Failure and Failure and Avoidance and Disaster

What is failure or success?

Interesting question.  One of the most interesting things happening on the web these days is the idea that either success or failure can be identified.  This is a form of evolution.

I don't believe in the evolution of man from a lower species.  I do believe that changes can occur based on environment.

Contrary to popular opinion intelligence is not an evolutionary trait.  If intelligence were an evolutionary selection there would not anywhere near as many stupid people in the world.

So what does evolution select for?  Probably memory.  Probably memory of mistakes or "bad things"

How did I come to this conclusion?  Pretty easily actually, it is based on common beliefs as represented by old sayings.  "People remember the bad and forget the good".  Think about it and I am sure you can think of similar sayings.

Psychologists tell us that people remember things attached to emotional situations best and that most of the situations we remember are attached to negative emotions.

If we consider the large number of negative "epic fail" and "failure" presentations on the web in combination with the large number of common beliefs around negative memories in combination with evolutionary concepts the idea that evolution has selected for negative memory retention becomes very interesting.

People who remember past mistakes, or bad situations, and avoid them are more likely to survive.

Now that seems like a brain dead conclusion, yet, people commonly think that evolution selected for intelligence while the circumstantial evidence suggests that evolution selects for people whose memories of bad situations is better than others combined with a desire to avoid bad situations.

In other words, evolution selects for people who focus on failure and live in fear.

Guys like me, the "bulls in the china shop" who are "reckless" enough to continually tackle the impossible, the risk takers, are probably the result of a combination of recessive genes that minimize memories of past bad situations and maximize a desire for achievement.  Whatever achievement we have defined.

Not always the achievement we have told others we want.  If people focus on failure than people will want to "cut" others down to size so it is best to never share or allow people to understand the nature of an individuals success.

The advent of anonymous and hackers who are trying to pressure people into an avoidance behavior pattern are circumstantial evidence of evolution selecting for fear.  Their extortion based behavior suggests that they believe fear to be the primary motivator in human beings, which suggests that they are motivated primarily by fear.

I suppose we can call it avoidance behavior to make people whose primary motivator is fear better about themselves.

There is another set of circumstantial evidence for evolution selecting for cowardice and for courage being a recessive trait, the reliance of people on the opinions of others.  If people believe someone else is a "bad risk" that "bad risk" can be ostracized.  This is another indicator of avoidance behavior and remembering the "bad".




One of the attacks I have suffered under is an attack on my credit rating where some hacker does something to damage my credit.  While the actions of the hacker do not honestly reflect my integrity, avoidance behavior results in others taking negative actions against me.  As if I care.

This is behavior very similar to political propaganda.  People are placed in situations where they believe a falsehood and make decisions based on the false information.  When bad information leads to enough bad decision making whatever group is influenced by the decisions is damaged and even destroyed.

This makes accurate information important and yet hackers spend quite a lot of their time doing everything they can to provide false information.

Eventually the "information highway" will result in the destruction of the planet as the information becomes more and more corrupt and people make more and more bad decisions based on bad information.

Damaging one person, say someone who was considered one of the best, if not the best, in the world at their profession can set a technology back years.  Damaging any individual not influential in their field probably won't hurt much, but, the bad information builds up.  Garbage in, garbage out.

Bill Gates used Microsoft to impede technology development and as a result the "internet bubble" cost trillions.  It happened, I am not arguing with propagandists.  Bill Gates made billions by costing the world trillions.

Poor appraisals of mortgaged properties resulted in the "mortgage bubble" which cost trillions.  It wasn't banks, they trusted the Garbage In and as a result they got Garbage Out.

Politicians are elected based on propaganda and twisted information and as the information becomes more twisted the bad decisions based on trying to avoid bad situations become worse and worse.

It is all based on memories of bad situations and a desire to avoid them, but, too many people providing the information have different ideas of what "bad" is.  We all know there is a "good" and a "bad", we just don't define it the same way any more than we define success the same way.

When people who define "bad" in different ways and manipulate information to avoid bad situations the information becomes contradictory and people can't help but make bad choices based on the contradictory and incorrect information.

The only possible result is disaster.