As western democracies continue to atrophy into warring ideological factions on the internet, an interesting sociological phenomena starts to emerge. Citizens of these countries continue to espouse more radical views online, while simultaneously suppressing their true intent, belief systems, and opinions in the real world.
/polfor/ - Political Forecasting
Benjamin Rivera
Noah Hall
This opens up and interesting dynamic on the internet and in real life. Played out over the next 50 years, you will begin to see emergent group cohesion and trust continue to break down in society, and observe the internet being used as a broader platform for real human interaction, while physical interaction continues to diminish. This will have long-term affects on the evolutionary biology of our species, to the point that 10,000 years from now, human genetics will have selected for those best able to circumnavigate economies based on ability to navigate the internet.
Owen Powell
The question that remains to be answered is one of great importance, will the chasm between the evolutionary winners on the internet win out over those winning in real life?
There will be subsets of the global human population that continue to be genetically evolved into excelling in technological roles, and those evolved into surviving non-technological roles. For example, let's break society down into a few different classes of "life focus areas".
Robert Adams
By life focus area, we mean, for a given human through their operational lifespan, in what major area will they progress a specific category that impacts the success of their locality on the planet, be it a nation state, a country, a city, a town, a neighborhood, etc?
Some categories to consider:
- Technological progression
- Force readiness for aggression & defense
- Economic growth
- Biological propagation
Gabriel Campbell
Humans are born into an ever-pivoting dynamic such that nature & nurture both play a role. As we live, and as we die, we each contribute to varying degrees to the sociological factors that encourage the progression or regression of our genetic line in these categories. And the relative strength and balances of our genetic line, and neighbors (either in domicile or in political boundaries), compete with us in these areas.
Nicholas Bell
So, back to the original statement -- western ideologies fracturing on the internet. The western internet. What most of you are exposed to here see is really just the western internet. Do these same fractures exist in Beijing? Jakarta? Hyderabad? Johannesburg? Probably not as viscerally, and probably not as drastically.
Juan Barnes
What does that mean? Is the western internet a microcosm of what is to come as more nations come online? Most in the west have smartphones, have a home computer, have tablets, have computers at work, but what about the other billions on the planet, with very far removed force readiness, economic dispositions, and biological propagation abilities? It will be interesting to watch classically 3rd world countries come online and overshadow the western hegemony over what has really become the global communication mechanism.
This could play out in many ways. The rest of the countries coming online adopting western values in the modern sense; memes, internet subcultures, instragram/facebook/twitter, or it could result in a pivot. More tribal aspects. But probably not.
Logan Ramirez
As technologist and corporation controlled factions gain a tighter and more consolidated grip over the current communication platform, those on-boarded into the global information superhighway will be bound by much more rigid guardrails, given the assumption that they are entering western-internet infrastructure. If the ISPs, global providers, backbones, hosting companies, server providers, cloud providers, etc, are all western backed (in the classic ideological sense), then the further on-boarding of third world countries will pull their cultures towards the existing gravitational well of western philosophy.
Ayden Richardson
But there are alternative outcomes. Non-western philosophy could subside, but the technology originating from the bell labs and darpa's of yesteryear could result in a resurgence of eastern philosophy being globally adopted, or others.
Time will tell how this plays out, but one thing to heed is that as humans continue to dedicate more time interacting with technology, becoming sex organs of the machines, we to shall shape and mold our evolutionary biology more towards propagation of the machines, granted the premise that the further technologically progressed a species is, the better it does from an evolutionary perspective, thus selecting for genetic lines predisposed to using technology (not necessarily controlling).
Lincoln Bailey
How this drives the outcome for the planet is of less importance than that of the species. The knowns on the long timelines are uncontrollable; asteroids, sunspots, supernova, CMEs, ice ages, volcanic activity; the unknowns are much more interesting to discuss. If one accepts the premise of such cataclysmic knowns, we must then submit to the scenarios that could play out when one accepts that the stasis of a healthy, easy living planetary host turns hostile and foreboding the demise of our current genetic lineage. Having not yet learned the lessons of the dinosaurs, how is the species du jour to respond to our learned information? Should the entire species respond? Should the controllers? Should there be controllers? What is the moral authority of them to take controller status? The long-term probabilities are not great, if your measurement of great is minimization of life-loss, or longer-term probabilities of great are maximization of species continuation. So what do we do? Should we do anything? Does it matter?