In the scheme of man’s quest for understanding, the impulse to not-know something is a far more powerful influence than the mere ideal of seeking knowledge itself. An embargo of ideas speaks louder than does all our epistemology.
Among competing alternatives, all other things being equal, prefer the one for which discussion or research is embargoed.
Lying is an art form which ranks among the greatest of the humanities – bearing parity with such human affairs as mercy, semantics, history, love, literature, or war. The Paul Ekman Group, which teaches methodologies useful in spotting lies, has identified nine key reasons as to why people lie.1 Within this essay, we seek to extrapolate beyond this body of work, and identify a chain of principle regarding the lie of the syndicate in particular – a foible-in-common which further then leverages the amplification gain to be had through collective humanity: the antiwisdom of the crowd.
Specifically, people lie in order to
- attain or preserve something precious,
- win or preserve the admiration of others, or
- exercise power over others by controlling the information their target can access.
When persons lie in support of The Narrative however, it is indeed about power alone:
- To achieve assent via logical deduction means your case is powerful, but to manipulate assent via a lie means that you are powerful – the more people manipulated, the more gratifying is that power.
- The lie is excused because one is lying for ‘virtuous or just cause’.
- The most rewarding form of lying for the Narrative Narcissist therefore, is one in which intent can be laundered from the liar themselves. This requires the support of a club in a state of anomie.
When a group in authority, seeks to exercise or preserve that authority, all these ubiquitous human factors not only come into play, but moreover become part of the re-enforced culture of the club itself. It’s alright to lie a little. After all, it’s for the club, it’s for science, it’s for virtue, and besides everyone in the club is also doing it. What I have found in business, is that even an individual habitually attentive to meticulous details of accountability, will suddenly compromise or abandon such practices when it comes to personal or club gain. Everyone is honest until money is actually sitting on the table. Then things change. A syndicate will loan to you only under the auspices of a lengthy and iron-clad contract, yet then demand that a loan they take from you, be borne upon a mere handshake. They suddenly become stupid – taking one for the club.
Once an individual has attained a scarce membership, one that they regard to be precious, worthy of admiration, or which affords them heady power over the information which others are allowed to consider – thereafter, preservation of the club (or syndicate) in the best interests of the individual, becomes paramount.
The Razor – Crowds are Anti-Wise
Inside a previous article we identified the principle that partial truths constitute the most effective form of lying. But what happens when spin, disinformation, and partial lies are wholly inadequate in controlling the critical information which the target of the lie might receive? What if the topic is not vulnerable to talking points, appeal to ignorance, or misrepresentation? For example, there is no way to ‘spin’ the ramifications of putative election corruption, elite island debauchery, fraudulent FBI warrants, or anomalous creatures. There is no ad hoc method available to rescue the notion that one got blind-drunk the previous night and had sex with an animal (hence the expression ‘screwed the pooch’). Information threats of this nature must be made subject to embargo alone. Embargo of research – embargo of its very mention.
Syndicates which bear the risk of the three primary motivations to lie, inside a milieu of anomie, are more likely to lie, more likely to spin disinformation, and more likely to frame an embargo of threatening ideas.
anomie – a breakdown of ethics, circumspection, awareness, standards, or clear purpose on the part of those inside a club.
Through this process of reverse osmosis, over time a syndicate or collective party will therefore be more likely to also be inhabited by a number of accrued false paradigms. Tangled webs which themselves must also be protected by means of more lies.
In Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World,” brainwashing is achieved through a form of affirmative sleep programming called Hypnopaedia, or the repetition of recorded aphorisms playing over and over while one slumbers. However, in our present reality, there is an intriguing contrast. Those who believe themselves to be awakened are paradoxically deeply influenced solely by a prevailing ‘Narrative of Embargo’. These participants regard themselves to be guardian gods of knowledge – with the authority to cancel and harm as they may see fit, and not merely the recipients of affirmations therein.
This is what makes the silence of embargo a much more sustainable tactic than mere lying. Individuals then are inoculated by this collective antiwisdom as one requirement of an elite membership. This is the central purpose of the university, governance board, and media systems in America. No evolution better demonstrates this anti-wise effect than the emergence of the SARS-Cov-2 virus.
A herd of quislings with scientific degrees allowed themselves to be so intimidated by the toxicity fabricated around Trump by the political, media, and academic establishment that they covered up something they believe to be true — that the [SARS-CoV-2] lab leak theory is credible enough to warrant investigation.
~ John Nolte & Alina Chan: Scientists Admit Covering Up Lab Leak Theory to Avoid Being ‘Associated’ with Trump
The IQ of a mob is the IQ of its dumbest member divided by the number of mobsters.
~ Terry Pratchett
One should not misevaluate through Gaussian blindness, a crowd attempting to measure the weight of an ox, or guess the number of jelly beans in a jar, as is framed inside James Surowiecki’s The Wisdom of Crowds for instance. Such non-sequiturs stand merely as exploitation of the constrained-obviousness of a tight Normal arrival distribution and the simplicity of a single variable, coupled with a Pollyanna view of the methodology by which complex issues are prosecuted.
There is no subterfuge or career risk wound up inside the anonymous guessing of the weight of an ox. Being wrong here, does not serve to embarrass you nor your fellows. Large groups of people are not ‘smarter’ than individuals, simply due to the fact that crowds bear a greater incentive to lie, to not be wise. Syndicates in particular, those who hold the power of embargo, bear an enormous incentive towards antiwisdom. They do not exist to protect truth after all, they exist to protect the club.
The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widely spread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible.
~Bertrand Russell, Marriage and Morals
There exists an exculpatory gain-amplification (antiwisdom) to be realized, through having every fellow inside your syndicate also participate in the lie. An amplification effect above and beyond the mere willingness to lie, on the part of an individual.
The reality is that crowds will adopt a wrong just as often as will individuals, all things being equal. However, the likelihood of the crowd enforcing a wrong to a greater degree or frequency as compared to an individual, increases as a function of the perceived scarcity of the crowd’s (syndicate’s) membership, veneration, and power. This is the very basis as to why the fashion apparel industry exists. Fashion is a lie, which becomes truth through the Overton Window power of the club. This power serves to introduce error, more often than it does rare truth.
The humanity of collective lying is an economy after all, just as are all the other humanities – and people will do what they must in order to preserve syndicate or clique brand against an outside threat. In order to accomplish this, a crowd may choose to prevaricate, disinform …or even embargo. It is the visceral desperation of this final tactic, the embargo, which stands as a warning flag of agency to the ethical skeptic.
If a subject is of such an abject nature of threat, that no form of prevarication nor disinformation will suffice to control its dissemination – then that subject must be embargoed by the syndicate. Embargo therefore, stands most often tantamount to an admission of validity which resides somewhere inside the threatening message. Debunking as well therefore, is a pretend method of engaging that subject and a tactic of its overall embargo. Debunkers constituting the erstwhile hit men, doing the disdained and dirty work of the syndicate.
A troubling notion which is 10% correct bears more inferential gravitas than does a truism which is 90% correct.
A religion at heart is defined by its grimoire of forbidden questions and embargoed ideas.
After all, a topic not worth studying, is also not worth investing copious amounts of focus and time around crafting a web of Nelsonian obfuscation. This brings us therefore to the point of crafting a principle of ethical skepticism from these predicates. A syndicate which is burdened by the human motivations to lie, serves only as a gain amplifier of this foible of human nature.
The Ethical Skeptic’s Razor (The Antiwisdom of Crowds)
Among competing alternatives, all other things being equal, prefer the one for which discussion or research is embargoed.
Power, Politics, Narrative, and Profit demand a level of transparency which obviates that same burden upon mere dissent.
What is enforced by Narrative, can also be dismissed as Narrative.
[Embargo] is the keystone to all tyranny. Not force, but secrecy and censorship. When any government or church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, “This you many not read, this you must not know,” the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motives. Mighty little force is needed to control a man who has been hoodwinked in this fashion; contrariwise, no amount of force can control a free man, whose mind is free. No, not the rack nor the atomic bomb, not anything. You can’t conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him.
~ Robert A Heinlein
Just as a false faith will costume itself in a public display of good works, even so a false truth-club will adorn itself in facts, coupled with embargo. Such exemplifies the ephemeral and mercurial nature of the complex relationship between humanity and truth. That occult reality which surrounds us merely reflects this very trickster nature back upon us – a form of pedantic and satirical mirroring. A mocking of that which we refuse to observe – very likely serving as the ironic basis behind our embargo as a species to begin with.
The Ethical Skeptic, “The Ethical Skeptic’s Razor – The Antiwisdom of Crowds”; The Ethical Skeptic, WordPress, 7 May 2022; Web, https://theethicalskeptic.com/?p=65555