https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=MduZWG_2XJU
a live stream on soothsayers and I wanted to do a concise video about that based on my monologue in the live stream so I thought you would find it helpful. The problem today is that we’re paying attention to political frames, we’re paying attention to economic frames, we’re paying attention to all kinds of crazy frames, but we’re not looking at what the people we’re listening to are like in their character. And what we need to be looking at is are they soothsayers? This topic has been quite popular so far, mainly because people get the sense that, you know, they’re listening to experts or they’re listening to people who are elected and they’re not getting very satisfying answers and that’s understandable. The question might be, well, why? You know, we can’t listen to the wealthy people they’re telling us to eat bugs and we’ll own nothing. We can’t listen to the politicians because maybe their election isn’t even legitimate or maybe they’re enfeebled or maybe they’re puppets. Well, we can’t listen to these scientific experts because, you know, they told us to stay in our houses for three years. You know, whatever the reasons, and there’s lots of ways to look at this, but really who can we listen to? And I think the first question you have to ask yourself is who shouldn’t you be listening to? And my answer to that is soothsayers. And, you know, it’s sort of hard to get a good term for this, especially in modern times, because we don’t have good sense for these things. But I think ultimately, the way to think about this is somebody who’s soothing you in what they’re saying, i.e. a soothsayer, is probably enchanting you towards their own personal ends and not towards the good. I don’t want to get into an extended discussion about what the good is, but let’s just assume that there is a good, seems useful, and something like the truth, the good, and the beautiful, transcendentals, and that you can at least tell when somebody is not going towards the good. They would be a soothsayer, and they’re probably telling you something you want to hear, like, you can give somebody a reasonable explanation for why the person that got elected is elected, or why there’s a war that we must fight in some place, or, you know, why it’s better for you to sacrifice, you know, nobly so that others may live. These are all very soothing explanations for things that you may feel that you must do out of guilt, or you want a crusade, you want a sacrifice that you can make that’s appropriate, that makes you a better person, somehow. And soothsayers are glad to give you those rationalizations. But they are rationalizations, and what they’re really doing is manipulating your agency, right? They’re taking away not just your agency of action, but your agency of free thought. They’re giving you thoughts about things that allow you to feel soothed in the moment or justified in the moment in your action. And it’s a lot like entertainment, right? It’s a medicine that only lasts so long. It doesn’t, it’s just a temporary salve on your current woes or worries. And a lot of this, as Sally Jo was pointing out just before that live stream, is really just verbal impressionism, right? It’s big words or ideas, big rationalizations that give you the impression of a world, and you get to fill in the details without ever finding agreement. And that’s very tempting, right? We’re very swayed by that sort of thinking. And there are a number of methods people use to do this, right? Because ultimately it’s all forms of enchantment. But enchantment, in my mind, is not good or bad. Soothsaying is bad. And again, I know you say some soothsayers are just prophets and predicting things. Fair enough. But in this case, I think it’s useful to think of them as all negative. So one method is to overload somebody with information. Because when you give somebody too much information or you speak above their current conscious understanding, it’s very easy for you to insert an emotion into them. And people don’t realize that about themselves. Like if I overload you with information in big words or a long, quick stream of rationalizations, which may even be completely true, it’s easy for me to then say, well, you can see why I feel safe about that. And then you’ll feel safe about that, even if what I said is nonsense. And we’re very impressionable unconsciously in that way. And the soothsayer takes advantage of that. Now, not everybody who does that is a soothsayer. This is very difficult. I understand. I’m not trying to give you an answer to say, a soothsayer always does X or whenever you see Y, that’s a soothsayer. That’s not my goal here. My goal here is to give you a bunch of methods. And if you see like three or four of these methods being used in one person, they’re probably soothsaying you. Right? Are they calming you down and giving you a specific charge? Are they calming you down and focusing you in on something you can do locally? If it’s local, it’s probably good. If it’s not good and it’s local, you can find out really quickly because the people around you who are also local will let you know in some way. So another method to say is to point at something that you have no agency over to rile up your emotions. So you can say, oh, these poor people in this country are starving, whether due to lack of good climate or war or, you know, evil government, keeping the food away from them doesn’t really matter, right? They’re tugging at your heartstrings on purpose. And look, if it’s another country, it’s not local to you. It’s not something you have any agency over. So they’ve stolen your agency and inserted pure emotion. Then they’re going to give you something to do, like give us money, right? Donate or maybe donate, you know, donate your time to this local thing that helps Africa. I don’t live in Africa. It’s hard to help Africa from here. I’m not saying you can’t do it. I’m not saying, you know, don’t fly to Africa and help them. You can certainly do that, but not much I can do for Africa from where I live because I don’t live anywhere in Africa. And some days that pains me. There are people doing things in Africa. You can help them. So another thing they can do is to subvert your expectation or agree with your expectation. So if you’re looking for a specific answer, like let’s say they have the answer to how to be a better person and you want to know how to be a better person, there’s an expectation there. And they can deliver on that. They can say, okay, well, one way to be a better person is to pay attention to the people around you. That’s true, but not helpful enough. Another way to do it is to say, you don’t need to be a better person. Other people aren’t better persons. All you need to be is good enough. Subverted what you were expecting. That can be very alluring. And, you know, it’s a form of hijack. And often they do that with giving you an expectation or assuming your expectation and either going along with it and then giving you something to do again that’s not local that you can’t validate or subverting that expectation entirely and getting you off the hook for having that expectation. So a lot of times they use a mix of logical and emotional framing to get you to believe in what they’re saying. But often what they say is absurd. So, for example, if somebody tells you that, well, the one reason why I think person A is better than person B is because person A is better read than person B. If that person doesn’t know personally both of those people, that’s an absurd claim. How do you know who’s better read? I don’t know what books you’ve read. You don’t know what books I’ve read. I can guarantee you that. You come to my house right now, it won’t help you. They’re all packed in the shed. And that’s not all the books I’ve read. So, yeah, how do you know? Claims like that are very hard to understand because we want to believe that there’s an answer there. One person’s better read than the other. First of all, I would say that’s irrelevant because if we’re talking about computers, the fact that they have more reading and philosophy is kind of irrelevant if the subject is computers. What does better read mean in that context? You could also claim that you’ve read more computer books than I have. That might actually be true, although I’ve read quite a few computer books. But man, have I read a lot of computer white papers, all the cutting edge stuff, and like all of it. So, you know, maybe better read doesn’t cut it. Right? You can also make statements about motivations of people. Like, oh, well, that person’s really just looking for money. Do you know them personally? Are you sure that’s their drive? A lot of things will get you money, whether that’s your goal or not. Could be their drive. You know, maybe. But how do you know that? Are they making a claim to know somebody’s intent? Good chance they’re a soothsayer. Now, if they know the person personally, they’ve had interactions with them. Oh, yeah, take that seriously. But if they haven’t, that’s suspicious. Are they using dualisms? Are they framing things as, you know, if you don’t feed these people, they’ll starve to death? You know, give today or these animals will die. You know, that’s suspect right there. There’s a lot of false dichotomies. Are these people approaching you from a point of you asking for information? Or did they get foisted upon you through an ad or as part of a video you engaged in on a different topic that kind of sneak in new topics? Oh, by the way, you might be interested in. If you didn’t ask for the information, maybe they’re trying to manipulate you. Maybe that manipulation is not bad, but maybe it is. Who set the frame? Did you walk into this willingly or did they set up this frame that they’re talking in? These are important questions. This is how you recognize soothsayers, right? For example, if you start out talking about AI, and you know, you make some technical AI claims and you make some profound statement about religion, that’s soothsaying. There’s no reason to cross over electronical run software and religion. Those two things don’t usually mix. You can start from the religious frame and talk about the impact of technology as such, and that may include software. But if you’re starting about talking about AI and you start talking about how it’s spiritual, no, that’s a manipulation on the negative side. Somebody’s, you know, trying to fool you. Another method that soothsayers use is building trust. And there are lots of ways for people to build your trust. One is flattery. You can say nice things about you. Well, look, you’re a fairly intelligent person. You can understand this. It’s really just the blue church attacking the red church with the help of the green church and some troops from the brown church. I didn’t say anything. You know, but I appealed to flattery. Also repetition. If somebody has a fairly steady message over time, that can convince you without you even realizing it. And that’s used, the mainstream media has been using that for decades now as they’ve been declining. Promises of understanding. And look, some people use frameworks of understanding. They use repetition. And they’re not wrong. And they’re not soothsayers. They’re just prophets. They’re people telling you how things are, showing you a pattern, giving you the truth. Again, this isn’t easy to discern. I’m just saying these are the things to watch out for. If all they’re appealing to is repetition or all they’re appealing to is a promise of understanding, or worse yet, a promise of control. These are red flags. If it’s just repetition, flattery, promise of understanding, and a promise of control, that’s red flag. You gotta have more than that. You gotta be able to make rational connections. And I’m all for giving people the confidence to believe they can understand something in some cases, but maybe you can’t understand it. Maybe you don’t need to. I can agree with somebody’s point even if I don’t follow the whole thing. I’m trusting the person at that point. There’s nothing wrong with that. I take responsibility for it. So these are the negative enchantment forms that we really have to watch out for. So the question you might ask yourself is why is it that we fall prey to soothsayers? What is it that makes them work? Well, the simple answer to this is that we are not merely rational creatures. That’s not what we are. We have an unconscious. We do not rationalize everything we do before we do it. In fact, we probably don’t rationalize much ever. That’s what the scientific papers indicate anyway. Rationalization is computationally expensive. It uses up a tremendous amount of energy. Your brain uses more energy than any other organ in your body. Last time I checked, maybe that’s changed, but I don’t think so. And it’s very easy for people to lull us using their tone. They can get real quiet and they can talk really slowly and they can give you the impression that everything’s okay. These are all forms of enchantment that are dangerous for you. The easiest way to figure out what’s going on is where are they asking you to put your time, energy, and attention? That’s what you should watch out for. If they’re trying to put it somewhere that isn’t your local environment, community preferably, that’s dangerous. Even if they’re telling you to put it to yourself, you go, watch out. Make sure you’re prepared in case the electricity goes out. You get attacked by bandits. This is not helpful. I’m not saying not to do that. I wish that I could afford to be totally ready to go off grid at any time, but honestly, completely unnecessary. Being in community with the people around you is a far better bet than trying to go it by yourself alone. Just something to think about. Look, there’s lots of forms of enchantment. Most of our signals that we get come to us unconsciously through this salient landscape, up through our awareness, to our attention. Into our consciousness that way. It’s easy for us to be hijacked by tone, by mannerisms. Some people look unassuming and innocent, so you should believe them. Some people look serious, so you really have to listen to them. There’s all sorts of different ways that we get signals. Again, they’re not bad signals by themselves, but certain combinations of them, when people are pointing not at the good, are not good. You have to watch out for them. It’s easy to fall for things like narrative capture, which I’ve talked about narrative capture before. It’s important stuff. Suitsayers use that. This is when it’s reasonable to be skeptical and cynical. Is this easy for you to believe? Is it too easy for you to fall into? Does it agree with a bias that you already have? Or did somebody subvert your expectation, insert a frame, attract you to something that you weren’t initially interested in? Did they promise you understanding or control over a really complex situation? Like, well, we can understand the fall of the universities through the Kabbalah. Really? Can we? Are they giving you something to do? Like, aha, I have something for you to do. You can set up solar in your house so that when they cut the power generation lines, you’ll be prepared. I don’t think so. I’ve got an electric co-op. My power’s not going out. They got their own trucks and their own backup generators. It’s the same. That is all red flag stuff. You have to be careful where people are pointing you. You have to be introspective. You have to look at this. How are they using their words? Are they using buzzwords? Are they appropriate buzzwords? Do they appeal to you, those buzzwords? Are they common words? Are they abstract words? Are they using this impressionist enchantment where they’re saying, look, we just need world peace through love of everybody and empathy for all humans and creatures of the planet? Okay. Probably would produce world peace if anybody could implement anything that crazy. What level of abstraction are they talking at? Lots of things seem funny or seem good or seem to make sense in the moment. That’s what I mean is kind of make sense in the moment. Just look at what people are pointing at. Are they pointing at something local you can do and engage in happily? Or are they pointing at something that you never had any interest in before and isn’t in your local community? This paying attention to who might be a soothsayer, and they might call themselves experts, they might claim government authority, and they claim to have a system that only you know. These are easy to spot like, oh, make $10 million online in four days. Here’s how I did it. Yeah, that’s Suzanne. That’s only slight exaggeration, by the way. I saw one of those ads recently. Facebook. YouTube’s full of them. Facebook’s full of different ads, Suzanne ads. These are the things you have to watch out for. Avoiding Suzanne is all about guarding the thing that you have that is your agency, that gives you agency. The thing that I’m most grateful for that you’ve given to me by watching this video, which is your time and attention.