Broader thought about narrower thought

Following immediately on the neurological connection of annoyance.

Noticed this Chomsky quote in a random selecton of memes.

= = = = = START CHOMSKY:

The smart way to keep people obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion but allow lively debate within that spectrum, even encourage the more critical and dissident views. This gives people the sense that there’s free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits on the range of the debate.

= = = = = END CHOMSKY.

Chomsky understood the connection between language and neurology better than anyone else until he got old and his own range of culture was limited.

Which leads to a broader thought. I’ve seen the same brittling in my own body and mind. It’s not just loudness, it’s EVERY perceptual variable. Temperature, light, kinesthetic, anxiety, hunger, thirst.

In every case the AVAILABLE range is narrower, so a small change feels big.

Some of the senses, like hearing, change their threshold. Most become brittle because the FEEDBACK LOOPS are weaker.

Negative feedback makes any device more adaptable and flexible.

Without feedback the device tends more toward a digital or binary response.

A dying empire follows the same pattern. It loses its feedback loops, so every function is binary.

Wars are not carefully modulated to achieve a goal. Every war goes on forever with no purpose until the resources are exhausted.

Public “health” is not modulated spatially and temporally to control real epidemics without doing harm. When one virus of the intolerable type is detected, all “health” mechanisms turn on at the same time with max output, and continue until the resources are exhausted.