Unfortunately that seems to be the pattern with a lot of beliefs right now, especially ones that the rich have vested interest in ensuring spread.
AI bros just updated their AI doomsday timeline again, from 2026 to 2030. At some point you’d think they’d see the parallels with the “world is ending on this specific day” cults and the constant timeline shifting.
As literacy, media literacy, numeracy, critical thinking, attention spans … all broadly worsen…
… amidst a backdrop of very serious collapse of material conditions on the ground…
Basically every time in history you get that combo of conditions, humans start making cults.
Its a kind of sociological coping mechanism, or maybe basically panic/stress response.
When people don’t have the tools to understand and evaluate reality, but people can very plainly tell tell that things are worsening, life is getting more tenuous… people will irrationally believe in anything that offers at least a real feeling of tribal belonging, identity, and that can also ideally either actually excercise force to secure material needs, or at the very least, make a convincing display that they could if they wanted to.
Unfortunately that seems to be the pattern with a lot of beliefs right now, especially ones that the rich have vested interest in ensuring spread.
AI bros just updated their AI doomsday timeline again, from 2026 to 2030. At some point you’d think they’d see the parallels with the “world is ending on this specific day” cults and the constant timeline shifting.
As literacy, media literacy, numeracy, critical thinking, attention spans … all broadly worsen…
… amidst a backdrop of very serious collapse of material conditions on the ground…
Basically every time in history you get that combo of conditions, humans start making cults.
Its a kind of sociological coping mechanism, or maybe basically panic/stress response.
When people don’t have the tools to understand and evaluate reality, but people can very plainly tell tell that things are worsening, life is getting more tenuous… people will irrationally believe in anything that offers at least a real feeling of tribal belonging, identity, and that can also ideally either actually excercise force to secure material needs, or at the very least, make a convincing display that they could if they wanted to.
It’s not “right now” it’s always been that way.
Believing this is a new or temporary thing is wishful thinking.