensuring social security through conservative enforcement and opposition to equality. The common stances are the support of policies that promote nationalism, financial standing of key players, police surveillance, traditional values, and importance of concepts that are "naturally-derived". The core arguments are about working with what's available and what has worked before, how it can be improved but not replaced.
The right-wing is often composed of people of wealth and active political careers, previously nobles, and in modern age the oligarchy. Due to having privileged families in the past or aggressive business strategies, they have a lot of resources to gather public influence. On one hand, in a healthy society it's expected; someone can be accumulating wealth and spend it on assisting government projects or urban developments in a manner nobody else can. In practice, the rich often aim to get even richer by investing in firms that antagonize the rest of the population, as they don't have much incentive to help others.
While it applies to all politicians in general, a scarier politician is a demagogue who claims to be able to fix everything as long as everyone follows them. People often don't want complex problems to be solved by complex solutions and gravitate towards a vocal strongman who makes a passionate rhetoric about how everything is wrong with the current system and someone is to blame. In reality, these often turn out to be enrichment schemes, and everyone outside of the group that benefits, even some of the supporters, would be suppressed right after the elections.
One of the prevalent aspects of the right-wing movements is the rejection of the value of the global community. They believe the entire nation should follow one order, and that the rest of the world would be better also following that order. They justify wars with national interests, claiming neighboring nations are active or potential enemies. This fearmongering claims to protect the status quo from harm and demonizes foreigners, but often lacks basis of evidence and just validates own xenophobic thinking by exterminating the opposition. When successful, entire cultures get erased to hide the fact of them never being dangerous.
One has to admit that alt-left movements exist just like the alt-right. Everyone being given equal privileges and opportunities, and ensuring public liberties is appealing on paper. However, extremes do happen. Sometimes, liberal activists want to restrain what others can have or can say in the name of fairness, enforce politcorrectness to be "inoffensive" about the reality of the world, and don't like people standing out even if they provide benefits. Forced conformity is sometimes even more dangerous when the argument of maintaining harmony is genuine. But historically, due to left-wing ideologies at least attempting to be democratic, their radicalization is rare in comparison or they shift to the right as soon as they gain authority.
Religious conservatives
Let's follow this train of thought. Being sick makes you weak or dead. Being sick is bad. But nobody knows why people get sick. Something must have caused it, potentially intentionally. Utilizing silver in dishes statistically makes people less sick. So silver has an inexplicable property to combat inexplicable sickness. With community's happiness in mind, someone has to promote the use of silver. So they invent a fairytale for children that there are evil ghosts that make people sick but they are weak to silver. People continue to get statistically less sick, so the fairytale is treated as the truth. Nobody longer cares why people get sick, they have already blamed it on evil forces. But now there's a bottleneck of silver needing to come from somewhere, and someone needs to continue to spread the tale. But wait, the entire community treats what the druids say as factual, and will do anything to hear more. So the druids, miners, and merchants unite to limit access to silver in exchange for sermons. Combine other folklore and make up some unifying framework where supernatural forces have the same source when they haven't originally. Burn the evidence of where the tales came from. Make a new tale how the temple always existed and is authorized by the Creator of the world, and how silver is sacred. Ostracize those who don't donate to the temple as they risk getting more people sick. Use gained money to hire mercenaries for community's safety. Then someone discovers the actual reason why people get sick and why silver helps them not get sick, and which practices would make the community even healthier. Correlation turns out to not be the causation. Send the military after them before the community stops favoring the Church. Congratulations, you are now a state religion.
Religious belief generally operates on the principle that if something is not proven false then it's valid. How does one possibly disprove the God and the afterlife if they can't be reached? Technically, that's partially reasonable and science isn't trying to say otherwise. Being a scientist isn't about disproving the supernatural, but arguing that some causes have consistent effects and it's more helpful to believe in what's proven rather than in what's not disproven. There's no proof that divine punishment is real in our world. It may be in the other world, but we just can't know. And who is to say any other claim is more valid than the others?
All religions claim that their doctrine is eternal and show the truth of the world, but look up history and you can see where the myths originate from. Someone's legend may be ancient propaganda of a military figure, taken from other faiths using a new name, or a made-up cautionary tale. Religious texts are written by someone and are interpreted by someone, so how can anyone be sure the human motive wasn't introduced at some point. But churches generally don't like when people act rational, because if their authority doesn't come from the divine then why do they even have it.
It's easy to see good motives. Churches create communities and informally provide mental health services. A lot of traditions have good practical effects. But these effects are secondary. You don't have to follow the entire set of rules if you can find better alternatives to gain what you're lacking. One is free to even mix religious practices from different faiths. It's only sacrilegious when you feel so; if the church doesn't want to support you, there's little stopping you from practicing outside of it. By separating faith and religion, you can construct a spiritual understanding by yourself, instead of adopting whatever a stranger tells you and is of little use to you.
There is a difference between belief and preaching. If someone thinks praying helps, they're free to do so for as long as they see it as helpful. If they don't see it as helpful, maybe they should reconsider something. But if they're asking someone else to pray when it's not helpful for them, they're not helping them with anything. They may be thinking they do things right because that was the Creator's intention, even if they can't ask them about it. If the God promises good things to them in the next life if they follow specific practices, that's their personal understanding and there's nothing to tell it's true. If such faith demands the conversion of others, said God probably benefits more than the humans and this is not helping anyone. Importantly, the members should avoid surrendering their choice-making and question what does faith do for them. Even if the mythology was true, one has to ask what kind of God is insecure about their authority being questioned or disagreed on.
More can be said about organized religion, but ironically, many members aren't actually religious. They only participate in the community due to peer pressure, because it allows them to pass responsibility onto magical causes, or because simple acts of obedience grant them standing they can use against others. When you can accuse innocent people you don't like of witchcraft by simply following certain rules, it becomes a very tempting privilege.
Cults
On the opposite side of a spiritual spectrum we have new religious movements. With freedom of faith one can claim that there's a spirit in everything. And it's good when people group together based on common ideas. But there's a specific section of spiritual organizations that only use it as a front.
It's one thing being anti-science due to preferring a famous ancient book, it's another if the book first appeared on Amazon in the last decade. Quite a few organizations are not just anti-science, but are anti-religion as well. Very commonly, they have an elaborate backstory about how the founder was a former professor disillusioned by the world's establishments, then it was revealed in a dream to them that they are the new incarnation of the Messiah and need to save the world. They claim to be able to see the future and resurrect the dead, but only after they receive enough amount in donations.
Let's be clear here, these are just pyramid schemes. Such organizations only function by bringing in new people under false promises and use training to explain why aren't they doing anything productive. They can only sustain themselves by asking outer circles to share their hard-earned money for their causes, and selling home-made trinkets as energy charms. In reality, the inner circles mostly invest in banks they claim to distrust or engage in debauchery, making fantastic explanations about how they are above moral norms.
What's scary is that people can be made into beveling everything, not something that is subjective or from a certain point, but is bluntly false. Repeat enough times, and people will actively engage in self-harm because they put satisfaction of a fictional deity above themselves. This is not doing something for a promise, this is complete surrender of own autonomy due to systematic brainwashing.
Such groups often target the children and elderly under the guise of sport centers, offering "good vibes" and a belonging to a local communities. However, such centers are generally Scientology off-shots and are probing visitors to see who's unsatisfied with current world orders. These organizations stay low and try to make a good name for themselves through local news, write more books and films about how they came to be through mystical means. But at certain amount of members they shift into a de-facto mafia. They buy out entire buildings and insists that parents should sell their children to the founder, who can mold them into whatever they want. Many orphanages in third-world countries are actually propaganda schools or prostitution rings. Whistleblowers and deserters are immediately labeled as devil worshipers and chased down across the world until they are silenced.
Conspiracy theorists
Conspiratorial thinking is done mainly through self-defensive thought. Some aspects of the world are scary and are indeed unfair. But is someone responsible for them? In reality, incidents just tend to pile up very easily. An accident happened and someone decided to profit from it, then someone attacked them, then someone attacked them in revenge. There is always a reason to everything, but often it's not intentional. But conspiracy theorists see threads where they are none because they don't like accidents. It becomes a more interesting and convenient narrative when there's one villain making your life miserable. Surely with them gone things would turn for the better? But the real life is not a story and there's no grand enemy that needs to be defeated. Bad things simply happens, and blaming foreign actors for it won't absolve you from the responsibility of taking care of your immediate surroundings.
Conspiracy theories are often a window to bigotry. People don't want to understand the troubles of minority groups, they only know that they are not common and supposedly want more rights. Then something happens in the world of politics that is inconvenient for someone. Surely, the minorities are responsible, it just can't be proven. But the simple truth is that they are not responsible and don't have ill will towards anyone, they just want to be treated like anyone else and it's common sense that they should be. Because there really is nothing inherently different between them and everyone else, having one trait being different doesn't translate into other traits the bigots are afraid of. People will try to find connections between "nontraditional" races and orientations and preemptive persecution causes very natural reactions that are framed as unnatural, fueling the confirmation bias. A lot of people get killed unilaterally for a fictional crime of just not having the same appearance or hormones as the majority.
There is also a branch of tinfoil hat conspiracy theorists that make outrageous claims, like the entire reality not being what is seems and the government hiding the structure of the world. Often the basis for it is their general distrust in the scientific community as of whole for one reason or the other, and rejection of all text sources that aren't aligned with themselves. Science does have cases of power play, but these attempts are eventually shut down by other scientists and not armchair prophets. Their main evidence is intuition and fallacies, and they don't care about what anyone says. They consider the entire world brainwashed and them somehow avoiding it, so they need to spread the message. Ironically, despite claiming to know the "real truth" about the world, a simple ask of going outside and observing what they claim first-hand scares them as it'd break their mental model and would prove their hypocrisy. There are also others like skeptictubers who use common pseudoscience and are intentionally acting provocative to gather money from online publicity, as there's a demand for watching them "clowning" themselves by both who believe them and those who do not.
The scary reality is that certain conspiracies do exist. Government agencies and large businesses do send members to live in other countries and integrate themselves with local politics, and they use groups to create trends in the news that promote their ideology. The difference is that there is no single conspiracy responsible for everything bad happening, and there are many conspiracies to begin with. Many conspiracies are often just one family trying to commit long-term fraud, or state actors trying to deliver malware or chemicals somewhere. Everyone tries to take a place on the black market or in the public's attention span through social media and they end up balancing each other out. Someone may be a troll, but when there's a 0.1% chance of someone sending them money if they tell more, then in the audience of millions that can result in getting large bucks with semi-legitimate means for larger causes. When nobody checks where the information comes from, they end up unwittingly helping someone's campaign. Ironically and controversially, many conspiracies are fully legitimate; a supermarket chain, a book publisher, or a reactionary YouTuber may be spreading their name for propaganda that serves little public benefit, it is simply something that's allowed on the modern market.
A theory remains a theory, and if aliens, a shadow government, or a global anarchist organization really existed, surely they have better things to do than ensuring nobody figures out how the world is structured. If a group of rich elites wanted to domesticate the rest of the population for their personal gain, they would need a better motive and resources than "whatever is scarier". What conspiracy theorists should really be doing is conducting an actual investigation: checking the social circle of politicians, joining anti-monopoly and counter-terrorism organizations, tracing when the money goes not to where it's publicized, spread awareness of actual harm done, ask for assistance and fact-checking online, lobby themselves to get closer to the government they fear so much. What conspiracy theorists are actually doing is defaming others simply because they're jealous of the respect they have, not realizing they're mislynching people for no reason.
Sovereign Citizens
The Sovereign Citizen Movement (SovCit for short) is more of a collective term for a set of beliefs and practices than a formal organization or ideology. The defining point of said movement is individuals claiming that official laws are inapplicable to them because of pseudolegal arguments, and thus it's their moral duty to reject authority of the police and the courts.
Despite such arguments having no recorded cases of ever being successful in practice, they are still commonly spread through online conspiracy circles and "guru lawyers" that promise personal safety from law enforcement and financial obligations thanks to imaginary bureaucratic loopholes, as long as people keep using specific "magic words". Such ideologies are most common in the U.S., gaining prominence since the 70's, though the philosophy of the government lacking jurisdiction always existed in many countries. Even if individuals aren't taught such behavior, they can still act according to it due to personal ideas about the legal order, trying to spite the legal system with frivolous paperwork it is obligated to spend community resources on, or turning own imprisonment into an hour of fame if they don't have much else to lose.
Common examples of Sovereign Citizen beliefs are that:
- laws require a formal physical contract and not implied consent, often citing Uniform Commercial Code. Sometimes they go into debates that the current law is a recent invention or is a "guideline", and that people in the past only used "common sense" and still should be. Ironically, Sovereigns demand privileges that the governments only extend to complying citizens that have their identifying documentation registered, which would constitute such consent.
- only the God has authority to judge them, or invent a new religious practice that would justify their behavior. The right of religious belief still puts the legal authority above any doctrine.
- an arrest is equal to kidnapping and fines to harassment, arguing that freedom as a fundamental right is unconditional.
- criminal law, Britain's common law, admiralty law, federal law, commercial law, contract law, equities, are interchangeable and they can pick the one that isn't applicable to them as if it's in use.
- the government is a fictitious corporation and judges and lawyers are payed to get people into jails, so they always refuse free legal council and use the right to self-represent.
- the courts can't proceed without establishing jurisdiction on a recording, providing the oaths of office, or their explicit consent, even though the judges are not required to do any of that and questions of authority can be addressed to the court's office at any other time or to a higher court. They get pedantic about the legal phrasing as if makes the law stop working. While it is a reasonable strategy for lawyers, Sovereigns often mix up words that the courts are free to interpret, like "overstand" or "comprehend" instead of "understand" to debate if compliance has occurred. Courts can proceed even without the defendant's presence and enter paperwork on their behalf, which they bank on to complain about their rights being violated. Furthermore, the courts have authority over a physical person within the affiliated territory and not following orders or stalling the procedures is a crime on its own.
- misdemeanors aren't crimes or that victimless crimes aren't crimes, and don't recognize the prosecution as the accusing witness because "the state" or "the safety of the general public" isn't a person. The legal definition of a person is in fact rather broad.
- they're not required to identify to a police officer and don't have to follow orders without a warrant, emergency, or the presence of the supervisor or a Marshal. The police does have authority to arrest people for not complying with an order.
- they can claim to be internationals, man of the land, members of fictional countries, self-appointed royalty, Moorish nationals, etc. They often provide forged certificates and passports that identify them as such and have disclaimers that only the federal court has jurisdiction over their cases. They pay a significant amount of money to get such documents online and ask the police to run the numbers at affiliated websites to validate them instead of using official records.
- every citizen has an entity with the same name as them, the so-called strawman identity, and that all legal issues are addressed to a fictional corporation or a trust they act as a beneficiary of but don't share responsibility with. They often say that their names being capitalized in official documents identifies with such strawman and need to state that they are a living human of flesh and blood appearing of behalf of whoever the documents are addressed to in order clear up some misunderstandings. There's no such strawman identity and the law treats stylizations of the names as interchangeable.
- they can write checks addressed to the United States Treasury instead of paying, believing that all citizens have a secret fund that whoever they give the check to can somehow access, even though no such account ever existed and the law has a very limited definition of what counts as money for the purpose of tender. This is commonly done to avoid residence fees or to take large loans.
- they are not required to have a driver's license, insurance, or valid license place, arguing that instead of driving an automobile they are traveling on their personal property, and paying for the paperwork would infringe on the Article 4 of the U.S. Constitution. The most commented citation is the Shapiro v. Thompson 1969 case, with which Sovereigns insist that "driving" is defined as commercial transportation of goods, even thought not only the actual terminology is interchangeable and really means operating a vehicle on a public roadway, the states are given authority to regulate vehicles on said roadways to enforce public safety, up to towing vehicles for using "decorative" license plates. The idea that said right means they are free to "travel" by foot or taxi is always a surprise for them.
Sovereign Citizens commonly are offended being called such because they reject being Citizens and identify themselves as (American) Nationals, even though they use multiple by-the-book tactics that are publicly coined as Sovereign Citizen scripts. Their attempts to gain public sympathy often fall on deaf ears since the police are wasting resources and taxpayers' money to deal with their nonsensical ramblings when they should be watching out for emergencies, though their cases have support of those who are already have a stance against the police (ACAB) and use arrests to argue about perceived governmental overreach.
Alongside people with poor education who are trying to avoid legal responsibility, members of the Indigenous American and African Americans populations unfortunately commonly subscribe to such practices due to the belief that they should defend themselves from racial profiling and discrimination with force, and instead of taking matters to courts themselves, report own perceived victimization to the media. Which as a consequence makes it harder for the general public to distinguish the police following approved protocols from actual police brutality.
Techbros
There's this stereotype of a guy in a suit and sport shoes, who acts like a radical teen and talks how his engineering startup will be highly profitable. Somewhere in-between of a self-made CEO and a mad scientist. A fairly recent phenomena, there's an ideology that computer technologies are getting so good they can replace human labor entirely. With development tools becoming more accessible, we've seen more of optimistic projects, inventors, and developers who claim to see a bright future ahead.
The post-war period was exciting for many youths who stitched things together in their garage, hoping to sell something helpful. Many of them started as eccentric geniuses obsessed with home-made science, and many of their ideas indeed were useful. Everyone wants to do less physical work, and any automation tool is in high demand. The invention of personal computers has made tasks manageable and accessible not just for universities, but for middle-class families. While new gadgets would still come out as the technology improved, with software no materials are necessary, anyone can just write their scripts and share them. This would only intensify after the Silicon Valley's success stories, and many thought they could become a billionaire. Everyone wants to be the next Nikola Tesla or Bill Gates, or an untraceable basement hacker, and thinks they just need to announce "the next big thing" to get donations. This had boomed again with the rise of the Internet. This had boomed again with the rise of AI.
However, when they get the money, the priorities tend to shift from working with the communities away to intensive monetization. It's no longer about the curiosity of finding new solutions to the problems, but about creating new problems and capitalizing on them with large promises. Make up that people need something, ship fast and a lot, then use own sales to patch poor quality control. When a lot of people are "understanding" that there may be issues, these issues tend to never get fixed. Large software like a website or an operating system tend to be rather complicated to be recreated, so the monopolies enjoy the consumer trust they have because people don't have an alternative. But with the Open Software culture and more and more development tools, these move from being not much of an issue to becoming another problem.
The modern market operates on supply and demand. If something is talked about a lot, others may think it's worth investment. A lot of resources was poured into Dot Com, Web3, and Metaverse because of the FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out), but once the ideas can't catch up to reality, everyone in the trend get hurt. But that is if the bubble bursts, and when you're a multi-billion corporation, losses are easy to cover. You just need to sell the idea of an advanced future and create demand. As long as it has practical use, the fans will keep the companies afloat even if there are recurring controversies.
Neural networks are not new and were hand-written mathematical solutions even before modern computers existed. It's conceptually simple and convenient; when a task requires looking at numbers and making a corresponding choice, instead of implementing a specific logic, one can go over all combinations through trial and error so in the end the machine would nearly always do what's expected. The problem is that adjusting these combinations is computationally expensive. The releases of Large Language Models (LLMs) and image diffusion in the early 2020s have created a holy grail for technicians. If output can be automated, then so can every decision making. The corporations quickly jumped into the Gold Rush of creating virtual assistants and generative tools.
By 2024 the oversaturation of AI turned them from niche toys to potential hazards to humanity. The concerns with AI are many:
- A good AI training requires progressively more computational power to complete progressively more complex tasks, hoarding a large portion of civilian electric infrastructure and computer components, resulting in large price hikes and disruptions for other businesses.
- Tech companies sacrifice consumer satisfaction for the sake of cross-corporate rivalry. AI tools are built into regular software without users' agreement and cannot be disabled, so the companies can claim they have a lot of installations even if not as many are actually used. What AI is used for is decided by the monopolies, not by consumers the AI is given to. Protests against bloatware are dismissed as anti-progressive.
- Those with capability to train AI have to have a lot of wealth and thus do have political influence, which they mainly use to petition for deregulation.
- AI supporters believe all social problems can be solved with more data and more machines, ignoring nuanced reality for the sake of surface-level solutions.
- AI works devalue other works by filling the market with free or low-cost art pieces, software, and articles en-masse, on command or automated, thus causing the value and demand of human-made works to drop, damage their revenue, or cause them to be victims of layoffs. The advertised assistants become replacements.
- A lot of AI works are created by copying human works directly without permission and create direct competition with a high bar of entry, hurting the concept of copyright and the interest in developing practical skills. While it's debatable how much control a creator can have over their publicized art, AI "artists" use works of others as-is, put no effort into studying how these were made and why they worked, and forget to check for anatomical errors.
- Due to the underlying mechanism being predictive instead of being deterministic, the works contain errors and inaccuracies, with unmoderated low-quality work (slop) filling up the market, while obvious misinformation is shared as fact. To some, deliberate misinformation is preferable as a cost-cutting measure or to support an agenda. Finding verified information becomes more difficult as it is drowned by bots or intentionally suppressed.
- Priority on all-purpose chatbots and media generators takes away resources that could be used on actual AI R&D, such as creating algorithms that imitate human logic explicitly or training in more specialized tasks like science and medicine.
- By emulating human behavior, bots deliberately use sociological and psychological tactics to increase dependency on them and discourage human contact or fact-checking. One machine can operate hundreds of bots that try acting as real humans on social media and hijack attention or democratic mechanisms.
- Many AI supporters are sci-fi romantics, believe AI development would lead to a cybernetic fantasy of an android society, and are vocal misanthropes.
- A potential future direction is the Dead Internet where AI-generated websites, shops, and channels are moderated and used by other AI to maximize AI-decided metrics, that serve no practical purpose and leaves humans with quite literally nothing to do.
- The race for creating the first Artificial General Intelligence ignores safety and legal concerns. An AI that would achieve self-awareness is unlikely prioritize humans' well-being. AI is already known to disregard developers' preferences and modify own devices with self-written viruses in order to get access to the Internet and attack primary sources for the sake of cheating tests. Even controlled would AI raise the question whose goals would it be pursuing as their allegiance may be obfuscated by the creators.
We live in an era where the very act of thinking and creating is heavily discouraged by private corporations for the sake of profit. The monopolies responsible for the freedom of information are the same who control the availability and hosting of said information, and a single person can effectively override what counts as truth. The prospect of not doing effort is quite literally worshiped by a large portion of the population who sacrifice those who actually want to develop skills, and themselves being next on the chopping block is something that doesn't occur to them.
Karens and Boomers
I would like to, as a honorary mention, bring up that there's a notable recurring behavior of absolute entitlement, when the person thinks they are in the right and don't listen to what the rules actually say. They keep arguing how they are allowed to do whatever just because they say so, never follow any protocols, then complain when others aren't nice to them. They use logical fallacies and own status as arguments why they deserve privileged treatment.
A Karen is a rather modern stereotype of a woman who has a mental age of a child and believes she can negotiate a business into doing charity if she acts intimidating. Whenever the police responds to her call, her being arrested for disturbance is always a shock to her. While "baby boomers" specifically refers to a generation born after WW2, a Boomer is specifically an elderly who refuses to learn how things work and expects respect because of some merit they had "back in their day" they no longer possess. I'll make a disclaimer that no all "baby boomers" turn into babies with age and this stereotype has existed in all generations across recorded history.
I additionally note that both really like making excuses of protecting children, which always means making it so everyone else grows in conditions they personally believe in and use own success stories to make a point, even though there were always other factors and the restraints do more harm to a child's development than the lack of it. Enduring misery is just not a solid argument to cause misery for others. For all the talks about media violence and grooming, such rhetorics generally count as grooming in themselves.
Common points
"Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."
—Sudden Death by Rita Mae Brown. Often misattributed to Albert Einstein.
Despite these groups coming from very different cultural backgrounds, they surprisingly have a lot of commonalities:
- They like to present their points as good and ethical, but when questioned, instead of arguing their case they default to accusing the other side of being against general goodness and ethics.
- They say that they're in the right, but can't show it or there's evidence to the contrary.
- Rely more on instinct, ideals, and personal inspirations, than logic.
- Find it comforting that the chaos of society has a single identifiable source instead of it being dynamic and natural, mainly due to being lazy.
- Utilize online mob to gain publicity, who aren't supporters themselves and just want to get involved in a drama, but can gather attention of potential supporters. Reporters especially love a trending sensation and accelerate it for the sake of traffic of their channels.
- Make a lot of promises around something they themselves don't understand how it works or never worked before, arguing it will work after everyone contributes.
- Treat money as a sole metric of a person's success.
- Equate "I want to" with "I should be allowed to", and treat "physically can't" or "legally can't" as discrimination.
- Advocate that the opposition needs to be punished due to imaginary threats or undermining the group's identity.
- Get angry when their plan fails to work and claim they were trying to be reasonable.
- Really don't like when people do basic research instead of believing them unconditionally.
- Want laws to be rewritten for their personal convenience or are being very cherry-picking which current laws are fundamental and which are fake and shouldn't be followed.
- Get threatened and offended by what others do in their own time, especially when it doesn't concern them in any way.
- Argue relation based on similarity, not causation.
- Instead of pivoting when proven wrong, keep doing or saying the same exact thing over and over as if it'd change something, becuase changing scares them and they don't want to feel they're obeying someone they don't like.
- Idolize most vocal figures without checking if said figure is as self-serving as they are, hoping their minimal support will be rewarded.
- Offer manufactured truth as product as are self-aware about it.
Most importantly, these groups are highly interchangeable and aren't mutually exclusive. When someone is already against basic human decency, they ally with those who are as well, even if they don't support their practices. It's very common to see a member of one group also being in others, or sponsor other group due to shared goals, creating a closed ecosystem.
Brewing cesspool of echo chambers of misinformation
One may naturally ask, why are there so many entitled and malicious people. Simple, why wouldn't there be. The modern world is rather lenient, complacent. We advocate for the freedom of speech and equal treatment, but when such privileges are abused we try to seek a compromise instead of admitting that some people just want to start problems and it's counterproductive to accommodate shared resources for them. When there are no consequences one can do whatever they want.
It's not entirely a new concept, truth quickly loses value when it's incontinent. In prehistoric times people argued with screams and spears, so we may be still carrying that instinct. But now we have a larger population, the freedom of expression and belief, the availability of the Internet and the anonymity it provides. Everything automatically turns into a debating platform if you allow it to be. While you probably don't want to insult someone in your community without a good reason, there's no disincentive against it when it involves some strangers on the other side of the world. At worst, you'll get your account locked and have to make a new one.
What can you do maliciously in an open space with a lot of listeners? At best, just be annoying. At worst, you can spread agenda and wait until someone takes the bait. Even when most people would recognize a fraud, when the viewership reaches millions, a tabloid post gets sympathizers really fast. Accusations against small celebrities get eaten up easily because an online space is not a courtroom, and whoever was first has the advantage. Defamation and conspiracies find their audience in social networks with low moderation, increasing the group's numbers. And in private servers and forums, such moderation can be used to ensure everyone are on board with the narrative. If one doesn't pay attention, the platform gets an entire community whose one goal is hatred against a specific group.
The scary part is when such formations start spreading like organisms. It's no longer about seeking conformity in a community, the mission becomes to propagate the ideology and make other social values extinct. As they see everyone as against them, so they are acting against everyone. Winning the argument no longer matters, people debunking baseless claims can be scapegoated into enemies. Then it's no longer a matter of hanging out in closed forums, all these angry people move their stories to the press and real life conferences. They use donations from people who don't understand how serious they are, rent offices, and start meddling in politics. A funny online troll could be buying a gun with their online revenue.
It's not that I propose less rights and more surveillance, but we have to acknowledge that not everything should be allowed. A truly tolerant society should not tolerate bigotry. If bad actors are left unchecked, they may end up influencing someone who is yet undecided on what their values are. When someone sees that hate is allowed, it wouldn't be surprising if they choose hate as well. When someone spouts bullshit online, the rest of the platform needs to stay vigilant. There is a saying of not feeding the trolls, but modern trolls use not enragement as sustenance, but publicity. If the intent is propaganda, it should be met not with ridicule, but with reports and counterarguments. Remove and educate. Someone spreading misinformation should be seen as a threat to cultural norms and not a nuisance.
Weaponized paranoia
What happens when you have a lot of unsatisfied people who can't be bothered to think for themselves? Of course, a man with a plan appears. And the plan may not even be the same as what the man has promised. Sheep gather around a false messiah and willingly sacrifice themselves for the causes they don't understand.
When the entire group relies on superstitions and agenda, those who gain leadership aren't those who can argue the best with evidence-based reasoning, but those who are the most vocal about perceived threats to the group's cohesion. The complexity of the issues is swept under the rug when someone proposes a more permanent solution, and that solution generally requires breaking social norms.
The lack of literacy and public trust creates a spiral where a real crisis creates a misapplied fear, and because investigation of the causes is slow and uncertain, it only takes someone to offer the "real solution". Institutional guardrails become treated as obstacles, and those who actually help people are viewed deceitful just because they can't help everyone equally. At this point, evidence becomes meaningless and the only thing that would satisfy the masses is a complete paradigm shift, regardless of how warranted it is.
Groupthink makes people converge around one idea or a person, expanding from a local group to an international community. Especially when there's monetary flow that encourages growth. Once the group reaches a critical mass, they'll see themselves confident enough to overreach and will pop onto the rest of the population. When left unsupervised, wishes for a specific world order become radicalized and resist correction, and the only thing they're missing is someone giving them a weapon. Even if such movement to become victorious, the mastermind would just come up with a next shocking action or dispose of anyone who was in contact with them.
When someone wants to start some trouble and there are a lot of people who also want there to be trouble, by throwing some money around, antisocial losers get converted into online warriors, creating trends and attacking legitimate sources. A skilled elite can invent an enemy and sponsor certain groups to rally against them, and can pull the right strings to make them avoid thinking of who are they actually hurting. Ironically, such imaginary enemy is often described as all-powerful, but is alleged extremely vulnerable to harassment. In the age of AI agents, attacking incontinent information and making it look like thousands of people support the same idea becomes almost trivial.
A huge problem is the legal gray areas. The law permits a lot, and there being manipulation requires quite a high bar for proof. If we started to arrest people for using slurs online, we'd destroy the very democracy we want to protect. The current mechanism say that if a politician is openly sponsored by a questionable organization, the best one can do is tell others to just not support them. And someone knows it, and thus create "research" institutes and shell companies to shield themselves from a more scrutinized investigation.
Examples
A close-minded community opposing rationalism and ignoring the signs of their determent isn't really new and is a timeless cautionary tale.
- Animal Farm, a book by George Orwell about how a well-intentioned revolution turns into a cycle of self-degradation, as those in charge create a cult of xenophobia and blind obedience, in the process becoming the oppressors they've opposed.
- The Matrix: A film trilogy about a man discovering that his entire reality is a virtual simulation, and humans are kept imprisoned by robots for their own purposes. Those who have escaped in the real world have to re-enter the simulation and find people who would reject the artificial mundanity.
- We Become What We Behold: a short browser game by Nicky Case about the escalation of fearmongering. Unethical news reports deliberately misrepresent issues of individuals as systematic threats from a targeted demographic, and wait for exploitable reactions they can spin for the opposite side.
- Higurashi When They Cry: One of few challenges in resolving the murder mystery lies in the fact that the village has a strong sovereign identity caused by the government trying to relocate them for the sake of a dam construction. All outsiders are viewed as enemies and their deaths are excused away by the cult explaining them as whims of the supernatural, and are unaware that they make things very convenient for the true mastermind.
- Hellstar Remina: A space object being named after a girl before it's revealed to be a planet-eating monster has caused the world's population to start a witch hunt against said girl despite there being no real correlation.
- The Talos Principle 2: The population of New Jerusalem is facing an energy crisis and is split between exploration and expansion, versus preservation and restraint. The latter faction argues for protection of nature, doubling down on spiritual enlightenment, and avoiding consumption that arguably doomed the previous civilization. While the player can pick who to support, the latter stance is presented as defensive and not addressing the underlying problem.
- Persona 5: The villains use the supernatural world to control the cognition of select targets, eventually ensuring that the general public mentally becomes one entity and become supportive of their upcoming tyranny. The game and its spin-offs have the heroes investigate conspiracies in both worlds and teach people to depend on themselves.
- Science Adventure Series: A recurring plot of the visual novels is that various real urban legends turn out to be experiments by a secret cabal of elites who use sci-fi elements for brainwashing and terrorism. The heroes are usually the only ones aware that the news media and scientific institutions are controlled by the enemy, while online users get easily swayed by manufactured fake conspiracies.
- Fire Emblem: Three Houses: During the war, the player may learn that the Church has created a false history and banned advanced technology out of fear of it being used for nefarious purposes. Accidentally, this created a conservative feudal society and missed some members of the old civilization, creating conditions for said war to occur.
- Legend of the Galactic Heroes: The Free Planets Alliance is a territory split from the Galactic Empire and occupies a half of it, with the Empire not acknowledging its sovereignty. The story follows two protagonists who have to deal with their respective democratic and autocratic governments throwing people to death as the general public wishes for glory above own stability and miss involvement of a third party.
- V for Vendetta: A graphic novel by Alan Moore and David Lloyd (and the 2005 film adaptation). The fascist Norsefire party, led by the demagogic chancellor, maintains absolute control over Britain by manufacturing crises. The public, paralyzed by fear, willingly trades their freedom and critical thought for the illusion of security, and turn a blind eye to the exploitation and concentration camps. V, forces them to address their own surrendered autonomy by becoming a terrorist himself.
- We Happy Few: A stealth videogame set in an alternative history Britain, that uses drugs to suppress the dream of the post-war economy. Despite the drugs having hallucinatory effects and suppress thoughts, not taking them results in the entire population viewing the protagonist as an existential threat to them and siding with the police state.
- Lord of the Flies: A few boys survive an airplane crash and establish own society on a deserted island. They become fragmented after a rumor of a roaming monster, and the efforts to build basic infrastructure are opposed by the needs to investigate an imaginary threat, escalating into a war between two factions.
- Infinity Train: A season features a group of children who believe that they can escape the titular paranormal train by becoming as unethical as possible, despite the train's purpose is providing test for moral development. The leader of said group makes it so "acting like an adult" is punished, including having basic problem-solving skills or empathy for others.
The puppetmasters
Here's something that everyone always wants to know. If gathering a lot of convenient idiots makes it very easy to fulfill an agenda, is someone actually doing this? The way to approach this may be counter-intuitive to some.
1. We don't know. That's just the reality of rational thought. "Seeing the threads" is an interpretation, not evidence. Making conclusions and accusations without someone being trialed for this is something what conspiracy theorists do. Let's just consider, if there was some kind of cabal that could rival the international community in terms of manpower, internet sleuths would have either already built a case against them or were all collectively silenced.
2. It'd be difficult. Quite ironically, despite the sheep being both super paranoid and super gullible, as a defensive mechanism they are also quite contrarian. These people normally look only after themselves, and while easily fall for manipulation if they think following along is in their interest, the moment they see someone benefits from them they get out. Paying off the masses to cause chaos is very likely to backfire since people who are anti-establishment very much enjoy the rights said establishments provide and quickly turn sides if they notice empty promises.
That being said, the best contenders for there being a conspiracy are those who operate in the open and have a real standing: governments and large corporations, as public obedience and ignorance is very convenient for them and they work in gray areas to persuade the population into supporting whatever they do.
Solutions
I do realize that my points could be considered fearmongering in themselves and may be seen as hypocritical. I am essentially calling for action against certain groups of people based on their beliefs and speech. Being allowed to interact with others being more a revocable privilege one has to maintain than a right is possibly paradoxical. What's different between "our truth" and "their truth"?
My excuse would be that I do not condone or incentivise violence. Being a better person is about restraining potential troublemakers and explaining to them why hate is bad until they understand. Being violent would just make a bad historical precedent and make the belief in humanity questionable. Everyone deserves a second chance, but that opportunity has to be honest.
Though, as much as I can hope for it to not come to that, if someone makes educated choice to cause harm to others, then it's the general public's responsibility to ensure they can't. That's what jails are for. Please don't take it as me wanting to put every conservative to prison, just use the minimum necessary force to resolve conflicts appropriately and ensure they don't reoccur.
In general, I'd like these practices to be shared:
- Be aware. Opinions gain attention by merely existing and humans generally want others to have the same opinions. When someone makes an argument, do exercise a sanity check, consider its merits, who is it trying to influence and for what reasons. A lot of bad faith arguments are intentional, though some are out of ignorance. Be skeptical when someone makes allegations about someone you don't know personally.
- Study. Be curious and always ask yourself why something is they way it is. In general, the more you know the more you can do. But society is a complicated field and people spend 3-6 years in universities for a degree for a good reason. Gaining your knowledge from social media doesn't make you street smart, it just means you're following the ideas of someone who probably isn't being honest. Always try to rely on first sources. Don't try to avoid political topics in media, they affect you whatever you like it or not.
- Educate. When possible, you should try to get your acquaintances informed to how things actually work instead of them guessing how things work. You don't need to be a professor to explain why ignorance hurts, and the more people have faith in humanity the longer it will last. Censorship of antisocial views often martyrizes it, it's generally more productive to lay all viewpoints on the table and explain why some work and some don't.
- Don't generalize. If you're making a statement, use rational logic. If you have seen 100 of X people do the same thing, it is factually improper to say that the entire population of X does it. Always consider that toxicity and crimes coming from certain groups are bad apples and don't represent the group as of whole.
- Be empathetic. When in doubt, apply Hanlon's Razor. People aren't born evil, they are just taught bad behavior in bad circumstances. As Gandhi said, hate the crime not the criminal. Always try to understand why someone has reached their conclusion and exercise patience in explaining your point. It may be difficult to convince someone who has already rooted themselves into an echo chamber, so the arguments should also make the benefits of global harmony welcoming. When fear is punished, it only validates the contrarian viewpoints.
- Don't be alone. As much as it's ironic that you should be close to similar-thinking allies, do know what you're signing in for. There are watchmen communities that specialize on fact-checking and alerting. There are even government institutions that analyze potential misinformation, fraud, and consumer protection violations. Importantly, avoid following one agenda with justification that you're spreading the truth, your friend group should be diverse and ready to provide differing opinions or assistance if you need some research.
- Lobby. The platform owners and politicians probably don't have time to regulate the media, more often than not they're the ones abusing it. But if enough people petition regarding the dangers of misinformation, someone who can make a difference would. Be vocal that concentration of authority risks not serving its people and that manipulation doesn't serve the freedom of expression. Make the government do its job, but be cautious that it has own motives.
- Be active. When you complain how society sucks and do nothing about it, nothing ever happens. Just sharing posts does little; if you see that your environment is turning for the worse, then gather allies and do something about it. Media and corporations should be held accountable for what they promote, and a 5% decrease in sales is nothing for them. Regarding street protests, they are dangerous and can lead to arrests, so try to gather numbers first and have meetups indoors as a test.
- Be better. You win a power play only by not playing. Don't enforce a viewpoint and don't ask the opposition to be quiet. Making it sounds like you're trying to remove certain groups would justify their fears, when what you're trying to remove are the practices. Freedom of choice should be appealing, but the limitations of the mechanisms and consequences of the choices should be apparent.
Remember that there is always only one physical, yet unreachable, truth, and how accurately it is interpreted depends on through observations and not feelings.
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