Heuristics & Harm

Don't assume your mental shortcuts are benefiting you

Heuristics are the mental shortcuts all humans use in order to make rapid decisions in a complex, ever-changing world. Most people do not consciously question these shortcuts once they have taken root. This leads to cognitive biases.

Shortcuts taken by humans can lead anywhere.

Heuristics impact our daily lives immensely and invisibly. They are the go-to mental mechanism for problem-solving and making snap decisions. Because heuristics skip the critical thinking process in favor of a pre-built algorithmic solution, they can be error prone and lead to flawed decision making.

Flawed heuristics may one day end the human species. How did a species that invented transistors and logic loops also create the conditions that allowed a moron criminal malignant narcissist to be crowned king of the idiots twice? We may never know. The only silver lining is that human idiots are also often capable of sudden and significant epiphanies. Trump loses supporters every day. Far more than he gains.

Heuristics are compressed stories, and stories are how humanity grew into the greatest self-aggrandizing entity on this planet. The year I am living arrived because of heuristics, and the year that is fast approaching may herald the end of life on Earth. We do not all need to become ghosts. It is a choice.

Chris Hedges has said, “We are experiencing an accelerated obliteration of the planet’s life-forms — an estimated 8,760 species die off per year — because, simply put, there are too many people. Most of these extinctions are the direct result of the expanding need for energy, housing, food and other resources. The Yangtze River dolphin, Atlantic gray whale, West African black rhino, Merriam's elk, California grizzly bear, silver trout, blue pike and dusky seaside sparrow are all victims of human overpopulation. Population growth, as E. O. Wilson says, is "the monster on the land." Species are vanishing at a rate of a hundred to a thousand times faster than they did before the arrival of humans. If the current rate of extinction continues, Homo sapiens will be one of the few life-forms left on the planet, its members scrambling violently among themselves for water, food, fossil fuels and perhaps air until they too disappear. Humanity, Wilson says, is leaving the Cenozoic, the age of mammals, and entering the Eremozoic — the era of solitude. As long as the Earth is viewed as the personal property of the human race, a belief embraced by everyone from born-again Christians to Marxists to free-market economists, we are destined to soon inhabit a biological wasteland.” That was in 2009. The world and the people-monsters that are breeding incessantly will either move past heuristics, or it will perish because of their harm.

From one ghost to all those about to be ghosts, may we live in interesting times.

What happens in interesting times? Ask Luigi. Ask those he speaks for. The dead ones. Those who believed the lies our self—appointed masters told. The system is the problem, stupids. Dodos speak for no one, and in the grand scheme, the universe produces far more dodos than it does thrivers.

Reach inside yourself, you living ones, and check your mental shortcuts. The idiot-king is about to be unleashed for the second time, and he is not the threat. His puppet masters are the real monsters. Educate yourself about the real threats in the world, and remember to eat them before they eat you.