You are probably wrong about everything
We are living in unprecedented times (like always).
I just finished reading Homo Deus, my second Harari prophesy this year. Preceding those, my thoughts were shaped by The Sovereign Individual. A few general observations recently added more fuel to inspiring this article.
In 2021, our biggest enemy is not Covid, but data consumption. We can control the spread of Covid with scientific endeavors, but only if we fix the much larger issue of modern consumption first. People are simple. Their consciousness makes them predictable. Each person thinks he/she is unique, just like everyone else, but the days of objective opinions are probably lost forever. Our voices are megaphones for a very narrow, carefully selected sample of events that form the complex web of interactions shaping the world. We try to consume as much as possible from the truth machine that is the world wide web, whereas power lies in knowing how to ignore the data we are bombarded with every day of our lives.
You, conscious being, are an instrument which turns screen taps into revenue. You do not know yourself better than the data algorithms. Your beliefs are shaped by outside forces. You do not have a free will.
Our minds cannot process enough data to form any opinion of even remotely knowing what is true in this modern age. Democratically elected state governments are even more inefficient that the individual mind and therefore most likely steering us further away from reality. Yet the majority of humans follow their lead religiously, thinking that race matters, that communism is alright in special circumstances and that taxes are necessary.
Stepping down to a lower level, my argument departs from the growing divergence between left vs right, covid-believers vs ivermectin-users and biden vs trump -supporters. These topics cause a lot of disagreement on the social layer, though no-one seems to realise that their beliefs on any subject is not a function of our own consciousness. Our so-called opinions are simply a result of data algorithms deciding what to feed our minds based on some desired outcome, whether that is to generate revenue for a large organisation or to win an election. Google, Facebook, media agencies, Amazon and the Democratic Nation State know you better than you know yourself. So next time you disagree with someone, remember that neither that person nor yourself are right. Both your opinions do not exist.
Closer to home, I realise that some people are labelled ‘anti-vaxx’ because of their stance on covid treatment. It is impossible to determine that one group is more correct than the other. The only difference between the two beliefs is that one was fed a slightly different (very small) sample of data. The scary thing however is undoubtedly the notion that many people are getting comfortable with communism. Although democracy never really existed, our definition of a democratic nation state is dictating a separation of society based on those who follow their interpretation of the truth and those whom the data algorithms decided to provide a different version. Dataism, in its infinite wisdom, might decide on behalf of governments that lockdowns and masks are the best mechanisms to control the virus. Others were fed the opposite. To me, the algorithms decided to show that lockdowns killed more people by means of suicide and hunger during any calendar month in 2021 than throughout the entire 2020 of covid.
Filtering events through the lens handed to me by the algorithms showed that the internet made democratic nation states obsolete, and that neither biden or trump deserves a presidential seat because the whole idea of individual authority is ridiculous. It is far from the optimal governance model and therefore won’t exist in a couple decades from now. These lenses decided to make me aware that right ideology supported race consciousness in the past while the left advocated for equal treatment. The tides shifted and presently the left supports racial differentiation while the right suddenly prescribes equality for all.
The fact remains that no one is right, and no one is wrong. All of our thoughts and beliefs are simply a result of data algorithms finding optimal paths that shape our thoughts to their own selfish desires. So next time you argue with people who decided to protest for BLM, or not to get vaccinated, or to vote for communism, remember that it was not their decision.