Through a Glass, Darkly

"For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known." 1 Corinthians 13:12 (King James Version)

Go to X.com. 

Have a look around. 

Depending on history and interests, at some point you’ll likely be confronted by a mix of overtly right-wing content (Christian Nationalism, Anti-woke posts, Nazi revisionism, and loads and loads of Trump). There is also a supply of batshittery on every subject imaginable: flat earthers, Christians ridiculing evolution, tradwives posting idyllic posts that eulogize child rearing and wifely obedience, anti vaxxers and even revisionist history about slavery and the revolutionary war. The Bullshit is oceanic with a strong undertow: wide, deep, and sucky.

While you’re here, pass your eyes over the numbers of people seeing the posts and the number of followers some of the most prolific, extreme users are. It’s not uncommon to see that they have tens or hundreds of thousands of views and followers. 

This level of engagement is something you pay for: on  X the number of engagements that your content generates determines how much cold hard cash you receive. Shitposters can make real money by fermenting outrage, counting the clicks, and pulling in the cash. Not only that, but the amount of money you pay to the platform determines your level of 'reply boost'. For a mere $40 a month, your content will be put in front of more people. 

Just how this works is opaque. Elon Musk is probably placing his thumb on the scale to suit his own purposes (either to serve his ego, his ideological perspective, or his business interests). It’s a matter of public record that after the 2023 Super Bowl, he frantically insisted on significant changes to the platform to make sure that his posts were seen by more people. Anecdotally, left leaning users report that the number of right posts in their feeds has increased dramatically.

The quality of the content is irrelevant. Many posts are just factually wrong and the arguments being made are astonishingly flimsy. It usually requires no expertise to dismantle posters’  arguments but that never seems to bother anyone. The Hellsite grinds on - inexorably promoting the most ill-informed, cruel, flagrantly dishonest content imaginable. 

I have been active on the site, largely because I want to engage (see my post: “We Need to Talk”), argue with people with an opposing view, and understand what-the-hell is going on in these spaces.

Basically, it’s a horror show.

On my feed, I see frequent posts about Trump’s general magnificence, about the absolute truth of the Bible, denialism about COVID, Trad Wife posts of how idyllic and wonderful married, childbearing life is, and (strangely) AI-generated movies of huge men wearing full gothic plate mail brandishing templar heraldry [apparently as an appeal to a sort of 12th Century crusader vibe]. There's a plethora other vaguely hilarious, deeply horrifying wrongheaded ideological takes on almost any subject you could name. 

For example, I replied to a post from a guy with the handle `MagaGrunt1` where he  posted a threatening image of a masked special forces soldier with the caption "The Kind of Infidel Allah Warned You About" - I thought the imagery looked genuinely terrifying and said "This post makes you look like a murderous psychopath", to which he responded with a cordial 'ty' as a response. This was one of the more good natured interactions I've had. Yesterday, I posted an outraged (but evidence-backed) response to a COVID denier that racked up a nice thousand or so views for which I received a block and an ad-hominem attack that questioned my motives, expertise, and nationality. These were nothing special, just two of the interactions I've had on X over the last couple of days. There are pastors, authors, and influencers galore. Clearly, this is one of the main marketplaces of the attention economy, and there is no shortage of click-hungry vendors out there.  

An interesting dynamic happened around the death of Rob and Michele Reiner, murdered by their troubled son. In the immediate aftermath, there was general sympathy and (almost) normal responses on X. This shifted when Donald Trump posted an insane screed claiming Reiner died ‘due to the anger he caused others through his…TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME,’ mocking a murdered man hours after his death.

The response from people on X was immediate and quite pervasively supportive of Trump’s position (although there were some brave souls willing to publicly criticize him for that post). I thought it was interesting how broad the subsequent coverage was from supporters on X. It seemed swept the site for a day or so and then it disappeared. This is how the conversation goes, tidal swells of opinion that is largely detached from reality dying back down to the everyday drip-drip-drip nonsense that forms the standard diet from within this topsy-turvy realm.

At some level, I feel some level of catharsis through these interactions. Politically, there is so much astonishing nonsense flying around, just attempting to occasionally post a rebuttal both feels good and I even get the odd 'like' from a stranger or two - so maybe other people are a little inspired by these mild attempts to stand up for what's right, at least in my eyes. 

I need to tread carefully with my own inner demons here. I like to argue. I especially like to argue with people who I know I'm never going to convince them regardless. I feel these tendencies pulling me deeper into participating more, but I know it's not good for me. My wife actively hates me being on X - she says I’m distracted and ‘always on my phone. She's been a good sport about it, but she has a point - trying to engage here is exhausting and time consuming. 

One observation of interest is the presence of a large amount of Christian Nationalist material (in-keeping with the presence of this perspective throughout US conservative political voices. These posts scream 'click on me' - either from heathen dissenters like myself or true believers who feel the spirit move them to shout a text-based 'Amen'. 

If the Devil was real, he'd likely really love X.  I can imagine an episode of the dystopian TV show, Black Mirror, where Satan would run a whole drove of X Premium Plus accounts that post this kind of content. They'd goad, bait, and trick vulnerable people into posting all sorts of irreverent, evil, and nonsensical diatribes on X. The posters would damn themselves through their cruelty. The Devil's minions would rack up souls by the million, cackling raucously as they harvest our misery and pain. 

In so many ways, X is the antithesis of an authentic place of worship, self-exploration, or spiritual awakening. It creates a marketplace that accelerates and monetizes quick angry responses - with no guardrails for accuracy, consideration, or decency. X has been shown to rarely enforce any of its own community standards regarding online behavior and, as evidenced by my minor skirmishes with its agents, pretty much anything goes in there. 

To return to the title of this piece - the dark glass we see through here is the endless scrolling feed of bullshit that unceasingly attempts to pull you in and trap you in its folds. Few of these interactions are 'face to face'. Even fewer of them involve anyone being known, or even knowing anything. 

Resist engaging with that black mirror and the voices you hear within it. They are sent by deceivers to profit from your darkest impulses and your soul will suffer from their influence.

Largely due to writing this essay, I’m quitting any political engagement on X. I think everyone should recognize the platform for what it is: a system for monetizing attention in direct service of Elon Musk’s interests - with all the associated fare for the hell-site’s various dark appetites. Generally, political and ideological engagement here serves only to control us and has zero relevance to the truth, insight or indeed anything of value. 

As a researcher working on technological approaches to empowering truth in service of humanity, I feel that we can and must do better. Our information networks should serve principles that run deeper than the limited whims or desires of a small number of wealthy people. In order to make that work, we are going to have to recognize the risks for ourselves and take action that drives the market toward truth.

So far, systems like X demonstrate that is a far flung hope with little evidence to support it. Perhaps we can shift it in the future.

The Greatest Trick The Devil Ever Pulled

A fictional character in a movie once said: “the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist”. Perhaps this is true, but I think certainly that, at the very least, the state of our national debate about guns runs a close second.

The Devil’s work is inherently based on convincing lots of good people to take actions that directly or indirectly cause suffering. He does this subtly, with lies and deceptions, with simplistic arguments that are usually too good to be true, with ideologies and propaganda. He does this by playing on our rawest emotions, on our anger, and our fear, our righteousness and our indignation.

Now, let’s be clear. I’m an atheist. I don’t think the Devil is actually real, in the same way that electrons, black holes or mitochondria are real. I think of the Devil as a helpful metaphorical construct. It presupposes that all the ‘evil’ in the world is created by an intelligent, malicious, despicable adversary. I think that the Devil is real in the way that market forces, the rule of law or the right to bear arms is real: a way of looking at the world with consequences. What makes it interesting are the consequences of looking at the world in that way.

We all have evil thoughts, desires or reactions. Why not imagine for a moment that, when we have those thoughts, they are coming from an external source, from some form of dark intelligence? If we realized that the person behind those thoughts was someone who didn’t have our best interests at heart, then that might make them easier to ignore, condemn and turn away from. If that were possible, might we not become stronger, less prone to succumbing to temptation, anger, malice or cruelty? Might we not become better people?

Inevitably, any discussion of Good, Evil and the Devil might well descend into a religious or moral argument about scripture or culturally-scoped definitions of what good and evil are. I’d like to simply invoke the presence of suffering as a direct consequence of the presence of evil. From minor things (such as racist comments) through to criminality, drug abuse, deadly violence, suicide, murder, terrorism, global warming, war, and even the ultimate depths of horror of which mankind is capable, like genocide, the key aspect of evil is that it causes suffering. How do we where evil is lurking? Find the suffering, and it's probably close by.

A brilliant commercial about racism in Australia shows several situations where white people interact with Aborigines and a man softly whispers to them “What do you think she’s up to?”, “Don’t make eye contact”, or “Go on, it’s only a joke” to trigger nasty little moments of discrimination. This is the Devil in our thoughts; conventionally sitting on our collective shoulders to lead us into temptation and treat our fellow man cruelly. The commercial’s message is about racism, but the image of the whispering man: disheveled, seedy and sounding oh-so-reasonable in his small, shitty way provides us with a working image of one aspect of the adversary at play.

If we build on this image and imagine too that the Devil is slippery, deceptive and insidious. I think that there is a diabolical irony to the machinations of evil. Milgram’s classic study in obedience describe how people can be coerced into performing truly awful things in a closed setting by enforcing people’s obedience. In this famous psychology experiment, test subjects thought that they were issuing painful, dangerous electric shocks to actors pretending to take a test so that they would be ‘shocked’ when they made mistakes. The actors would fake screams in response to the supposed punishments meted out by the test subjects who were themselves under scrutiny to see how far they could be made to push the severity of the punishment through instructions, encouragement or simple orders to do so. A recent book reexamined Milgram’s original findings to show that our common interpretation of his results are wrong: simply ordering someone to do something awful from a position of authority rarely worked. However, a high percentage of subjects would go further if they were told there was a higher purpose to their actions. The people willing to do more damage were not simply drones following instructions, but zealots doing what needed to be done for a just cause.

At least partially, this is how the Devil works. True believers can be more easily persuaded to cruelty, darkness and atrocity. He tricks people irrespective of faith, political persuasion, nationality or culture. He cultivates our desires, reactions, judgments, hatreds, and fears. He gives us a suitably lofty ideal to believe in and pursue, blind to the human suffering lurking in the consequences of our actions, and then sits back and laughs as we tear each other apart. He terrifies and horrifies us, turning some people into monsters so that we then see monsters everywhere.

The idea that the Devil has a sick sense of humor is worth considering too. Consider a recent news story where a woman was captured on camera berating a group of Muslim men in a San Francisco park saying:

“You are very deceived by Satan. Your mind has been taken over... brainwashed... and you have nothing but hate.”

Her speech is sanctimonious, righteous and pious but her actions embody pure xenophobia, religious prejudice and violence (she throws a cup of coffee at one of the men). Clearly, she is doing the Devils work, and her religious convictions render her blind to the contradiction between what she was saying and doing. If you are a Christian, you sincerely believe in God and the Devil, but you don’t think the Devil is directly trying to trick you into being an asshole as a matter of principle, you might want to rethink your approach. This is the sort of sneaky, backhanded slipperiness your enemy is up to.

Furthermore, in our modern, interconnected, information-based world, the lies that lead into darkness can amplified endlessly without effort by politics, by the chitter-chatter of the news cycle and of course, by social media. A clear example of the scale and destructive potential of this amplification can be most clearly seen in the story of Justine Sacco, who posted a thoughtless tweet about AIDS shortly before boarding an 11-hour flight to South Africa and by the time she landed, millions of people actively hated her. The viciousness and scale of the public shaming she received was extreme. Describing how this process played out in a NYT article, Ron Jonson wrote:

Social media is so perfectly designed to manipulate our desire for approval, and that is what led to her undoing. Her tormentors were instantly congratulated as they took Sacco down, bit by bit, and so they continued to do so.

Where did all this celebration of her downfall come from? Collectively, from a bunch of otherwise well-meaning, ‘good’ people, doing the Devil’s work with gusto.

So, if we put this together: (A) everyone has thoughts, feelings and drives that have us do things with negative, ‘evil’, consequences. (B) It’s easier somehow to ignore or dismiss these consequences if we have an ideological position on ‘how the ends justifies the means’ or if we’re simply unaware, oblivious or unconcerned with those consequences. (C) The amplification provided by mass media means an immense momentum can be derived from popular opinion across huge numbers of people.

If you take these elements and then throw in the hellish, ridiculous clusterfuck that is gun violence in the United States then you have the Devil, dancing a jig and cackling madly on a ripe harvest of 30,000 butchered souls every single year.

According to this report from the CDC for 2013: across the whole US, there were 21,175 suicides, 11,208 homicides and 505 accidental deaths by firearm discharge in that year. There were a total of 2,596,993 deaths from all causes, so roughly 1.3% of all fatalities in 2013 were caused by guns. This is a little less than the number of people who died in motor vehicle accidents in the same timeframe (35,369). Consider also that in 2013, the number of people with non-fatal injuries from firearms was 84,258, and these injuries were likely to be extremely serious with a lifelong impact. Another tragic aspect of firearm violence is that it disproportionately impacts young people, spiking around age 20–24 so that when those lives are snuffed out, all of the good that they could have ever accomplished is extinguished too.

Now, since we’re talking about the Devil here, a key aspect of the human cost of the unique mayhem that gun violence inflicts upon us is that someone is pulling the trigger to take a life. These are not impersonal medical tragedies or natural disasters but individual human beings acting as killers to destroy people’s lives. What act could bring the Devil greater joy than that? Not only are the souls of the killed flocking to his door, the damned souls of the killers await their judgement when the time comes.

And if we attempt to trace the suffering of bereavement, loss and tragedy that inevitably follows gun violence, the greatest evil present in the conversation is how disconnected the conversation is from the issues at hand. We aren’t talking about practical measures or treating the issues intelligently. We’re lambasting each other, personalizing the conversation, ceding too much power to invested parties with a clear conflict of interest (the NRA) and making this about culture wars between liberals and conservatives, the constitution, government tyranny, a strangely structured definition of ‘freedom’.

There’s so much obfuscation, confusion, powerlessness, rancor, and inaction, I just know that the Devil is behind it all. People demonize and ridicule people on the other side of the conversation; disingenuous arguments are made based on biased advocacy positions with no grounding in logic or data; overly-simplistic arguments are wrapped in illogical appeals to patriotism to justify them and finally, some people make enormous amounts of money from the sale of guns with no regard of the dangers to public health that ensue.

I think that the way forward is to better understand the opposing side’s point of view. The two different ways of looking at the problem are based on the different reaction we all have when we think of being faced with an attacker armed with a firearm.

Gun rights advocates think practically in terms of the tactical requirement needed to defend yourself in this situation. You need to be able to stop whoever is trying to kill you and the best way to do that is to shoot them first. The only way you could possibly do that is if you own and carry a gun yourself. Gun rights advocates argue that they need to able to own and carry guns freely for that purpose and strongly resist any legislative efforts to prevent them owning or carrying these weapons. Rather than calling these people ‘gun rights advocates’, let’s call them ‘tacticians’.

On the other side, gun control advocates think practically in terms of the sociological and strategic conditions of preventing your attacker from obtaining a gun in the first place. It should be difficult for dangerous people to own weapons and oversight needs to be put in place to prevent that from happening. Naturally, gun control advocates strongly push legislation that should supposedly prevent people from owning or carrying guns, and this puts them at odds with tacticians. Rather than calling these people ‘gun control advocates’, let’s call them ‘strategists’.

The sheer horror of the presupposition of what anyone might do in a live shooter situation drives the fundamental, primal contradiction at the heart of this discussion and paralyzes any practical approaches to solving the problem. Simply put, tacticians and strategists tend to be drawn into intractable arguments because the consequences of being wrong is that people die (and of course, we all feel that our viewpoint is the best way of stopping that from happening).

So, let’s push the agenda in a different way. Let’s leave the Devil to argue about ideology, the dangerous stupidity of our opponents, and all the other tired, old tropes that lead us endlessly nowhere. Let’s instead talk about practical ways to reduce sufferering.

How do we stop people from dying?

Perhaps we should have the tacticians talk to police organizations, the FBI, martial arts schools, trauma specialists, and EMT doctors to figure out the best ways to help people protect themselves, and to train people effectively at doing so. This sort of engagement could also help us keep an eye on people for erratic or self destructive behavior, raising red flags if there is any cause for concern. Similarly we could then have the strategists talk to mental health professionals, epidemiologists, criminologists, yet more trauma specialists and EMT doctors to figure out how to prevent truly dangerous people from being able to obtain and use firearms. Most importantly, let’s have the tacticians and the strategists talk to each other and come up with both tactical and strategic measures that can reduce gun violence. Forget everything else. Just stop the killing.

Imagine how furious the Devil would be if we slowed the flood of death, murder and suicide into hell from gun violence? He’d probably try to take steps to prevent this from happening. He might send out corrupt agents to spread incendiary lies and misinformation to set us against one another. He might make the image of being able to kill for justifiable reasons attractive in popular media. He might come up with dodgy pseudo-religious arguments that justify violence by a tortured reinterpretation of scripture .

Oh no, wait, that’s actually what he’s doing right now.

So, naturally, you could dismiss this argument simply because, well, I’m an atheist and I don’t really believe any of this stuff anyway. You might say: “You might not believe in the Devil, but he certainly believes in you”. It’s true, I don’t believe in the literal truth of the Devil’s existence, but my view is that we should use the idealogical constructs of religious faith as effective moral weapons and strive to reduce suffering as our primary goal.

I also think that the Devil has been running a terrific counter-espionage campaign. He’s convinced everyone that he’s easy to spot: he’s got horns and fangs, he’s debauched, and carries a clear malevolence that is easily recognized. I know that if he was real, he wouldn’t look this way. He’d be handsome, rakish, charming, convincing, rich and sexy as hell. He’d convince you do all sorts of thing that would cause suffering in others and then persuade you that you were on the side of the angels all the while. The Devil works in mysterious ways and the only barometer we should trust is the tell-tale scent of the presence of evil: suffering. If we focus on that, and don’t allow ourselves to be distracted by the Devil’s lies, we should be able to actually solve the problem of gun violence in America.