The Snap: The Absurd Arena Live Discussion Board
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Hey Useful Idiots,
Here’s a hypothetical that’s been stumping me this week: If you could change every single person on earth’s mind about one thing with a snap of your fingers, what would it be?
This one came from my roommate, who’s been using it as his new party icebreaker. The responses he gets vary widely, from big issues like “everyone should stop using guns against other people” and “everyone should believe that renewable energy is the way to go” to more specific issues like “bikers need to stop going the wrong way down one-way bike paths.”
One particularly prescient response that we heard just after debating whether “war is bad” is the best choice was from someone who clearly took the question with a different meaning: “Everyone should think I’m pretty.”
My first thought when he asked me the question was that everyone should realize it shouldn’t be okay to make people live on the street without food and shelter, especially when there are more than enough resources to help every one of them. But “the fighting should end,” “stop killing the world,” and “enough with these terrible governments” all made my limited resource of one snap feel very critical.
So let’s debate: you’re able to change everyone’s mind about one topic. Are you saving the polar bears? Stopping drunk drivers or mass shootings? Getting everyone to chew with their mouth closed? Or just having everyone finally realize how hot you are?
Join Katie and Wilson at 12pm est to get some magic in your fingers and snap everyone out of one idea you just can’t bare for them to have.
re: Useful Idiots, snap your finger, one thing that will change everyone's minds
Obviously: make people more open to changing their minds on the basis of rational examination of evidence AND on the basis of subjective narratives being authentic ("systems colonize lifeworld" - Habermas).
See evolutionary psychology for why such "openness" was not heavily selected for in the evolution of the human species (in systems theory: a system of dynamic, punctuated equilibrium needs to have the capacity to recover from "too much chaos" without becoming stagnant and fragile to disruption).
So, the larger goal is for the current, failing, disrupted systems of culture to become anti-fragile to disruption by becoming more open in response to disruption of legacy hierarchies of curated expertise. See John Vervaeke's recent youtube on making AI more human for example.