[ExI] A Paranormal Prediction

[spike at rainier66.com]

-----Original Message-----
From: Keith Henson <hkeithhenson at gmail.com> 
Subject: Re: [ExI] A Paranormal Prediction

>>..."Political discussion is ok if you must."

>...What is of much more interest to me is the meta-level.

Something I noticed decades back was the connection between economics and politics.  There was an upswing (particularly in the Rust Belt) in neo nazi activity with every downturn in the economy.  Eventually, I figured out that this is a human reaction to the perception of a bleak future.  In the Stone Age, we were selected to circulate xenophobic memes as the first step in dehumanizing neighbors in preparation for killing them for their resources in a resource crisis.

Support for crazy leaders is part of the package

Unfortunately, this is too complicated an idea to spread well even here.  Plus people seem to be deeply resistant to understanding that they have deep psychological traits.

Keith






Keith I left your entire comment in there because it is so well-written.

In the USA, we have elections for the head of the executive branch, an office in which we invest far more interest and imagine its importance to be far beyond what it really is.

Every four years we have in imaginary or symbolic war, where we choose our champions to participate in a play fight where we imagine the outcome of the debate is somehow relevant.

Every four years, we have an incumbent party struggling to convince the voters how good they have it, while the challenger party struggles to convince the voters how bleak is their future if the current course is held.  The bleak future scenario triggers the fight-meme identified by evolutionary psychology.

In the USA and to some extent the world, we are immersed in a culture war, which is really distracting us from the real struggle: figuring out how we are going to deal with the rise of AI.  We still don't know.  We are distracted by the play-war being waged between big personalities and imagining that it matters which one wins.  Meanwhile, AI continues to develop, and we humans still don't know how to deal with it.

spike