Some Thoughts on Evil Deeds (Even the Simulation of Them)

I'd like to explore a subject with you I raised on a gaming subreddit, because I think it has wider implications and can stimulate a broader discussion about active and passive messaging, the practice of "evil" and all the ways we encourage it and engage in it ourselves, by way of a video game.

The nice thing about this is, for a deeply immersive roleplaying game it can tickle the part of the brain that leads to emotional investment, much like you get invested in your favorite character from a book or TV show. That leads to moral investment so your conscience comes into play, and so it's interesting fodder for exploring doing extreme deeds you'd never do in real life to get a small taste of how you might react to them. I never feel guilty gunning everyone down or running them over with ambulances in Grand Theft Auto. I'm just not emotionally invested in that series. I don't get immersed in it. But some games, like Fallout 4 are different, and they're designed to be immersive and get you emotionally hooked.

This is about choices, guilt, and conscience ultimately.

These days when I play Fallout 4, I destroy the town of Far Harbor as a matter of course leaving its citizens to die gruesome deaths at the hands of horrible monsters, for the perk I get. It's easily one of the best in the game.

So from purely a gameplay standpoint, doing so is a win. Almost gamebreaking actually, but if you've already played through a bunch of times, it can be fun to play this way.

And here's the important issue for me, and that is personal to me - I don't want to try to universalize my experience, as you may feel differently, agree or disagree I'm not trying to start a war. This is a moral argument, but one that is again, individual and personal - it's not intended as judgment of anyone else or anything like that.

From a moral standpoint I get that familiar twinge of guilt whenever I bring down the windfarm and wipe far harbor off the map. Especially since I helped them all first and got their hopes up (for the experience points, you understand).

That brings up an issue for me. I've long understood, and read confirmation of the idea that we don't learn like a computer does. We learn like we acquire muscle memory. Our learning of math(s) is *like* learning to catch a ball, and that's why practice helps at least as much as instruction, and why experience is gold, but...

I've been taught (and I agree with the analogy) that one's moral core is like corrugated cardboard in that it gets weaker where you fold it. The more you fold it the weaker it gets. Bear with me.

The more you do math(s), the easier it is to solve math(s) problems.

The more you lie, the easier it gets to lie.

The more you steal the easier it gets to steal.

The more you destroy Far Harbor the easier it gets to destroy Far Harbor.

That little feeling of guilt gets eroded every time I hit that fateful button.

Why might it matter? I'm not sure, but could it make it easier for me to hurt people (even people I've helped) for personal gain? Again, I don't know.

I hope not, but there's a part of me that wonders.

I recognize the difference between fantasy and reality. The game is just pixels. But that guilt isn't. The guilt is real.

Like I said though, I believe it's possible to erode feelings of guilt and remorse. Basically any time you violate your own code the code becomes less effective. (Everyone with a conscience has a moral code even if they haven't articulated it to themselves).

In other words, *your own* standards are the judge. If *you* do something *you* know is wrong, it makes it easier to do that thing *you* feel is wrong, and related things as well. I firmly believe that to be true. I think I can make a solid factual case for it as well, but I'll spare you for now.

As far as transferring from the game, if you are invested enough in the game where your conscience is coming in to play, then yes, I think the same rules apply, because what I said above is about nurturing or harming your conscience.

When you harm your conscience it becomes less effective, *at least when it comes to specific areas where you've violated it, like stealing* - a mobster can have a big problem with theft, but no problem with murder under the right circumstances, for example.

But does it harm your conscience more generally too? Does it make the whole thing weaker? I don't know. Maybe the answer is yes? Is that same mobster *more* likely to do other criminal acts after they've killed someone? I tend to think so, since they've already violated a major societal norm, what's one more?

Am I more likely to lie, cheat, or otherwise do someone dirty for my own benefit because I *am* violating my own conscience by destroying far harbor?

That's the question I'm wrestling with. Far Harbor as a sandbox for my own moral navigation, but also possibly bleeding over into real life precisely *because* my conscience bleeds into the game. As I said this doesn't happen with GTA.

Maybe this whole thing seems ridiculous to you.

A) Maybe it seems silly in the first place that someone could get so invested in a game - to which i'd say a good game is like a good novel. you haven't found the right one. and some just don't like to read. and some people just don't like games. I'm actually sympathetic to that last one as I really only like the fallout franchise.

B) Maybe it seems silly to you that games could impact your conscience, but if so I'd like to hear why, so please carefully consider what I wrote, such that you understand the many angles I'm coming at to get to my point. I'd love to hear from you.

Or maybe you'd like to add something, or this makes you think of a related situation. Let's talk about it.

You be the judge...

 

Some relevant philosophical questions:

Q1.) If some of the insurrectionists believed / interpreted that Donald Trump was calling on them to storm the Capital, guilt-wise, does it matter if Trump actually said the words “storm the Capital,” or just merely implied it (spoke in code)?

- How do you (personally) draw that line?

 

Q2.) The impeachment article says that Donald Trump was responsible for inciting the insurrection, not that he caused the ensuing injuries and deaths.  Should Trump also be held responsible in some way for the effects of the insurrection as well?

- How do you (personally) draw that line?

Q3.) Do you think Donald Trump is guilty of inciting the Capital Building insurrection?

- What’s your final verdict on the House's Article of Impeachment, and what is your reasoning behind your verdict?

 

Thanks for your thoughts. And for recommending.

A Story About a Mind's Trip Into QAnon and Then Out Again

Lenka Perron: “At some point I realized, ‘Oh, there’s a reason this doesn’t fit.’ 

We are being manipulated. Someone is having fun at our expense.”

Credit.

..

A major personal interest is in how a normal, educated human mind can leave reality and enter a world of reality-detached nonsense and obvious lies. The New York Times writes about one woman's trip into the crackpot conspiracy theory QAnon world than then back out. What led to her ability to see that she was being manipulated was her acceptance as real of the bits of contradictory reality she allowed herself to see. Her ability to see and accept contradictory reality for what it was saved her from an ugly life. 

Her journey into QAnon began with her fears for the future and her deep disappointment in the democratic party with its abandonment of the blue collar middle class. 

The NYT writes:

In the summer of 2017, Lenka Perron was spending hours every day after work online, poring over fevered theories about shadowy people in power. She had mostly stopped cooking, and no longer took her daily walk. .... It would all be worth it, she told herself. She was saving the country and [her children] would benefit.

But one day while she was scrolling, something caught her eye. People claiming to be sources inside the government had posted on Facebook that John Podesta, a former White House chief of staff, was about to be indicted. And yet on her phone she was watching a video that showed him chatting casually in front of an audience. Around the same time she saw Hillary Clinton, another supposed target for an indictment, walking in Hawaii, looking relaxed and holding a coffee cup.

“She just wasn’t behaving like someone who was about to get arrested,” she said.

It was the first nagging feeling that something did not add up. Five months and many more inconsistencies later, Ms. Perron, a consultant in the insurance industry in suburban Detroit, finally called it quits.

“At some point I realized, ‘Oh, there’s a reason this doesn’t fit,’” she said. “We are being manipulated. Someone is having fun at our expense.”

But while much has been said about how people descend into this world, little is known about how they get out. Those who do leave are often filled with shame. Sometimes their addiction was so severe that they have become estranged from family and friends.

The theories seem crazy to Ms. Perron now, but looking back, she understands how they drew her in. They were comforting, a way to get her bearings in a chaotic world that felt increasingly unequal and rigged against middle-class people like her. These stories offered agency: Evil cabals could be defeated. A diffuse sense that things were out of her control could not.

The theories were fiction, but they hooked into an emotional vulnerability that sprang from something real. For Ms. Perron, it was a feeling that the Democratic Party had betrayed her after a lifetime of trusting it deeply.

She spent weeks combing through the emails, hacked from Mr. Podesta, the Democratic National Committee and Mrs. Clinton. Her stunned discovery enraged her and put her on the path to conspiracy theories and, eventually, QAnon.

“There was no hint of conversation about the working class,” she said about the emails. Instead, she said, it was “expensive dinner parties, exclusive get-togethers.”

The emails were Ms. Perron’s doorway to the conspiracy world, and she found others there too. She was no longer a lonely victim of a force she did not understand, but part of a bigger community of people seeking the truth. She loved the feeling of common purpose. They were learning together how to research, looking up important people in the emails and figuring out how to trace them back to big donors.

“There was this excitement,” Ms. Perron said. “We were joining forces to finally clean house. To finally find something to explain why we were suffering.”

People who tried to talk her out of the conspiracy theories by sending her factual information only made it worse.

“Facts are not facts anymore,” Ms. Perron said. “They are highly powerful, nefarious people putting out messaging to keep us as docile as sheep.”

Mr. Trump himself was a source of doubt. Q presented him as a brilliant mastermind, and for a while she accepted that. But it became harder to reconcile that persona with what she observed in real life.

When she first left QAnon, she felt a lot of shame and guilt. It was also humbling: Ms. Perron, who has a master’s degree, had looked down on Scientologists as people who believed crazy things. But there she was.

“Trump just used us and our fear,” she said. “When you are no longer living in fear, you are no longer prone to believe this stuff. I don’t think we are anywhere near that yet.” (emphasis added)

The emotional component overwhelms the rational

Perron put her finger on a key aspect of people's descent from reality into bizarre fantasy. Specifically, emotion overwhelms reason. She was fearful about growing wealth inequality, democratic party betrayal of blue collar workers and a sense that everything was out of control and going in the wrong direction. She was not stupid or uneducated. She was not authoritarian. She was scared.

This is why I keep discouraging the labeling of all supporters of the ex-president as stupid, vindictive or authoritarian. Most are frightened, deceived, manipulated and betrayed. Perron is a example of that. How many are like Perron? I don't know, but believe it is more than half for rank and file republicans.[1] The research I've looked at suggests that fear was one of the top factors that drove people to support the ex-president. In my opinion, it was and still is the most important factor. Economic fears. Social, racial and demographic fears. Fear of democrats and the press as enemies of the state. All kinds of fears, some reasonable but most not.

Perron figured out for herself on her own what had been done to her. Unfortunately, she is probably in the minority. Probably no more than about 15% of the deceived can do this on their own. The rest need help, but how to help isn't clear to me. Trying to stay civil, respectful and understanding but consistently truthful is the best I can come up with. 

Footnote:

1. I bet that most (~75% ?) of the low to moderate tens of thousands of people who have dropped their republican party registration since the Jan. 6 coup attempt have somehow managed control their fear level enough to let them see reality with less distortion. When emotions go up, rationality tends to go down. That is the human condition. It is well-known among experts. People who make their living based on dark free speech also know this. Propagandists use this aspect of the human condition ruthlessly to manipulate minds and perceptions of reality to serve their own ends. 

People who claim to deceive and manipulate to serve the public interest are flat out liars. They are just selling a product that people most people (~65% ?) would not buy unless it was packaged in toxic snake oil. Therefore, it comes packaged in snake oil, a/k/a dark free speech.

Willingly throwing away democracy…

Was the American Experiment doomed/destined to eventually fail?  Was it just a good idea on paper with no hope of ever achieving its lofty goal of a/that “more perfect union?” Has it finally reached some kind of critical mass and is about to blow sky high?

I was hoping Nicolle Wallace would post this segment with Eddie Glaude, Jr., from her show yesterday.  Please take a look:

https://twitter.com/NicolleDWallace/status/1354940194319958018?s=20

Here’s the question:

Is there really any room for compromise anymore?  Can we compromise with extremists?  Or by compromising, do we embolden?  Is Eddie Glaude right here?  Your thoughts.

Thanks for posting and recommending.

The Last Great GOP RINO Hunt: Looks Like the Fascists Will Win

Kevin McCarthy - seeking reconciliation, went from saying the

ex-president incited the attempted coup on Jan. 6 to the lie 

that “everybody across this country” bore some responsibility

Credit...

Context

Over the last 12 years, major changes occurred in the GOP leadership and the rank and file to a major extent. The election of Obama in 2008 accelerated three pre-existing trends, leading to what are essentially final outcomes. First, the GOP completed an ideological cleansing process from moderately rational and reality-based conservatism to mostly irrational radical right anti-democratic authoritarianism that some people, including me, now consider to be a form of fascism. 

Second, it transitioned from a party willing to be reasonably bipartisan to a party focused on single party rule and total opposition to the democratic party and policies. That change (i) caused compromise and democratic governance to die, and (ii) included attacks on opposition and minority voting rights to be greatly intensified. Intolerance if dissent within the GOP itself extended to party leadership. Politicians seen to be too independent either forced out and retired or were attacked and replaced by authoritarian radicals.

Third, despite their success, the RINO hunts were not over despite years of internal ideological and dissent cleansing. The ex-president took the existing trends to their final conclusion and led to the last great GOP RINO hunt, which is underway right now. The split is between GOP leadership who supports the ex-president and those who finally decided they could no longer support him. Most rank and file republicans (~75% ?) appear to still rabidly support the ex-president, so presumably they are a significant factor in forcing the last RINO hunt (for the foreseeable future) to play out.

The last RINO hunt

Several sources are reporting on the GOP split. It looks like the fascist wing of the party is going to take full control. Leaders of the ex-president's supporters in congress are openly workinig to get rid of the remaining "normal" republicans. The New York Times writes:

Two weeks after [California] Representative Kevin McCarthy, the top House Republican, enraged Donald J. Trump by saying that he considered the former president responsible for the violent mob attack at the Capitol, the two men met on Thursday for what aides described as a “good and cordial” meeting, and sought to present a united front.

The meeting at Mr. Trump’s private club in Palm Beach, Fla., came two weeks after Mr. McCarthy, in a speech on the House floor, said that the former president “bears responsibility” for the events of Jan. 6, when a throng of his supporters stormed the Capitol after a rally in which Mr. Trump urged them to “fight like hell” against his election defeat.

It was the latest evidence that top Republicans, many of whom harshly criticized Mr. Trump after the assault, have quickly swung back into line behind him and are courting his support as he faces a second impeachment trial.

On Thursday, aides released a photograph of Mr. McCarthy and Mr. Trump posing together in one of the ornate rooms at the former president’s Mar-a-Lago club, and issued a statement calling the meeting a “very good and cordial one.” The statement bore the hallmarks of Mr. Trump’s bombastic and often false assertions about himself, incorrectly claiming that his “popularity has never been stronger than it is today.”

“His endorsement means more than perhaps any endorsement at any time,” the statement, issued by Mr. Trump’s Save America political action committee, added, saying that Mr. Trump had agreed to work with Mr. McCarthy to try to take back the House majority in 2022.

Matt Gaetz (R-FL) - leading the last RINO hunt &

aiming for the big game called Liz Cheney (R-WY)

A short segment that NPR broadcast this morning focused on a recent trip to Wyoming by Representative Matt Gaetz (R-FL) in aid of the ongoing GOP fascist wing RINO hunt. He spoke to Wyoming republicans and promised to support a challenger to Representative Liz Cheney (R-WY), the No. 3 House republican. Cheney criticized the ex-president and voted with nine republicans to impeach the ex-president on a charge of “incitement of insurrection.” The crowd loved the Gaetz attack on the RINO Cheney. They love the ex-president.

Whether they love it or not, or know it or not, an apparent majority of the GOP leadership and apparently most rank and file party member are settling into some form of demagogic fascism with an anti-democratic mindset. It is reasonable to believe that contempt for, or rejection of, inconvenient facts, inconvenient truths, inconvenient sound reasoning and inconvenient democratic norms will continue to dominate the rhetoric and behavior of the ascending fascist wing on the party. 

For now, the GOP will be unstable because the ex-president is its de facto leader and his approval rating among all Americans is low. Although the RNO hunt is not over, it seems that the pro-ex-president wing will win and take full control after the cleansing is completed in the next 2-4 years. At present, no major republican politician seems to have the gravitas to stop fascists from taking full control of the radical right GOP which has transitioned from a tribe to a personality cult.

Good News!: Housecleaning Is In Progress

Biden swearing in the professionals after kicking out 

the partisan authoritarians and rank amateur partisans

The New York Times writes about what Biden is doing to deep state republicans the ex-president installed in the federal government to sabotage it. This is excellent news. Apparently Biden gets it and is doing something about it right now. The NYT writes:

When President Biden swore in a batch of recruits for his new administration in a teleconferenced ceremony late last week, it looked like the country’s biggest Zoom call. In fact, Mr. Biden was installing roughly 1,000 high-level officials in about a quarter of all of the available political appointee jobs in the federal government.

At the same time, a far less visible transition was taking place: the quiet dismissal of holdovers from the Trump administration, who have been asked to clean out their offices immediately, whatever the eventual legal consequences.

If there has been a single defining feature of the first week of the Biden administration, it has been the blistering pace at which the new president has put his mark on what President Donald J. Trump dismissed as the hostile “Deep State” and tried so hard to dismantle.

From the Pentagon, where 20 senior officials were ready to move in days before the Senate confirmed Lloyd J. Austin III as defense secretary, to the Voice of America, where the Trump-appointed leadership was replaced hours after the inauguration, the Biden team arrived in Washington not only with plans for each department and agency, but the spreadsheets detailing who would carry them out.  

A replacement was even in the works for the president’s doctor: Dr. Sean P. Conley, who admitted to providing a rosy, no-big-deal description of Mr. Trump’s Covid-19 symptoms last year, was told to pack his medical kit. While all presidents eventually bring in their own doctor, Mr. Biden wasted no time bringing back a retired Army colonel, Dr. Kevin O’Connor, who was his doctor when he was vice president. 

At the National Security Council, the White House said in a statement, Mr. Biden has “nearly doubled the number of staff ready to start and onboarded than either Trump did in 2017 or Obama in 2009.” The White House offered no specific numbers, but said they reflected “the urgent need to build — in some cases rebuild — capabilities like climate, cyber, global health security and biodefense, and democracy from the ground up.” (emphasis added)

Biden is kicking out the bums and crooks loyal to the ex-president out and replacing them with competent people loyal to the Constitution, the rule of law and the American people. This is a real feel-good story.