Everything Is F*cked by Manson Mark

Author:Manson, Mark
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Harper
Published: 2019-05-13T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 7

Pain Is the Universal Constant

One by one, the researchers shuttled the subjects down a hall and into a small

room. Inside was a single beige computer console with a blank screen and

two buttons, and nothing else.1

The instructions were simple: sit, stare at the screen, and if a blue dot

flashes on it, press the button that reads, “Blue.” If a purple dot flashes on the

screen, press the button that reads, “Not Blue.”

Sounds easy, right?

Well, each subject had to look at a thousand dots. Yes, a thousand. And

when a subject finished, the researchers brought in another subject and

repeated the process: beige console, blank screen, a thousand dots. Next! This

went on with hundreds of subjects at multiple universities.

Were these psychologists researching a new form of psychological

torture? Was this an experiment into the limitations of human boredom? No.

Actually, the scope of the study was matched only by its inanity. It was a

study with seismic implications, because more than any other academic study

in recent memory, it explains much of what we see happening in the world

today.

The psychologists were researching something they would call

“prevalence-induced concept change.” But because that’s an absolutely awful

name, for our purposes, I will refer to their discovery as the “Blue Dot

Effect. ”2

Here’s the deal with the dots: Most of them were blue. Some of them were

purple. Some of them were some shade in between blue and purple.

The researchers discovered that when they showed mostly blue dots,

everyone was pretty accurate in determining which dots were blue and which

ones were not. But as soon as the researchers started limiting the number of

blue dots, and showing more shades of purple, the subjects began to mistake

purple dots for blue. It seemed that their eyes distorted the colors and

continued to seek a certain number of blue dots, no matter how many were

actually shown.

Okay, big deal, right? People mis-see stuff all the time. And besides, when

you’re staring at dots for hours on end, you might start to go cross-eyed and

see all sorts of weird shit.

But the blue dots weren’t the point; they were merely a way to measure

how humans warp their perceptions to fit their expectations. Once the

researchers had enough data on blue dots to put their lab assistants into a

coma, they moved on to more important perceptions.

For example: next, the researchers showed the subjects pictures of faces

that were some degree of threatening, friendly, or neutral. Initially, they

showed them a large number of threatening faces. But as the experiment went

on, as with the blue dots, they showed fewer and fewer—and the same effect

occurred: the fewer threatening faces subjects were shown, the more the

subjects began to misread friendly and neutral faces as being threatening. In

the same way that the human mind seemed to have a “preset” number of blue

dots it expected to see, it also had a preset number of threatening faces it

expected to see.

Then the researchers went even further, because—fuck it, why not? It’s

one thing to see threats where there are none, but what about moral

judgments? What about believing there’s more evil in the world than there

actually is?

This time, the researchers had the subjects read job proposals. Some of

these proposals were unethical, involving some shady shit. Some proposals

were totally innocuous and fine. Others were some gradation in between.

Once again, the researchers began by showing a mix of ethical and

unethical proposals, and the subjects were told to keep an eye out for

unethical proposals. Then, slowly, the researchers exposed people to fewer

and fewer unethical proposals. As they did, the Blue Dot Effect kicked in.

People began to interpret completely ethical proposals as being unethical.

Rather than noticing that more proposals were showing up on the ethical side

of the fence, people’s minds moved the fence itself to maintain the perception

that a certain number of proposals and requests were unethical. Basically, they

redefined what was unethical without being consciously aware of doing so.

As the researchers noted, this bias has incredibly upsetting implications

for . . . well, pretty much everything. Governmental committees designed to

oversee regulations, when provided with a dearth of infractions, may start to

perceive infractions where there are none. Task forces designed to check

unethical practices within organizations will, when deprived of bad guys to

accuse of wrongdoing, begin imagining bad guys where there are none.

The Blue Dot Effect suggests that, essentially, the more we look for

threats, the more we will see them, regardless of how safe or comfortable our

environment actually is. And we see this playing out in the world today.

It used to be that being the victim of violence meant somebody had

physically harmed you. Today, many people have begun to use the word

violence to describe words that made them feel uncomfortable, or even just

the presence of a person they disliked. 3 Trauma used to mean specifically an experience so severe that the victim could not continue to function. Today, an

unpleasant social encounter or a few offensive words are considered

“trauma,” and necessitate “safe spaces.” 4 Genocide used to mean the physical mass murder of a certain ethnic or religious group. Today, the term white

genocide is employed by some to lament the fact that the local diner now lists

some of its menu items in Spanish. 5

This is the Blue Dot Effect. The better things get, the more we perceive

threats where there are none, and the more upset we become. And it is at the

heart of the paradox of progress.

In the nineteenth century, Emile Durkheim, the founder of sociology and an

early pioneer of the social sciences, ran a thought experiment in one of his

books: What if there were no crime? What if there emerged a society where

everyone was perfectly respectful and nonviolent and everyone was equal?

What if no one lied or hurt each other? What if corruption did not exist? What

would happen? Would conflict cease? Would stress evaporate? Would

everyone frolic in fields picking

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