Updating Mental Models

Updating mental models:

Everyone, everywhere is critical to keep the world going.

There’s a company in the Netherlands that makes lithography machines that makes modern computer chips possible. Without their equipment, the world grids to the halt.

If you think, yeah, but there was a time (not long ago) before computers, that’s true, but the world now is so interconnected, and reliant on computers, I’m not sure people could exist without them.

The more you understand about how interconnected the world is, and how interdependent we are on each other, the less flippant you’ll be about the fate of others you will be.

Countless example….

War in Ukraine led to cascading system failures with food supply, energy supply, inflation, etc.

Potential war in Taiwan could lead to computer chip disruption worldwide.

Email going down would shut down the worlds economies.

The power grid failure, causes the failure of almost everything.

Everyone is important. Even people and things you likely hate, probably have a day job that helps society.

Fascism thrives in fearful environments. It preys on people’s fears of change, it harkens to a mythical path (that of one’s childhood… when things were perceived as simple and good; or a time further back, before the living memory of anyone alive). It comes up with simple answers to complex problems, placing the blame on some out group. And it usually has as its face, a mentally weak, but externally boisterous male leader who pretends to be an all knowing, all powerful with all the answers to the worlds complexities, with simple answers to every problem.

When the world is complex and scary, simple and reassuring is comforting. Accepting responsibility is hard and changing one’s ways is hard, blaming others is easy. The allure of fascism isn’t hard to understand, and the less empathic you are, and the less introspective you are, the easier it is to fall prey to it.

The corporate take over of government is nearly complete, not just in the US, but abroad. Most government policies are focused around protection for incumbent businesses or competition amongst business interests both domestically and internationally.

In the US, this corporate take over of government was made possible by religious nut jobs, who have simultaneously infiltrated government, causing a massive brain drain, with an authoritarian bent to government. Not only that, it’s a mixture of ignorance, hate, victimization, and apocalyptic fervor that is extremely self destructive. The US and the world writ large is in peril.

These corporate and religious entities are not coordinating efforts so much as being guided by memes, which are ideas with authority. The only way out of this darkness is with light.

[This is getting to in the weeds… need to figure out how to explain the complexity of systems without having to explain how everything is interconnected]

Need data visualization.

High level ideas:

• Everything is interconnected

• Few resources are expendable

• Memes are ideas with authority. A meme can be the authority figure.

• New ideas mental models are required for progress

• Fear and ignorance are retarding forces, they hold people and humanity back

• Ethical understanding and liberal thought are required to form good mental models

• Fidelity to truth, both scientific and ethically valid, and fidelity to humankind, and life on Earth have to be the foundations of any sustainable future.

• Understanding the interconnection nature of everything ought to provide enlightenment to even the most cynical among us that an attempt at fixing our dilapidated systems is far superior to blowing things up.

• The impulse to destroy things is understandable emotionally, it’s certainly easier to destroy than to build, but ultimately destruction of “the other” is a destruction of the self.

• What we have are a series of thinking problems; bad mental models.

• We need new mental models; which requires an EthoLiberal mindset.

• We need to design ourselves out of the current malaise.

• These are design problems to be solved.