I have an American friend who’s a passionate believer in the idea that democracy is about educating and…

I have an American friend who’s a passionate believer in the idea that democracy is about educating and mobilising ‘the people’. I would call this an American cultural disease, except social media has now spread it globally. A synopsis of my counter-arguments, to him. /1

Firstly, despite the almost universal belief that human groups of whatever size act as some sort of agency or entity, like ‘the people’, they just don’t. No group of any size does. We’ve all been in groups of various sizes, we’ve seen this from the inside. /2

The group only ever gives an impression of acting as a single agency when some tiny number of people in it suggest something, which the others then ‘get behind’. A group only exists as a hierarchical following, never as a simultaneous miraculous unanimity. /3

How could we think otherwise? How would it happen that everybody in a group suddenly had the same idea, at the same time? It’s nonsense. Groups are networked hierarchies, always. Society itself is networked fractal hierarchies. They look a bit like this. /4 https://t.co/3PYetaUSaX

A parallel belief that ‘the people’ run democracies is that information does. No society runs on information, ever. Again, how would that even work? Which information? The amount of information out there is beyond anybody to make even the slightest dent in, in their study. /5

My friend passionately every day attempts to ‘educate’ people, to eradicate disinformation and misinformation. And then to mobilise people with their new understanding. It never works, but he’s been doing it his entire adult life. The mythology of it all never dies. /6

I’m pretty much alone in most conversations about this, when I suggest the sign of a healthy society is people knowing hardly anything at all, about anything. Remember the saying, a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing? Were we paying attention? /7

Because a little bit of knowledge is all ANY of us can now possibly have, about the staggeringly complex world we live in. We absolutely need all that knowledge. It’s the wonder of our age. But the idea we need everybody to have all of that knowledge? Seriously? /8

See the diagram again. We *delegate* responsibility for that staggering complexity of knowledge, extensively throughout society. So that most of us can get on with living our lives not needing to know it. We’re all part of at least one of the hubs. Knowing something well. /9 https://t.co/brEBIgZ4st

But the idea we all have to know everything about all of them is laughable, dangerous nonsense. Encouraged by populists, because by making everybody an expert in everything, their true mission is carried out. /10

The destruction of *trust* in all of these networked hierarchies. Look at this and other social media platforms, you can be a complete bullshit artist, and post alongside a Novel prize winner, lecturing them on their own field of expertise. /11

Social media IS the toxic implementation of ‘the people’ ideas, across every facet of life. From the most intimate and personal, through to the professional and political. Everybody is now an expert in everything. Apparently. Why society now seems so staggeringly stupid. /12

Humans set up institutions full of millions of skilled people, to undertake the daily churn of the astronomical knowledge-based social lives we live. Populists level these institutions, to be replaced by universal expertise for every individual, through social media. /13

Which is a con, to allow them to then vacuum up millions of ‘followers’ without doing any work at all processing the complexity of peoples’ lives. The medium is the message. These platforms, I say nearly every day, are the way we are destroying civilisation itself. /end