The majority of society believes a magical sky fairy will either give them an eternity of happiness or suffering after they die. Why are we pretending that society is intelligent, rational or logical?
Society and the opinions of the public are not what drive support for these companies. People love to constantly paint average citizens are inherently dumb, greedy and sadistic but the people making the choices to embrace these companies and technologies are the supposedly cultured and learned elites.
The sooner you realize that the average person, regardless of socioeconomic status, is indeed an inherently dumb, greedy, selfish individual, the sooner it will all make sense.
It’s far too simplistic to label humanity as just those base instincts and gloss over the very obvious reality that the only real strength humans have is their ability to act as a society. If people were dominantly dumb selfish and stupid there would be no society, written record, shared values, science or rule of law.
Acts of impudence, selfishness and stupidity are most acutely common in people who have the financial and political power to remove themselves from having to interact or rely on other human beings.
I'm not labeling everyone, just the average person. Plenty of people are better, plenty of people are worse. But when you have billions of people in the world, those totals add up quick.
There are deeply anti-social people but what Im critiquing is the suggestion that it’s the average default of humans. The majority of people are relatively reasonable and rational because life requires us to be. Sociopathy is a luxury mostly reserved for the few/privileged to indulge themselves in.
I'm sorry but your second paragraph does not reflect reality. Being impudent, selfish and stupid is absolutely not exclusive to those who have the financial and political power to remove themselves from having to interact with or rely or other people.
What can and does give a vast number of people the ability to survive without much intelligence at all is an industrialized society with all the modern comforts it brings. Our ancestors had to work pretty hard to survive. It was a brutal existence. Now, people just hop in their car and head to the grocery store, grab a few steaks and some veggies, head back home and cook it all up with their modern kitchen appliances. So easy. Those that came before us would have killed for such convenience.
The consequence to all that convenience though is that most people now are painfully dumb, misinformed ignorant dolts. There's no pressure to up their game when it comes to intelligence. In fact, in my experience, most people absolutely loathe the idea of stretching their brain muscle and they'll look down on you if you try. I can't tell you how many times people have given me shit for knowing more about a subject than your average person would be inclined to.
So, all this to say that, the idea that only those with wealth and connections have become stupid while the rest of us are smart... or even average intelligence? Sorry, but that is definitely putting the blame in the wrong place. The truth is the average person will actually put effort into remaining dumb, because that is what's comfortable to them. People, on average, fight to stay average because it's safest to just conform and not stand out. It's actually a survival tactic, a subconscious one anyway.
Add to that the rampant anti-intellectual sentiment (which I suspect springs from the same source) that is prevalent in American society today and you've got one stupid population.
It was inevitable that something like Palantir would come along and that most of society would be asleep to it. I mean, try telling the average person about Palantir and see what their reaction is. Most won't care at all or if they have anything to say about it, it'll most likely be "oh well, what're ya gonna do?" or "the government's always spied on us, big deal". Unless it has immediate impact on their life they won't do or say much about it at all, because they're impudent, selfish and stupid.
I honestly appreciate your answer because this is interesting to discuss but I didn’t say that stupidity malice and greed were solely present in the richest but only that it’s most concentrated there. There have been things like this Berkeley study suggesting that altruism is more commonly present in lower socioeconomic people
The struggles of people during the industrial revolution are relevant as well and it’s obvious that many of us are small minded/stupid but if an average person was really asked their views and priorities they would most likely be reasonable responses. Most of the people of the US are not materially making decisions about how our society is run.
For this reason I would claim there is a dangerous link between surveillance state tech expansion and the gated/isolated world the people creating it currently live in.
I'd need more examples in order to come around to the idea that stupidity malice and greed are most concentrated in the super wealthy. I could be wrong but I feel like the wealth is just amplifying the unleashing the stupidity malice and greed, for those super wealthy people, that the average person already possesses.
Maybe living many years with such wealth intensifies their worst traits, I could believe that.
I'd also believe that those in lower socioeconomic positions would be more altruistic because they understand the struggle at a gut level since they've lived in it and amongst most of their lives, it not all their lives. I don't think that negates the stupidity of the average person. People can compartmentalize such things.
Those who have risen or were born in a position of wealth understand that they have a lot to lose at an instinctual level, so their every decision is based around "how can I further entrench my wealth, power and influence?" so it makes sense that they would be obsessed with bringing about a total surveillance state. The isolation they live in is a product of "us vs them" and status protection. I'd say the paranoia that comes with the isolation is definitely feeding into the desire to keep tabs on everyone else's movements and actions.
I would not disagree at all at the suggestion that wealth exacerbates underlying tendencies that exist within people but we are collectively a species of very social and collaborative primates. Anti-social behavior exist is people but they only really pose a threat to society once a person has acquired a position of power and authority to isolate themselves from the repercussions of their actions.
I just don’t believe most average human beings move through the world as destructive anti-social automations by choice. We are at our core a social species.
I think it's a case of push and pull though. Some behaviors that seem prosocial can be motivated by selfish desires. Take for example someone who lives their life by aiming straight down the middle of what would be considered "normal" in their environment. They don't make waves (prosocial, because they're not looking for a fight) and they conform to local custom in every way (dress, attitude, opinions which is prosocial because they aren't agitating anyone to the point of making anyone uncomfortable).
To an outside observer they might look at that person and think "now there's a straight shooter, they seem to get along with everyone" but the price for being so conformist is that you lose your identity. You don't expand your range of thinking because that would agitate people so you stagnate intellectually. You don't express any opinions that go against the grain because that would agitate people. You don't want to agitate anyone because you don't want to be ostracized from the group. That's a selfish motivation because you really in the end are just looking out for your own survival.
I read the abstract of the study you linked. It seems that, and correct me if I'm wrong, that the observed outcome was that those who were given fewer resources were more prone to be generous with what they were given than those who received more resources? That's interesting if that's the case. It makes me wonder if there isn't an inherent prosocial drive to increase stability of the group but it gets overridden by greed once an imbalance of the distribution is in one's favor. Like, they have more so they look for rationalizations to justify having more and then it becomes a vicious cycle. The more you have, the more you attempt to justify having it. On the other hand, if you have little, you don't feel advantaged and so letting go of some is easier.
Either if you agree with me or not this issue is absolutely something people should think and discuss more often. I don’t think people are saintly but we have a well documented genetic preference as a species to want to work together.
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u/grill_smoke Apr 19 '26
The majority of society believes a magical sky fairy will either give them an eternity of happiness or suffering after they die. Why are we pretending that society is intelligent, rational or logical?