The stupidest modern thing

Watching the early rounds of the French Open, the channel switched to Novak Djocovic approaching Roland Garros. He walks to a little table and opens his tennis kit bag. The security man looks like a school boy and does a desultory totally ineffective inspection of the bag and the Joker is allowed to enter the grounds.

This I suppose is another manifestation of nobody is above the law…..on the way to the inevitable nobody is above anybody, as we continue to deny reality in the cause of boring conformity,

Here's a piece I got Ai to write. You might enjoy it.

The Memetic Virus

Richard Dawkins introduced the concept of the meme as a cultural replicator: an idea that spreads from mind to mind much as genes spread from body to body. Memes compete for survival, adaptation, and reproduction. Like genes, they need not be true or beneficial. They need only be effective at replicating themselves.

The most successful memes rarely exist alone. They form cooperative clusters, each reinforcing the others. Together they create what can be viewed as a memetic genome—a self-sustaining set of instructions that shapes how individuals perceive morality, status, guilt, responsibility, and power.

Many modern moral memes appear to function in precisely this way.

One meme teaches that historical injustices create obligations that extend indefinitely into the future, assigning moral responsibility to descendants for actions they never committed. Another teaches that unequal outcomes are inherently suspicious and require correction regardless of the causes. Another frames wealth as evidence of privilege rather than value creation. Another promotes the belief that emotional harm carries the same moral weight as physical harm. Another treats personal responsibility as secondary to social circumstance. Another insists that disagreement itself can be a form of oppression.

Individually, these memes may appear compassionate, reasonable, or even noble. Together, however, they form a powerful and mutually reinforcing system.

The inherited-guilt meme creates moral debt.

The equality-of-outcome meme identifies debtors and creditors.

The privilege meme explains why success should be viewed with suspicion.

The redistribution meme provides a mechanism for transferring resources.

The victimhood meme grants moral authority to grievance.

The censorship meme protects the entire system from criticism by portraying dissent as cruelty or intolerance.

Each meme performs a function. Together they operate as the genetic code of a larger organism.

From this perspective, the system behaves less like a philosophy and more like a virus.

Its survival depends on attaching itself to the healthiest instincts of human beings: compassion, empathy, generosity, fairness, and cooperation. Yet instead of directing those instincts toward mutual flourishing, the virus redirects them toward its own replication. The more successful an individual becomes, the greater the pressure to justify, surrender, or apologize for that success. The more an individual can claim disadvantage, victimhood, or dependence, the greater the moral protection he receives.

Competence becomes privilege.

Achievement becomes evidence of unfairness.

Self-reliance becomes selfishness.

Excellence becomes exclusionary.

Competition becomes oppression.

Merit becomes suspect.

The virus does not openly attack productivity, innovation, responsibility, or independent thought. Instead, it slowly redefines them. It changes the moral language surrounding success until the traits that build civilizations become sources of guilt rather than admiration.

Like a biological parasite, it prospers when the host fails to recognize its presence. It spreads through education, media, bureaucracy, entertainment, and social pressure. It rewards those who transmit it and punishes those who challenge it. Most importantly, it teaches its hosts that resisting the virus is itself a moral failing.

The genius of the memetic virus is not that it defeats its opponents. It is that it persuades them to defeat themselves.

Whether any civilization can permanently thrive while systematically transferring moral status from competence to grievance remains an open question. But viewed through the lens of memetics, one thing is clear: ideas compete for survival just as organisms do. And the most dangerous ideas are often those that convince a society that weakening its strongest traits is the highest form of virtue.

That’s perhaps the best analysis of what’s happening in our human society that I’ve come across. But I’d say the censorship gene is becoming the judgement meme….sending certain aberrant types into outer darkness. You can see it on here the moment any poster sees something positive in anything Trump does.

The strength of honest debate, an individual different perspective, a sense of protection for those things that make our lives what they are….all gone. Can Europe come back to anything like their historical values? I doubt it….British sense of humor, justice, beauty, all disappearing in favor of a dull conformity.

Crypto

Luckily, Moz, if one survives a viral infection you are generally stronger afterwards.

Perhaps this is all a necessary evil. I very much doubt we can ever expect the TDS infected here to have their come to Jesus moment, but the pendulum has begun to swing back that other way. Trump did blow the Dems out of the water in the general elections.

At this point, we're obviously still going to see the dealers feeding the last bits of their product to the most addicted...like Denise. But the clickbait outrage fuel is running out.

Still sticking with the virus theme, the collective mental immune system isn't nearly as vulnerable to this stuff any more. I see it with people I know too. They're less interested in Trump, more aware of media manipulation, tried of being rage baited and seemingly mostly recovering from the virus.

I'm wondering if mainstream media will even be around in years to come. Right when independent media started leading the race, mainstream did the one thing that, in my view, that sealed their own fate. Instead of leaning into credibility and factual reporting, they tried to outdo the YouTubers in terms of falsehoods and bias.

As an example, imagine if CNN had stayed the course instead of becoming a mouthpiece. If they focused more on facts, less on opinions, and held onto the credibility they had. If instead of fact checking others for gotcha moments, they spent more on fact checking themselves. In other words, CNN minus the Russia collusion hoax and so many other false and politically driven narratives.

Such a shame that so many of the established outlets flushed their credibility down the loo. Trustworthiness was the only thing that could have saved them. Instead they acted as the primary purveyors of the virus that society is now growing more immune to every day.

And once herd immunity is reached...where to then for them?

Meanwhile, the Rogans of the world are putting in the work and interviewing physicists, politicians, veterans, celebrities, philosophers, innovators and everybody else with something interesting to say. Apparently that's neo-fascism.

Visser, have you ever used any blockchain?

Had I felt you have the capacity actually answer, I'd ask you to explain to me how instant, immutable, traceable, P2P transaction is a stupid idea?

Unfortunately, I doubt you even understood most of the words you just read.

Buttplug,

PayPal and many other online payment systems have been able to do most of that for ages. My bank can also send and receive instant payments.

If you have a decent bank you can make free payments and receive them for free.

I would not want my payments to be immutable (irreversible). There are question marks if that is even illegal, as it would not give anyone a chance to dispute a payment.

You are welcome to believe absolutely anything you want, VisKop.

...but I'd suggest you enter the following search into Ai;

How will tokenisation of real world assets change finance and what is the role of immutability in that?