1. Another important detail to track is what the leader says in private versus what they say in public. Typically you may want to first acquire data and attempt to trigger these cascades in private and in smaller groups, before you try triggering them across your nation or planet.
2. I also think the Internet is going to shift these dynamics, by forcing private spheres of life to shrink or even become non-existent, and by increasing the number of events that are in public and therefore have potential to trigger these cascades.
For example someone might just be experimenting with an unusual ideology or relationship or lifestyle in their private life, but if they and 50 others end up posting about this on YouTube, and a bunch of people end up reviewing it favourably, it could quickly become a worldwide phenomena practised by millions.
A corollary is that if someone powerful wants their current ideas to not be threatened by competing ideas they may need to even more aggressively shut down anyone trying anything else in public, even if it’s only being tried at a small scale. Shutting down the more popular ideas might just mean more public attention gets freed up and directed to the less popular ideas.
I am not sure a monopoly on violence is sufficient to shut down ideas in today’s world. People still smuggle hard drives and phones into North Korea for example. A real-time system to smuggle information could change the dynamics of military coups in the future. Note that this information could even include information about people’s preferences, who sides with who, trustworthy video proofs, leaks of private information of the elites etc.
P.S. Shameless plug but I’m currently a full-time researcher trying to figure this stuff out. (Implications of the internet.) Feel free to read my website and reach out if interested.
I love this post.
1. Another important detail to track is what the leader says in private versus what they say in public. Typically you may want to first acquire data and attempt to trigger these cascades in private and in smaller groups, before you try triggering them across your nation or planet.
2. I also think the Internet is going to shift these dynamics, by forcing private spheres of life to shrink or even become non-existent, and by increasing the number of events that are in public and therefore have potential to trigger these cascades.
For example someone might just be experimenting with an unusual ideology or relationship or lifestyle in their private life, but if they and 50 others end up posting about this on YouTube, and a bunch of people end up reviewing it favourably, it could quickly become a worldwide phenomena practised by millions.
A corollary is that if someone powerful wants their current ideas to not be threatened by competing ideas they may need to even more aggressively shut down anyone trying anything else in public, even if it’s only being tried at a small scale. Shutting down the more popular ideas might just mean more public attention gets freed up and directed to the less popular ideas.
I am not sure a monopoly on violence is sufficient to shut down ideas in today’s world. People still smuggle hard drives and phones into North Korea for example. A real-time system to smuggle information could change the dynamics of military coups in the future. Note that this information could even include information about people’s preferences, who sides with who, trustworthy video proofs, leaks of private information of the elites etc.
P.S. Shameless plug but I’m currently a full-time researcher trying to figure this stuff out. (Implications of the internet.) Feel free to read my website and reach out if interested.