you are being drafted into a war. you don't even know it .even leaders don't ....
Time and again, us humans have been at war.
We certainly do not go to war because one or both or multiple sides feels over-arching abundance.
We go to war because of reasons deeply rooted in lack or scarcity or the anticipation of it . These "lack" or "scarcity" are deeply entrenched in individuals and or groups.
- How was one drafted into wars in the past?
- What is the war now?
- How are you Asymptomatic Carriers of Warlords, thus drafted in the war already?
- How can you fight it better or cut-down your participation? And these can enable you into "situational leadership" position if you chose to.
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| https://www.wearethemighty.com/articles/vietnam-draft-dodger |
- How was one drafted into wars in the past?
What is drafting?
When a community and or its organizing body or institution went for a war, there was either what is called voluntary participation for fighting in the war or something called enlisted drafting/conscription.
Draft in Hunter-Gatherer Times
No! I shall not go into the hunter-gatherer scenarios. Where the violence was handled differently. And most of us had to either fend for ourselves or be part of the small community and naturally get drafted into the wars. Of course, back then wars would also involve survival amidst the fury of the nature or the beasty of the predatory animals or the other tribes.
Draft in Colonial Times
During the colonial times, there were versions of colonia militia rules. These rules dictated certain age, gender and other criteria to be naturally part of the fighting army.
Draft Circa World Wars 1 and 2.
There are stories. Stories about how voluntary listing was low during both world wars. And hence the leaders in respective nations, put in stringent drafting/conscription.
And then there are also stories of how the drafted soldiers were very low on motivations. And anecdotes of how even films were made to coax the demotivated soldiers to believe in the ethos of "why we fight?" (example: series of 7 documentaries made by USA during World War 2)... Film Directors included Academy Award Winning Frank Capra. This information is important to understand because there has been consistent use of propaganda (as posited by Max Weber) throughout history...to rally behind a certain idea.
2. What is the war now?
Atom Bombs Vs Bits-and-pieces
Wars today aren't fought through the threats of "atom or nuclear bombs". Albeit, "information" or "bits" is the new weaponry.
Imagine you are able to create large scale chaos in a population and drive them into polarized opinions and behaviors...Viola! They will destroy themselves through various forms of active physical violence or mental harassment or stripping each other of their dignity.
How have we come here?
A. Knowledge Explosion
Alt-facts, misinformation, conspiracy theories, rumor mongering, polarization, online shaming, etc are all the various versions of the war happening during the current pandemic. They were happening before. It is their amplification in the current context that makes it war like.
But how did we get here?
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| Lawrence Lessig |
Political Activist & Harvard Law Professor Lawrence Lessig mentions in one of his talk that till sometime back, there was a phase of "common knowledge" and "common will'....because information dissemination would come from gated-media-outlets. Of course there were massive challenges there, however, (and this is my interpretation of his work that) we have now moved to "tribal knowledge" and "tribal will".
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| Leda Cosmides |
I believe that part of the reason could be the gated-ness of the dissemination of information, but there could be other factors like "common enemy" or "common purpose" that would necessitate people pooling their risks and rewards (ala Evolutionary Psychologist Leda Cosmides). These pooling of risks and or rewards was always there in our evolution. It just kept expanding beyond the Dunbar number of 150 people in a stable social relationship...as we evolved into larger kingdoms or then the nations.
(((Dunbar's number is a suggested cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships—relationships in which an individual knows who each person is and how each person relates to every other person.)))
So far, so good.
But what has all this got to do with Knowledge Explosion?
Who creates knowledge?
March to Objectivity & Inter-Subjectivity at the same time
Last couple of centuries saw the reliance on "reason and science" to inform our beliefs and behaviors. The project led to what Linguist and Cognitive Psychologist Steven Pinker calls human progress through his work in his book, "Enlightenment Now".
It was also the case that a lot of economic tail winds kicked in. Industrialization and Urbanization led to people leaving their knitted-communities and migrating to cities...melting pot or swelting pot of culture or inter-subjectivity.
There were the objective knowledge which was assumed to come from science. There were rules laid down by states using various "reasoning" and "voting" mechanisms. And people were left to their devices to exercise their "choices" in free market...work and consume...buy and sell.
These were also tumultuous times as there were large scale revolutions, rights-movements and wars coinciding with the the economic juggernaut.
As more and more humans' motor functions (labor done by hands and legs) were outsourced to more and more of machines, there was a move to now get more and more humans to focus on cognitive functions....trading opinions and judgements.
This also meant that people had to create their own opinions and judgements as it became currency for getting to the next promotion, the next investor, the next consumer. This i guess contributed to scaling up of already a long tradition of mass scale manufacturing of opinions...each individual becoming a knowledge manufacturing factory.
B. Increasing Complexity
What were we doing with all this knowledge manufacturing?
Well! For time immemorial, society had been about having opinions about people and things and behavior. Politics was also about opinions. But something interesting was happening here...for the first time "opinion" (or responses to opinion) were being exchanged (as knowledge) for economic purposes. And there are specific ways in which to deal with inter-subjectivity, which our current forms of conversations make it difficult.
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| Roman Krznaric |
Till about 100 years back, there were only approx 200 kinds of jobs on the planet, says Public Philosopher Roman Krznaric. And now there are approx 12000 kinds of jobs (in public and private sector).
These jobs are different roles (with myriad tiny tasks) that need to co-ordinate with one and other in order to deliver goods (or services). And as they have grown in number, the organizing of these (meaning simplifying and regularizing) of these remain a challenge. And its a double challenge...the myriad tiny tasks + subjectivity around them.
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| Joseph Tainter |
Anthropologist Joseph Tainter calls this as the diminishing returns on complexity...meaning that at some stage the complexity can get bogged down or crash under the weight of its own scale of complexity...and not generate further returns.
So, complexity across our various personal-professional-civic tasks are rising.
So, our need to manufacture our opinions and the growing complexity, makes it difficult to create properly thought out opinions at the level of individual. It has aspects of continuous skilling and also the ever-speeding-time-treadmill. Hence we rely a lot of many other people (influencers).
Some of the Influencers use this weakness to their advantages. Some of them turn into self-appointed warlords. (((i am not against revolution and or reforms and or free speech...i am questioning the motives and the soundness of arguments propelled by many))).
Some of the Influencers tactfully dovetails words or concepts of science and logic. They connect things that are established or people who are established.
The War today is the Information War.
The Opinion War.
The "i am right" and "you are conspiring" war.
The "overthrow the system" war.
There are asymptomatic carriers of the current corona virus. Basically, they do not know and other's also do not know if they are carrying the virus...unless a test is done on them to ascertain.
Similarly each of us are becoming asymptomatic carriers of warlords. Warlords who are calling out a "war" against various individuals or systems without sound evidence. And are doing it in a manner where they use scientific vocabulary or logic vocabulary, but neither show these in their arguments or their findings (((more on how to detect them towards the end of this module))).
And sometimes they do represent their case using less researched findings or sound peer review (((i do acknowledge the issues around journals and the paywalls and the tribalism within scientific community too))). But this doesn't make a bad research or a bad finding suddenly good. And it certainly doesn't make a good research or good finding an eternal truth. In words of Dr Shohini Ghose, Sr TED Fellow and President of Canadian Association of Physicist in one of our dialogues, that "science is a process".
Coming back...
We are all asymptomatic carriers.
Yes!.
All of us!
Including me.
Whenever we peddling "unreflected" ideas or facts or opinions of our own or borrowed from others consciously or subconsciously.
By sharing their information without critical thinking or a healthy constructive co-discovering debate.
We are in Knowledge Explosion, Information Obesity, Analysis Asymmetry, Motivated Reasoning, Echo Chamberical, Hyper-Tribal, Poor Conversation Architecture world.
There are the influencer generated content and its online-chinese-whispered-user-generated-content.
...enabling currency expansion of "tribal signalling" or "virtue signalling" or "moral entrepreneurs" or "saviorship",
...and compelling for one's allegiances to these tribes which are only growing manifold in its intensity. Add to it the positive feedback loops.
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| Kartik Hosanagar |
What this leads to is reading more and more of people or ideology we follow often. And algorithms are fueling this too...what Wharton Prof Kartik Hosanagar calls as "The Rogue Code"..., and not following and critically thinking about the other sides arguments.
Which means your social network feeds will just not show much of "raw material" for critical thinking, i.e., other sides arguments. And even if it does, then not all people from other sides, and not all their arguments maybe sound or interpretable easily or maybe wrong sometimes...and because of our compulsions to commit to an opinion, we brush them in a bucket.
(((actually i believe as an extension of Bill of Algorithmic Rights as proposed by Kartik Hosanagar, we could move a request (and if not followed then a later petition) that the algorithm do either of the two:
- show balance of feeds of opposing sides
- show feeds in a manner where the opposing views are juxtaposed
(of course a lot of work needs to be done to be able to map these and code these)
...thus ringing-invoking in Universal Critical Thinking Structures.
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| Tristan Harris |
| Jaron Lanier |
And it is not just elite college profs, there are industry insiders who are sounding off alarms regarding the challenges of algorithms and also the "winner takes all" problematic outcomes
... like Tristan Harris, Fmr Tech Ethicist at Google, or Jaron Lanier (considered as founding father of Virtual Reality).
Because of the hyper charged atmosphere, it's easy to label the "other" side and constantly #Strawman their motivations and arguments and leverage on their past failures.
At any given point in time in history, you will always find people who are resentful of many many things. People (influencers/leaders) use their resentments to fan them into their tribes by positing various theories. We are indeed in #PsychoSocialSavana . Its a brilliant turn in our civilization.
4. How can you fight it better or cut-down your participation? And these can enable you into "situational leadership" position if you chose to.
There are some ways in which one can attempt at overcoming these: by scrutinizing and or demanding of the presenter (influencer or anyone) on the following:
(for sake of simplicity, we use the word "presenter" here as someone presenting an argument or opinion to their followers)
- presenter shares tools for "how to think" and not just "what to think"
- presenter presents multiple arguments and their premises and conclusion about an issue. And not just one's own argument. in so doing, both steelman the argument and not just strawman across one's own and other's arguments.
- presenter remains humble about one's conclusions and remains open to revision
- presenter shares or seeks ways towards falsification his/her own argument
- presenter remains open to multiple truths sometimes. and demonstrates how one has been loyal to this in the past if possible
- presenter shares about their own major belief changes and how did it come about
- presenter shares instances of being wrong and how/why of it
- presenter is able to point out possible reasonable people on the other side
- presenter remains open to interdisciplinary review
- presenter gives disclosure or is open to scrutiny about their own skin in the game, while presenting the opinions
- presenter's diversity of sources of overall views over past few years
- presenter's lexicon (linguistic) analysis of the choice of words ...if laden with fear mongering, circular reasoning, slur, etc
- seek to learn from the presenter as to what they consider as false conspiracy theories...examples of the same, and how to identify if they are false, and why do so many people fall for such theories
...there are many more ways.
...maybe i will expand on this...maybe not...just thought it was important to share what is happening around us
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