Only The Paranoid Survive

By?William Davidow

Author—The Autonomous Revolution—Reclaiming the Future We’ve Sold to Machines

Five billion of us are spending more of our lives in virtual space. We are maladapted to this new environment.?The new virtual space has disarmed our senses and makes it extremely difficult for us to discover threatening situations.

Lacking alerts from our senses, it is only logical that we should spend more time searching for threats and building defenses against them—behaving in paranoid ways.?This appears to be what is happening. Everywhere one looks feelings and thoughts that frequently accompany paranoia—anxiety, persecution, conspiracies--are on the rise.

In recent years, the percent of Americans reporting symptoms of anxiety disorder has tripled.[i] According to Pew Research, government restrictions on religions increased 50% between 2007 and 2018.[ii]?So it is no wonder that millions of believers in God feel persecuted. Conspiratorial thinking powered by social applications on the internet is on the rise.[iii],[iv]

Over billions of years, senses evolved to enable species to find food and escape and defend against threatening situations.[v]?Our senses of touch, taste, and smell do not work in virtual space.?Hearing and sight are severely constrained.?Eye contact is difficult, and it is hard to see body language.?In virtual meetings, it is hard to hear the tone of the room.?A bored room sounds different than an engaged one.

In physical space we have five senses.?In virtual space, we completely lose three and have partial use of sight and sound. If we give partial credit to sight and sound, we go from five senses to one to the order of one.?We have lost 80% of our capacity to sense threats.

The Smell of Paranoia

So, let’s look at smell to get gain insights into how our warning system works.?

Smell is our oldest sense.[vi]?Our olfactory system has on the order of 400 different types of cell receptors.?These receptors are designed to bind to different molecules.[vii] Some of these receptors bind to positive smells associated with things like food.?Others to negative smells associated with threats and dangers.?Evolution designed our olfactory system so that negative smells are processed more quickly than positive ones.[viii]?It prioritized staying alive over filling our stomachs.

The threatening smell message is sent directly to the olfactory cortex in the limbic system.?The limbic system distributes the warning. It sends a signal to the autonomous nervous system, the most primitive portion of our brains, that turns on the sympathetic nervous system associated with the fight and flight response.

The threat message sent to the limbic system is passed on to the amygdala.?It triggers an emotional response—fear.?Another message is sent to the cortex, the slow thinking part of the brain.?It develops a strategy for avoiding the threat such as climb up a tree or run for home.?

The key point here is that the role of the cortex in response to threats in the physical environment is a strategic one.?

In virtual space, our traditional threat warning systems do not work.?Virtual threats are invisible.?You do not get an advanced warning that your bank account has been compromised or an alert that you are about to be doxxed.?

The way you defend against virtual threats is to constantly search for them.?So, your cortex changes it role.?It goes from being a threat escape strategist to being the threat search mechanism.?The cortex becomes the threat sensing mechanism.

We have a word for people who constantly search for threats and see them everywhere—paranoids.?

So as more and more emotionally vulnerable people spend time in virtual space, we should expect to see the level of paranoia and those evidencing the systems of paranoia rise.?So, it is no wonder that more of us are experiencing anxiety, depression, and have become susceptible to conspiracy theories.

Be careful when you visit virtual space.?You are maladapted to the environment.

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[i] https://www.livescience.com/depression-anxiety-increase-covid-19.html

[ii] https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/nov/11/religious-persecution-increasing-pew-research-cent/

[iii] https://www.institutegreatereurope.com/single-post/a-true-his-story-or-the-global-rise-of-conspiracy-theories

[iv] https://phys.org/news/2019-09-truth-conspiracy-theories.html

[v] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=definition+of+paranoia&atb=v124-1&ia=definition&iax=definition

[vi] https://www.infobloom.com/how-does-the-sense-of-smell-work.htm

[vii] https://www.dana.org/article/the-senses-smell-and-taste/

[viii] https://www.dana.org/article/the-senses-smell-and-taste/