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I think I finally, really, comprehend why secret societies have historically been created... I mean the potentially logical ones. This train of thought is logically terrifying.

I want a logic check.

I've been jokingly mentioning some of my totally true, practically useless in most scenarios, skills/specific fields of knowledge/ability under a moniker of 'extremely useful, assuming apocalyptic event' for years. Things like advanced knowledge of Coefficients of glass expansion, Fortran, various things that have caused friends to refer to me as MacGyver after the reboot came out.

In recent years, I've personally encountered several varieties of the ones defined by helplessness, self-victimisation, some version of a real disability... that theyve expounded into a personified personal nemesis-- to flashily battle yet never overcome, etc... the vast majority perplexing me as to why that's a valid form of life to them... it's not that they never consider some other way; the ball is just quickly dropped and never picked back up.

College?(not that I'm a big fan) they wish they could but so expensive... aide? The form was hard/confusing/past-due...

Lookup/learn something more indepth than a tiktok? *some self-deprecating bs*

Yet it's "I always wanted to do/be/learn X"

Shows like 'How It's Made' fascinate, but don't inspire enough for a 5min google query.

In the dev world its a clear, inverted pyramid-- one of the first posts I saw when I rejoined here was ostream's rant on Apple sucking because after they stop support/updates you "can't" load a different OS... ofc you can. But several comments down... no mention of that... i think it was @LensFlare who was the only one in ~15 respondents to point out the core logical fallacy.

Basic shit is totally forgotten... try asking some random adults what plastic is made from... or pay attention to how many people declare they have a gluten "allergy".

I get people frequently telling me that things im pointing out as differences don't matter because "it's just semantics"... semantics is literally the epitome of "significance", with roots in 'meaning' and 'truth'

Back to the main issue... We are in a world where DIY is typically something you pay more to do as a catered experience than actually learning anything, people destroy their own arguments hopes of validity unwittingly often by stating the arguement, get 'offended' or 'triggered' by factual statements, propagate misinformation and bastardise words until MW needs money enough to print a new version, likely adding the misuse as an actual definition and basic knowledge and the thought to actually learn is vetoed by the existence of google translate, the wisdom of tiktok and the pure brillance of troubleshooting every random linux issue you have from not knowing basic CLI and thinking linux makes you cool, with chmod 777 because so many other dumbasses on forums keep propagating misinformation. Ask them what 777 means, most have no clue... as they didnt consider googling that one before putting it in a terminal several times.
The number of humans that actually know the basic shit that the infrastructure of the world is built on keeps decreasing... and we aren't even keeping a running tally.

The structure of the internet has the right idea... dns- 13 active master root servers, with multiple redundancies if they start dropping... hell ICANN is like a secret society but publicly known/obfuscated... the modern internet hasnt had a global meltdown... aside from the lack of censorship and global availability changing the social definition of a valid use of braincells to essentially propagating spam as if it's factual and educational.

So many 'devs' so few understanding what a driver is, much less how to write one... irl network techs that don't know what dhcp is or that their equiptment has logs... professionals in deducated fields like Autism research/coping... no clue why it was called "autism", obesity and malnutrition simultaneously existing in the same humans... it's like we need to prepare a subterranean life-supporting vault and stock it like Noah's ark... just including the basic knowledge of things that used to be common/obvious. I've literally had 2 different, early 20s, female, certified medical assistants taking my medical history legitimately ask if not having a uterus made it harder to get pregnant...i wish i was joking.

Any ideas better than a subterranean human vault system? It's not like we can simply store detailed explanations, guides, media... unless we find a way to make them into obfuscated tiktok videos apparently on nonsense or makeup tutorials.

Comments
  • 0
    Holy shit.

    @jestdotty u happy now?
  • 2
    @SidTheITGuy
    If you're assuming that @jestdotty said/did something to mod me you'd be very mistaken. I'd gladly prove it; many sources from at least teens, friends and plenty of quirks thatd be easily recognisable. this isnt out of character. Frankly id be excited if true. I've been much the same since I was at least 6, just then nobody realised I was fully intending, and suceeding, doing the things i claimed for the rationale I stated.
    Me@6, bro@10- him/his friends played pokemon, I saw a charizard for 67$, got store owner to give me piles of energy cards & mom to buy packs for me too. I used their ignorance to trade energies for real cards, then higher ones. traded bro, earnestly thanking for the + 74$, he cried "sara stole my pokemon cards", explaining his trade. Mom was curious, asked to see, "how can you play with it in that big case?" Me "i wont, pokemon cards are paper, kids destroy paper. So when I'm like 30 I'll sell them for thousands of dollars." Did/still ~$2k left.
  • 0
    Wait, your hypothesis is that secret societies have historically been formed because people with similar skills and interests get together and then eventually got isolated enough?
    'cause that is literally how ANY society is formed.

    Look no further that the "secret" society of those who call themselves "webdevs" and sacrifice their sanity to their ever changing pantheon of deities: React, Angular, NodeJS... the cult of any of those has at least a few fanatical cells and many schisms separating different denominations.

    So I guess that you're right, but this insight into the core of the formation of societies is not that disruptive to the way anthropologists have been thinking.
  • 0
    @jestdotty You never will be a part of the secret societies. They already see your online activity and doing their best to stay away from you.
  • 0
    Isn’t there a secret society of lizardmen or something? They control who becomes President 🍕🍕🍕🍕🍕🍕
  • 1
    @JsonBoa no... youre missing the point of rationale...whether its been the masons or some theatrical creation like protectors of some ancient magic, people ready to battle some evil the rest of the world has forgotten ever existed (very akin to the current terror imo) or something like a specific martial art style(or any special info/methodology/metaphorical keys to the kingdom...power, a seat at the table that has enough resources to sway society)passed on with specific guidelines for use and retaining it through generations... it's most often about protecting something that's seen as vital, very powerful, disregarded, forgotten or misused by society and in danger of losing the inherent power it holds... good/evil/mystical/whatever.

    Noah's ark = the ecosystem of the world, balanced and maintained from natural order

    Freemasons (without going into intense theoretical debate) = structural societal balance/tweaking
  • 1
    @jestdotty imo that's because most hackers (at least worthwhile ones) tend to highly prefer relying on their strictly developed, controlled, precise, env and well gauged ability.

    Perfect example that not everyone knows but isn't exactly hard to confirm... the big, scary, iconic hacking collective... "Anonymous"... essentially powerless, highly disorganised, and a very literal joke in circles of hackers that have any valid ability.

    I was actually approached (electronically ofc) by them multiple times awhile back for certain reasons...within a certain, rather short time frame: at least 2x trying to recruit me and im sure beyond 2x trying to hack me
    i have no doubt there was more attempts that simply never reached even my basic radar... like if my algorithm fails a certainty rate in identifying a deer that quickly leaves... but also thinks it was a deer, i get a tiny notif.

    They are mainly script kiddies who cant even DDOS a home network without a few dozen of them trying.
  • 1
    @jestdotty though im sure sid will take some harsh dismay at this... im also bad cultist material... for the reasons you stated, sure ofc... but my biggest perceived failure, assuming i was genuinely all for whatever the cult was about... id be constantly re-engineering for efficiency... which would likely cause the cracks in the matrix to be more visible.

    In short, once again, I'm overqualified for some potentially fascinating research project.

    That said, if bandwagonning and group mentality behaviours didn't annoy me so much, and i was more willing to be in charge of shit... I'd make a great cult leader. People already follow/are strangely drawn to me for reasons ive still yet to debug... cuz honestly id prefer it to stop (assuming that wasnt just my selfish inclination... id be a shit bus. owner if i ignored the clear fiscal implications).
    Even my name here(and most accs since 3rd grade) came from amusement at adults changing to follow a 3rd grader's spelling over their own.
  • 1
    @JsonBoa also i made zero implications of "eventually" getting isolated... in fact i made a nearly explicit implication of starting off from a isolation measure.

    You also seem to miss the deliberately highly specific, selection/acceptance criteria that'd be integral for anything close to my implied methods/rationale... and prepended a psychological need to "feel" like part of a whole... like most societies... definitely any formed from typical social rejection of a group of people in shared circumstances to gripe about their unfair reality.
  • 0
    I think all secret societies must have a religious aspect to it.

    It's been discussed in this book that without a supernatural religious aspect. Societies with more than 30ish people can't maintain themselves

    https://goodreads.com/en/book/...

    not gonna lie. the first few chapters were pretty depressing
  • 1
    TLDR
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