Kindness and truthfulness are the universal egregores. These are the foundational principles of Naturopathic and other holistic forms of medicine. "Dis-ease" is a wise , innate response of the organism to violation of these natural/universal egregores. Healing is the unfailing result of applying these universal egregores first and foremost to our behaviors, individually and collectively to our behaviors of eating, moving and resting, thinking, and relating. Healing begins with the radical transformation of our very attitude that illness is our enemy to an attitude of non-violence. "First, do no harm." The practical application of this principle to the care of fever, inflammation, respiratory, and circulatory problems transforms our care of illness and must be experienced to be appreciated.
Maybe Paxlovid instead? I get the "identify doctor which won't treat treating you as a moral hazard" idea, but if someone is still going on about ivermectin, they're engaging in some nonsense culture war battles, above truth-seeking.
More generally, a doctor who is Antithesis who also doesn't recommend IVM will enthusiastically bring up Paxlovid as an alternate when you ask. A doctor who is Thesis will tell you to drink chicken broth. And most are Thesis, so asking the question about IVM still gives you the answer you're looking for. You as a patient aren't looking for a particular drug, you're looking for a caregiver that is actively seeking answers.
"The signal that binds them into super-organismic behavior for the prior ten thousand years has been the use of money."
I'd love to see an expansion of your ant model to include other pheromones. For example, social emotions like shame or ambition or competitiveness or fame seeking. Or even, actually sexual pheromones. All these can be argued to contribute as much as money to super-organismic behavior, at least from time to time.
Follow the link back to the other article. It focused on money, and on game theory of human evolution and how we're headed someplace very bad, but maybe your ideas can bail us out. I'm interested to hear your approach.
Given IVM's risks are near zero, if it's got a 10% chance of working then I see no reason not to add it to the kitchen sink approach. I plan on taking it whenever I catch Covid even though I don't give it better than perhaps a 40% chance of helping. And I think that's a totally rational approach.
"Kurzweil Singularity of a different form, a man-machine hybrid thinking object that lives in the virtual, and battles with other man-machine hybrid thinking objects for purchase in the overall landscape of human brain space. These are the egregores, and they control the behavior of most people who are plugged into the feed. And each information silo echo chamber is fertile ground for the formation of an egregore." Similar to the plot of SSSS.Gridman - a friend pointed this out it seems legit
I work on a project called The Canonical Debate, and it seems to me to be a possible counter to the evolution of egregores. If they are doing the thinking (and the talking) for doctors (and everyone else, of course), they are only able to do that within the spaces left between facts. That is, they are an accumulation of beliefs where there are no facts, or where facts leave space for interpretation. Is Ivermectin effective? We don't know. If we did, it wouldn't serve as the litmus test you proposed. The more facts we can verify, the less room there is for egregores to do the thinking for us. There is also less room for egregores within our ignorance for those things we can openly research. While you are effectively sensemaking, or, better, while you are performing actual experimentation to understand a phenomenon, your mind is open, and therefore relatively free from egregore influence. Mankind also suffers from inefficiency of information transfer (no one person has all the facts), which also creates space for egregores to do the thinking. The Canonical Debate proposes to improve our capacity to accumulate and share knowledge. I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on how it might change social communication (in the realm of debate), and how that would effect the evolution and influence of egregores. (look for "Canonical Debate Lab")
Sounds like a great idea, but I don't think it's strong enough to go against an egregore. Consider cloth mask efficacy, for instance. Or lab leak hypothesis. Even when something is obviously true, the egregore overwhelms it.
Or consider, for instance, how the CDC "manipulate by messaging" mindset drives people to smoke cigarettes by falsely equivocating vaping with them. These things are powerful forces that truth cannot undo. The truth can, at best, provide a guiding light for those avoiding egregorical influence, but it even leaks into the science. We see this all the time with gun policy research - the researchers unconsciously transmit the egregore's bias all the way into the study design, and then among ten studies the egregore elevates the one out of the ten that is most useful for egregorical spread.
Except that I think the idea changes the norms around what's considered good information. Egregores thrive on our lack of access to complete information, which we substitute with trusted figures. Even medical experts have to rely on trusted figures within their profession, which is what leads to the networks of like-thinking. If sensemaking is the act of trying to sort through the information yourself, it's the act of breaking connection with the egregores to whatever degree is possible. So, as a thought experiment: how much does society change with each decrease in effort to do proper sensemaking? Cloth mask efficacy is a perfect example. There's no one answer to their effectiveness, so different sides choose the one they like. How much Googling does it take to do a full thesis-antithesis-synthesis study of the subject? What if that effort were 0, though (I'm not saying that's possible, just theoretically)? Would masks still be an indicator of side affiliation? Why, for example, don't the different camps argue about whether or not it's worse for the elderly than children? If there were doubts about who suffers more, I'm sure that would be one more fissure between thesis and antithesis sides. Fissures only exist where there are doubts.
Thank you for your clear thinking.
Kindness and truthfulness are the universal egregores. These are the foundational principles of Naturopathic and other holistic forms of medicine. "Dis-ease" is a wise , innate response of the organism to violation of these natural/universal egregores. Healing is the unfailing result of applying these universal egregores first and foremost to our behaviors, individually and collectively to our behaviors of eating, moving and resting, thinking, and relating. Healing begins with the radical transformation of our very attitude that illness is our enemy to an attitude of non-violence. "First, do no harm." The practical application of this principle to the care of fever, inflammation, respiratory, and circulatory problems transforms our care of illness and must be experienced to be appreciated.
"Ask them their opinions of ivermectin"
Maybe Paxlovid instead? I get the "identify doctor which won't treat treating you as a moral hazard" idea, but if someone is still going on about ivermectin, they're engaging in some nonsense culture war battles, above truth-seeking.
https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/ivermectin-much-more-than-you-wanted
You might find this critique of Scott's pivot to worms theory interesting.
https://doyourownresearch.substack.com/p/a-conflict-of-blurred-visions?showWelcome=true
More generally, a doctor who is Antithesis who also doesn't recommend IVM will enthusiastically bring up Paxlovid as an alternate when you ask. A doctor who is Thesis will tell you to drink chicken broth. And most are Thesis, so asking the question about IVM still gives you the answer you're looking for. You as a patient aren't looking for a particular drug, you're looking for a caregiver that is actively seeking answers.
"The signal that binds them into super-organismic behavior for the prior ten thousand years has been the use of money."
I'd love to see an expansion of your ant model to include other pheromones. For example, social emotions like shame or ambition or competitiveness or fame seeking. Or even, actually sexual pheromones. All these can be argued to contribute as much as money to super-organismic behavior, at least from time to time.
Follow the link back to the other article. It focused on money, and on game theory of human evolution and how we're headed someplace very bad, but maybe your ideas can bail us out. I'm interested to hear your approach.
https://hwfo.substack.com/p/we-are-all-apes-behaving-like-ants
"They believe they have seen these treatment options work, in their experience, and have variously used hydroxyquinoline, ivermectin,"
The word "believe" is very powerful. Perhaps Ivermectin is worth considering for nothing more than a placebo effect, given its risk profile?
Given IVM's risks are near zero, if it's got a 10% chance of working then I see no reason not to add it to the kitchen sink approach. I plan on taking it whenever I catch Covid even though I don't give it better than perhaps a 40% chance of helping. And I think that's a totally rational approach.
Random aside:
"Kurzweil Singularity of a different form, a man-machine hybrid thinking object that lives in the virtual, and battles with other man-machine hybrid thinking objects for purchase in the overall landscape of human brain space. These are the egregores, and they control the behavior of most people who are plugged into the feed. And each information silo echo chamber is fertile ground for the formation of an egregore." Similar to the plot of SSSS.Gridman - a friend pointed this out it seems legit
I work on a project called The Canonical Debate, and it seems to me to be a possible counter to the evolution of egregores. If they are doing the thinking (and the talking) for doctors (and everyone else, of course), they are only able to do that within the spaces left between facts. That is, they are an accumulation of beliefs where there are no facts, or where facts leave space for interpretation. Is Ivermectin effective? We don't know. If we did, it wouldn't serve as the litmus test you proposed. The more facts we can verify, the less room there is for egregores to do the thinking for us. There is also less room for egregores within our ignorance for those things we can openly research. While you are effectively sensemaking, or, better, while you are performing actual experimentation to understand a phenomenon, your mind is open, and therefore relatively free from egregore influence. Mankind also suffers from inefficiency of information transfer (no one person has all the facts), which also creates space for egregores to do the thinking. The Canonical Debate proposes to improve our capacity to accumulate and share knowledge. I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on how it might change social communication (in the realm of debate), and how that would effect the evolution and influence of egregores. (look for "Canonical Debate Lab")
Sounds like a great idea, but I don't think it's strong enough to go against an egregore. Consider cloth mask efficacy, for instance. Or lab leak hypothesis. Even when something is obviously true, the egregore overwhelms it.
Or consider, for instance, how the CDC "manipulate by messaging" mindset drives people to smoke cigarettes by falsely equivocating vaping with them. These things are powerful forces that truth cannot undo. The truth can, at best, provide a guiding light for those avoiding egregorical influence, but it even leaks into the science. We see this all the time with gun policy research - the researchers unconsciously transmit the egregore's bias all the way into the study design, and then among ten studies the egregore elevates the one out of the ten that is most useful for egregorical spread.
Except that I think the idea changes the norms around what's considered good information. Egregores thrive on our lack of access to complete information, which we substitute with trusted figures. Even medical experts have to rely on trusted figures within their profession, which is what leads to the networks of like-thinking. If sensemaking is the act of trying to sort through the information yourself, it's the act of breaking connection with the egregores to whatever degree is possible. So, as a thought experiment: how much does society change with each decrease in effort to do proper sensemaking? Cloth mask efficacy is a perfect example. There's no one answer to their effectiveness, so different sides choose the one they like. How much Googling does it take to do a full thesis-antithesis-synthesis study of the subject? What if that effort were 0, though (I'm not saying that's possible, just theoretically)? Would masks still be an indicator of side affiliation? Why, for example, don't the different camps argue about whether or not it's worse for the elderly than children? If there were doubts about who suffers more, I'm sure that would be one more fissure between thesis and antithesis sides. Fissures only exist where there are doubts.