Mental tools for living in a dirty information pool

The information pool is filthy. You can't trust what you read online, but you can trust even less what you hear on the TV. Much note has been taken about things that are true today being conspiracy theories just months ago. This is a symptom - of a dirty information pool.

I have been following Matthew Crawford from Rounding the Earth Substack. A smart, decent, honest guy who is good at math, I am watching him bang his head against some realities - and this has to do with the dirty information pool.

https://twitter.com/EcoInstant/status/1644432521197678600

What do we know?

Since the information pool is so dirty, we may only have a few pieces to grasp at, and we have a great advantage if we stay flexible and understand these things in a modular way - different points have different merits that we can discuss, and we do not need to commit ourselves to any tiny point.

We can come at this from a few different angles, but at this point right now we should all be comfortable with a few basic suppositions - going outside is good, for example, being locked in a home is bad. Those of us who research these things, are pretty much in agreement that the PCR testing at high amplifications was a terrible idea, something I had enough information to conclude and make this post about in October, 2020.

And a growing number of us seem to know that 'they', some they out there, doesn't seem to have their best interests in mind. I think its more likely several multiple groups of infighting elites, more than a single 'they', but there is definitely a swamp to be drained.

So let's elect Trump.

https://twitter.com/EcoInstant/status/1645923286340222977

Think again! (this should be a habit)

I am pretty convinced Donald Trump is a Parasocial Dunbar Hacker. He is being wedged into our brains, levered into position as one of only two positions - Fearless Leader or Big Bad Other Guy.

Quite simply, a lot of what is going on is theater. Take a deep breath, touch your toes, sit down on the ground. These things are real - but the '2024 election' probably isn't, at least not in the same way as the ground beneath your feet or the air you breath into your lungs is real.

What's real is what is around us, our land and communities, and a lot of things that we get to choose, like youtube videos. I will recommend upgrading the type of content that you consume, and soon youtube will be recommending stuff like this to you too, and I get them from all around the world:

Seems like regenerating ecosystems is something that we are showing great success with all around the world - and something we could all get along and work together on.

Of course, I know a lot about this topic, and it actually fills me with optimism, so remember Gell-Mann Amnesia always when we are dealing with an information pool that has become tainted. Knowing a lot about your area of expertise can be helpful, as long as your understanding takes you all the way through the problems and into the solutions.

In that space, talking about solutions, we can actually start to find a much cleaner, purer, information sources and flows, and a lot of great (also optimistic!) experts.

Let me give you an example about geopolitics, in case you think the forest garden stuff has made me soft and biased.

The creation of a multi-polar world with new properous trade flows, is the positive proposal of a framework to build into the future. You can only understand it if you are honestly and earnestly looking for a solution. Multi-paraty solutions have a specific geometry, and we can all tell when somebody isn't trying to look for a viable solution (we often refer to these as 'belligerent')

Although we can pretty well detect when someone is not trying to negotiate and has become a belligerent (ehem, USA) - we have to be careful with anthropomorphising of corporations or government structures. They are not people, they are full of people. Specifically, groups of people with various interests.

If we take a look at the different modular information packets we have collected over covid, many very smart people are still trying to fit them together in a way that all people can agree. There is a lot of arguing about details, and you know somebody is always going to come up with Hanlon's old zinger:

To be frank, I think this is an easy out for groups of humans who are by necessity conspiring all the time. I am conspiring with many local people to make ECOBANK a success right now. But it's not this razor that I wanted to discuss today, its just a popular one with a name.

I want to you to think about the idea of 'they', and how 'they' as a concept gets fit into 'theories', which both make them 'more believable' and way less precise and also easier to discard. There is no 'they'. There are infinite 'theys'.

Everytime you and your brother or best friend get together, its a 'they'. In fact, if one time you and your brother meet up with your best friend, its a different 'they' than the first two.

Saying bankers are bad dudes and are causing these problems does not then allow you to understand the nuance of the US Federal Reserve going to war with the EuroDollar market of European Bankers.

Groups of people are the most powerful force on this planet

And, All I want to say is that they don't really care about us. The banks mentioned above are fighting each other, its not about you.

Certain philosophies can become mind poison, the 'out to get us' stuff. Even if it's true. You can't be a functional human being if you are attending to your paranoias of being persecuted. And we need functional human beings to plug in their controllers and build a better world with better systems.

Freedom and Friendship