>>5598314I wonder if there is a mechanism of collective or crowd ideation, akin to those empirical studies which demonstrate nonperceptible subvocalisation of words when neurologically activated during internal articulation of speech (see for instance, this wearable project attempting to read volitional internal speech)
https://www.media.mit.edu/projects/alterego/overview/What this wearable device is trying to do is capture the silent nonobservable signals being said internally before you form words but when you do not deliberately speak them aloud.
Just as war exercises can precede an actual war, can crowd re-enactment serve as a precursor to macro event ideation, macro hysteria? See the Ohio derailment / DeLillo White Noise film etc.
>>5583389It is hard to disentangle causality from confirmation bias and apophenia hehe, as there will always be some crowd performing some similar and analogous time-precedent action somewhere, that can be reinterpreted ex-post as a precursor to the hysteria or the event itself. Which was the cause and the effect, when Granger causality is no guide?
I know of some research by the cognitive linguist George Lakoff (he has some bias to his political views) that attempts to extend individual interior psychology to the nation state. Lakoff is pretty well-known for his Strict Father model, which characterises (mis-characterises?) conservative politics as the Strict Father, citizens as children to be disciplined, but once children "earn" their responsibilities, ie become law-abiding adults, the government-father should refrain from interfering in their lives etc. And of course Lakoff also believes in the Nurturant Parent alternative as the superior version, this is probably Hillary Clinton or whoever Dustin Hoffman was playing in that Ben Stiller vs Robert de Niro Meet The Parents Gaylord Focker sequel film. I always thought Lakoff's framing was flawed as he establishes these two perspectives in opposition as opposed to one emerging from another (Nurturant Parent as propaganda?) Anyway, the point of this is to explain that because understanding of complex macro phenomena such as government is contaminated / intertwined in the human mind with simplistic conceptual metaphors like parent-child guilt-discipline reward-punish etc, the aggregate human behaviour responds accordingly, perhaps suboptimally, when you probably should be using some advanced econometrics THE VAMPIRE SORCERY instead. In other words people respond to the metaphorical representation of an event as opposed to examining the actual event itself (which may be unknowable or incomprehensible, etc)
>tldr; LARP IS REAL 