Psychosecurity
You have no defense against the next ten years of influence operations
We explores the limitations of human sensory experiences in online interactions, emphasizing how these limitations affect our understanding of memes and cultural communication. It introduces the concept of “sense-blindness,” which refers to the restricted sensory inputs available on the internet—primarily sight and sound—leading to a diminished capacity for fully engaging with others and complex ideas.
Humans are equipped with millions of biological sensors that help us make sense of the world. These sensors include our sight, hearing, taste, touch, and smell. But they also include less obvious senses like pain, temperature, balance, the sense of body position (proprioception), pressure changes (barometric pressure), and even the internal cues that tell us when we’re hungry or thirsty. All these senses work together to give us a complete and accurate understanding of reality.
Now, imagine if only one of these senses worked — say, just your left ear. Without your other senses, you’d struggle to figure out what’s happening around you. You might hear sounds, but without sight, touch, or other inputs, you wouldn’t know where those sounds are coming from, what they mean, or how to respond. You wouldn’t be able to fully understand your environment or interact with it as a complete person.
This is similar to what happens when we use the internet. Online, we’re mostly limited to using just our eyes and ears. We can see text, images, and videos, and we can hear sounds, but that’s about it. The other senses that make us fully human — like touch, smell, taste, the feeling of temperature, pain, the sense of balance, and more — are left out of the equation.
Because of this, there are no “complete” human experiences on the internet. They are limited and incomplete because we’re missing so many of the senses that we rely on in the real world. When we communicate online, we’re doing so through a very narrow lens, like looking at the world through a tiny pinhole. This limited perspective makes it hard to fully understand or connect with others the way we do in person.
So, what does this mean for how we interact online? It means that the internet, as amazing as it is, can never fully capture the richness of real-life human experience. We’re not getting the full picture, and that’s something we need to keep in mind as we navigate our digital lives. The internet connects us, but it also leaves a lot behind — things that are essential to truly being human.
Our sensory experiences in the real world are rich and multi-dimensional. However, online interactions are constrained by the limited sensory inputs available through digital screens — primarily sight and sound. This restriction, which I will refer to as “sense-blindness“, has a significant impact on how memes endure and how they fail.
The internet is a sensory deprivation chamber. Only a handful of our many sensory organs have access to it. When your sense organs go blind, your brain overcompensates on the senses you do have. It’s not that memes are “emotionally supercharged“, it’s that our sensory organs (eyes and ears) which can sense the internet are supercharged because everything else is sense-blind.
Memes Are Not Ideas Or Units Of Culture
Online communication relies heavily on text and images, which means we often engage with content through our linguistic sense. Memes are designed to be simple, often using brief text and easily recognizable images to convey ideas quickly and effectively. The ease with which memes can be understood and shared makes them perfect for an environment where complex, nuanced communication is more challenging. This linguistic focus allows memes to be rapidly consumed and spread, leveraging language to create quick, impactful messages.
With our sensory experiences reduced, our emotional responses become even more crucial in the online world. Memes are crafted to evoke strong emotions — whether it’s humor, outrage, or nostalgia. Because we’re not getting the full sensory context of real-life interactions, emotions often drive our online behavior. Think back to the scenario of only your left ear working: If you suddenly went sense-blind and only one sense organ worked, you would panic and become overwhelmed with emotional instability. Memes can be seen, not as ideas, but as emotional navigation of the sense-blind space. The emotional intend embedded within them helps them gain traction and become viral, as they resonate deeply with our feelings even without the full sensory experience.
The digital world often fails at mirroring our social hierarchies and group dynamics. This is because memes are not units of culture either. If memes are the result of sense-blindness, then there is no way they can be used to to accurately represent the fullness of social hierarchies built from sense-rich conditions. Instead, each meme that goes viral acts as a “true north” within the sense-blind space. From here, they create a sense of belonging (or exclusion) for those navigating a sense-blind space. We do not naturally have institutions or social hierarchies for sense-blind scenarios, and more often than not, our institutions naturally contend against sense-blindness as one of their core functions.
The internet offers a sensory experience confined to text, images, and sounds. Unlike face-to-face interactions where we can gauge emotions through body language, touch, and other sensory cues, online interactions are limited. This sensory deprivation means that the full depth of human experience is often lost in digital communication. Due to this extreme, persistent, and ubiquitous sense-blindness, we must conclude that only “non-humans” participate on the Internet.
What Are Memes?
We have begun to chip away at the assumption that memes are units of culture or fragments of ideas. Once you factor in wide-spread sense-blindness, we begin to see the real function of memes:
- Simplification Over Nuance: Memes are designed for rapid consumption and easy sharing. They often condense complex ideas into bite-sized, visually appealing formats. While this makes them effective for spreading straightforward concepts or humor, it also means that the nuance and depth of ideas are frequently sacrificed. Complex, multi-faceted ideas that require a full sensory context to be properly understood can be oversimplified or distorted when conveyed through memes.
- Emotional Response vs. Intellectual Engagement: Because memes rely heavily on emotional engagement rather than intellectual discourse, they often prioritize quick, visceral reactions over thoughtful reflection. They are crafted to elicit immediate feelings — such as amusement, outrage, or nostalgia — rather than to foster deep understanding or critical thinking. This emphasis on emotional response limits their ability to transmit complex, multi-layered ideas.
- Fragmented Understanding: Memes can reflect and reinforce existing beliefs and social norms rather than challenge or expand them. The narrow sensory input available online means that memes often echo familiar concepts and sentiments rather than introducing new, thought-provoking ideas. This can lead to a fragmented and insular understanding of issues, where the depth of an idea is reduced to a catchy phrase or image.
- Cultural Echo Chambers: Memes can contribute to the creation of cultural echo chambers, where individuals are exposed primarily to content that aligns with their existing beliefs and attitudes. This reinforces social and cultural boundaries, limiting exposure to diverse perspectives and stifling the development of complex ideas. The lack of sensory richness in online interactions means that memes often fail to challenge these boundaries effectively.
- Reductionist Communication: The constraints of digital media encourage reductionist communication. Memes, by their nature, strip away much of the context and sensory detail that would typically accompany a richer exchange of ideas. As a result, they often fail to convey the full complexity of the issues they address, reducing them to slogans or catchphrases that lack depth and context.
Given these limitations, what do memes actually do? Memes are effective at selecting which cultural symbols will be treated as “true norths” within collective sense-blindness. This feature often gets memes confused as a “unit of culture“. People attempt to construct social groups from this shared experience, but collective sense-blindness is endlessly reinforcing, and so, new “true norths” are constantly being generated and demanded. Social group cohesion constantly erodes as new “true norths” emerge.
Due to our sense-blindness and the actual behavior of memes, memes are not spreading ideas. Instead, they are “non-ideas“. This means all Internet behavior can be explained as “non-humans” (in the sense of reduced, sensory-limited online presences) spreading “non-ideas” (simplified, surface-level content) to other “non-humans” (users interacting in similarly reduced and limited ways).
Non-Ideas Are Bad Ideas Chasing Out Good Ideas
Memes and similar digital content often spread simplified narratives, emotional responses, and cultural symbols rather than complex, nuanced ideas. These “non-ideas” are generally stripped of the depth and detail that would typically be required to fully understand or engage with more sophisticated concepts.
Gresham’s Law is an observation about economic behavior and it is traditionally stated as “bad money drives out good.” Where two forms of money are in circulation but one is perceived as less valuable, the less valuable money will tend to circulate more, while the more valuable money is hoarded. This principle also explains meme transmission: simplified and emotionally charged non-ideas (the “bad money“) drives out more nuanced and complex ideas (the “good money“).
More nuanced and complex ideas (the “good money“) often require deeper engagement and more comprehensive understanding. These ideas are less likely to be shared widely because they demand more time and cognitive effort to process. As a result, they are less prevalent in the fast-paced, attention-driven environment of the internet. The good ideas are not only being hoarded by those in control of the mediums of meme exchange, but they are hiding as if they were in what Liu Cixin called “a Dark Forest“.
Sophons
The concept of “sophons“, introduced in Liu Cixin’s Three-Body Problem series, refers to proton supercomputers created by an alien civilization. These sophons can disrupt human progress and communication by manipulating fundamental aspects of reality and knowledge. They serve as a metaphor for how sophisticated, external forces (such as nation-states or economic policy) can influence or control information and discovery on Earth.
If we extend the idea of sophons to the realm of memes, we can explore how the dynamics of sense-blindness may resemble the disruptive effects attributed to sophons:
- Disruption of Deep Understanding: In the Three-Body Problem series, sophons disrupt human scientific progress and communication, preventing humans from achieving deeper understanding and technological advancement. Similarly, memes can disrupt deep understanding by simplifying complex ideas into easily digestible, emotionally charged content. The prevalence of such content can prevent more nuanced discussions and hinder intellectual growth. Just as sophons block advanced scientific progress, memes can block the development of complex, critical thought by prioritizing superficial engagement over deep analysis.
- Manipulation of Perception: Memes can shape and distort perceptions by promoting simplified or skewed viewpoints. The narrow sensory inputs available through memes can lead to a distorted understanding of issues, echoing the way sophons alter human perception. This manipulation reinforces existing beliefs and biases, leading to a less accurate and more fragmented view of reality.
- Creation of Echo Chambers: Memes contribute to the formation of echo chambers where users are predominantly exposed to content that aligns with their existing beliefs. This creates isolated information environments that reinforce rather than challenge viewpoints. Just as sophons create controlled environments, memes can create information silos that limit exposure to diverse perspectives.
- Overshadowing of Substantive Discourse: Memes overshadow substantive discourse by dominating online spaces with superficial content. The constant barrage of simplified, emotionally charged material can crowd out more detailed and thoughtful discussions, similar to how sophons overshadow human capabilities. This results in a digital landscape where complex ideas struggle to gain attention.
- Influence on Social Dynamics: Memes influence social dynamics by shaping and reinforcing cultural norms, group identities, and emotional responses. They act as tools for social cohesion and division, impacting how people relate to one another and perceive their social environment. This influence mirrors the way sophons affect human social structures and interactions.
Memes vs. Sophons
If memes compete to be the “true north” of sense-blindness, sophons compete to maximize sense-blindness. This dynamic can be described with the same mechanics found in how bacteria and bacteriophages interact.
Bacteria reproduce and spread by dividing and colonizing new environments. They thrive by utilizing available resources and can rapidly expand their presence. Bacteria can contribute to various processes, both beneficial and harmful, depending on the context. They often act independently, focusing on their own survival and growth.
Bacteriophages (or phages) are viruses that infect bacteria, often leading to the bacteria’s destruction. They spread by infecting bacterial cells and using them to replicate, thereby controlling or eliminating bacterial populations. Bacteriophages can suppress bacterial growth and influence microbial communities. Their role is to regulate or disrupt bacterial populations, similar to how sophons control or suppress the spread of certain ideas.
Just as bacteria spread and reproduce to propagate their presence, memes “promote ideas”. Both work by reaching a wide audience and utilizing available resources (attention and engagement) to achieve their objectives.
Memes are designed to go viral, leveraging their simplicity and emotional appeal to reach a wide audience quickly. Their primary function is to promote or propagate an idea, sentiment, or cultural trend by making it easily shareable and engaging.
Sophons, like bacteriophages, control and disrupt by infiltrating the system and “suppressing ideas”. Their influence can be subtle, operating under the guise of normal content (like phages masquerading as benign agents) while achieving their goal of information control or suppression.
Sophons suppress ideas by creating barriers to understanding or altering perceptions in a way that hinders the dissemination of complex or revolutionary concepts. Their role is to maintain control over the flow of information, thereby stifling intellectual and scientific advancement.
Sophons can mimic memes to blend into the digital landscape. By presenting themselves as familiar, engaging content, they can more effectively influence or control information without drawing attention to their true intent. When sophons pretend to be memes, they may spread misinformation or distorted views under the guise of harmless or entertaining content. This mimicry allows them to reach a broader audience and subtly manipulate perceptions while evading detection.
You can see a simulation of how this dynamic evolves here:
Conclusions
As memes become the “true norths” within this sense-blind space, they inadvertently create fertile ground for the emergence of sophon-like forces—subtle, controlling influences that further manipulate the flow of information. These sophons naturally arise in a landscape where the depth of understanding is already compromised, exploiting the conditions of sense-blindness to steer cultural discourse in specific, often superficial directions. The result is a digital ecosystem where complex ideas struggle to survive, overshadowed by the constant churn of memetic content that is easier to consume but less meaningful.
This interplay between sense-blindness, memetic selection, and the formation of sophons highlights a critical challenge in our digital age: the risk of losing intellectual depth and diversity in favor of a more controlled, simplified narrative. Understanding this dynamic is crucial if we are to reclaim a more nuanced and comprehensive way of interacting online, one that better reflects the richness of our full human experience.
Source – https://tyrantsmuse.mn.co/
