UPDATE: May 1, 2020 included at the end of this article.
A couple years ago, when I started out with these ideas and strategies, I was under the impression that 1 person out of 40 would be willing to entertain them. For more info on why I thought this, you can check out Part 4 of Renegades of Disruption: Beyond the Rogers Adoption Curve.
Sadly, as you’ll read in that section of the book, it has now become more evident that the number is likely closer to 1 out of 1000 people, or 0.1% of the global population.
Stanislav Petrov
The reason I have mentioned Stanislav Petrov a few times within my work is that I have often asked myself if I would have responded the same way he did given the same circumstances.
Unfortunately, I have never been able to answer that question. Petrov was being asked to decide which had failed, technology or people, and he ultimately decided it was technology. But really, it was people that failed, otherwise he never would have been in that situation in the first place: forced to make a decision that would decide the fate of our species. That sort of decision should never have to be decided by one single person. It was the entire world that had failed. Luckily, Petrov stepped up and performed admirably.
Alignments
When writing or playing fictional characters, there is a spectrum that balances ‘goodness’ and ‘lawfulness’ to better explain character behaviours.
Here’s an outline on this spectrum:
http://easydamus.com/alignment.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alignment_(Dungeons_%26_Dragons)
Like many things, this should be seen more as a guideline than strict rules. When global change is required on the level I have identified, the success rate becomes much higher if the individual spearheading this change is defined more as ‘Lawful Good’ or ‘Neutral Good’ versus an individual who is ‘Chaotic Neutral.’
It’s better to have a Captain America or a Wonder Woman leading such a change, rather than a Catwoman or a Deadpool.
Regardless of exactly where I sit on this ‘Alignment Spectrum,’ it’s not like the consequences of the problems I have identified don’t bother me. Of course they do. The potential deaths of billions or more is hard to ignore. However, at some point, I have to make my peace with the fact that I have failed at locating a receptive audience, and it does not appear I have made any traction since January 2019 when I started the Viable Underdogs Podcast-Audiobook.
There is little doubt in my mind that this ‘Viable Underdogs Unfreeze-Chain Letter Strategy’ will work if enough people buy into it, I just don’t see that happening. My life experience leads me to believe that it is unlikely anyone would be willing to lower their associative barriers on the required level to entertain these ideas. Doing so would require an individual to abandon a part of their identity, and who in their right mind would be willing to do something like that?
Maybe I’m wrong. If I am, then I would still encourage you to forward on this Viable Underdogs Chain Letter.
What’s Next
As for me, I have to learn to make my peace with this monumental failure. Though, even given the chance to do it again, I’m not sure there’s anything I could have done differently that would alter the reception of these ideas, and increase their success rate.
There are a couple updates I will soon be adding to this article that outline:
Maybe It Is Too Easy, Simple, & Obvious?
All of these global, Type 1, problems can be addressed.
All that’s required is a critical mass of people to forward and share these ideas, but after years of trying, I cannot even locate one person, let alone a critical mass. While I have located some people who think I may be onto something, they are either unwilling or unable to lower their associative barriers to fully understand the material. Who can blame them though? 999 people out of 1000 would behave the same.
My Review
Overall, if I would have to rate this V-Dogs experience over the last few years, I’d rate it 2 stars out of a possible 5. It cost me lots of time, money, and put additional stress on all my relationships. Some people no longer speak to me. And I now have to find a way to move on from all this, despite the fact these many global problems still exist.
Had my initial launch worked last year, there’s a chance the COVID-19 numbers would be a lot lower. Maybe the global pandemic could have been averted altogether. Those deaths, and the deaths that will occur based on best-case scenarios for the problems I have identified, will never cease to be on my conscience.
Would you rather be the 999 / 1000 people who bury the heads even further up their own asses, indulging their warped views of reality, or do you want to make your peace with my unpleasant truth, and work on solving these problems?
This is your world. And, as always, this is your decision to make.
Cheers,
-Your friendly neighbourhood ‘chaotic-neutral’ guy
All Viable Underdogs material, including free book downloads, can be found here:
UPDATE:
It’s not my intent to add too many updates, unless there is something significant to add. Recently, one of the experts I have referenced in the Viable Underdogs material responded when I reached out to them. I won’t specify too many details, since I wouldn’t want to single out the individual. As per the research outlined in the book, Renegades of Disruption, this expert didn’t exactly argue the points I made, but did appear to dismiss them and give the impression I was making a bigger deal out of something than it was.
This exact same thing happened when I presented the Peak Demand Stagger Strategy to an engineer who specialized in exactly this sort of thing. Again, although this engineer agreed the strategy was valid, they responded by saying the strategy was more of a mere curiosity than something that could yield meaningful results.
As a species, we really do seem to have a disability when it comes to seeing the bigger picture. It’s very easy for us to scale down ideas than it is for us to scale them up.
Experts Have High Associative Barriers
What all this means is that the experts whose works I have referenced continuously throughout Viable Underdogs would all likely dismiss the ideas presented within. This presents an odd dilemma to me as a researcher and writer. If I was only presenting you, my audience, with one fundamentally disruptive idea, then the success rate would be higher than the three (arguably more) fundamentally disruptive ideas present in my work:
* Incorrect Global Perception that is affecting every single person on this planet.
* The Silo Effect of Knowledge: solutions to just about every problem facing our species already exist, and merely need to be either scaled up, or laterally applied from another field.
* The Slow Acceptance of New Ideas: this includes the problems of associative barriers, cognitive fallacies, and other social and psychological factors.
The more I have attempted to present these ideas, the more it becomes apparent that people are unlikely to entertain them. The ideas are simply too large to fathom. I was unaware of the full extent of these challenges when I started Viable Underdogs.
Whose to blame for all these problems?
If you have read all my work, then you’ll notice where I have assigned the majority of the blame. This was never with the intent to finger-point. The groups mentioned would likely be the largest sources of resistance and dismissal of the ideas presented in V-Dogs, and the intent was to proactively prevent a high level of resistance.
In reality, we’re all to blame.
Our species is drowning in biases, cognitive fallacies and other social and psychological factors that detract from our ability to see unbiased truths in our world. Many of us don’t have the stomachs to entertain harsh realities, so we bury our hands deep in the sand and pretend the problems don’t exist. And last, we have becomes very skilled at distracting ourselves. We’ve chosen to mostly ignore the greater world around us; the same attitude that has allowed genocides to occur, slavery to continue, and the current pandemic to occur.
Globally, every one of us is complicit in this. If you disagree with that statement, then this is evidence of the social and psychological factors I just mentioned. It’s easy to shift blame. It’s much harder to accept responsibility and hold oneself accountable.
I’ve mentioned before that Viable Underdogs was initially my full-time job and it eventually simply became a hobby, since I was running out of ideas on how to promote these strategies. As of now, I am officially out of ideas. For the time being, I will leave the Podcast and blog up in case I come up with something else.
Even though I wrote an entire book on the slow acceptance of new ideas, it never ceases to amaze me just how slow we are.
Turning Point
When a situation has escalated into a crisis, it fundamentally represents a turning point; a fork in the road with two very different paths. As a species, it appears we have chosen the much more difficult path that has far greater potential consequences.
The offer of my consulting services will remain on the table. Even in May of 2020, I am quite confidant that the strategies I propose could dramatically mitigate the loss of life and the economic impacts of COVID-19. Not to mention, the strategies proposed could also transition our planet towards sustainability - something that, I assure you, will be taking centre-stage in the very near future.
My work is based on probabilities. Currently, there is overwhelming probability that COVID-19 represents a small tremor of the massive earthquakes looming on the horizon.
Although I have never felt so confidant in something I have worked on, never in my life did I ever want to be wrong so badly.
-The Last Clockmaker on Mars
May 1, 2020
A couple years ago, when I started out with these ideas and strategies, I was under the impression that 1 person out of 40 would be willing to entertain them. For more info on why I thought this, you can check out Part 4 of Renegades of Disruption: Beyond the Rogers Adoption Curve.
Sadly, as you’ll read in that section of the book, it has now become more evident that the number is likely closer to 1 out of 1000 people, or 0.1% of the global population.
Stanislav Petrov
Matthews, D., (2018). Vox. 36 years ago today, one man saved us from world-ending nuclear war.
https://www.vox.com/2018/9/26/17905796/nuclear-war-1983-stanislav-petrov-soviet-union
The reason I have mentioned Stanislav Petrov a few times within my work is that I have often asked myself if I would have responded the same way he did given the same circumstances.
Unfortunately, I have never been able to answer that question. Petrov was being asked to decide which had failed, technology or people, and he ultimately decided it was technology. But really, it was people that failed, otherwise he never would have been in that situation in the first place: forced to make a decision that would decide the fate of our species. That sort of decision should never have to be decided by one single person. It was the entire world that had failed. Luckily, Petrov stepped up and performed admirably.
Alignments
When writing or playing fictional characters, there is a spectrum that balances ‘goodness’ and ‘lawfulness’ to better explain character behaviours.
Here’s an outline on this spectrum:
http://easydamus.com/alignment.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alignment_(Dungeons_%26_Dragons)
Like many things, this should be seen more as a guideline than strict rules. When global change is required on the level I have identified, the success rate becomes much higher if the individual spearheading this change is defined more as ‘Lawful Good’ or ‘Neutral Good’ versus an individual who is ‘Chaotic Neutral.’
It’s better to have a Captain America or a Wonder Woman leading such a change, rather than a Catwoman or a Deadpool.
Regardless of exactly where I sit on this ‘Alignment Spectrum,’ it’s not like the consequences of the problems I have identified don’t bother me. Of course they do. The potential deaths of billions or more is hard to ignore. However, at some point, I have to make my peace with the fact that I have failed at locating a receptive audience, and it does not appear I have made any traction since January 2019 when I started the Viable Underdogs Podcast-Audiobook.
There is little doubt in my mind that this ‘Viable Underdogs Unfreeze-Chain Letter Strategy’ will work if enough people buy into it, I just don’t see that happening. My life experience leads me to believe that it is unlikely anyone would be willing to lower their associative barriers on the required level to entertain these ideas. Doing so would require an individual to abandon a part of their identity, and who in their right mind would be willing to do something like that?
Maybe I’m wrong. If I am, then I would still encourage you to forward on this Viable Underdogs Chain Letter.
What’s Next
As for me, I have to learn to make my peace with this monumental failure. Though, even given the chance to do it again, I’m not sure there’s anything I could have done differently that would alter the reception of these ideas, and increase their success rate.
There are a couple updates I will soon be adding to this article that outline:
* What I attempted for this second launch attempt (including the email that was sent out in an attempt to gain traction).
* My last promotional strategy that should be uploaded and complete by the end of April 2020.After that, I don’t think there is anything more I can do since I cannot convince anyone to read the material and take my claims seriously. This means it is unlikely there will be more V-Dogs material being produced after a couple minor updates in the near future.
Maybe It Is Too Easy, Simple, & Obvious?
All of these global, Type 1, problems can be addressed.
All that’s required is a critical mass of people to forward and share these ideas, but after years of trying, I cannot even locate one person, let alone a critical mass. While I have located some people who think I may be onto something, they are either unwilling or unable to lower their associative barriers to fully understand the material. Who can blame them though? 999 people out of 1000 would behave the same.
My Review
Overall, if I would have to rate this V-Dogs experience over the last few years, I’d rate it 2 stars out of a possible 5. It cost me lots of time, money, and put additional stress on all my relationships. Some people no longer speak to me. And I now have to find a way to move on from all this, despite the fact these many global problems still exist.
Had my initial launch worked last year, there’s a chance the COVID-19 numbers would be a lot lower. Maybe the global pandemic could have been averted altogether. Those deaths, and the deaths that will occur based on best-case scenarios for the problems I have identified, will never cease to be on my conscience.
YOUR Decision
Would you rather be the 999 / 1000 people who bury the heads even further up their own asses, indulging their warped views of reality, or do you want to make your peace with my unpleasant truth, and work on solving these problems?
This is your world. And, as always, this is your decision to make.
Cheers,
-Your friendly neighbourhood ‘chaotic-neutral’ guy
#YouBuying?
#ViableUnderdogs
*************************************************************************
All Viable Underdogs material, including free book downloads, can be found here:
UPDATE:
It’s not my intent to add too many updates, unless there is something significant to add. Recently, one of the experts I have referenced in the Viable Underdogs material responded when I reached out to them. I won’t specify too many details, since I wouldn’t want to single out the individual. As per the research outlined in the book, Renegades of Disruption, this expert didn’t exactly argue the points I made, but did appear to dismiss them and give the impression I was making a bigger deal out of something than it was.
This exact same thing happened when I presented the Peak Demand Stagger Strategy to an engineer who specialized in exactly this sort of thing. Again, although this engineer agreed the strategy was valid, they responded by saying the strategy was more of a mere curiosity than something that could yield meaningful results.
As a species, we really do seem to have a disability when it comes to seeing the bigger picture. It’s very easy for us to scale down ideas than it is for us to scale them up.
Experts Have High Associative Barriers
What all this means is that the experts whose works I have referenced continuously throughout Viable Underdogs would all likely dismiss the ideas presented within. This presents an odd dilemma to me as a researcher and writer. If I was only presenting you, my audience, with one fundamentally disruptive idea, then the success rate would be higher than the three (arguably more) fundamentally disruptive ideas present in my work:
* Incorrect Global Perception that is affecting every single person on this planet.
* The Silo Effect of Knowledge: solutions to just about every problem facing our species already exist, and merely need to be either scaled up, or laterally applied from another field.
* The Slow Acceptance of New Ideas: this includes the problems of associative barriers, cognitive fallacies, and other social and psychological factors.
The more I have attempted to present these ideas, the more it becomes apparent that people are unlikely to entertain them. The ideas are simply too large to fathom. I was unaware of the full extent of these challenges when I started Viable Underdogs.
Whose to blame for all these problems?
If you have read all my work, then you’ll notice where I have assigned the majority of the blame. This was never with the intent to finger-point. The groups mentioned would likely be the largest sources of resistance and dismissal of the ideas presented in V-Dogs, and the intent was to proactively prevent a high level of resistance.
In reality, we’re all to blame.
Our species is drowning in biases, cognitive fallacies and other social and psychological factors that detract from our ability to see unbiased truths in our world. Many of us don’t have the stomachs to entertain harsh realities, so we bury our hands deep in the sand and pretend the problems don’t exist. And last, we have becomes very skilled at distracting ourselves. We’ve chosen to mostly ignore the greater world around us; the same attitude that has allowed genocides to occur, slavery to continue, and the current pandemic to occur.
Globally, every one of us is complicit in this. If you disagree with that statement, then this is evidence of the social and psychological factors I just mentioned. It’s easy to shift blame. It’s much harder to accept responsibility and hold oneself accountable.
I’ve mentioned before that Viable Underdogs was initially my full-time job and it eventually simply became a hobby, since I was running out of ideas on how to promote these strategies. As of now, I am officially out of ideas. For the time being, I will leave the Podcast and blog up in case I come up with something else.
Even though I wrote an entire book on the slow acceptance of new ideas, it never ceases to amaze me just how slow we are.
Turning Point
When a situation has escalated into a crisis, it fundamentally represents a turning point; a fork in the road with two very different paths. As a species, it appears we have chosen the much more difficult path that has far greater potential consequences.
The offer of my consulting services will remain on the table. Even in May of 2020, I am quite confidant that the strategies I propose could dramatically mitigate the loss of life and the economic impacts of COVID-19. Not to mention, the strategies proposed could also transition our planet towards sustainability - something that, I assure you, will be taking centre-stage in the very near future.
My work is based on probabilities. Currently, there is overwhelming probability that COVID-19 represents a small tremor of the massive earthquakes looming on the horizon.
Although I have never felt so confidant in something I have worked on, never in my life did I ever want to be wrong so badly.
-The Last Clockmaker on Mars
May 1, 2020
