Knowledge is Power
France is Bacon
A response to a note posted by Lydia Laurenson
Back in 2015, when I started getting interested in the subject of misinformation in media and on the internet, I had to convince people around me to care. I’m remembering how I had multiple arguments with my bf at the time (he was a scientist employed in tech) about whether the subject mattered at all.
It’s so weird to me that I’ve been ahead of the curve on so many things but it doesn’t seem to help me… like… do anything?
My response below:
I apologize for the length of this reply, I’ve been thinking related thoughts, and will probably post this reply to you as a stand-alone essay.
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I told a friend that knowledge is power, and he replied in the negative. “I used to believe that. Now I’m convinced that power is power.”
I still believe that knowledge is power, both in the usual sense of the phrase, and because I have a somewhat mystical belief that true knowledge is inextricably tied to reality, in order to truly know what a zebra is, would be the same as instantiating it in real life. If you are unable to do this, I believe, there must be some form of knowledge that you are missing.
However, despite the popularity of the phrase, it is clear that possessing knowledge on its own, or at least the knock-off version of “true knowledge” that we seem to acquire, is not quite the same thing as possessing power. Particularly when the knowledge is not combined with any other “form of power”, mere facts can feel hilariously impotent. When warning of “knowledge” of an “impending disaster”, like misinformation, or more classically something like climate change, it’s easy to fall into the Cassandra curse.
In this sort of scenario, there’s the added hurdle that the knowledge is anathema to the current status quo, which can alienate other forms of power even more than unthreatening knowledge does. New knowledge is never completely unthreatening, anyway, anything currently unknown is potentially a threat, there’s no way to know! And accepting that there is relevant info that one does not know is a tough pill to swallow for anybody, let alone those with some power, they have more to lose! Typically the only way new information is integrated occurs when it’s immediately exploitable through the current structures of power. Or at the very least, the juice (opportunity that the new information provides) is worth the squeeze (the changing of organizational structure, the hassle of updating processes).
So, to summarize, I would guess that knowledge isolated from any other form of power is likely to be impotent. And in the case where the knowledge spells doom for power, it will alienate potential allies even more, making it even more likely to remain in the realm of thought, rather than action.
Though, reading your note, I am not sure if your scenario should be analogized to Cassandra. I don’t know whether you meant to describe a situation where you were prophesying a catastrophe, or just noticing a trend. Maybe you were sounding the alarm, maybe you were just trying to talk to people about an interest. But even in the case where you were sounding the alarm, you weren’t trying to convince people whose livelihoods depended on the media being misinformation-free. (Or at least, that’s how they would characterize themselves. If that bf worked on developing vaccines, then it’s possible his livelihood did depend on a lack of media misinformation. But what I’m trying to get at is that you weren’t talking to the head of the NYT, just “normal” people, if I’m understanding you correctly. While you may have been describing a catastrophe, even if they agreed with you, it would be a hurricane hitting a different city, so it shouldn’t have triggered any self-defense response. Still, you saw how hard it was to get anybody to understand.)
I think the first thing to recognize is that attempting to convince people is a sucker’s game. The correct play is to find the people who agree with you, and make bullshit organizations that slowly become less bullshit over time. If you’re “ahead of the curve”, and confident enough that there will be a curve, your “power” is in the relative lack of competition in the space. One can debate the pros and cons of being a big fish in a small pond, vs. a medium-sized fish in the ocean. But if you’re convinced the pond will turn into an ocean, well, it’s easier to be king of a hamlet than an empire.
This is what I mean by a “bullshit organization”. It’s easy to declare yourself king of your own house, but it rings a bit hollow, it’s not enough of a kingdom. So the idea being, back in 2015, you find other people also interested in misinformation, you create some official-sounding organization, “Media Misinformation Matters”, or some other cheesy name, and you go out and do things, you can waste some time trying to convince people, but really the name of the game is to “find the others”, and do studies, analyze the landscape, that sort of thing. Eventually, because you were right and this did end up becoming a big deal, all of a sudden big names start calling, people and organizations with more money than sense, at least concerning this formerly niche area that suddenly is **IMPORTANT**. That’s when you can go for the kill, so to speak, and either become acquired, do consulting, become a talking head, whatever your goal.
Now, I’ve illustrated the general pathway, but I haven’t really given any direction to reaching the first step of the journey. How do you “find the people who agree with you” in the first place? Well, I can think of no better way than the internet, using it as the coordinating mechanism. You have a platform, and I’m sure you’re aware this is a “form of power”, no matter if it’s not as “hard” as a military. I wouldn’t be surprised if you had a new “misinformation” so to speak, and you wrote a persuasive call-to-action about this new idea, you’d get a handful of people responding, either interested in hearing more, or you’d hear back from others who have already been thinking about this. Subdivide further into those people you can stand working with, and begin from there.
For those with no following and no platform, the internet, or other coordinating mechanisms, like local groups and organizations, is still probably the best way to “find the others”. It is important to not only not be discouraged by those who don’t “see the vision”, but also to not spend too much time trying to change these peoples’ glasses prescription, so to speak. I am somewhat convinced that attempting to convince through reason alone, or even just through a one-on-one conversation, is fruitless. (Though, to counter the latter part of the statement, if not the former, I remember reading a piece from you which illustrates the potential destabilizing effect of changing someone’s mind, at least if it’s as radical a change as shaktipat.) We are not made to be convinced through rationality, but through vibes.
Before I move on to the next part of this piece, I worry that I am coming off as too cynical, as even the win conditions I mention aren’t necessarily describing a way to improve the world, rather they point at “getting that bag”. I think part of this is because I have no idea what your goals are with respect to misinformation, nor do I really understand what people mean when they talk about misinformation. I am distrustful of any measurements, and since I have not lived in any time besides the present, it is difficult to judge how things have improved or decayed. When there were only 3 TV channels, did this imply less misinformation, or more? How many checks and balances are possible in a world like that, with so much pre-filtering on what you are allowed to be exposed to? Anyways, enough jabberjawing, I just mean to say that you can fight the power, it might not be encouraged, but it is allowed, at least for now. But this reply isn’t about fighting the power, rather, it’s about recognizing where the power is headed, and how to act in order to personally benefit from that.
So, are there any other ways to use your pre-cog powers to help yourself out? There must be more ways to benefit from being informed. There’s no way this can be the only way to “profit” off of being ahead of the curve. But honestly, I’m having trouble coming up with any other designs. The classic example is the stock market, but it’s not as simple as one might naively think. For instance, I’m pretty sure there isn’t a public company you could have bought back in 2015, based on the idea that misinformation would be increasing in scope and power.
I am really interested in this idea, (if you couldn’t tell!) of profiting in some way due to being ahead of the curve, of having undervalued knowledge, and I’ve written a bit about similar ideas already, see here: https://theignorantschoolmaster.substack.com/p/exploiting-societys-biases-for-fun
The stock market flatters my particular conceit, I’d love to make money off of being correct, (other people being wrong is just a bonus). But it isn’t as simple as it seems. To give an example, my dad works in the shipping industry, and it’s his job, in some sense, to know what’s going to happen relating to oil over the next months and/or years. You might think that this would be simple to turn into profit. After all, you can literally bet on the price of oil! The problem is that while you can see trends in oil, there’s no way to see all the trends of everything. The macro events can and do dominate.
Now, don’t get me wrong, it’s certainly possible to see a trend coming and make money off of it in the stock market, just ask anybody who bought Nvidia stock because they thought AI was the future. A similar event in the opposite direction would be those who had their ear to the ground in January 2020, realizing Covid would be a big deal, and either got their money out of the stock market, or bet against the market and won big, at least until April of that year. But hindsight is always 20/20, so it’s dangerous to look to the past for examples, which is why I’m only including examples which I saw people justify in the moment.
If anybody has other examples of how to profit, please, let me know!
I recently had a thought about Cluely, the AI company which promotes cheating. I wondered if it was operating as a schelling point for people who understand that due to AI, the bottleneck is no longer engineering talent, but rather in advertising, in distribution, in popularity. Creating a business, and not only a think tank, can also be a way to “profit” off of a coming tide. However, in Cluely’s case, combining this message with clear vice signaling, well, selection effects can be a bitch, and I don’t envy that community, nor do I wish to be a part of it.
I think this is an important point to make clear. If you are going to use being ahead of the curve to do things, you not only have to enjoy thinking about the thing, you also have to like interacting with it! If you are going to do something, it will probably take a lot of your time and energy! Just because you see the future, doesn’t mean you have to follow it. There are many changing tides happening all at once. Like Buffet says, there are no called strikes. He was talking about investing, but it’s true to an extent in life as well. Right now, you are not doing billions of things. What’s one more? Just because you see an opportunity, doesn’t mean that you have to follow it.