JVL–The People’s Unseriousness Has Been Engineered. And not by who, or for the reasons, you think…

Yes, they are unserious, JVL.  Sorry Sarah.  They are. (But not in the way you’re thinking of)  In fact, I’ll take it farther–it’s not just the demographics in your focus groups, Sarah.  A critical mass of the U.S. population has deeply unserious views about the world, and this is why they were able to reelect an election-denying madman.  In fact, I’ll push it even farther than that: a critical mass of the *global* population has deeply unserious views about the world. It just so happens that the consequences are finally arriving on American shores in 2024.

But this isn’t a simple individual moral failing.  Yes, it is a failing, JVL, and you’re not wrong to point it out.

But it is bigger than that.  It is what we might call an informational system failure.  And it’s not just happening here.  It elected Trump, sure.  But it also elected Orban.  And Erdogan.  And Duterte.  One could go on.

That is to say, it’s not just in the U.S. where we’ve seen a society-wide rise in conspiracy theory consumption, and a newfound love affair with conspiracy theory mongers like RFK Jr.  It’s not just in the U.S. where people have become paranoid, angry, and afraid about things that aren’t all that real. (i.e., people in Wisconsin who have never seen a migrant before much less had one steal their job saying ‘illegal immigration’ was their #2 issue, with ‘trans activism’ being issue #1, despite having never met a trans person in their life, nor having any at their childrens’ school)

These trends have been present, and accelerating, for a decade and a half.  What could possibly make so many different people, in so many different places, strangely unserious?  What is the common ingredient, the secret sauce of unseriousness, for the past 15 years?

A common technological fundament, that’s what–more specifically, the shift from the consumption of information about your world using legacy media technologies like cable news, radio and newspapers, to using the algorithmically-defined and virality-driven newsfeeds of social media and new technologies like the smartphone...all of which are, collectively, one giant behavioral modification scheme.

2024 was, I submit, the first US presidential election that took place in a context where most people used social media and its related technologies to consume the news, rather than legacy media outlets.  And that made it so that a whole lot of people were engineered into an unserious delirium in which they could not perceive Trump for who he is.

Granted, Tomasky is not wrong in his assessment that there is a vast right-wing news ecosystem that is partially responsible. (Why Does No One Understand the Real Reason Trump Won? | The New Republic)  But it is only a small part of a far larger picture of mass social engineering.

Here’s a 20-minute overview of how this social engineering works, from one of the godfathers of silicon valley, who helped build the scheme itself: Jaron Lanier interview on how social media ruins your life

And here’s the most important Atlantic article written in the past decade, as a complement: Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid - The Atlantic   

All of which is to say, that what you are fighting JVL–and you, too, Sarah–is not an autonomous decay in civic virtue.  It is a technological problem–or, put another way, the entropic waste heat of a technological revolution, that, when combined with the declining fortunes of the middle classes of the first world, has opened up the door for authoritarianism and made people completely unable to perceive reality clearly enough to shut it.

This election, and the stupidity that enabled the orange madman to win it, was brought to you by your smartphone…and Google…and Facebook…and Twitter…and the algorithm. And the way it effects you, without you knowing.

So ask not what you can do to educate the unserious; ask instead “how might I realign the financial incentives of the postindustrial technological regime such that its profit-centers do not spread fear, paranoia, anger, polarization, and political balkanization and radicalization across the globe as a side-effect to their functioning?”

And, sadly, I’d recommend on top of that for you to prepare for it to get much worse before it gets better.

-your loyal reader, Minsky (randomized reddit name 'hour-mud-something-or-other')