Just randomly connecting dots today and I had a series of strange thoughts... I've had them before, but they seem much more poignant right now.
We have violently accepted crowd sourcing in different aspects of life that actually damages us. Let me name a few and see if you get my gist: The Stock Market, Belief, Politics, and Law.
No, these aren't really "crowd source" models, as defined, but I get this feeling that we have supplanted fact and real thought with a ridiculously loaded idea that the "wisdom of the crowds" must be right. Or, perhaps, the largest crowd must be right.
The Stock Market is, at times, completely rumor driven, to the point of being whimsical. The older, more established companies don't feel it as much, but ... when someone says, "check the stock price" as proof of failure, doesn't that strike you as dangerously assumptive? I don't deal with the stock market much. And, because of how reactive people (and bots) are to certain trends and announcements, I doubt I'll ever pay close attention to it.
What about Belief? Something as inherently subjective as belief is wielded like a hammer to, not exactly destroy but, overwhelm fact. Many people "believe" something, but when they use it as a counter to fact, a proven thing can the whimsical nature of belief really contest it? Unfortunately, yes. Yes it can. Because people are involved and ignorance thrives when we don't accept the process of how theories are proven. Unfortunately, this can be completely media driven. How to change the hearts and minds of great masses of people in an instant? Put a compelling, albeit false, statement on TV. Sell it to the nation, sell it to the world. Belief wins, at least, until we're crushed by fact.
Law and politics seems to follow the same measure, for better or for worse. A bad thing happens, so you restrict the "bad thing" without fully understanding the problem. You start outlawing symptomatic failures, not perceiving and dealing with the root of the problem. It ends up being dangerous and over-reaching. What's worse now, the over-reach continues, announcing that the symptom is actually the problem. The real problems are overshadowed by the inflamed, but ultimately trivial, that people deem more worthy.
The symptomatic failures continue and you wonder if anyone really understands the root of the problem beyond a whole pile of subjective opinions that constitute "mob reason". We've always known that mobs are not thinking, judging systems. Why do we think that this is the best way to manage and shape society in the future?
I have no idea how to fix it. It would be a process of stopgaps to make sense of the madness and not like subjective thoughts affect real world problems. A person, individually, may be smart enough, but they are definitely not loud enough. The people rule and subjective understanding destroys the nuance between fact—what makes sense-—and what is just plain stupid.
Yes, and unfortunately, I'm actually bashing democracy. But when subjective thought rules the world, there will be no room, or need, for facts.
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