Rule-Based Robots

I have been surprised (and disappointed) by how subservient many people are to the lockdown, face diapers, etc. But the political angle of this has been talked about enough. There is a different perspective that might go a ways to explaining craven obedience.

Think back a few decades to when the digital clock became standard on most nightstands. I always disliked them, and wondered why people put up with them.

Circa 1970.

Then TVs acquired remote controls, with dozens of tiny buttons. Soon VCRs jumped on the bandwagon, and of course had their own remote control, so now you could wrestle with two of the damn things at the same time.

On and on it went: a PC (computer) on every office desk, and more and more people did office wussie work for a living, as America became post-industrial and bureaucratic.

Then you started doing your taxes on software such as TurboTax. In fact you did everything on the computer. It became strange to ever touch pen and paper.

But the reductio ad absurdum is the digitalization of the automobile. When you step into a rental car these days, your first thought is, "What am I supposed to do now?"  Driving used to be intuitive and fun.

The daily experience of wrestling with all this digital crap has acclimated the average person to following microscopic rules and proceduralism. You simply have to push the right button or click on the right box -- and a perfect sequence of these -- or you won't get the desired result. And you will tend to blame yourself for any problems, instead of blaming the System.

A population pre-conditioned to behave like this becomes a perfect herd of rule-following robots.