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ionelvI was listening to SGU 1088 and while Steve mentioned that the only palpable placebo effect noticed while studying acupuncture had to do with provider level of care (and not with needles or chi points), it dawned on me that the whole discussion about acupuncture as no more that a woo placebo effect practice, virtually the same discussion could be had using the word religion instead of acupuncture. From this seed, two thoughts crystallized within my fermenting neurons:
1. Most human endeavours (culture, religion, art, work, creativity, introspection, writing, scientific inquiry, philosophy, recreational activities, etc) are mere rabbit feet that we pet in the hope of cheating death via different means more or less tied to our Maslow hierarchy level: procreation and/or incremental novel accretion to humanity’s growing corpus of (pseudo)knowledge.
2. Tanking birth rates (in addition to the usual interpersonal, extended family and socioeconomic/genetic/evolutionary/environmental factors) are at least in part due to the collapse of subsistence agriculture (which demands lots of offspring cogs) and due to a collapse of the religious long con that promises yuge returns afterlife if only one kisses a celestial ass (especially its intercessors asses) and procreates like a rabbit. Many young’uns (at least outside of the poorest world regions) simply don’t buy the afterlife mirage anymore and want the payout within their lifetimes (preferably before they hit 40).
Notes:
a. Graeber was unto something with his 2013 essay about bullshit jobs, although I think (especially the anglosphere) have completely misread his essay (and book/“theory”) and focused on the symptom and not the underlying cause. Worse, Graeber missed a few other obvious explainers for bullshit jobs: increasing complexity of human interactions will invariably create apparent bullshit jobs, and our built-in drives for profit, moating and relevance will always create apparent bullshit jobs.
b. Much of what humans do can be explained by a simple concept that is a lot more generic and applicable to most humanity despite our original narrow (mis)diagnosis: cargo cultism, our general tendency to perform soothing placebo-like processes that give us the illusion of control. Sadly, most of these idiotsyncratic (sic) kabuki performances are learned through osmosis or steeping in our own cultural/parental proximal milieux (from which 99% of us never evolve beyond).
1. Most human endeavours (culture, religion, art, work, creativity, introspection, writing, scientific inquiry, philosophy, recreational activities, etc) are mere rabbit feet that we pet in the hope of cheating death via different means more or less tied to our Maslow hierarchy level: procreation and/or incremental novel accretion to humanity’s growing corpus of (pseudo)knowledge.
2. Tanking birth rates (in addition to the usual interpersonal, extended family and socioeconomic/genetic/evolutionary/environmental factors) are at least in part due to the collapse of subsistence agriculture (which demands lots of offspring cogs) and due to a collapse of the religious long con that promises yuge returns afterlife if only one kisses a celestial ass (especially its intercessors asses) and procreates like a rabbit. Many young’uns (at least outside of the poorest world regions) simply don’t buy the afterlife mirage anymore and want the payout within their lifetimes (preferably before they hit 40).
Notes:
a. Graeber was unto something with his 2013 essay about bullshit jobs, although I think (especially the anglosphere) have completely misread his essay (and book/“theory”) and focused on the symptom and not the underlying cause. Worse, Graeber missed a few other obvious explainers for bullshit jobs: increasing complexity of human interactions will invariably create apparent bullshit jobs, and our built-in drives for profit, moating and relevance will always create apparent bullshit jobs.
b. Much of what humans do can be explained by a simple concept that is a lot more generic and applicable to most humanity despite our original narrow (mis)diagnosis: cargo cultism, our general tendency to perform soothing placebo-like processes that give us the illusion of control. Sadly, most of these idiotsyncratic (sic) kabuki performances are learned through osmosis or steeping in our own cultural/parental proximal milieux (from which 99% of us never evolve beyond).
