Henri Poincaré was among the first to follow the idea of conventionalism in mathematics. His view was that, paraphrasing Wikipedia here, axioms should be chosen such that they deliver good results and not to match intuitions about reality. Or, put too simply: Something is true if it is useful.
I don’t consider myself an optimist. When I think about possibilities, I try to estimate the likelihood of each one, independently of whether they are good or bad. And yet, I always hold the belief that “it will be alright”, even if I know that I may be disproven.
Many people hold beliefs that aren’t proven. Ranging from simple superstitions to massive conspiracy theories, these people adopt these beliefs despite their lack of empirical proof. If we look at the examples of tennis players: I remember reading that a famous player always steps on to the court with his left foot. Having a set ritual in this fashion helps the player to focus. If he does every step right, he’ll feel like he’s ready to win. He’ll feel good.
Having rituals like these probably don’t affect winning chances. There is, a quick google search turns out, no empirically-measured benefit to these rituals. But it changes something, at least a little bit: The player’s psyche. Being committed to “the truth” all the time is a noble duty, but it’s one that will leave you feeling down often, especially when you aren’t in control over the outcome in question.
It is in this fashion that I believe “it will be alright”. If something is beyond my control and I hold the belief that “it’s a coin toss”, I’ll feel dread over the outcome with absolutely no benefit – after all, worrying makes you suffer twice in the bad outcome, and suffer pointlessly in the good one. Thus, the belief that “it will be alright” is a useful one, in that it has a benefit for the belief-holder.
This substitution of belief is possible thanks to the fact that the future is ultimately unknowable. A contingent truth has every value, so it makes effectively no difference which one you pick as long as when the contingency collapses, you change your belief.
One disadvantage of this belief is that, if the bad outcome does happen, the letdown will be tremendous. This is how I felt this Wednesday morning. But even then, I still haven’t felt any negative consequences of what happened that night and so I will continue to hold this belief until I am proven wrong.
Another disadvantage is that it only works for things completely beyond one’s control. One still has a duty to always fight so that the worst-possible outcome doesn’t happen. And preparation for a bad situation can be life-saving. In this sense, the belief is more of a “hope for the best, prepare for the worst”.
In this sense, in the sense of fighting against bad outcomes, I am going to say: I think the 2024 United States presidential election was an incredibly dodgy affair.
The sheer amount of levelling going on was utterly insane. Upon evidence of one side doing horrendous things, supporters always responded with an “equivalent” being done by the other side. For example, I saw that reports of Trump’s general incoherence and rambling were met with footage of Harris, sitting inside Air Force Two, looking tired after a day of campaigning.
The media constantly treated the two in the exact same way, regardless of their actual actions. CNN headlines about Trump’s “strong closing arguments” were blatant sane-washing of a few incoherent sentences, in which he said the word “immigration” a few times. She had to be flawless while he could be lawless.
And to be fair, Harris was not flawless. She tried too hard to win over Republican voters, who just weren’t interested. She started strong (“kamala IS brat”, anyone?), then pivoted right too hard. Hindsight is 20/20, but I’m pretty sure that Dick Cheney isn’t a good person to have an endorsement from.
No investigation was conducted into questionable campaign financing despite Musk’s voter lottery. The attorney general seemed to not be doing anything since 2020. Trump should have had far more barriers to get through to run, seeing as he incited an insurrection the previous time.
And, most strikingly: The Republican Party closed polling stations and purged voter rolls in heavily questionable fashion.
In view of these facts, is it possible to ignore the fact that turnout was lower than 2020 despite there having been a pandemic at the time?
And yet, there are no reports of protests, no challenging of results. There seems to only be resignation and acceptance. It seems like nobody believes that anything can be different. There’s no questioning of “why did we have to choose between two right-wing candidates”. Thank God we have coalition governments here. We have a realer choice.
I’m not saying that he didn’t win. I’m not an election denier, of course he “won”. I’m just saying that it’s striking how, when Biden wins fair-and-square, there’s massive protests across the country, yet when Trump wins after questionable actions from his party and supporters, there’s radio silence.
The thesis from the election does seem to be that people wanted what Trump was promising (or trying to promise through word salad). People wanted 20 million immigrants to be “deported”. People wanted a national abortion ban. People wanted a gay marriage ban. Or at least, they accepted it as a necessary part of getting something to change, of getting someone else into power. And even more people just didn’t care enough to stop it.
Why? What people care about isn’t ingrained. I’d argue that it doesn’t even depend on what childhood people had. The only thing it depends on is what information they receive in what amounts. An anecdote: I was interrailing in Sweden and was staying at a hostel. At a table was a group of people my age, chatting. I joined them.
One guy (I’ll call him Simon) brought up Jordan Peterson, saying his book had helped him. Now, I’m informed on him. I know that he had a carnivorous diet, ended up in a medically-induced coma, has an untidy bedroom. I know that he propagates right-wing talking points about cultural issues and that without the politics, he’s little more than a mediocre self-help guru.
I said “I’ve heard Peterson’s alright if you leave out the politics”. Simon agreed with me. And then promptly steered us into an argument about trans people. After getting over the conversational whiplash, me and this other guy (let’s say, Giles) promptly countered all the usual talking points. It was very striking how the things Simon said were the exact same talking points you hear on the news, from politicians, in the comment sections on Reddit or Instagram or TikTok, in conversations with completely different people from completely different walks of life.
Giles said something that struck me. It was something along the lines of: “Why is it that every time trans issues are brought up, it’s always ‘women’s sports’ and ‘gendered bathrooms’ and never things that affect us badly like access to medicine or discrimination?” That made me realise that what we care about as individuals and as society as a whole depends only on what information we receive. Not just how we feel about certain issues, but what counts as an issue and even what counts as true:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_truth_effect
Much has been said about the correspondence between the rise of the extreme right-wing and the rise of algorithmic social media. The fact is, much of the internet, especially those parts with disproportionately large reach, is dedicated to echoing the same old stories about cultural and economic issues with disregard to their truth. The repetition of these things and the way that the algorithms tend to shove these things down the viewers’ throats change what the viewers care about.
And the fact is that this always pushes people to the right. A key takeaway from the election is that hate motivates more than hope. What could be more hateful than a position that says immigrants are invading in secret and eating pets and that they should all be deported? What could be more hateful than rejecting measures that could reduce the suicide rates of a certain proportion of the country’s population massively? What could motivate an audience more than a grand narrative around a “deep state cabal”?
Everyone who dissents, who criticises the permeation of culture by these fascists is promptly dissapeared from the space. Doxxing, swatting, no holds barred. This is, after all, how all this started: The massive harassment campaign against Zoë Quinn known as GamerGate. I won’t go into detail here, but check out the “Innuendo Studios” YouTube channel. There’s a brilliant deep dive into the subject there.
We, as a society, need to take a step back and question the role of social media and the Internet at large in opinion-making. It is without question that our manner of interaction with digital media is harmful to our attention spans:
I believe that weighting of speech according to how much rage it causes, or how much is paid for it to be seen, goes against the fundamental principle of free speech. I believe that free speech necessarily includes a diversity of opinions, over which the listener controls what to give credence to and what to stop hearing. In short, I believe in free and equal speech. Algorithmic social media does not provide this at all.
The way the Internet is now gets us to care about things that do not matter, causes us to sabotage ourselves in the name of fictional culture wars, and threatens the future of democracy. So what do we do?
Social media’s meteoric rise doesn’t mean that those services that the internet has been reduced to – Twitter, Reddit, Instagram, TikTok et cetera – will last forever. In fact, it means the opposite – disruption can come from anywhere. The only reason these things persist so strongly is due to the high switching costs. So if everyone leaves at the same time, they’ll just vanish.
What we do is to hold honest personal and political discussions around leaving these services in the dust, avoiding them when we can. It seems like a lot of people are realising this. I’m hopeful. In due time, their influence will fade. We won’t go back to normal, but this will be the first step in getting people to care about the things that really matter.
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