A conversation
Strewth you’re so predictable.
Great steaming banjollisnibs.
What?
That wasn’t predictable.
Okay it wasn’t exactly predictable, but in a wider sense it was because it’s the kind of thing you do and say. What I’m saying is, that in general you are predictable, as I am. A core aim of government and hierarchies is to foster predictable behaviour. The interesting aspect of that is that this too is predictable behaviour by governments.
No it isn’t.
I knew you’d say that.
No you didn’t.
And that. Anyway, to pick up my thread again.
Your predictable thread.
Okay my predictable thread…
Because you’ve said this kind of thing before.
Shut up. The aim of government is not to foster rational behaviour, but predictable behaviour. We navigate through life by avoiding surprises which is another way of saying that we seek predictability. This is what holds hierarchies together and makes government possible.
Okay I’ll go with that, but the big question is why is predictability so vitally important to governments and hierarchies?
Because it also makes government inevitable, because predictable behaviour is normal behaviour. Leadership, government and all kind of other group activities are emergent properties of our endless push towards predictable behaviour.
Not if… no go on.
As the world becomes more complex, human behaviour becomes less predictable. Ever since the invention of printing, we the general population have become more and more aware of wider possibilities. We have become better informed and thereby less predictable. Electronic and now digital communication have hugely accelerated that trend.
Agreed but with caveats. An agreed example is that you and I aren’t in the same town as we have this conversation, but we could be in different countries. In principle we could be on different planets. So yes I do see how advances in communication have made us less predictable, but it would be simpler to say we are better informed and this in itself makes some of us less predictable. That’s some of us, not all of us and in any event it’s a spectrum.
Exactly, we are better informed, or in a more impersonal sense we are less predictable. So as an inevitable response, the general behaviour of the population is reined in by government. Here in the UK, such things as the NHS, state education, the BBC, welfare state and even the recent pandemic all foster predictable behaviour.
As do roads. You go where they go.
Er – yes. Anyway, to take this further, the point of gender politics, climate change and so on is to make most people predictable by isolating sceptics who can’t accept such crazy and obviously manipulative political notions. That’s the reining in - defining outsiders more clearly as outsiders.
So according to you, this is why our elites appear to have become more stupid, at least politically. It’s just that we have caught up with them and more and more of us are catching on. Not catching on at any great rate, but it’s happening and nobody knows what the outcome will be. Hence all the creeping censorship. With hindsight, that too was predictable.
I didn’t think you’d agree with me.
Neither did I. I’m so unpredictable.
Great steaming banjollisnibs.
What?
That wasn’t predictable.
Okay it wasn’t exactly predictable, but in a wider sense it was because it’s the kind of thing you do and say. What I’m saying is, that in general you are predictable, as I am. A core aim of government and hierarchies is to foster predictable behaviour. The interesting aspect of that is that this too is predictable behaviour by governments.
No it isn’t.
I knew you’d say that.
No you didn’t.
And that. Anyway, to pick up my thread again.
Your predictable thread.
Okay my predictable thread…
Because you’ve said this kind of thing before.
Shut up. The aim of government is not to foster rational behaviour, but predictable behaviour. We navigate through life by avoiding surprises which is another way of saying that we seek predictability. This is what holds hierarchies together and makes government possible.
Okay I’ll go with that, but the big question is why is predictability so vitally important to governments and hierarchies?
Because it also makes government inevitable, because predictable behaviour is normal behaviour. Leadership, government and all kind of other group activities are emergent properties of our endless push towards predictable behaviour.
Not if… no go on.
As the world becomes more complex, human behaviour becomes less predictable. Ever since the invention of printing, we the general population have become more and more aware of wider possibilities. We have become better informed and thereby less predictable. Electronic and now digital communication have hugely accelerated that trend.
Agreed but with caveats. An agreed example is that you and I aren’t in the same town as we have this conversation, but we could be in different countries. In principle we could be on different planets. So yes I do see how advances in communication have made us less predictable, but it would be simpler to say we are better informed and this in itself makes some of us less predictable. That’s some of us, not all of us and in any event it’s a spectrum.
Exactly, we are better informed, or in a more impersonal sense we are less predictable. So as an inevitable response, the general behaviour of the population is reined in by government. Here in the UK, such things as the NHS, state education, the BBC, welfare state and even the recent pandemic all foster predictable behaviour.
As do roads. You go where they go.
Er – yes. Anyway, to take this further, the point of gender politics, climate change and so on is to make most people predictable by isolating sceptics who can’t accept such crazy and obviously manipulative political notions. That’s the reining in - defining outsiders more clearly as outsiders.
So according to you, this is why our elites appear to have become more stupid, at least politically. It’s just that we have caught up with them and more and more of us are catching on. Not catching on at any great rate, but it’s happening and nobody knows what the outcome will be. Hence all the creeping censorship. With hindsight, that too was predictable.
I didn’t think you’d agree with me.
Neither did I. I’m so unpredictable.
4 comments:
An interesting issue here is how dissent and being in a minority is different from being unpredictable. Someone who regularly and predictably dissents and refuses to cooperate is a problem, but a far from insuperable one. They can be "worked around", allowed to have their say, or ignored. The emphasis may have changed from getting us to do their bidding, to simply preventing us from disrupting what they are getting others to do.
Sam - I think you are right, it's a shift towards prevention rather than persuasion. "Go along with us or you are nobody" is the message.
IFF we were rational creatures AND were better informed, then we might be expected to reason to the same rational conclusions and therefore agree more. But on the whole we are nothing like a rational as we like to think we think so what we do with whatever information comes our way is quite unpredictable.
djc - governments seem to know that and try to make sure that the same information comes our way so that reactions are more predictable. The media do it too of course because they want a predictable audience.
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