I remember growing up hearing that most people voted for the candidate they thought they could sit down and have a beer with. Then I started paying attention to politics and kind of forgot this really basic idea. It’s almost like a trap, the more you educate yourself, the more you assume that other people are doing the same thing. Then you’re flabbergasted when people vote against your preferred candidate since it seems so obvious. But seriously, look at the last few decades of presidents:
Bill Clinton seemed more relatable and someone you could have a beer with than Bush Sr, then also with Bob Dole.
Dubya, bless his dumb little heart, felt more down to earth than Gore or Kerry.
Obama was infinitely cooler than McCain or Romney.
Trump, as much of a jackass as he is, certainly seems more fun to hang out with than Hillary.
The major outlier here was that Biden beat Trump. It kind of goes to show you just how bad Trump fucked up. Had he just somewhat competently managed COVID, there’s a good possibility he would have won in 2020.
Most people don’t give a shit about appointing Supreme Court Justices, immigration policy, monetary policy, disaster preparedness, etc. They just wanna look at a politician and say “Yeah, they’d probably be my friend if we met” and that’s it.
Most people don’t give a shit about appointing Supreme Court Justices, immigration policy, monetary policy, disaster preparedness, etc. They just wanna look at a politician and say “Yeah, they’d probably be my friend if we met” and that’s it.
It goes deeper and worse than this. Worse as in, for our long-term survival.
The problem is as a species we are incredibly vulnerable to this kind of effect, because we are not nearly as advanced or logical as we like to imagine. We have brains that serve only one purpose, which is invent a story to explain your feelings, and that story doesn’t even have to make sense. This was an amazing adaptation a half million years ago for surviving the natural world.
But we’re very far from the natural world, and the same responses that helped us figure out how to survive dangers are now being exploited to hoist people to positions of power at the cost of our environment, our health and happiness and our promise of a future.
And it’s about to get so, so much worse. We’re about to get thrust into an era of LLM’s just fucking with people’s emotional storytelling to a fantastic degree. Our world is teetering on climate collapse and every person is withdrawing further and further from socializing with each other and we’re barreling towards a world where nobody will have any idea what’s real or not and education will become less and less valuable.
I’ve been watching our world for decades now, and I am seeing this trend mature and I’m very worried for all our futures.
I remember growing up hearing that most people voted for the candidate they thought they could sit down and have a beer with. Then I started paying attention to politics and kind of forgot this really basic idea. It’s almost like a trap, the more you educate yourself, the more you assume that other people are doing the same thing. Then you’re flabbergasted when people vote against your preferred candidate since it seems so obvious. But seriously, look at the last few decades of presidents:
Bill Clinton seemed more relatable and someone you could have a beer with than Bush Sr, then also with Bob Dole.
Dubya, bless his dumb little heart, felt more down to earth than Gore or Kerry.
Obama was infinitely cooler than McCain or Romney.
Trump, as much of a jackass as he is, certainly seems more fun to hang out with than Hillary.
The major outlier here was that Biden beat Trump. It kind of goes to show you just how bad Trump fucked up. Had he just somewhat competently managed COVID, there’s a good possibility he would have won in 2020.
Most people don’t give a shit about appointing Supreme Court Justices, immigration policy, monetary policy, disaster preparedness, etc. They just wanna look at a politician and say “Yeah, they’d probably be my friend if we met” and that’s it.
Edit: this made me think of this Dave Chappelle stand-up before he was an asshole. https://youtu.be/KQ2dquaHO7Q
It goes deeper and worse than this. Worse as in, for our long-term survival.
The problem is as a species we are incredibly vulnerable to this kind of effect, because we are not nearly as advanced or logical as we like to imagine. We have brains that serve only one purpose, which is invent a story to explain your feelings, and that story doesn’t even have to make sense. This was an amazing adaptation a half million years ago for surviving the natural world.
But we’re very far from the natural world, and the same responses that helped us figure out how to survive dangers are now being exploited to hoist people to positions of power at the cost of our environment, our health and happiness and our promise of a future.
And it’s about to get so, so much worse. We’re about to get thrust into an era of LLM’s just fucking with people’s emotional storytelling to a fantastic degree. Our world is teetering on climate collapse and every person is withdrawing further and further from socializing with each other and we’re barreling towards a world where nobody will have any idea what’s real or not and education will become less and less valuable.
I’ve been watching our world for decades now, and I am seeing this trend mature and I’m very worried for all our futures.
That’s both disturbing and interesting.