[Hitch]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

You did, but I don't. I don't normally place bets, let alone accept them.

(Doing the latter would likely be stepping on someone's toes, and they would object violently.)

I'm pretty sure that they knew I was joking, my friend. ;-)

And the Internet enables it.

It doesn't just enable it--it encourages it. Rude behavior has now replaced any pretense at listening to someone, because, god forbid, you might learn something or hear something that doesn't jive with your beliefs. We all see how the unintended consequence of that behavior is playing out at universities, unfortunately.

I had conversation with a friend a few years ago. She was a former executive editor at a trade publisher who is now a full time writer, and we were discussing the state of publishing and the misconceptions surrounding it (like how cheaply a book can be priced.)

Don't get me started on that one. If one more person says "you shouldn't charge to make EDITS! It only takes one minute to open a file and make a change," I may go down for murder.

She said "The problem is, we're smart, and we surround ourselves with other people who are smart, so we're insulated. We don't realize that an awful lot of people out there aren't smart until we have to deal with them."

I used to say this (more or less) to my associates--that we were all spoiled. That we'd been very lucky, that all the people we dealt with, building hotels, etc., were incredibly smart and good at what they do. That our entire "universe" was populated with top performers and so forth. That the flipside to that is--you're ill-prepared for reality, when it hits.

She's spot on. I've lost track of the number of things that are glaringly obvious to me that elude some folks I deal with. In some cases, it's a matter of not wanting to get it, because the concept is one that flies against their preconceptions and they don't want to believe it. In others, they simply can't get it. They just aren't bright enough to grasp the notion.

Both types seem to emerge from the woodwork where self-publishing is concerned.
______
Dennis

Yes, that's true, in self-pubbing, I suspect largely due to the whole 'dream' thing. Right? Everybody wants to be the next Dan Brown, the next Stephenie Meyer, etc. And, bygod, their novel is IT. It's the next brilliant as-yet undiscovered masterpiece, and as soon as people just READ it, the sooner that rocketship to superstardom will depart.

But it's also true everywhere else. It's not just publishing, where people increasingly cherry-pick what information they want to hear/see. It's everything. The advent of the Net has made it VERY easy to live in an echo chamber. Where you surround yourself with people who Think Just Like You. People who won't tell you that you're wrong that the Illuminati are taking over the New Jersey Garbage Business, because they're putting special chemicals in the trash cans, that get on your hands and then into your brains. Or whatever. It doesn't even have to be far out. It's just easy, isn't it? Stick at the forums where everybody knows your name, and supports what you believe, reinforces the idea that you're right, in your beliefs....it's a seduction. Like any other type of addiction, it feeds the brain chemistry that is hard to defeat with cold hard facts.

There is some kind of study--and no, I don't know where it is, now--that belief and beliefs can actually act like chemical agents on the brain. That the act of belief can cause the release of certain brain chemicals/hormones/whatever that make you feel good, like drugs. And while the study in question was addressing religious belief, what's the difference? I mean, if you believe in some type of conspiracy, and you surround yourself with other Troos, what's the diff between that and some specific religious belief? Nothing, brain-chemistry wise.

Just...think about that for a moment. The idea that finding people who agree with us, who support our belief system, is potentially addictive. How easy it is, to find those people, on the Net, and invest in staying with them. And how that would affect the behavior of people "in real life" as they say, especially over a long period of time, over large swaths of population.



Hitch (who finds it all a bit worrisome...)