Cory Doctorow: Reality-Based Communities
https://pluralistic.net/2025/03/27/use-your-mentality/Remember the Global War on Terror? I know, it's been a minute. But there was a time when we were all meant to take terrorism – real terrorism, the knocking-down-buildings kind, not the being-mean-to-Teslas kind – seriously.
Back in the early oughts, I remember picking up a copy of the Financial Times in an airport lounge and flipping through it, and coming across an "advice to corporate management" column in which the question was, "Should I take out terrorism insurance for my business?" The columnist's answer: "The actual risk to your business of a terrorism-related disruption rounds to zero. However: a) your shareholders don't understand this, an b) your insurance company does. That means that you can buy a very large amount of terrorism insurance for a very small amount of money, making this a cheap price to pay to mollify your easily frightened investors."
I never forgot that little piece of writing. It was a powerful reminder that successful large-scale enterprises must attend to the world as it is, not as ideology dictates that it should be. This was – and is – a deeply heterodox position among the ideological defenders of capitalism, who continue to uphold Milton Friedman's maxim that:
Truly important and significant hypotheses will be found to have "assumptions" that are wildly inaccurate descriptive representations of reality, and, in general, the more significant the theory, the more unrealistic the assumptions (in this sense)
https://pluralistic.net/2025/02/17/caliper-ai/#racism-machine
These ideologues – who often cross over from boardrooms into governments – are with the GW Bush official who dismissed a journalist as a member of the "reality-based community":
When we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality-based_community
*snip*
= new reply since forum marked as read
I am going to dig into this on my own.
You know, most people want confirmation of their prejudices gotten from who knows where.
"Common Sense Is Nothing More Than a Deposit of Prejudices Laid Down in the Mind Before Age Eighteen" ... rightfully attributed to Albert Einstein. (1)
IMO, society programs us subtly or overtly into playing losing games. These incorporate myths developed over time to keep people from questioning and challenging authority of various sorts, going on the job treadmill, comparing oneself to others, and (sadly) projecting ones weaknesses and failures onto others rather than taking responsibility and growing.
"Reality: is complex. (2) People want short-cuts to thinking, and reality often conflicts with myths and cockamamie fetishes (like tariffs and trade deficits).
And people are easily fooled into acting against their own best interests. (3)
Many people would rather be "right" than successful.
"Right" means that others share their wacky opinions and theories, or "right" in the sense of hammering one's point of view rather than taking the other person's wants and needs into account, and one remains alone, or alone in a cult of similarly hypnotized zombies. "divorced from reality"
Now that one can meet online, instead of having to meet in person, these cults are easier to assemble, and program.
As for Cory's quote:
Successful large-scale enterprises must attend to the world as it is, not as ideology dictates that it should be.
people are easily confused by cognitive biases. ( 4). Mentioning 9/11 reminds me that we are overwhelmed by "spectacular" events that have vanishingly low probability.
(1) https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/04/29/common-sense/
(2)
(3)
(4) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases
"shocking"
I personally just feel it's easier to read it in its entirety on his site.
