Thread by @EvilVizier

ON THE MIND VIRUS THEORY

Bronski (@bronskijoseph) did a nice little study debunking the theory that people believe crazy things because there's a mind virus circulating...

Basically he demonstrated that people don't act in line with their crazy "beliefs" on issues purportedly relevant to the mind virus. In other words they're just hypocrites, and sociopathic status maximizers, as I like to call them.

Well even as I appreciate Bronski's study,

I think it's a little more complicated than that, or as liars like to put it, I think some "nuance" is required. My nuanced take is that their brains are split and the sociopathic status maximizing is, for most of them, pre-conscious. In other words they are Calvinistically evil.

Basically on a deep, unconscious level they DO know they are professing false beliefs, and when their personal well-being is at stake they don't act on those false beliefs, as they find themselves inexplicably adverse to doing so.

But on a conscious level they DON'T actually know, because a mental reflex against crimethink prevents socially inconvenient beliefs from even emerging clearly on the verbal level. Instead these buried beliefs, like dark matter, cause distortions that are to them inexplicable.

This is actually a more pessimistic take than "they're hypocrites," as hypocrites, being conscious of their hypocrisy, would seem reformable.

Instead we're dealing with a "calvinistic," i.e., pre-determined type of evil, where the critical sin is pre-conscious, pre-volition.

This seems to be the normal manner of existence for elite human capital, which elevates them "above" intelligent and motivated people who, perhaps also in a predetermined fashion, nevertheless fail to qualify as EHC but can only observe their antics from the outside.

I'm aware that this is a not-very-empirical explanation whose nuancedness should lead you to be skeptical, but it squares with what I observe better than the "pure and simple hypocrisy" explanation.

So, there isn't really a mind virus circulating but some other thing--namely a weaponized meme that the calvinistically evil wield with innate and largely unconscious skill to secure worldly power, EHC foremost among them.

Related:

https://twitter.com/EvilVizier/status/1656579225699364864

P.S. I should have mentioned that there are undoubtedly some pure hypocrites and perfectly conscious sociopathic status maximizers out there, and that these are common enough among our rulers.

However they are not so great in numbers, and I think the calvinistically evil are the larger part of our problem.