This is Essay #9 in the series Truth Be Told. The core dynamic of this era is the notion that controlling the narrative controls the world, as persuading the populace to believe something is true controls their convictions which then control their behaviors. Centralized powers discovered the potential for narrative control to control the world in the 20th century, as mass communications enabled centralized control of what is presented as true and important. Propaganda has an ugly tone, so now we say narrative control, which is of course a comically obvious propaganda technique. We call propaganda designed to financially benefit a private entity marketing, a key component in what I call privatized totalitarianism: establish a monopoly that controls a key mass communication technology--a social media platform, search, smart phones, etc.--and voila, privatized totalitarianism controls the medium which controls the message. Controlling what the populace believes to be true appears to control the world, but Controlling the Narrative Is Not the Same As Controlling the World. This is becoming increasingly clear as the status quo narratives--everything's going great, AI will deliver super-abundance to everyone, inflation is low, etc.--are now so detached from what we experience that they are inducing mass psychosis. The incentive is obvious: persuade the populace to accept an arrangement that enriches and empowers those in control, and you no longer have to deliver authentic Progress or Prosperity, you only need to deliver artifice: fake statistics, fake claims presented as certainties, a ceaselessly promoted narrative in which everything is fake. But narrative control doesn't actually control the world. A rancher told us the cost of fodder has doubled in the past year. That's the real world of weather and the cost of energy. Telling us that inflation is only 3.6% while healthcare premiums go up 13% a year, insurance costs triple and beef is now a luxury item is a parody of factual reporting. The Pendulum of History has reached an extreme of artifice and narrative control that will break the status quo as the gulf between the fake and the real widens to the point the bridge connecting them collapses. The social control of replacing authenticity with artifice will backfire and the pendulum will swing back to punishing self-serving artifice rather than rewarding it. Yes, yes, I know this is "impossible." Those wielding the machinery of social control have god-like powers that will never diminish, they will only increase, etc. But everything is fake and mass psychosis are not stable arrangements. Artifice is self-liquidating. The pendulum has reached an extreme of parody that cannot be pushed any further, and as the real world intrudes, all the narrative control in the world won't actually control the real world. New podcast: Global Uncertainties may result in Nonlinear, Self-Reinforcing Instability (26:31 min) New collection of five intriguing stories: Jumble Bin Stories (Kindle $6, print $12) read samples for free (PDF) My book Investing In Revolution is available ($18 for the paperback, $24 for the hardcover and $8.95 for the ebook edition). Introduction (free) Subscribe to my Substack for free NOTE: Contributions/subscriptions are acknowledged in the order received. Your name and email remain confidential and will not be given to any other individual, company or agency. Thank you, Paul C. ($300), for your beyond-outrageously generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.   Thank you, James B. ($70), for your monstrously generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership. Thank you, Craig F. ($150), for your beyond-outrageously generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.   Thank you, Gary F. ($100), for your outrageously generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership. Go to my main site at www.oftwominds.com/blog.html for the full posts and archives.

The ultimate truth is revealing the truth of the situation and our feelings about it are a relief, and the starting point to moving forward in a positive direction. This is the first in a series of posts around the theme of Truth Be Told, a theme that demands some interpretative explication / context. There is a spectrum of ways to tell the truth. There's the angry rant ("I'm mad as hell and I'm not gonna take this any more!"), the tearful confession, the accusatory diatribe ("you can't take the truth!"), the dispassionate accounting of facts and evidence, and many variations that combine the human emotions these express. My series is built around a special form of Truth Be Told, the kind only a true friend can tell us. It's human nature to hide truths that hurt, and it's human nature to lie to ourselves to maintain a front that all is well and whatever's crumbling can be shored up by our belief that everything is still as it's always been. The acquaintance responds to our doubts and fears with superficial encouragement: you'll get through this, it's just a rough patch, every relationship / enterprise goes through these low spots, you just need a weekend off to regain your perspective, and so on--well meant but not the truth. Only a true friend will risk telling us the truth, knowing it will be painful and that we will likely respond poorly, defensively at best and lashing out attacking the friend at the worst. The true friend accepts the responsibility reluctantly, torn between the desire not to hurt us and the knowledge that the only way out of our misery is to finally face the truth, mourn what is no longer what it once was and accept the truth of what we feel beneath what we've been telling ourselves to keep going. A true friend is not passing judgement, they speak the truth with sympathy for our plight, sympathy for the suffering of living a lie, however attractive the lie may be, fully aware of the pain we're experiencing as the gulf between what we tell ourselves and what we truly feel widens to the breaking point. The truth is the most personal, consequential truths are often painful because accepting them means the end of something we wanted and cherished, the end of an era and the acceptance of an uncertain, perilous future. I use the examples of relationships and enterprises, because these are life's most demanding commitments. To end a relationship or close an enterprise is difficult on multiple levels, and the true friend knows this from their own experiences. The path of least resistance is to maintain the facade of a happy marriage and successful enterprise, even as living a lie eats away at us. It's often a shock that someone else sees through the facade and discerns the truth within us. The true friend must make a difficult calculus, as truth be told risks the friendship for a highly uncertain gain. The true friend is aware that sometimes we're not ready to confront the truth, and the precipice has to crumble beneath our feet before we're ready to accept the truths behind the facade. Or we're finally at a point where hearing the truth from a trusted friend who has our best interests at heart unleashes a great relief, for the truth is not just pain, it's also relief. A true friend is more likely to expose the truth by asking us questions rather than making statements. Our answers to questions such as "when was the last time you had an honest heart-to-heart with your partner?" reveal the truth we've avoided. I anticipate angering many readers in this series, because deeply held mythologies will be bulldozed. In a very real way, the facades we cling to to maintain relationships and enterprises are personal mythologies, and their collapse generally spawns an emotional tornado. The ultimate truth is revealing the truth of the situation and our feelings about it are a relief, and the starting point to moving forward in a positive direction. To share a series around Truth Be Told makes me feel like the guy in a bedraggled white robe on the street corner, murmuring about redemption while passersby cross the street to avoid me. So be it. I'm just asking questions, and the truth is revealed by your answers and your emotional reactions. New collection of five intriguing stories: Jumble Bin Stories (Kindle $6, print $12) read samples for free (PDF) My book Investing In Revolution is available ($18 for the paperback, $24 for the hardcover and $8.95 for the ebook edition). Introduction (free) Subscribe to my Substack for free NOTE: Contributions/subscriptions are acknowledged in the order received. Your name and email remain confidential and will not be given to any other individual, company or agency. Thank you, Darth L. ($70), for your marvelously generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.   Thank you, Djanyja ($70), for your monstrously generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership. Thank you, Amarnakar ($25), for your massively generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.   Thank you, Eugene K. ($20), for your most generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership. Go to my main site at www.oftwominds.com/blog.html for the full posts and archives.

Our naivete is being exploited so ruthlessly and with such abandon that the golden age of the Big Con is consuming itself. Naivete is interesting because it's so easily confused with confidence, native optimism, youthful enthusiasm, and a host of delusions, including mistaking idealized fantasies and fairy tales as templates for the real world. In a culture that prides itself on not being a chump, to be called naive is an accusation: don't be naive means don't be an easily conned chump. In contrast, being confident, optimistic and filled with youthful enthusiasm are praised as the core of American Practicality, Idealism and Vigor, i.e. the can-do spirit. That naivete lends itself to youthful enthusiasm, sunny optimism and can-do confidence is rarely remarked upon. So what is naivete other than credulity? It's a willingness to trust leaders, institutions and mythologies without running them through common-sensically skeptical filters, and a belief that everything will work out just fine regardless of what happens if we just keep working hard and working smart. The difference between a willingness to trust leaders, institutions and mythologies, sunny optimism and youthful enthusiasm and naively mistaking self-serving fantasies and fairy tales for the real world is, well, there isn't any. Believing that an unending stream of patently transparent self-serving fairy tales accurately reflect "the real world" is the pinnacle of naivete, and that describes the entire American society, culture and economy: this is the golden age of the Big Con. Which brings us to Herman Melville's under-appreciated classic, The Confidence-Man. Why read a book from 1857 which flopped so badly as commercial literature that Melville stopped writing and ended his career as a customs official? Because this book masterfully explores the entire nature of trust, confidence and cons. Though the setting is a riverboat on the Mississippi River just before the U.S. exploded into Civil War, its insights cross cultural boundaries. This is not an easy book to read for several reasons. First, it is undoubtedly one of the first "post-modern" novels which breaks from traditional narrative storytelling. ( Another example: Dostoevsky's Notes From the Underground.) The Confidence-Man is a collection of 45 conversations between various people on the riverboat--beggars, absurdly dressed frontiersmen, sickly misers, shysters, patent medicine hucksters, veterans (of the Mexican-American War) and the "hero" in the latter part of the book, the Cosmopolitan. In typical Melville fashion, you also get asides--directly to the reader, in several cases, as if Melville felt the need to address issues of fiction outside the actual form of his novel. The lack of structure, action and conclusion make this a post-modern type book, but if you read each conversation as a separate story, then it starts to make more sense. For what ties the book together is not a story but a theme: the nature of trust and confidence. In a very sly way, Melville shows how a variety of cons are worked, as the absolutely distrustful are slowly but surely convinced to do exactly what they vowed not to do: buy the "herbal" patent medicine, buy shares in a bogus stock venture, or donate cash to a suspect "charity." In other chapters, it seems like the con artist is either stopped in his tracks or is conned himself. Since the book is mostly conversations, we are left to our own conclusions; there is no authorial voice wrapping up each chapter with a neatly stated ending. This elliptical structure conveys the ambiguous nature of trust; we don't want to be taken, but confidence is also necessary for any business to be transacted. To trust no one is to be entirely isolated. Melville also raises the question: is it always a bad thing to be conned? The sickly man seems to be improved by his purchase of the worthless herbal remedy, and the donor conned out of his cash for the bogus charity also seems to feel better about himself and life. The ornery frontiersman who's been conned by lazy helpers softens up enough to trust the smooth-talking employment agency owner. Is that a terrible thing, to trust despite a history of being burned? The ambiguous nature of the bonds of trust is also explored. We think the Cosmopolitan is a con-man, but when he convinces a fellow passenger to part with a heavy sum, he returns it, just to prove a point. Is that a continuance of the con, or is he actually trustworthy? The book is also an exploration of a peculiarly American task: sorting out who to trust in a multicultural non-traditional society of highly diverse and highly mobile citizens. In a traditional society, things operate in rote ways; young people follow in their parents' traditional roles, money is made and lent according to unchanging standards, and faith/tradition guides transactions such as marriage and business along well-worn pathways. But in America, none of this structure is available. Even in Melville's day, America was a polyglot culture on the move; you had to decide who to trust based on their dress, manner and speech/pitch. The con, of course, works on precisely this necessity to rely on one's senses and rationality rather than a traditional network of trusted people and methods. So the con man dresses well and has a good story, and an answer for every doubt. Our naivete is being exploited so ruthlessly and with such abandon that the golden age of the Big Con is consuming itself. Delusions are now the norm, as if our unhinged optimism that everything will turn out just fine as long as we believe in Technology and Finance, for that will be enough to stem the tsunami of consequences building up beneath the surface euphoria of stocks and AI making us all wealthy beyond measure. These are the joys of naivete. The tragedies are still over the horizon, a gathering storm we are unprepared for. NEW PODCAST: We Don't Have Capitalism Anymore--We Have Privatized Totalitarianism (60 minutes)(host Daniel H.) My book Investing In Revolution is available at a 10% discount ($18 for the paperback, $24 for the hardcover and $8.95 for the ebook edition). Introduction (free) Become a $3/month patron of my work via patreon.com Subscribe to my Substack for free NOTE: Contributions/subscriptions are acknowledged in the order received. Your name and email remain confidential and will not be given to any other individual, company or agency. Thank you, Joe S. ($70), for your superbly generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.   Thank you, Randy J. ($70), for your marvelously generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership. Thank you, Nick H. ($7/month), for your massively generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.   Thank you, Jeff M. ($7/month), for your splendidly generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership. Go to my main site at www.oftwominds.com/blog.html for the full posts and archives.

The possibility that AI will end up unleashing waves of 'Anti-Progress'--malicious uses, untrustworthy output and uncontrollable floods of slop--also doesn't occur to those confined in the current belief construct. A funny thing happens on the way to understanding risk: we discover it's tricky. We think we see all the risks, and think we can mitigate or hedge those risks, but by its very nature, risk evades such simplistic filters and metrics. Risk remains hidden, offscreen, invisible, building up out of sight, awaiting a catalyst that's equally undetectable until it manifests, and after the fact, we look back and ask, why didn't we see that coming? Risk is tricky like that. It can lay dormant for decades and then erupt with little warning. Risk is tricky in other ways. In our hubris, we see the power and might of our technologies, systems and foresight, and reckon these are so robust they will easily survive any tectonic shift, as we've planned for emergencies. But our faith in the might of our civilization is itself a source of risk because the risk of Model Collapse--the breakdown not of a supply chain or technology but of our entire conceptual construct of how the world works--goes unrecognized because our confidence that our model maps the real world is so high that we are incapable of recognizing its drift into hallucination and civilizational psychosis. In other words, our confidence that our conceptual mythologies are accurately mapping the real world is itself a source of civilizational risk because this confidence makes it inevitable that we do more of what's failing, as the alternative--recognizing our conceptual models and mythologies are self-serving rationalizations that substitute artifice for realistic appraisals--is conceptually and emotionally impossible. Put another way: Emperor Norton's delusions of power and grandeur were harmless as long as he was recognized as delusional. But should Emperor Norton actually be given the power he believed was his to wield, then risk rises accordingly. Consider the bet being made globally that the current iteration of AI will be 1) immensely profitable (the most important thing in the Universe) and 2) immensely productive (secondary to immensely profitable but necessary as a motivation for everyone to throw trillions of dollars at purveyors of AI). The risk that this bet--and the assumptions that make it not only rational but pressing--is the equivalent of handing Emperor Norton the keys to the kingdom with little evidence he will be a wise leader, is unimaginable in the current model / mythology, and so therefore it doesn't exist. The worst that could possibly happen in the current model / mythology is a brief spot of bother in the stock market as euphoric overvaluations come down to Earth, and then the immense profits start flowing and markets rocket higher in a multi-decade Bull Market of AI Productivity. The possibility that the current iteration of AI is innately incapable of metaphorically boiling away the seas is not on the screen, any more than a stock market crash or social upheaval is on the screen. Yet if the fantasy of vast, unstoppable floods of profits driven by vast increases in productivity fail to materialize on a very short timeline, then both a stock market crash and social upheaval move from "impossible" straight through "unlikely" to "happening now," leaving everyone who thought they understood risk and were properly hedged against unwelcome change in a state of disbelief and wonderment. Risk is tricky that way. What's "impossible" in our current belief construct--a construct we mistakenly believe maps the real world perfectly--is a source of system-breaking risk that is invisible within the confines of this self-congratulatory belief construct. The possibility that AI will end up unleashing waves of Anti-Progress--malicious uses, untrustworthy output and uncontrollable floods of slop--also doesn't occur to those confined in the current belief construct. The risk may be of a magnitude and scale that switching AI vendors or platforms and approving policy tweaks won't fix the problem. My book Investing In Revolution is available at a 10% discount ($18 for the paperback, $24 for the hardcover and $8.95 for the ebook edition). Introduction (free) Become a $3/month patron of my work via patreon.com Subscribe to my Substack for free NOTE: Contributions/subscriptions are acknowledged in the order received. Your name and email remain confidential and will not be given to any other individual, company or agency. Thank you, Peter ($70), for your superb generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.   Thank you, Mark ($7/month), for your marvelously generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership. Thank you, Douglas H. ($70), for your massively generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.   Thank you, Vermont R.P. ($70), for your splendidly generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership. Go to my main site at www.oftwominds.com/blog.html for the full posts and archives.