If a psychological study has a catchy name like "The Marshmallow Test" or "Power Posing," the probability of it replicating is inversely proportional to the number of TED Talks given about it.
"Let's normalize" what the fuck about any of this is normal we crossed the normalize event horizon sometime around 2016 and now we're just free-falling through a reality where nothing means anything, you can't normalize your way out of this one
βWe donβt talk enough aboutβ sir let me stop you there we talk enough about everything, all we do is talk on the internet 24 hours a day 7 days a week we donβt shut the fuck up enough
At 13, I joined a Wolfenstein 3d modding forum. 22 years later, my posts are still there - and still searchable.
The discussion I had in Discord 2 years ago?
Not so much.
We chose this. We can choose better.
The moderates make sense, so they're boring. The extremists are insane, so they're viral. Every movement gets defined by its worst members because outrage is the only thing that scales...
When the topic gets ruined by the worst 5% of its advocates.
Veganism becomes "you're a murderer." Crypto becomes "have fun staying poor." Effective Altruism becomes "letting people die today is good actually." The reasonable majority gets drowned out by the loudest extremists and now nobody can have normal conversations about anything.
The flanks capture the discourse.
Sanity is expensive, and extremism pays dividends.
We talk a lot about polarization as if it were a disease that infected society, but weβre missing a key data point:
Polarization is a growth hack, and it works.
It delivers results.
Somewhere around 2016 I noticed the smartest people I knew started saying increasingly stupid things.
The common thread: their extreme positions got them more of what they wanted.
Sanity was expensive.
Extremism paid dividends.
