The vast majority of bad things are not due to conspiracies but emergence

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Conspiracy theories upset me. But I remind myself that conspiracy theorists aren’t trying to irk me. They really believe this stuff. Imagine a world where the moon landing was faked and the powerful elite are lizard aliens out to get us. They wake up to this world every day!

I really feel sorry for them. I get to live in a much nicer world. In my world every day starts with a perfect cup of Nespresso and my fibre connects me to the greatest collection of knowledge ever assembled.

Now look, my world has problems too. Big ones. It also has a pandemic. It also has corrupt politicians. And my world even has some fake scientific achievements.

So what is the big difference between these two worlds? It’s not bad things. It’s the source and the nature of the bad things.

In their world things are explained through paranoia and conspiracy. In mine there are way less actual conspiracies and far more EMERGENT BEHAVIOR.

(Emergence is when the behavior of a system doesn’t depend on its individual parts but on their relationships to one another.)

Why are conspiracies more popular than systems thinking? Because conspiracies are essentially stories and that’s easier to understand. Even people who know they’re looking at emergence treat it like a conspiracy.