Y2K meme contagion-food for thought?

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Hey! I'm no troll. I'm a former doomer myself. (Former because I don't know what to think now that Y2K isn't as bad as I knew it would be.)

The guy who pointed me to the deleted threads helped me find this article on how thought contagion can cause one to become evangelical about fear-based alarmist conclusions. After reading it, I'm afraid I saw a little of myself in that article. I was (and am) motivated to alarm others in order to save themselves. Where I originally pointed to Y2K bugs and warned others to prepare by stocking up, now I'm alarmed by the techno-bubble.com and oil prices surging and am warning others to get out of the stock market (at the top) before it's too late.

Maybe I should just keep my fool mouth shut. Yet somehow I think us doomers will be vindicated in the end, even soon. Maybe I was crying wolf, but wolves are real, and they do bite!

Link to the "thought contagion" article: http://www.mcs.net/~aaron/tmc.htm

-- Cee Bee (ceebee@hotmail.com), January 19, 2000

Answers

I saw the cutest sign on I90 the west side which read :

A CLOSED MOUTH GATHERS NO FEET

<<<<
-- consumer (shhh@aol.com), January 19, 2000.


I read it, and I have one question: What about the most prevalent 'meme' of all - the good 'ol "Peace And Safety" meme that seems to have the majority of mankind in it's grip?

Me, I must be infected with a number of them: Backpack nuke meme, anthrax meme, Russia ain't our friend meme, trillions in derivatives ain't good meme, huge national debt is dangerous meme, Y2K ain't necessarilly over meme, the Saints will win the Superbowl someday meme, TB2K is a really neat forum meme, and the old reliable Christianity memes mentioned in the article.

Jes so much claptrap...

Kook

-- Y2Kook (Y2Kook@usa.net), January 19, 2000.


It would be hard to label Y2k concerns just an urban legend when the U.S. Senate and the State Department played a part in repeating these 'legends.'

Clearly, there were rational reasons for concern.

-- (prepped@and.happy), January 19, 2000.


Hey, I'm also happy I prepped, and I don't mean to put anyone on the defensive. A meme is a concept that is passed from one person to the next. It can be an assumption, a revelation, an opinion, whatever.

But the best memes are those that are most successful at spreading.

The root meme that seems to affect the thinking of a lot of us doomers is: something is wrong with the system and it's going to break so we better get ready and therefore need to convince others of the danger.

A meme isn't necessarily incorrect, I still believe in my alarmist meme construction. But it isn't always rationally arrived at, and can be difficult to dislodge with rational arguments. A meme is easily seen as such when emotion is more evident than reasoned discourse.

Anyway, TEOTWAWKI is happening every day, but it's going to become rather more noticeable soon. Pass it on...

-- Cee Bee (ceebee@hotmail.com), January 19, 2000.


off off

-- (off@off.off), January 19, 2000.


OK, I went to the article in the URL and read it. The fellow does hit on some truths in his piece but it seems to me he makes too much stew out of one oyster.

There were and are those who really, really went to the far end of the preparedness extreme in prepping for Y2K this is true. In fact, they may have violated a cardinal rule of survivalism that states "don't get so caught up in a given scenario that it becomes a disaster in itself if the scenario doesn't occur. Whether they have or not remains to be seen. My gut feeling is they probably have. This, however, does NOT apply to the overwhelming majority of those who prepped for Y2K and will lose very little to nothing at all by not needing their preps for the reasons they acquired them.

At the same time, this fellow did not take his "meme" (rhymes with dream) ideal to all of its logical ends. That concept works backwards as well as it does forward. There are those who actively and ardently strove to convince others not to make any preparations at all apparently because of a "nothing will happen" meme even when federal, state and local emergency management organizations were telling people they should. Their meme leads them to believe that nothing drastically bad could happen so they should strive to convince others that nothing could happen when they could not say that with any more certainty than the folks who said it would be the end of civilization.

Now to be fair, after his several dozen paragraph long article on "end of the world" memes he did include this ONE paragraph about prudent preparedness.

Sensible Emergency Readiness: No matter what year it is or where you live, there is always some risk that some kind of emergency or disaster will happen. Though it will not be the end of civilization, Y2K does add one more class of things that can go wrong. To stay prepared for emergency situations before, during, and after the year 2000, consult the general readiness information provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). The agency is also in the process of setting up pages specific to Y2K.

I suppose he felt obliged to include it for all of us who did NOT see Y2K as a potential end of civlization but it seems more than a little disingenuous to spend so long talking about how so many people have been suckered into believing that anything bad could have come out of Y2K and then include that one brief paragraph.

It's too bad really. The fellow did hit on a basic truth but he then used one of the classic techniques of lying (telling just enough of the truth to sound plausible) to make a pollyanna argument.

Once again I have to say I find this whole "doomer" vs "polly" argument to be rather silly. Y2K was (is) only ONE scenario out of a great possible many. Some are probably not possible, many are very improbable and others have larger degrees of probability. Nevertheless, in the course of a long life, every single person in this forum will encounter a need at least once to have some preparedness supplies of one sort or another put by to get them through a tight spot. Not every disaster that occurs is going to give you sufficient warning to prepare for it in advance (few will, in fact) so if you'd be prepared for those disasters it's incumbent upon you to prepare even when there's no apparent immediate need to.

...........Alan.

The Providence Cooperative - A great source of preparedness information

http://www.providenceco-op.com

-- A.T. Hagan (athagan@netscape.net), January 19, 2000.


Cee Bee,

Personally, I'm always a little skeptical when someone with a name I've not seen before says "I'm no troll, but..." Anyway, setting that suspicion aside, here are my two cents (worth what you paid for them).

You wrote, "I don't know what to think now that Y2K isn't as bad as I knew it would be." That sounds like your first mistake...how did you come to know how bad it would be? With near unanimity, the posters on this forum pre-rollover were saying, "Nobody knows what will happen." Reading that you knew what would happen, it does sound like it may, indeed, be helpful for you to consider your belief system.

You wrote, "Where I originally pointed to Y2K bugs and warned others to prepare by stocking up, now I'm alarmed by the techno-bubble.com and oil prices surging and am warning others to get out of the stock market (at the top) before it's too late." Have you considered that your friends and acquaintances might be better served by having you point them towards information and sources, and encouraged to make up their own minds about the seriousness of any threat? Are you making financial decisions based solely on what anonymous people are posting on an internet bulletin board? If so, you may benefit from examining your capacity to self-determine. Do you really give financial advice to your friends, and are they acting on your warnings? Assuming you have no credentials/qualifications to dispense investment advice, if others are making potentially life-changing financial decisions based on your warnings, they already had some flaw in their cognitive processes before you ever spoke to them!

You wrote, "A meme is a concept that is passed from one person to the next. It can be an assumption, a revelation, an opinion, whatever. But the best memes are those that are most successful at spreading" Maybe you could consider, as our friend Y2Kook suggested, "...the old reliable Christianity memes mentioned in the article"?

Finally, you also may wish to consider that a "meme" is a theory presented by the individual who wrote an article you have read. Do you find yourself believing it to be scientific fact? If so, this would raise yet more questions about your thought processes. It might be that the words you've typed here today are saying more about you than they are saying about so-called "doomers" or "memes".

-- (RUOK@yesiam.com), January 19, 2000.


The responses I've received are gratifying. I'd like to respond to some comments that were made. First of all, it is true that that the article appears to be critical of "doomers." Who would really call themselves that anyway, except that the argument became so polarized that you have to be either "us" or "them."

And it is true that if memes amount to anything, then there are poisonous concepts such as preservation of the status quo that belie the faulty reasoning in the "no big deal" crowd.

Don't mistake my humility for inanity. I know how to make up my own mind and have a long background in skeptical inquiry. I also have learned to discern the ring of truth, as I see it, when a reasonable theory is proposed. The 'meme' theory of information transmittal has been around for a long time and has passed its own test of survival of the fittest--it's still being talked about.

I researched Y2K for over a year and was expecting (yes, you have to make up your own mind about what you expect in the future, and this forms the basis of a belief) a more serious outcome for Y2K in the near term. As time goes by, I have no doubt that we may yet suffer as a society due to numerous cascading paper cuts.

Like many others, I am both elated that things worked out so well and perturbed by an outcome that is hard to reconcile with the world view based on my Y2K research. I'm even a little disappointed that Y2K hasn't (so far) shook things up a least a little bit. I think the status quo deserves some stirring up. (Although disruption can also play into the hands of those that seek to establish new limits on our personal freedoms in the name of peace and safety.)

By exposing my vulnerabilities, that is the realization that I have tendency to be somewhat alarmist, I'm not asking for an analysis of my mental processes. I'm offering a chance to some other people to consider whether their own personality characteristics make them prone to seek out drama in a world that is often all too prosaic.

Having said that, it is fascinating to watch this forum with RC's prediction of $60pbb oil and an economic collapse arriving imminently. If it's a weakness of mine to be drawn like a moth to a flame, it may somehow prove to my advantage. I at least had the sense to do the practical thing and prepare for a 5 on a scale of 1-10 on the Y2K best case/worst case scenario. And these preparations will serve me to some degree in an economic depression.

But I'm still left wondering, should I raise the alarm, and let others know what may be about to happen soon? True, I have no real expertise outside of computers, but with Y2K, I've pointed those victims on my "Y2K alert" mailing list to relevant articles and extracts from the best of the information I've come across. I owe them no less with the current gold/oil (potential) crisis brewing, but I fear I no longer have the credibility that I drew upon for Y2K. At least with Y2K I thought I knew something about the issue. I'm a programmer and system administrator going back 20 years.

-- Cee Bee (ceebee@hotmail.com), January 19, 2000.


Cee Bee,

My sincere apologies. It is obvious that I misinterpreted your intentions in starting this thread. This last post of yours is a well-reasoned and honest presentation of your thoughts, in my should-have-been-more-humble opinion. I'm sorry for the sarcastic tone in my original response to you...it was misplaced.

When I spoke with friends and loved ones about Y2K, I tried to point them toward dissenting opinion...even the URL for the Debunker's board. (There were some pretty humorous reactions to that, which I don't think is what the Debunker's would have hoped for...but that's for another thread someday!) I tried not to give advice, though if really pressed I would say something like, "If you decide that Y2K might be a potentially serious problem, don't put anything on the line that you can't afford to lose if you're wrong."

I can't think of anything that would persuade me to sound an alarm to others about their investments, even though I'm still being very cautious and watchful with my own financial choices. I can respect that you may feel compelled to alert those whom you care for that there could be serious economic impacts coming down the (oil) pipeline. I'm grateful that one of the happy outcomes of my Y2K discussions with loved ones is that they have become more avid "world watchers". Hopefully that will afford them some protection against unforeseen consequences, and hopefully that is true of some of the people on your list, too. Good luck to you...I'm still holding my breath.

-- (RUOK@yesiam.com), January 20, 2000.


First of all, it is true that that the article appears to be critical of "doomers."

Yes, it was. It damaged the credibility of an article that could otherwise have been much more persuasive. It's too bad, he has a very good point. If he had applied it as evenly as the meme concept clearly calls for it would have been much more telling.

Who would really call themselves that anyway, except that the argument became so polarized that you have to be either "us" or "them."

The "us" vs. "them" thing invariably happens which then acts to oversimplify something that is much more complicated than that. If you're a "doomer" you must automatically believe everything that North, et. al., published when it wasn't that way at all for the majority of the people who chose to prepare. If you're a "pollyanna" you must believe the world will go on forever and ever without a bobble. Both are nonsense and are what led to a great deal of the acrimony and bitterness that has been displayed in this forum.

And it is true that if memes amount to anything, then there are poisonous concepts such as preservation of the status quo that belie the faulty reasoning in the "no big deal" crowd.

Another part of the reason for this hostility in this forum. Two diametrically opposed memes in conflict with each other. No different than two expanding and opposing religions coming into contact with each other.

The 'meme' theory of information transmittal has been around for a long time and has passed its own test of survival of the fittest--it's still being talked about.

I'm behind the times, I suppose, because until your post I'd never heard the word "meme" before but now I see it's something that bears much thinking about. It applies to those of us who prepare and those who take such vigorous opposition to us. Provided someone doesn't try to take it too far and make it into something the idea won't support it's a valid concept.

By exposing my vulnerabilities, that is the realization that I have tendency to be somewhat alarmist, I'm not asking for an analysis of my mental processes. I'm offering a chance to some other people to consider whether their own personality characteristics make them prone to seek out drama in a world that is often all too prosaic.

There is some truth to this, I think. You have to be this way at least a little bit to spend so much time thinking about matters that other folks find to be unthinkable or at least unpleasant. People, by and large, do not willingly spend time thinking about matters they find to be unpleasant. Those of us who write and teach about preparedness have to have some interest in the subject in order to give it sufficient thought to learn our craft and be able to persuade others to realize potential into action.

Having said that, it is fascinating to watch this forum with RC's prediction of $60pbb oil and an economic collapse arriving imminently. If it's a weakness of mine to be drawn like a moth to a flame, it may somehow prove to my advantage. I at least had the sense to do the practical thing and prepare for a 5 on a scale of 1-10 on the Y2K best case/worst case scenario. And these preparations will serve me to some degree in an economic depression.

I don't know if there's going to be any economic collapse or not. Nor do I know when there's going to be a depression. I am certain there will be a depression because we've had many depressions before and I have not seen anything that leads me to believe we are now depression-proof. In the fullness of time one will come along. It may be as bad as the one we call the Great Depression and it may not.

It's the same way with hurricanes, wars, earthquakes, blizzards, and many other disasters that have occurred previously in the past. Rather than get too hung up on the idea of a specific scenario it's far, far better to be just generally prepared for as many different scenarios as you can be. There are a great many preparations you can do that most scenarios will share in common. Carry out those preparations for one scenario (the depression you mention) and you are now prepared for many others. Unless you are taken with the "nothing bad can happen" meme, in the fullness of time one of these low-probability events will occur to you personally and you'll be far ahead of the great unwashed in being ready to deal with it.

Allowing yourself to become neck deep in a preparing for one specific scenario which then doesn't occur easily leads to becoming disillusioned and failing to stay prepared. You're then at risk of being blindsided by the scenario you didn't see coming.

But I'm still left wondering, should I raise the alarm, and let others know what may be about to happen soon? True, I have no real expertise outside of computers, but with Y2K, I've pointed those victims on my "Y2K alert" mailing list to relevant articles and extracts from the best of the information I've come across. I owe them no less with the current gold/oil (potential) crisis brewing, but I fear I no longer have the credibility that I drew upon for Y2K.

At least with Y2K I thought I knew something about the issue. I'm a programmer and system administrator going back 20 years.

This is a problem that all of us in this forum who prepared share in common with groups such as FEMA, the National Weather Bureau, the Hurricane Center, seismologists and every other group who try to make people aware of the risks of living in the real world.

I don't have a good answer. With Y2K I tried to tell those who would listen that there seemed to be a signficant risk of potentially serious disruptions due to the millennium computer bug. With that in mind, they'd then have to decide for themselves how risk adverse they were. Maybe there wouldn't be the first flicker of a light bulb but maybe the lights would go out and not come back on for days, weeks, or even months.

When Hurricane Floyd blew up to 154 miles per hour wind speed the weather service, hurricane center, state, county and municipal governments convinced enough people here in Florida to move out that it created the largest peace time evacuation in the history of the United States. The storm made the turn the hurricane center predicted it would all along and our damage was negligible. They made a very good call in asking people to evacuate because only God knows for sure what a hurricane will or will not do and if it had not turned the damage and death toll may have been catastrophic. Y2K was no different. That storm turned and went out to sea. Under different circumstances it might not have. The problem was not entirely one of technology but also of human behavior. What would have happened if the lights had gone out in New York City or Los Angeles for ten or twelve hours?

About the most you can do is apprise people of those situations where there appears to be a significant risk of something seriously negative occuring and point them towards the evidence you have that has caused your concern. The more mainstream the source the more likely you'll be able to persuade others to act. If you come across as rational and use a reasoned approach you've done about all that can be done. Beyond that, each individual will just have to accept the consequences of their actions/inactions. You cannot save those who do not want to be saved.

...........Alan.

The Providence Cooperative - A great source of preparedness information

http://www.providenceco-op.com

-- A.T. Hagan (athagan@netscape.net), January 20, 2000.



Ack. Italics off.

Doggone it.

-- A.T. Hagan (athagan@netscape.net), January 20, 2000.


Thanks all for feedback on the issues I raised. Y2K has indeed raised my awareness of what's going on these days globally and economically. I never took preparation seriously, we've been living paycheck to paycheck without even a savings account to carry us through emergencies. I think the money I spent on Y2K preps is better than money in the bank, but I think I'd better try to hold on to some of my money while I'm still earning it, too. Probably put some of it in gold since I am loathe to convert it back into paper, at least until the price zooms up.

-- Cee Bee (ceebee@hotmail.com), January 20, 2000.

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