LETHAL SPELL ABILITY thought experiment.

I had thought of this interesting hypothetical scenario recently, which could easily be extended to a thought experiment. Imagine that each person, over the age of, say, 16 was given the magical ability of having another person drop dead by thought alone, e.g. 'Adolf!', and Adolf drops dead. The ability would entail perfect concealment of he act, i.e. it would be impossible to know who had cast the deadly spell. This part is important, so those exercising this magical power would do so with full knowledge of its effectiveness, and impunity. Moreover, I believe that to many, only the presence of such anonymity would be a necessary condition for casting the spell at all.

This is interesting for a number of reasons. I wonder how many people would go ahead and actually use the spell? Also, suppose the version of the magic ability such that the total number of spells was unlimited, with perhaps some daily limit. And that each spell would have to be cast at an individual, e.g. general spells like "may all people above 6 feet drop dead" would be disallowed, which doesn't mean that one couldn't find out who the people like this are and cast the spell on them. At what rate and in what sorts of patterns would people start dropping dead? 

I have been thinking about this, and wondering what kind of people would jump at the opportunity of exercising such power.

For example, suppose that in the original scenario (of having a single spell only), we let the time to cast the spell last for a month. The point being that existing grudges, prejudices, and feelings of hate would be sorted out right away, so to speak, instead of having the scenario allow to wait for a time when an otherwise unwilling to use the spell person would be forced to do so in self defense. 
So suppose a month goes by and all the spells had been cast. It follows that we're left with a population that is at most smaller than before by the whole number of people (magicians) who were endowed with the ability to cast the spell (the case when no magicians are killed before casting their own spell), and roughly (±1) at least smaller than before by half the number of magicians (the case when half the magicians are killed before casting their spell).

Now imagine 2 alternative outcome-worlds:
--world 1 consisting of all the spell casters and the remaining youth under 16. So this world is left with those that though it to be better to cleanse it one way or another. And those who got eliminated no longer exist.
--world 2 consisting of all the spell victims, and all of the under 16 that were present before any spell was cast, i.e. the original, under 16 population. So basically this world consists of everyone minus the spell-casters.

I wonder how those worlds would evolve in time. World 1 has less people remaining, but let's suppose the populations to be sufficiently large, as not to be in danger of extinction after the cleansing process. I wonder how those worlds would differ, given what kind of people occupy it.

I also wonder if people would just annihilate themselves into extinction, on the version of the scenario where there would be no limit on the number of lethal spells. It would be like giving anyone access today to the current nuclear arsenal deployment.

I'm sure there are other aspects of this thought experiment that I haven't raised, and which could be quite interesting. I'm thinking of writing a short story based on this scenario as the underlying premise. No prizes for guessing that Borges and Lem are among my inspirations! 

Group memory quality as a function of group size and interaction---an explanation.

I read somewhere, years ago, that species of birds that live in flocks tend to display better group-memory. I don't remember (pun intended) how that was measured, but have observed this to be also true of human interactions. Aside from mere cognitive stimulation---in a group we also tend to interact more, so there's a greater chance of certain facts being continually refreshed---I believe that there's more to what enhances group memory. That is, I think that there's another factor that influences group-memory, not by virtue of cognitive stimulation alone, but the kind of stimulation that has greater likelihood of occurring as the group size increases.



It has to do with both the abilities and limitations of each individual, and the fact (conjecture) that those abilities/limitations vary significantly among individuals. The hypothesis underlining this idea is simple---it's very plausible that given that we've been a social species for most of our evolutionary history, it would appear to be an adaptive trait to distribute cognitive abilities related to memory and recollection over the entire group. In particular, there may be a significant variation of the temporal ranges that individuals are capable of recollecting proficiently. That is some people would be better are remembering recent events, with high fidelity, whereas other's mid-term or long-term memory may be much better. After all it's the sum of all memories, fed into the social collective that counts, so it needn't be preserved by each individual---that would be an unnecessary over investment of neural-power.



From careful observation of my family and friends I have noticed that some of us display great proficiency in recollecting great amount of detailed information of current affairs, i.e. information gathered in the recent days or weeks, but may struggle holding that detail for a long period of time, and their memory of current affairs progressively fades over time. Others, on the other hand, display much better long term memory than others.

Perhaps such traits can be shown to be more generally diversified with respect to temporal ranges of optimal recollection. Moreover, there may be variance regarding the kind of of information that is remembered---some people may be better at remembering how to perform certain actions, others at phenomena that occurs in the surrounding environment, and others still may be really good at keeping a moral tally of group members, i.e. those displaying altruistic actions and those that exploit the benefits offered by the group. Combining those individual abilities in a social group would obviously enhance the group memory, simply by virtue of mutual compensation of individual limitations. So, such a social mnemonic mechanism would result in the group super-organism as a whole displaying much better memory than each of its members alone, on the condition that information flow is unhindered.

Those ruminations on the nature of memory are an unintended interest of mine. I just can't help but make conjectures about it. I've explored this subject matter before, via a short story---in particular how perception influences our memory and recollection.

Cognitive dissonance and belief revision in perilous political discourse.

This is only a free rumination on one aspect of the role that cognitive dissonance plays in political belief revision, with particular attention to the role of perceived self-image.

We need look no further than the comments sections beneath a random sample of online articles or videos that contain overt political content, to realize that public political discourse is—more often than not—far from polite and respectful. Tendentious rhetoric and insults are common there. And no one is spared—even those who have (naively enough) found themselves attempting the conversation with a genuinely open mind about having their own views revised if a good argument that challenges them presented itself. This phenomenon is most pronounced in cases where clearly identifiable, dichotomous for/against positions are present. Now I'll sketch out how cognitive dissonance regarding perceived self-image can hinder belief revision, in particular how it can lead to a tendency of entrenching one's views—even those that have been previously held only tentatively. Central to this dissonance is the contribution of unpleasant experiences acquired from engaging in careless political discourse with anonymous others.

Here I focus on that entrenchment being precisely the result of cognitive dissonance rather than a rational process. One needs to look no further than the aforementioned discourse space, to find people engaging in disingenuous rhetoric or contemptuous criticism, which often escalate to outright insults. The insults in most cases center around the following personal attributes: knowledge, cognitive faculties, and moral integrity. It's safe to assume that most people don't ascribe to a self-image as described by such disingenuous criticism or outright pejorative combinations of epithets aimed at the aforementioned personal attributes. That is, people prefer to think of themselves as not being completely ignorant, especially when speaking out on issues that matter to them; also, unless a medical diagnosis states otherwise, they prefer to think of themselves as not being in any way cognitively impaired; and finally they prefer to think of their beliefs as not being morally questionable. So by making the occasional error of engaging in discussions on unmoderated forums, where trolls abound and where other interlocutors often display no more conversational etiquette than trolls, one puts one's self-image at peril, and as a result gathers painful resentment toward "the other side" over time.

As a consequence one will tend to become more entrenched in one's beliefs. Why? Because changing one's view (in cases of issues with clear-cut for/against positions) would almost amount to agreeing with those who had previously expressed contradictory views to one's own regarding their self-image. But this is unacceptable (to most), as it would be treading very closely to tacitly condoning views that contradict one's self-image. After all, conceding that someone who holds such contradictory views can be right about some things—in particular those things that prompted them to make a contradictory judgement regarding others' self-image—is not too far from saying that they may also be right about that very judgement. Or to put it another way, if someone is right about some things, then their judgement about those who fail to see those things as right may very well also be right. Mental discomfort resulting from such doubt is an instance of cognitive dissonance.

Generally, conceding to the correctness of a view previously held as incorrect may indeed prompt many to consider revising their self-image—there's an implication of certain unfitness of some of the aforementioned personal attributes—after all, how could one have been wrong for so long? In this case however the inclination to revise one's belief is additionally hindered because it entails agreeing with people who explicitly hold contradictory views regarding one's self-image. Hence the strong inclination to escape this cognitive dissonance, resulting in a tendency to (irrationally) stick with one's original position/view. Indeed, seeing the degree of emotional engagement in political discourse that people display, would make one think that it's not the broader issues that are being defended but something more personal.

What causes the heuristic 'if you're not with us, then you're against us' so persistent? Rumination on some discourse leaden reasons that lead to polarization of political views.

One of the reasons that (general) political view declarations are important, and persist, is because they play a key role in aiding the interpretation of what is being said. Of course what is said, often strongly implies such a declaration, but not always; that's why it becomes useful to declare "what side one is on", even when one wishes to remain neutral (until one's understanding of the issue at hand has matured), unless one is prepared to have their utterances treated with suspicion. This is a more general phenomenon, not only restricted to political views, but I believe that politics makes the phenomenon more pronounced. Much more could be said about this, but here I'll just give an example, which illustrates the idea. I will use an abstract example (to avoid the risk of creating a distraction).

Let the context be one where there is a stark divide in views regarding some issue in it. Now, say there's a proposition 'A' that expresses an attitude regarding that issue in the mentioned context. That is, some would think, and feel very strongly that A, whereas others would think, and feel very strongly that not A.

EXAMPLE 1
Person 1: "A"
Undeclared: "Of course"

EXAMPLE 2
Person 1: "Not A"
Undeclared: "Of course"

In both cases, it's very likely that Person 1 (or person 2) will inquire "what do you mean?" And why are they doing this? Was the Undeclared's statement not clear enough? It was, but coming from an Undeclared it may be taken as meaning the opposite of what it says, e.g. being a sarcastic remark; the existence of such remarks, being common where political views clash, adds to the ambiguity of the actual intended content of undeclared's statements. The degree of this phenomenon, I suspect, would be a function of the context's scope, i.e. given some context, what is the extent of the Undeclared's lack of declaration.

Needless to say, this leaves those who wish to maintain neutrality (which is more often than not the wise attitude, I believe) in an uncomfortable position of their opinions being either notoriously misunderstood or treated with suspicion, so there exists a pressure to declare oneself politically, even if one is neutral. In a "war of words", which often is the form of political discourse outside of echo chambers, being declared facilitates unpacking the non-explicit, intended content of the actual statements that are made. So enhancing one's clarity is a tempting reward for the mere cost of an instrumental declaration (even when it is inconsistent with one's actual view). Consequently, this mechanism inadvertently facilitates the proliferation and sustainment of extreme views, at the cost of the more balanced ones.