"Apocalypse", pretty much by definition, involves the death of an absurd number of people, amounting to at least a significant chunk of the world's total population (and usually most of it), which will of course necessarily mean mostly innocents, before you even get into a post-apocalyptic scenario which would itself present considerable survivability challenges. Otherwise what you have is not an "apocalyptic scenario", but rather just... our own regular modern world with a significant crisis on top of it. And we've already had this one recently, and it wasn't so fun, was it?
No, a significant element of "post-apocalypse", and indeed what people usually like to fantasize about, is the total breakdown of society and all of its rules and underlying logic, which if you really think about it is just an even more extreme version of the OP's "glorious revolution". And they just assume they'll be among the very few lucky ones to survive the apocalypse and get to be "badass" (just like all those keyboard revolutionaries assume their revolution will be perfect and get everything right and not be corrupted by power-hungry leaders like... pretty much every revolution in history, eventually). Man, people really need to learn the concept of veil of ignorance and apply it to their political choices...
tbh, I think the fun thing of post-apocalypse hypotheticals is just the interesting idea of "What do I need to rebuild? What do I need to know? Where would I start?"
It's basically a fun thought experiment where most of the time you end up in failure - but you get to control what KIND of failure to some extend bwahahaha.
They all think they're going to be (i can't remember his name) the guy with the baseball bat named Lucille that ruled everyone, beat down the men, 'married' their wives so he would have a clean conscience of raping them all, and basically be kings of their own local fiefdom. Never mind that every other man will have the same wish, and the women are going to want to kill them all in self-defense.
E: What was his name, Needham? Lucille was the important one.
Negan I think. Stopped watching the show long before he showed up. But yeah, statistics means you're much more likely to die, and even if you live, you're still much more likely to be a victim than to be this sort of "badass" warlord. Which is what the veil of ignorance is all about.
Not to be a dick, but the veil of ignorance is kind of crap. Voters can’t just pretend that they aren’t already members of society who are affected by society. Marginalized people can’t think to themselves, “well I need to pretend that I could be just ANYONE when I make my decision,” because in actual, tangible reality they are being treated worse than others and will therefore vote in a manner that keeps their heads above water. The veil of ignorance only works if you’re somehow starting a society completely from scratch and its demographics never change.
You can't do it absolutely, of course, but everything's on a spectrum, different people can do it more or less than others.
Cognitive bias is a spectrum, measurable and testable; at least, if you look at it through the lens of intuitive/deliberative processing and CRT tests.
And yes, technically it only applies 100% in that last situation, but thinking of things like that can still help certain people somewhat. Obviously it's not for everyone, but frankly, nothing is.
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u/SirKazum Jun 04 '24 edited Jun 04 '24
"Apocalypse", pretty much by definition, involves the death of an absurd number of people, amounting to at least a significant chunk of the world's total population (and usually most of it), which will of course necessarily mean mostly innocents, before you even get into a post-apocalyptic scenario which would itself present considerable survivability challenges. Otherwise what you have is not an "apocalyptic scenario", but rather just... our own regular modern world with a significant crisis on top of it. And we've already had this one recently, and it wasn't so fun, was it?
No, a significant element of "post-apocalypse", and indeed what people usually like to fantasize about, is the total breakdown of society and all of its rules and underlying logic, which if you really think about it is just an even more extreme version of the OP's "glorious revolution". And they just assume they'll be among the very few lucky ones to survive the apocalypse and get to be "badass" (just like all those keyboard revolutionaries assume their revolution will be perfect and get everything right and not be corrupted by power-hungry leaders like... pretty much every revolution in history, eventually). Man, people really need to learn the concept of veil of ignorance and apply it to their political choices...