[ExI] A Paranormal Prediction

[Keith Henson]

On Sun, Jan 14, 2024 at 8:48 AM <spike at rainier66.com> wrote:
>
snip

>
> 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.

It is worth remembering that most of the genetic selection for war and
related happened before agriculture, much less nation-states or
presidential elections.  So if the result does not seem well adapted,
that's no surprise.

Another deep psychological trait is that people are insanely
optimistic about winning a war.  On average going to war is rewarding
to genes but half the time you lose.  If people recognized reality,
they would know that going to war is a chancy business, but our
psychological traits lead us to be far more optimistic about going to
war than is rational.

Keith
> 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
>