You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.
Unknown, popularly attributed to Abraham Lincoln
One of the most famous supposed quotes of Abraham Lincoln, got me thinking. What if we interpreted those words in the literal sense? What would that imply?
Especially the part of the supposed possibility of a state of ‘omni-deception’, “You can fool all of the people some of the time”, where the entire world is confused…
That even the greatest scoundrels, when devising the most devious and sophisticated plans, manage to fool themselves in the end as well? (at least some of the time)
If literally everyone were to be fooled simultaneously then by definition it would be impossible to tell until after the fact, at the very least. In the state of deepest confusion even the nagging feeling of confusion disappears, at least in everyday life, such that one does not even realize they are confused.
Could that truly somehow be operant simultaneously upon all and one?
How would those periods of omni-deception appear? And what would they be about?
How could we distinguish them from other periods in retrospect?
If your thinking these sound like mysterious questions then I share the sentiment, perhaps they will inevitably lead to even more mysterious answers…
Crossposted from my blog: https://mzuo.ca/2022/02/08/everyones-mired-in-the-deepest-confusion-some-of-the-time/
I think it sometimes happens in cults, that they are first started by a person shamelessly lying to others, but as they are surrounded by true believers the social pressure instinct kicks in and suddenly the person is like: “wow, I was thinking I was making up this stuff, but seems like actually I have been receiving messages from the Universe all the time, I just wasn’t aware of it.”
Another possibility is that the people who confused the whole world die, and then all the living people are confused.
Not sure if “fooling people” requires intent. If you invent flogiston and make everyone believe in it, are people “fooled”?
Those are some interesting points. I think if someone truly promoted the idea of ‘flogiston’, even with the purest intentions, and as a consequence some people became deceived, I would consider it unintentional fooling, subconscious fooling, etc. So it definitely wouldn’t require intent.
After reflection, this also ties in with the issue of determining the competence of a superior intelligence. Where one can only identify the level above them, but not differentiate the level above the level above them, and so on.
So people who think they are near the top, and who believe there’s one level of people modestly greater than them in lets say ‘fooling ability’, may genuinely carry out their activities on that assumption. They effectively lead themselves into a trap if their estimation was wrong, if they are not actually near the very top.
I can understand why the simulation hypothesis and zoo hypothesis are so popular.