kevin on ignorance, distortion & anarchism

Rational Ignorance, Cognitive Distortion, and Anarchism (may 2025) by kevin carson

via bsky [https://bsky.app/profile/kevincarson1.bsky.social/post/3lpx5cypkl22w]: https://c4ss.org/content/60395

notes/quotes from article:

In public choice theory, “rational ignorance” refers to the choice not to inform oneself on some issue when the costs of doing so outweigh the benefits — in particular, when they outweigh the likelihood of one’s vote influencing the outcome of an election or one’s political pressure influencing a politician’s decisions. It also makes sense based on the finitude of time and energy: people are, naturally, more apt to devote more of those things to the affairs of their immediate family, job, friends, and neighbors, than to issues of public policy.

..they frequently also have a tendency to form strong opinions about national issues based on relatively little information. Hence the prevalence of strong negative — bigoted, in other words — opinions about LGBT people, People of Color, and immigrants. 

Surprisingly often,  people respond, when engaging directly with someone from a marginalized group, in ways that totally contradict their abstract beliefs about them as a group based on their ideology and the stances they take in political discourse.

Why is this? *I don’t think we’re equipped, as a species of ape that evolved in an environment where most of our interactions and decisions concerned small groups of a few dozen people, to deal rationally with a large volume of issues on a continental or planetary scale, based on a symbolically mediated reality brought to us by a global communications system. Human beings are prone to major cognitive blinders and distortions, which become greater the further we’re separated from direct experience.

*aka: wilde not-us law.. because: sea world.. need hari rat park law

Part of the reason might be that when dealing with abstract, distant, symbolically mediated groups of people, the social and psychological cost is quite low. However, when one comes face-to-face with a member of an outgroup, the cost becomes more apparent and salient.

That’s one reason why, as an anarchist, I believe we need to devolve as many functions and decisions affecting our lives as feasible to local bodies with which we are in direct daily contact such as self-managed workplaces and public services, with as much direct democracy as possible in cases where a consensus is required.

*rather.. just the local ness.. all the rest are cancerous distractions.. ie: managed (self or not) workplaces, public services, direct democracy, consensus.. there’s a nother way for 8b people to live (free) .. and we’re missing it.. for (blank)’s sake

None of this is to say, of course, that abstraction or symbolic thought is bad. Without them literature, music, art, science, history, and philosophy would not exist. The problem lies with requiring competent decision-making in areas where direct experience is replaced entirely with a symbolically-mediated reality. It lies, further, in deciding how to treat the actual, flesh-and-blood human beings in front of us based on second-hand ideological categories, and viewing them simply as stand-ins for those categories and losing sight of their humanity.

aka: whales speaking whalespeak in sea world.. via khan filling the gaps law et al..

nothing yet has gotten to the root of problem

legit freedom will only happen if it’s all of us.. and in order to be all of us.. has to be sans any form of measuring, accounting, people telling other people what to do

how we gather in a space is huge.. need to try spaces of permission where people have nothing to prove to facil curiosity over decision making.. because the finite set of choices of decision making is unmooring us.. keeping us from us..

ie: imagine if we listen to the itch-in-8b-souls 1st thing everyday & use that data to connect us (tech as it could be.. ai as augmenting interconnectedness)

the thing we’ve not yet tried/seen: the unconditional part of left to own devices ness

[‘in an undisturbed ecosystem ..the individual left to its own devices.. serves the whole’ –dana meadows]

there’s a legit use of tech (nonjudgmental exponential labeling) to facil the seeming chaos of a global detox leap/dance.. the unconditional part of left-to-own-devices ness.. for (blank)’s sake.. and we’re missing it

ie: whatever for a year.. a legit sabbatical ish transition

We see people learning very late — sometimes too late — to see human beings where previously they saw only an NPC called the “illegal alien” or the carrier of “gender ideology.” It should not be this way. We should see humanity first.

need 1st/most: means (nonjudgmental expo labeling) to undo hierarchical listening as global detox so we can org around legit needs

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