It’s funny time now in Slovakia; as if someone declared a call: “Irrational people of all beliefs, unite!”
It started two years ago with the so-called “Gorilla scandal”. (TL;DR: Not a real gorilla, just a nickname of some criminal who was investigated by the secret service. By wiretapping his house the investigation revealed that almost all of our political parties, both left and right, participated in economical crime, cooperating with the same small group of people. The transcripts of the investigation were leaked to internet.) It was followed by a few demonstrations, after which pretty much nothing happened. Realizing that most media in our country actually belong to people involved in the scandal, so they don’t have an incentive to investigate and report on the scandal, an internet radio called “the free broadcast” was created. From that point, it gradually went downhill.
By deciding to focus on ‘news that don’t have place in the official media’, the radio was gradually selecting for hoaxes, conspiracy theories, etc. Which probably led to saner people leaving the radio, concentrating the irrationality of the remaining ones. One year later, it was mostly about how vaccination causes autism and how pharmaceutical companies want to prevent you from using MMS. Two years later, it seems to be mostly about how freemasonic and homosexual conspiracies are ruling the world, which is why we need to make a revolution and create a direct democracy.
Meanwhile, a new religious cult called Magnificat was created by a few excommunicated Catholic priests; or perhaps they joined an already existing cult and brought it here, I am not sure. A few years ago there were some documents about social service in some other countries (mostly Britain) abusing their powers and taking children away from non-abusive families to offer them for adoption to other people, for money. This Magnificat cult is spreading news that this is all a part of world-wide conspiracy against the traditional family, led by atheists, homosexuals and people hating the Virgin Mary. Recently this cult has registered as a political party, and participated in the recent municipal elections (although I am not aware of any significant victories). They also organized a large protest “for life and traditional family”. When our Catholic church saw them stealing its main agenda, it doubled its efforts and last week it published a new pastoral letter criticizing the “culture of death”, “gender ideology” and “the sins of Sodom”.
Meanwhile, a local neo-nazi movement become strong enough to win the municipal election in one of our counties (luckily not the one I live in). Their main agenda is fighting against the corrupted democratic politicians and parasitic Roma minority. They are very popular on “the free broadcast” internet radio, together with Magnificat; at this moment they seem to support each other, at least memetically. This combination of signalling contrarianism and yet appealing to common prejudice, seems very attractive to a lot of people. These days you can’t have an online discussion without someone explaining what a brainwashed sheep you are for not believing in them.
A month ago I burned some of my social capital by publishing a blog about how the Catholic church should stop giving tacit approval to the neo-nazis. (And by “tacit approval” I mean things like the former arch-bishop organizing a private mass for the local neo-nazis and blessing their leader. Which was later described by the church speakers as simply his private affair, which is not anyone else’s business.) So far it doesn’t seem like there was any benefit from it, except for me feeling better for having spoken my mind openly.
I feel like surrounded by complete idiots. To be honest, I always had this feeling, but recently it became very intensive.
Seems to me that irrational people have the advantage that they can relatively easily join their powers. An irrational person mostly cares about one thing; a rational person cares about many things. Suppose that you have a person A believing that people are manipulated by space aliens; a person B believing that vaccination causes autism; and a person C believing that it’s all about homosexuals trying to destroy the traditional family. Technically, none of them contradicts the others. And if you succeed to create a complex theory containing all the necessary components (the space aliens are controlling the humankind by giving more political power to homosexuals, which use their power to destroy the traditional family by using vaccination to cause more autism), you already have three strong believers. And more people mean more political power! Meanwhile the rational person will disagree with A and B and C, and remain without any allies. The ability of an irrational person to accept a compatible irrational belief is popularly called “having an open mind”.
I used to wish that people be more interested in how society works, go outside of their homes and try to improve things. After seeing this, I just wish they all lost interest, returned home, a started watching some sitcoms.
I wasn’t sure whether this largely political comment was okay to write on LW, but then I realized LW is pretty much the only place I know where I could write such comment without receiving verbal abuse, racist comments, explanations that homosexuality really is the greatest danger of our civilization, or offended complaints about how I am insensitive towards religion. Recently, LW feels like an island of sanity in the vast ocean of madness.
Perhaps this will give me more energy to promote rationality in my country. I already arranged another LW meetup after a few months pause.
It’s funny time now in Slovakia; as if someone declared a call: “Irrational people of all beliefs, unite!”
It started two years ago with the so-called “Gorilla scandal”. (TL;DR: Not a real gorilla, just a nickname of some criminal who was investigated by the secret service. By wiretapping his house the investigation revealed that almost all of our political parties, both left and right, participated in economical crime, cooperating with the same small group of people. The transcripts of the investigation were leaked to internet.) It was followed by a few demonstrations, after which pretty much nothing happened. Realizing that most media in our country actually belong to people involved in the scandal, so they don’t have an incentive to investigate and report on the scandal, an internet radio called “the free broadcast” was created. From that point, it gradually went downhill.
By deciding to focus on ‘news that don’t have place in the official media’, the radio was gradually selecting for hoaxes, conspiracy theories, etc. Which probably led to saner people leaving the radio, concentrating the irrationality of the remaining ones. One year later, it was mostly about how vaccination causes autism and how pharmaceutical companies want to prevent you from using MMS. Two years later, it seems to be mostly about how freemasonic and homosexual conspiracies are ruling the world, which is why we need to make a revolution and create a direct democracy.
Meanwhile, a new religious cult called Magnificat was created by a few excommunicated Catholic priests; or perhaps they joined an already existing cult and brought it here, I am not sure. A few years ago there were some documents about social service in some other countries (mostly Britain) abusing their powers and taking children away from non-abusive families to offer them for adoption to other people, for money. This Magnificat cult is spreading news that this is all a part of world-wide conspiracy against the traditional family, led by atheists, homosexuals and people hating the Virgin Mary. Recently this cult has registered as a political party, and participated in the recent municipal elections (although I am not aware of any significant victories). They also organized a large protest “for life and traditional family”. When our Catholic church saw them stealing its main agenda, it doubled its efforts and last week it published a new pastoral letter criticizing the “culture of death”, “gender ideology” and “the sins of Sodom”.
Meanwhile, a local neo-nazi movement become strong enough to win the municipal election in one of our counties (luckily not the one I live in). Their main agenda is fighting against the corrupted democratic politicians and parasitic Roma minority. They are very popular on “the free broadcast” internet radio, together with Magnificat; at this moment they seem to support each other, at least memetically. This combination of signalling contrarianism and yet appealing to common prejudice, seems very attractive to a lot of people. These days you can’t have an online discussion without someone explaining what a brainwashed sheep you are for not believing in them.
A month ago I burned some of my social capital by publishing a blog about how the Catholic church should stop giving tacit approval to the neo-nazis. (And by “tacit approval” I mean things like the former arch-bishop organizing a private mass for the local neo-nazis and blessing their leader. Which was later described by the church speakers as simply his private affair, which is not anyone else’s business.) So far it doesn’t seem like there was any benefit from it, except for me feeling better for having spoken my mind openly.
I feel like surrounded by complete idiots. To be honest, I always had this feeling, but recently it became very intensive.
Seems to me that irrational people have the advantage that they can relatively easily join their powers. An irrational person mostly cares about one thing; a rational person cares about many things. Suppose that you have a person A believing that people are manipulated by space aliens; a person B believing that vaccination causes autism; and a person C believing that it’s all about homosexuals trying to destroy the traditional family. Technically, none of them contradicts the others. And if you succeed to create a complex theory containing all the necessary components (the space aliens are controlling the humankind by giving more political power to homosexuals, which use their power to destroy the traditional family by using vaccination to cause more autism), you already have three strong believers. And more people mean more political power! Meanwhile the rational person will disagree with A and B and C, and remain without any allies. The ability of an irrational person to accept a compatible irrational belief is popularly called “having an open mind”.
Sounds like an interesting real-world example of http://lesswrong.com/lw/lr/evaporative_cooling_of_group_beliefs/
On the plus side, now you have all the material you need to write a satirical novel.
I used to wish that people be more interested in how society works, go outside of their homes and try to improve things. After seeing this, I just wish they all lost interest, returned home, a started watching some sitcoms.
I wasn’t sure whether this largely political comment was okay to write on LW, but then I realized LW is pretty much the only place I know where I could write such comment without receiving verbal abuse, racist comments, explanations that homosexuality really is the greatest danger of our civilization, or offended complaints about how I am insensitive towards religion. Recently, LW feels like an island of sanity in the vast ocean of madness.
Perhaps this will give me more energy to promote rationality in my country. I already arranged another LW meetup after a few months pause.