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one way of explaining it is: a lot of it has to do with the fact that, most people in most groups don't particularly feel responsible for the totality of the group. so what is a seemingly fair/reasonable response from each individual, adds up to an overreaction from the group
i'm also vaguely reminded of someone's observation that the scientific establishment as a whole ends up collectively cherrypicking what gets published, which would be kinda considered fraud if Science was a single individual? maybe i'm misremembering, sry this is a 5am tweet
and you can kind of think of the history of wars and technology etc as growing pains as humans struggle to learn to coordinate in larger and larger groups. marshall mcluhan had some good stuff to say about this, man i really gotta reread the book and write that essay
went looking for my thread of notes on Understanding Media and this stood out to me. idk what specifically he was referencing or how true it is, but it's interesting to think about how and why this has changed https://t.co/4s04qWJkQp
from Junger's Tribe: https://t.co/gCInv70OZ5
Subsistence hunters aren't necessarily more moral individuals, they just can't get away with selfish behavior because everything is so easily scrutinized. Modern society is a sprawling and anonymous mess. We know fraudsters are among us, but we can barely do anything about it
my mental model of how to address this is something like: there need to be organic networks of well-adjusted, high-agency, responsible people that perform roughly the same function as roots resisting soil erosion. modern comms tech does allow us to achieve this like never before
@visakanv There’s something else in play here that strikes me - “insanity” is when someone has multiple unreconciled parts competing for attention. Internal misalignment. In groups though we need to assume misalignment as the initial default state. “Sanity” as alignment?
@visakanv This video talks about how this dynamic is analogous to cancer. When individuals see themselves as separate from the group/environment, they treat it as a resource to exploit. https://t.co/dl3nTJ8oBp
@visakanv challenge accepted! https://t.co/c8IYpMep9R