Trump's Reality Distortion Field (Help from Perplexity.ai)

Donald Trump’s Reality Distortion Field: Key Examples

The term “reality distortion field” describes a leader’s ability to reshape perceptions and convince others to accept their version of events, often in defiance of objective facts. Donald Trump’s presidency and political career provide many striking examples:

1. The “Big Lie” About the 2020 Election

Trump repeatedly and falsely claimed he won the 2020 presidential election “by a landslide,” alleging massive voter fraud without evidence. Despite dozens of court rulings and official audits affirming the results, millions of supporters accepted his narrative, culminating in the January 6 Capitol riot.

2. Repetition of Falsehoods

Fact-checkers documented over 30,000 false or misleading statements by Trump during his first term. He often repeated claims, such as exaggerating his inauguration crowd size or electoral margin, despite clear evidence to the contrary, leveraging the “illusory truth effect.”

3. Promotion of Conspiracy Theories

Trump advanced numerous conspiracy theories, including:

• The “birther” claim that Barack Obama was not born in the U.S.

• Baseless allegations about Ted Cruz’s father and JFK’s assassination.

• Persistent, unfounded claims of widespread voter fraud.

4. Undermining Trust in Institutions

Trump frequently labelled unfavourable media coverage as “fake news,” attacked the judiciary, and encouraged supporters to distrust independent sources. This sowed confusion and allowed his narrative to overshadow objective reality.

5. Recent Campaign Examples

• Claimed he won the 2024 election by “millions of votes” and had a “massive mandate,” despite a narrow margin.

• Falsely asserted he won the youth vote by 36 points.

• Made dozens of false claims in single campaign speeches, misrepresenting disaster aid and economic achievements.

6. “Flood the Zone” Tactic

Trump’s team, notably Steve Bannon, used the strategy of overwhelming the public with so many falsehoods that it became challenging to refute any single claim, further distorting reality.

7. Policy Decisions Influenced by Distorted Narratives

Trump’s reality distortion field extended to policy and appointments, such as nominating individuals with extreme or conspiratorial views for key positions, which allowed misinformation to influence governance.

Summary:

Trump’s reality distortion field is characterized not just by isolated untruths but by a systematic effort to reshape public perception and political discourse, often with profound consequences for democracy.

For further reading, see: Reality Distortion Field - Wikipedia

Malignant Narcissism

"Seek first to understand"

It is important to understand that Donald Trump is a monster. The technical term for this is "[malignant narcissism]." This is described in detail in the movie "Unfit".

I like to explain this using an analogy. Suppose you come home to find a grizzly bear in your kitchen. You would not attempt to reason with the bear. Job #1 would be to understand that the bear is doing bear things, not 'human" things. If you try to explain what the bear is doing in human terms, you will be not just wrong but dangerously wrong.

Trump is a textbook example of malignant narcissism, which includes all the worst personality traits of the most dangerous criminals among us. Attempts to stop Trump's coup are like calling the cops on the bear.

Among other things, Trump is:

• A convicted criminal
• Famously unable to fake empathy
• Defiant of norms
• A self-view (very stable genius) that is at odds with reality (psychosis)
• Contemptuous of all rules and norms, even the rules of golf
• Vindictive, as a matter of policy, humiliates and retaliates against perceived enemies
• Living in his own fantasy world (paranoia)
• As part of paranoia, being convinced that he is the centre of the world
• As part of paranoia, seeing the opposition as an enemy attach

And so forth. To oppose Trump, one must understand who (or what) he is. We must get over endless evidence of his departure from "normal" human behaviour.  It's not news. Look for ways to get the bear out of the kitchen.

Constitutional Crisis in USA

[Is the US undergoing a constitutional crisis?]

The Constitution is fragile and under constant attack. Perplexity.ai:

The United States exists in a state of permanent constitutional stress rather than acute crisis. While no single event has yet triggered irreversible breakdown, accumulating pressures—from norm erosion to federalism conflicts—create systemic fragility. Judicial resolution of pending immunity cases and electoral disputes in 2024 could either stabilize or further destabilize the system. Ultimately, the Constitution’s survival depends less on legal text than on political actors’ willingness to subordinate short-term gains to institutional preservation—a commitment now in grave doubt.

Making America Small Again

While the world is transfixed by Trump's banning of plastic straws, Elon Musk continues to kick the stilts out of the US economy, threatening US economic emergency. Precedents include the 2008 banking crash and the great depression. 

From MS Copilot in "Think deep" mode:

 Slashing government spending is like removing beams from a building's foundation—take away too much, and the entire structure risks collapse. When a department like the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) enacts aggressive cost-cutting measures, the immediate impact often manifests as a surge in unemployment, setting off a chain reaction throughout the economy.

**Direct Job Losses**: Government cuts typically lead to layoffs of public sector employees—teachers, healthcare workers, infrastructure planners, and countless others who provide essential services. These individuals lose not just their incomes but also their purchasing power, which directly affects consumer spending.

**Decreased Consumer Spending**: With more people unemployed, there's less money circulating in the economy. Households tighten their belts, opting to save rather than spend. This reduction in consumer demand hits businesses hard, especially small and local enterprises that rely on steady patronage.

**Business Retrenchment**: As consumer demand dwindles, businesses face shrinking revenues. To stay afloat, they may freeze hiring, reduce employee hours, or lay off staff—spreading unemployment further into the private sector. It's a domino effect where one fallen piece topples the next.

**Ripple Through Supply Chains**: Suppliers and manufacturers feel the pinch as orders decrease. This slowdown propagates upstream, affecting industries that might seem disconnected from government spending at first glance. For example, reduced infrastructure projects mean less demand for raw materials like steel and concrete, impacting those industries and their workers.

**Psychological Impact**: Rising unemployment fosters uncertainty and fear. Even those still employed might curb their spending in anticipation of hard times ahead. This collective anxiety can exacerbate economic contraction, making recovery more challenging.

**Strained Social Services**: Ironically, cuts intended to save money can lead to increased spending elsewhere. Higher unemployment boosts demand for social safety nets—unemployment benefits, food assistance, and healthcare services—all of which require government funding.

**Historical Precedents**:

- **The Great Depression**: In the 1930s, austerity measures deepened the economic crisis. It wasn't until government spending increased through programs like the New Deal that the economy began to recover.

  

- **European Austerity Post-2008**: Countries like Greece and Spain imposed strict spending cuts after the financial crisis. Unemployment rates soared—Greece's unemployment exceeded 27%, with youth unemployment even higher. The social and economic fabric of these nations suffered immensely, leading to prolonged recessions.

**Long-Term Consequences**:

- **Skill Erosion**: Prolonged unemployment can lead to a decline in workers' skills, making it harder for them to re-enter the workforce later.

  

- **Income Inequality**: Job losses often hit lower-income workers hardest, widening the gap between the rich and the poor.

  

- **Reduced Tax Revenue**: Fewer employed individuals mean less income tax revenue, which can worsen budget deficits and undermine the initial goal of the cuts.

**Metaphorical Insight**: Think of the economy as a living organism. Government spending is the blood flow that nourishes various parts. Sudden cuts are like constricting arteries—organs begin to fail, and the health of the entire body declines.

**Balancing Act**:

- **Targeted Efficiency**: Instead of broad cuts, focusing on reducing waste and improving efficiency can save money without massive job losses.

  

- **Invest in Growth**: Allocating funds to sectors with high growth potential—like renewable energy or technology—can create new jobs and stimulate the economy.

  

- **Social Programs**: Investing in education and retraining programs helps unemployed workers adapt to changing job markets, reducing long-term unemployment.

**Global Examples**:

- **Post-WWII Recovery**: The Marshall Plan injected significant funds into war-torn European economies, leading to rapid recovery and growth rather than collapse.

  

- **Japan's Lost Decade**: In the 1990s, Japan's efforts to cut spending during a recession led to stagnation. It wasn't until expansive fiscal policies were reintroduced that the economy showed signs of recovery.

Understanding the delicate interplay between government spending and employment is crucial. Aggressive cuts might seem fiscally responsible on the surface, but without careful implementation, they can trigger unemployment spikes and economic downturns that negate any short-term savings.

**Looking Ahead**: It's worth exploring how monetary policy can counteract these negative effects. Central banks might adjust interest rates or implement quantitative easing to stimulate the economy. Additionally, discussing how public-private partnerships could maintain essential services while relieving government budgets might provide a balanced path forward.

Trump Psychosis

I have refrained from writing about the perfect storm South of the Border since most people will not find anything new in what I have to say and others (American Republicans) will simply deny whatever I say for reasons that inspire this essay.

There are three mental health issues that center around Trump but cannot be "blamed" on him. Not entirely.

But let me start with Trump himself. He is plainly a malignant narcissist - a condition that has progressed into psychosis as he is backed into a corner by the self-evident gap between the world he lives in and the world the rest of us are stuck with. Building an alternate universe is the very definition of psychosis, but psychosis is a symptom not a "disease". It is linked to all kinds of underlying conditions. Nor is "psychosis" the end of the story with Trump. For example, he exhibits an astonishing willingness to sacrifice thousands of lives to serve his purpose (whatever that is). This puts him in the company of such twisted personalities as Stalin, Mao Tse Tung, and Pol Pot. You really need a new name for these guys. There is one aspect of Trump's personality that is particularly dangerous. For lack of a better term, we can call it "charisma". It's the showman - the P. T. Barnum. Trump has built his public persona as a show business personality - a "talking head" - and he's good at it. He is very good at attracting attention to himself and instinctively goes for "outrage". He knows that flat-out bullshit and outright denial of the facts will get him attention. He loves our outrage. We hate him but we still watch.

The second issue has to do with Trump supporters, who also exhibit an easily recognized psychosis, namely a persistent denial of reality along with a fierce defense of this delusional world. They talk in conspiracy theories, bumper stickers, and catchphrases, moving rapidly from one to another to avoid getting into specifics. There are too many to list but "the Russia Hoax" is one. This is a straightforward denial of widely known facts and a simple mouthing of what Trump claims. They feel that Trump was "framed", not impeached and he was proclaimed innocent, proving all the charges were a Democratic plot. What ties all this together is a shared "alternate fact" universe that is deeply held and aggressively defended. There is no way to talk to these people and that's the way they like it. It's the inappropriate emotional intensity that marks this as psychosis and not a "widely held opinion".

Of course, it is dangerous for the President of the United States to be clinically insane and even more dangerous that a significant portion of Americans shares a psychosis of their own. It's frightening to see followers of a political party swallow the whole package, for example, defending imprisonment of babies in diapers to prove the depth of their faith.

The third problem kept me awake the night Trump was declared President and it persists. That is the panic among sane Americans as Trump's invincibility and ever-expanding criminality grow. While perfectly justified, this tends to take the spotlight off of truly scary issues that are only indirectly connected with Trump, if at all. It is not all about Trump! Any of the following issues would be on the front page if not for Trump's daily clown show.

• Nuclear power plants and the nuclear arsenal are, like hospitals, understaffed as large numbers of irreplaceable people don't report to work or die. If we have learned anything from the past it is that nuclear power plants ride a razor's edge. Minute by minute expert attention is required.  Of course, Trump has torn up the "Open Sky" treaty to remove the best defense we have against accidental nuclear war.
• By muzzling the CDC, Trump has not only crippled Amerian response to the virus but crippled the ability of the world to fight catastrophe. The CDC has lead the fight against pandemic for decades. We know how to fight these things, but by pushing aside the CDC, Trump has guaranteed millions of needless deaths worldwide.
• For most of the population of Earth, starvation not the infection is the issue. By obsessing over state by state epicurves and lifting of restrictions, we ignore places that at completely defenseless against what amounts to a modern plague.
• Happy talk from politicians in general papers over the need to prepare for a world-wide depression while the virus becomes "endemic". There is no evidence that we will mount the kind of worldwide defense against the virus that will make it "go away". We are still fighting polio even though we have a vaccine.
• Obsolete monetary theories, especially among American conservatives and the European Union threaten to trap the economy in a depression for decades. We can't "borrow our way out of this". Worry about how we can "afford" to keep people from starving to death mirrors Canadian politics that literally starved people to death until we were "saved" by World War II.

I could list a dozen more. The key is to follow the news on the BBC rather than American outlets. Of course, BBC spends 3/4 of its time on British scandals and puff pieces, but it does make an attempt to cover worldwide news. 

-- Postscript January 2021 (Trump defeated)

The New York Times provided an overview of Q-Anon and the impact of Trump's loss. My reaction was to remark at how individual Q-Anon believers go through an experience that looks very similar to my own experience with mania shading into psychosis. Symptoms of this disorder include:

• Hallucinations (seeing or hearing things that are not there)
• Delusions (false beliefs)
• Incoherent or nonsense speech.
• Inappropriate behaviors for the situation.
• Depression.
• Anxiety.
• Sleep problems.
• Social withdrawal.

The interviews in the above piece provide insight into some of the less-obvious symptoms, including social withdrawal, evident in Trump supporters in general (the "skunk at the picnic" effect). We also see depression and anxiety in some of the Q's facing the total collapse of the Q view of history. The attack on the Capital on January 6 must certainly be classified as "inappropriate behaviors for the situation".

Whatever your definitions,  millions of Americans take Q-Anon seriously enough to engage in violent, illegal behavior believing in the righteousness of their cause. If we characterize this frame of mind as "crazy", even though millions suffer from it, we must think about what we mean by "crazy". Just exactly when do we become worried about bizarre beliefs when believers start to act like this, severing ties with friends and family who express concern about the mental health of believers?

P.S. Scientific American article on the subject

"Fear" A Review

This review may or may not be published by Amazon for an interesting reason:

The book is an instant best-seller. I don't think I'm the only one who read it straight through as soon as I could get my hands on it. Amazingly, it seems that Amazon is being swamped with reviews!

For what it's worth, here's my take ...

Portrait of a Malignant Narcissist

Woodwards's book comes as no surprise for those who have been watching this sick man spiral dangerously into a fantasy world as he violently casts off all who attempt to challenge his delusions.  Woodward provides dozens of examples of this, along with the assessment of those closest to Trump: that he his a professional liar and a moron. Nothing new here. What we need to notice is how crazy and detached from reality this man really is. He is perfectly willing to explicitly risk World War III because he is unhappy with the real estate South Korea has granted to the US MIlitary.  It's all about money and projection of strength. Of course, Trump is not strong. He is seriously disabled. What little strength he has comes from the bizarre circumstance of him holding a powerful office. Woodward endlessly documents how Trump is completely unaware of how that office works. Unwilling to be tutored on any subject, Trump's responses to those limitations are rants and personal attacks. He his happiest spending hours every day watching Fox News.

Trump's personality disorder has been in plain view for many years. "Dangerous Case" summarizes it as "Malignant Narcissism". Trump's behavior checks so many boxes for so many definitions of "crazy" that the only way to disagree is to offer some other equally damning pathology. 

As I write, the day after the publication of "Fear", Mr. Trump is on the air praising his actions in the Puerto Rico hurricane (in 2,975 American citizens died because of the incompetent response of the Trump Administration). It was a huge success. It would be hard to imagine clearer evidence that Trump has cast off any moorings he may have had to this world and set sail for the world in which he is, in his own words, the Greatest President in History. But if you want more examples, read Woodward's book.

While Woodward is terrified at the danger, it's plain that he bends over backward to present a balanced account of many of the issues. For example, we find reason to doubt that Mueller will ever come up with an Obstruction of Justice case, even though obstruction is taking place daily in plain view. We see the possibility that Trump's admiration for Putin is just another symptom of his admiration for raw, unchecked power. Trump's continued attempts to circumvent the law are presented as instances of his utter ignorance of the way government works, along with his refusal listen to anyone's advice that contradicts his narcissistic delusion that he his King of America.

Donald Trump - The Godfather

My long-standing rule with Trump is: whatever you think about him, the truth will turn out to be worse.

Donald Trump is the godfather of an international criminal organization. His show business antics (some may say "malignant sociopathy") distracts us from the big picture of long-standing criminal activities of his immediate family and extended family of tyrants and criminals.

He is systematically dismantling the rule of law in the US, resulting in staggering profits for the Trump family and criminal associates, such as Vladimir Putin and his criminal organization. I expect Trump and company to fall, if at all, as the result of an investigation of the activities of this group (family and friends) as an organized crime family conspiring to conduct such activities as fraud, bribery, obstruction of justice and money laundering. Eventually, the sprawling assets of this organization will be seized under the RICOH legislation as proceeds of crime. Alternatively, Trump will succeed in turning the USA into a kleptocracy like is beloved Russia, Panama, Turkey, and Indonesia. This is the drama that is worth watching. The antics of Donald Trump, like those of Al Capone, are of little long-term importance. The activities of Trump's family are far more sinister and blatant than the clown show put on by "The Donald." We need an organized crime prosecution, not impeachment of the godfather.

Part of the Trump drama is the way that Trump has co-opted an important segment of American craziness, sometimes referred to as the "right." Like Hitler, Trump is currently purging "his" political party of disloyal members, drawing leaders into a tightening ring of lies, conspiracy and outright lawbreaking. The Republican Party is not yet the "Party of Trump," but for Trump to succeed, it must be. It remains to be seen if America will allow itself go the way of Spain, Germany, and Italy, becoming a Fascist kleptocracy.

There are no guarantees, but my money is on the eventual triumph of the rule of law. As Churchill is rumored to have said: the Americans can be trusted to do the right thing after exhausting all the alternatives. The vast scope of Trump's activities virtually guarantees that "rats" start to trade inside information for leniency. The current trickle of rats will become a flood.

On the plus side, Trump is educating those who would pay attention to the value and vulnerability of what we call "the rule of law". This is particularly valuable at a time when the criminal elite is trying to persuade all of us that there is no such thing as facts and that all politicians are corrupt. Again, we come to the issue of "public morality" and the difference between immoral behavior and lawbreaking.

Yes, it's complicated, and there are many shades of gray. Historically, we have dealt with this through "test cases" - specific instances where the lines need to be drawn. We can thank Mr. Trump for providing us with an encyclopedia of bad behavior that will be debated long after we have gotten rid of him.  We don't seem to have adequate institutional protection to prevent someone from running the Presidency of the United States as a for-profit criminal conspiracy, nor a remedy for massive intervention in an election by a hostile foreign power. It's an old idea, but nobody has so blatantly succeeded in the US before. It's worth noting that Americans usually find themselves in a slightly different position on this issue: being the hostile foreign power and installing friendly kleptocracies in foreign states. Ironically, this has led them to have a huge blind spot against the same tactics being applied to them.

The Trump success story illustrates the mistake we made when allowing corporations to be legal persons (the core idea behind the "Dragon" blog). This has allowed the profits of crime to be hidden while individuals remain anonymous. Trump corporations have repeatedly declared bankruptcy, "legally" stealing from vendors and empoyees while Trump himself floats free with his pockets full. It has also allowed virtually unlimited political donations from corporations, effectively concentrating political power in fewer and fewer hands - especially in the hands of individuals who specifically do not value the public welfare and do not wish to see public welfare to restrict their ability to pick the pockets of the public through the "free" market and ballooning debt. As I write, the Trump budget proposes to cut taxes for the rich (including the Trump family) and "corporations" while increasing taxes for the middle class and undercutting affordable medical insurance for millions. It is kleptocracy on a grand scale, enabled in large part by our decision to grant rights to corporations while shielding those who benefit from corporate profits to anonymously pocket the lion's share of the wealth created by all of society.

Focus - November 19, 2017

I have a lot of time on my hands - perhaps too much. I read a lot, usually 2 serious books per week or maybe more if you count the books I check into and decide not to read or put on the back burner for later. In the "later" category is the emerging genre of books explaining all the details of Donald Trump's horrible personality and personal history. I get it. No further information required.

There is a danger of being pulled into a rabbit hole, following "click bait" until starvation sets in. Sometimes I wonder if I'm doing something similar on a larger scale, taking advantage of the cheap and easy access to books (Kindle) and general information (Google/YouTube).

So here are, in theory, the "topics" I'm following.

THE SELF & COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE

This is a hold-over from the main thread in my "Christian Skeptic" blog. At the moment, it concerns questions about the nature of the self (aka, "soul"). I'm convinced that this issue is very widely misunderstood. Most recently, I have wondered if we should have another pronoun, similar to the "royal we", that refers to the conventional "I" plus all the myriad of influences that determine what "I" know, what "I" want and how "I" make decisions. See The Knowledge Illusion and Behave. Perhaps "I" should just refer to the immediate experience of consciousness in the moment - a result of all those influences. This perspective is not unrelated to long-standing questions coming from "Dragon Theory". How is it that we are deeply "assimilated" into "dragons" like religions and corporations? What does assimilation feel like?

The distinction between "I" and the "Royal We" is important on a day to day personal level - what I might call the "Zen" outlook. I increasingly separate the pseudo-spiritual aspects of Zen from the simple discipline of mental and moral clarity implicit in the practices and traditions. In this case, there is not much more to learn - only the day-to-day struggle to apply what I already know. It's also a conscious effort to be "assimilated" into the right traditions, groups, political parties, and social media "bubbles". To some extent at least, we can determine what our personal "royal we" is.

Perhaps the easy way to understand this perspective is to note that human intelligence, like bee intelligence, is collective. The bee doesn't "know" how smart it is, or why it performs its wiggle dance or why it feels compelled to fly off in a given direction after watching a wiggle dance. Yet, when seen from the viewpoint of the hive, the behavior is perfectly intelligible. This idea applies on many levels to human behavior, but the interesting one applies to everyday experience - the fact that almost all of what we "know" is actually signaled in some way from other humans. Just think of what we "know" as we drive a car across the city.

CHRISTIANITY

I found "Fantasyland" to be a particularly scathing critique of religion - especially the American fundamentalist "Christian" version. However,  I still take the Christian ideal of forgiveness as an antidote to the current witch hunt "outing" all men who have ever behaved in an outrageous manner to any woman. Let him who has no sin throw the first stone. I expect a few stones to be thrown my way when I express this idea. For my own part, I am trying to banish "moral outrage" from my emotional toolbox. In spite of the widespread acceptance of moral "relativism" (acceptance of "gays" for example), most of us are unwilling to go the entire (Christian) distance to recognize that we all have things we are ashamed of and we all need forgiveness: the permission to start over.

Can all my reading and thinking serve to address practical questions, such as What kind of person should I be, How should I act? This has nothing to do with celestial "carrots and sticks." These are questions of personal and public morality. The current tsunami of moral outrage illustrates that many of us are addressing important moral issues with rather blunt instruments. 

ASSIMILATION

The idea behind "Dragon Theory" (now "Programmable Ape") can be seen from two perspectives: "top down" from the "dragon" or "bottom-up" from the assimilated human "component" of the dragon. I started from the "top," asking such questions as Is the "dragon" alive? Quite rightly, one of my readers pointed out that this is chiefly a matter of definition. Subsequently, trying to define the dragon has been quite a project, not unlike the effort to define a "meme." There are similar problems when one attempts to say anything that can not be said without the concept or to say anything that sheds a special light on the phenomenon. Accordingly, I now consider the original vision of the "dragon" as a first draft or glimpse of the phenomenon that is in need of a major overhaul. "The Corporation" remains as one of the most accessible introductions to this idea. On the other hand, my early versions of the idea, namely the "Creedal Group" and the "Spirit System" (dating back to 1970) seem to be surprisingly durable.

I have been encouraged by seeing the progress that some have made with the "meme" idea, especially by Daniel Dennett - most recently in "Bacteria to Bach." Really durable memes are be formed as a result of environmental constraints or the laws of physics. In other words, our "ideas" don't (always) grow out of unconstrained fantasy. In a sense, our ideas connect us to the "real world." Duh. To put it in another way, our "minds" are a (perhaps muddy) reflection of the world we live in. 

I continue to be well served by "Surfaces and Essences," the classic study of how analogies form the very basis of human thought. I'm always on the lookout for the analogies that underlie my ideas. Some analogies are better than others, but they are all analogies. It is wise to use analogies as a "whiteboard" sketch of a concept but always be on the alert for the need to drill down to the details of a phenomenon - especially those that challenge your favorite analogy. For example, from the beginning, "Dragon Theory" set itself up to be a promoter of confirmation bias, especially ignoring the substantial contribution made by individual decision making and constraints imposed by the environment. For example, by definition, the corporation operates in a financial environment, resulting in "behavior" that is more accurately seen as a result of the environment. To use an analogy, the behavior of a fish is, to a great extent, determined by the physical properties of water.

I have made more progress coming from the "bottom up", asking how it is that people get "assimilated." Early on, I realized that part of the answer is to be found in common assumptions, most notably in language and money. Most recently, that has been generalized with the aid of an AI concept: the "fitness function." For example, in the case of a for-profit corporation, the fitness function is entirely expressed in terms of money. This translates directly into the way that humans are assimilated, through hiring practices, employee incentives, customer relations and investor participation. All this is increasingly implemented by AI algorithms, but this only goes to reveal the fitness function that was there all along. By automating a fitness function, we create a monster. This is eloquently pointed out in "Weapons of Math Destruction" and supported by quite a few other sources such as "WTF." "WTF" is an instructive tutorial in how the simple idea of "money" as a fitness function actually works in Silicon Valley. You'd be surprised ...

Special assimilation issues arise in fantasy-ridden, fundamentalist American culture (See "Fantasy Land").

"Wiser" gets into the nuts and bolts of how "herd instinct" works in small groups such as juries and corporate boards. "Wiser" is a road map of how people are assimilated into a group, allowing the group as a whole to be more stupid than any particular member.  "Polarization of opinion" and "race to the bottom" are psychological phenomena subject to laboratory study. There is a large literature about exactly how corporations make stupid decisions. It comes as no surprise that we don't need fancy analogies to explain how the "brain" of the dragon - the prefrontal lobe - makes wrong decisions.

CLIMATE CHANGE

This issue used to literally keep me up at night. I now regard it as a kind of background fact - one of the "givens" that we all need to deal with, such as Calgary weather. It's been awhile since I have read anything new or important on this issue, although I try to connect the skeptics to information on the subject if they chose to actually learn something about it. Strangely, I often find myself in the awkward position of pointing out that there are other things besides climate change going on. Climate change is the background, but sometimes disasters are "ordinary" things like hurricanes, floods, and droughts. We need to deal with these events whether or not they are the result of climate change. To put another way, our preparation and response are within our control. It is useful to think this way since it calls for action from all quarters, including the climate change skeptics.

Zen plays a large part in my ability to retain a cool head while the world heats up. It is important to accept what you cannot change. In particular, we must accept impermanence - even the impermanence of life on Earth.