Who are normies? What do they believe?

IMO the normie mind can be explained by the following 10 normie commandments.

1. Individual human action has low or no effect on the world.

2. Mainstream news is mostly honest and reflects reality.

3. Institutions are trustworthy

4. Thinking via convention is the only worthwhile thought pattern.

5. Comfort is the highest pursuit in life, both physical and psychological.

6. Consumption is desirable, creation is not.

7. Authority figures are legitimate and deserve respect.

8. Conventional career paths are the most valuable in our society.

9. You can’t predict what will happen next.

10. Risk is intolerable and should be treated as such.

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Discussion

And, unsurprisingly, all ten beliefs are instilled and rewarded by the current public education system.

Funny how that works

Buy your carbonic indulgences today! Get 50 percent off and be carbon neutral. Your sins be forgiven you.

How is consumption instilled in the public education system?

Proudly 0/10

Proud of my failing grade here!

GODL APPROVES

No lies detected!

You should make this a TED Talk.

Cosign

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#6 is the virus spreading most rapidly

you are missing the most important:

the government should solve all society's problems

everything that is wrong is because there isn't a law that stops it

The people make the app, not the other way around.

It does depend on what the term “normie” is being measured against. For instance, I feel like a normie when a dev talks deep code for example. However, these 10 reek of “conformist gimp” as I like to phrase it.

normies are people who are comfort in local maximas

passive investing is king

Normies also thinking equity is a virtue. Variance is undesirable.

💯

nostr:note10mewdkr4ukmx8apyfuq2377al6f3vjvmxlw7k02s6mr7q8wcy8lqprkmgd

safety maxxing

Number 1 is the insight.

Why bother with anything at all if your action has no impact?

Exactly. That’s the most important normie commandment. Everything else just reinforces the worldview of the first.

I'm pretty good at number 9...

I think many normies are terrified of the injections they took and are trying to pretend they didnt line up to take them, can’t sleep well every time they fall ill and it would mean questioning everything.

Pride comes before the fall.

Quite hateful

Fits most people around me

I'm ok with 5, at least after some discomfort to get to that point.

Seek path of least resistance

🤘🏼

Kind of True… but here on Nostr are no Normies.

I wonder what would happen if you share this on a normie network like Facebook?

Lots of salt and cope

Normies keep asking me when I'll buy a house. You mean when will I stop renting from a landlord and rent from the government? Another landlord? I'll just stack some sats instead thanks

On point

Sounds pretty much like the argument Nic Carter makes in his recent piece against the Strategic Reserve

Normie mindset = fiat mindset.

Though I have to admit I do like comfort. It just tends to get boring very fast.

I’m abnormal🤝

I have thought about it and I think the key difference is the lack of curiosity. The lack of search of other worlds other viewpoints. I am fine where I am, I like my town, I am ok with everything around. No questioning, jut living. Lack of curiosity.

These are the reasons Bitcoiners struggle to orange pill normies. It’s not an IQ problem or a lack of information. It’s a choice. But there are ways to manage these NPCs and drive back the darkness

https://youtu.be/KKDA2YWr3pc?si=t60YrxO3WgANX2U0

hey Nolan, i miss your stuff/* how is the fam & all? Island life or back on the mainland? if U care 2 share only*/***

Back on the island. For winter. Check out the new channel and show. Family is doing great, I’m heads down building, trying to bust through

Being a normy is incompatible with owning bitcoin

Means as a normie you gradually lose your bitcoin, until you have to sell your time

Bitcoin beats the normie out of you

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I once came up with what I call the Normie Hypothesis which is the hypothesis that the vast majority of humans will do basically anything to avoid thinking for themselves and will instead insist on deferring to an orical of sorts (investment advisor, news caster, politicians, Dr.s, knowledgeable friends, academics, public health people, religious figures...)

Me enquadro no 5 e no 9🤨

This is a good list. Nice work nostr:npub1rtlqca8r6auyaw5n5h3l5422dm4sry5dzfee4696fqe8s6qgudks7djtfs

Haha 😂

So accurate

I'd replace 7 with:

7. If you do well in school & get a degree, you deserve a well paying job for life.

I used to think like much of this list. I still sometimes wonder if there's some unknown unknown that might derail Bitcoin and keep the world in bondage. I know it's very unlikely at this point, and I move accordingly, but it's still a bit of a worry in the back of my mind that something bad that I can't forsee will occur. Those feelings are slowly improving with time though.

A lot of them are merely a consequence of 4, which is like their foundationnal principle.

Everyone has their own battles.

Yep. Take them day by day

I think the majority of humans just go with the social environment. Most of their impulses are designed for that. A small percent go against it, the "dissidents", if you will. This creates mostly inertia but just a bit of change stimulus. Like a big boat in the ocean. Too much of the dissidents and the tribe is unstable. To few and it is too stagnant. Tribes have tended towards this balance.

Amen. TBH normies don’t even know what they believe

Has anyone seen the theory of stupidity by bonhoffer?

This is all true, and I think it can be summed up as “Do what everyone else is doing.”

So true. Been thinking about 6 lot in terms of art and proof of work. I only want art that someone performed proof of work to create. I also have a new found respect for things that took years to create. Proof of work is so important in every aspect of life. The others on the list become apparent when you understand Bitcoin, and it’s sometimes sad. I sort of miss the days of being ignorant and thinking the government was doing the things that were in my best interest. And just buying index funds and being a little normie in the world not knowing how money worked. I would def choose the current path because I prefer knowing the truth and I’m creating generational wealth with Bitcoin. But you can never look at the world the same way ever again.

Nailed it.

With the subtle detail that they are unable to describe their behavior in such a rational way.

They simply act, and I believe the entire situation can be summarized as an inability to engage in meta-cognition.

More so they react and yes they have no meta cognition.

have a Merry Christmas fam, day HODL/*

I sort-of/basically agree with all of these, except the first.

2. Mainstream news is usually honest and reflects one view of reality. Different sources of news reflect different views, each attempting to give an honest account. The lie was always in the pretense that news are ever truly objective. No information is unadultered because no information is uncurated.

3. Institutions are as trustworthy, as the people running the institution. In a society, where the populace is generally corrupt, the institutions eventually will be, too.

4. Thinking via convention is an underrated thought pattern. Most novel thought is either stupid and a bit insane, or just a dumbed-down version of what someone smarter once thought and put to writing or embedded in tradition. Most people aren't well-read or knowledgeable enough to know that, tho, so they reinvent the same cart 100 times, or go off on some harebrained tangent, rather than using prior wisdom as a base from which to add to the pool of knowledge.

5. Comfort is the highest pursuit in life, both physical and psychological. (We can disagree on what defines "comfort", but the ancients might describe it as the pursuit of pleasure and avoidance of pain.) Comfort, for one person, might be escaping Hell and enjoying the warmth of family life and friendship, and then sleeping soundly knowing that they will wake to their loving family or to Heaven.

6. I have never met a person who actually thinks this. At most, some see excessive consumption as a way to communicate some prior successful creation or accomplishment, through flamboyance.

7. Authority figures are legitimate and their positions deserve respect, even if they themselves don't.

8. Conventional career paths are the most valuable in our society, for men. Something common tends to be essential.

9. It's difficult to make predictions. Especially about the future.

10. Risk should be contemplated and avoided, where practical and when possible.

#4 burns a little too much for comfort

also #6... funny

I would say the problem is in holding the ideas as absolutes. Normies tend to form a rigid worldview and then attack things outside their belief structure. The normie mind can’t form nuanced thoughts such as “normally risk should be avoided, but this is a moment where it makes sense” or “normally I think via convention, but the outcome of my wealth, health and happiness will be greater if I go back to the drawing board and reexamine these things from first principles”

It all just goes in the bucket of scary thing that exists outside the normal pattern. So I’ll avoid it.

An inability to adjust to circumstances outside of the norm, yes. To hold fast to the rule, but still allow for exceptions and be unperturbed by them.

In the other thread, we were ruminating upon the limits of intelligence, and this is the sort of thing where MOAR SMARTER doesn't equate to better outcomes because intelligence doesn't automatically lead to an ease in suspending disbelief. Only creativity or divergent thinking can do that.

That, essentially is what that IQ/midwit meme is about, but what is being reflected is not IQ. It just correlates with it.

That's probably what #1 is hinting at. Someone who has repeatedly used their creativity to gain some asymmetric advantage, will be more aware of the possibility for one person to make a profound impact.

I have a billionaire friend that I talk about this topic with often. We call it the wizard staff. You plant the wizard staff in the ground and watch reality bend around you. Or I have another mental model called the cardboard mall. Imagine a mall full of cardboard cutout people, who are only as real as you allow them to be. At any point in time you can simply decide to run through the mall at a full sprint knocking down every cardboard person in your way. The cutouts jeer at you. They make mean faces and murmur about you. They’re not pleased to be knocked down, but in the end they’re made of cardboard and there’s nothing they can do to stop you.

That's really powerful imagery!

The cardboard mall is incredibly disturbing, but... yeah... oddly accurate.

I guess the cardboard cutouts are analog to the concept of NPCs. Why are people non-playable characters? Because you can't activate them to accomplish something. They're like part of the scenery.

Having the same thoughts and opinions as the majority locks you into some sort of mental pattern where you can’t deviate. You become locked like an npc, but it also becomes easy to route around you.

Or perhaps the majority opinion is held by the majority because that's the way most peoples' brains work, and we're generic sports that Nature allows for, to give humanity a way out of mental traps.

Like the prophets of old.

I personally don’t like to conceptualize myself as special in any way. Probably an American thing. We all want to view ourselves as self made people who pulled ourselves up from the earth and carved ourselves out of clay.

That said you may be right and it’s possible that neurotypical people are actually just incapable of changing the world or even their immediate environment.

Nah, you ain't special. Funny AF at times though. Merry Xmas A.Hodl. :P

They have other talents. It's not as if prophecy is always a pleasant occupation. Arguably the worst, of the talents.

Think of Jonah, who preferred to risk drowning, than tell people things they didn't want to hear. Remember what Christ said, about the thankless job of being a prophet.

Prophecy , though I’ve never made it an occupation could have easily been my way.

But as one, I knew the future of the #USA & let’s be honest … #Christians fight enough amongst theirselves , as if they haven’t continued to kill humanity too.

https://cdn.nostrcheck.me/2aadfb8ac7d43aca6d164ed99248147910048269601ff60d4463c4d5b3abfdcd/2456eceba34be4649395d4d87190fb5ec07bcc7fced033c3348e296d35a91a9b.webp

The danger of refusing the label of "specialness", exceptionality, or being set apart by Providence, is that you are still left to explain the chronic dichotomy, and you will tend to accuse everyone else of simply being inferior and to rage at them to become more like yourself, even though they might not be able to.

God made you the way you are because He thought you would be useful for Himself and to others, by being that way. Humility is not found in denying this, but in acknowledging that it comes from Him and that it is meant to serve some purpose.

If you are a prophet, what purpose does your prophecy serve? Have you done all you can, to warn others? I think, we can never have done all we could do, and that is the misery and the tragedy of the prophet. Prophets perpetually grieve.

I think I believe this to be true, but for some reason still find myself resistant to the idea of thinking I am special or unique in some way. Maybe it’s cultural conditioning. Maybe I just think I’m still not living up to my full potential and so don’t deserve the classification. 🤷🏻‍♂️

I have a rich friend who always says things like this to me. “You’re special, you were anointed” etc… and I always recoil at it. Feels smugly congratulatory or something. Like if I believe it I immediately lose my edge.

Well, Jesus was very special and they nailed him to a cross for it, so your mileage may vary.

It's possible that you're subconsciously afraid of the terrible fate that oftens awaits the anointed. I also fear it, but I am doomed to prophecy.

Probably so. I do have and always have had an overwhelming sense that my life is building to something large. Not sure what, but I have an internal sense that it’s about 20 years away still. Right now I’m sort of wandering the desert. In my case both literally and figuratively lol 😂

Same. And Merry Christmas and God bless.

Merry Christmas. Go save Europe.

Guys what an awesome convo.

Thanks both.

None of us are seperate from the all that is. At our highest level, we are all God. When you feel that power & play with it, you can experience feelings of being special. You've remembered who you are but everyone else seems to have forgotten or not yet remembered.

I'm convinced this feeling causes a great deal of confusion for many. They become unable to function, to walk unnoticed among the cardboard cutouts. The people around them get worried for their & others safety. Many end up in mental institutions which do nothing for their confusion.

Yes you are special. You've remembered who you really are. You are One with everything & not seperate. It is everyone's destiny to awaken & remember/rediscover this. Your job is to know & to feel you are God without seperating yourself from that oneness. To experience the pain & joy of forgetting & rediscovering. To hold the frequency of light & love.

💚

To change your mind—to learn—requires a willingness to venture into the unknown. The unknown is where all the monsters and dragons live, which is why most avoid it, but the hero knows that behind the dragon there is treasure (knowledge).

Important to remember that you can still be a normie in a subset of humanity that is non-normie… I.e. the unthinking simps in the bitcoin community that simply parrot the talking points. I think on a relative basis there are fewer among us. I think it’s also true, and perhaps more of a risk when you find yourself in a successful heretical movement, that at any point you can begin sliding into the normie mold. Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom… on both the individual and macro scale

Love your framing.

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself.

Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."

hi Rod. nice to meet you. 🫂😇

thanks Gigi. awesome repost.

My mom absolutely hated after I read that quote as a teenager. 😂

I dont like this statement. It assumes that all adaptations inflicted on the world are positive ones.

It is unreasonable and arrogant in many cases, to presume that nature is imperfect, and that it can be improved on.

Some of the most destructive adaptations have arrisen through the arrogance of the medical fraternity.

The Godly man lives in the kingdom of Heaven

In changing yourself, you change the world. And the one thing you can master is yourself. So that's backwards, isn't it?

Try to get your billionaire friend to do less of this metaphorical discussion and more factual literal discussion of reality. Could undermine their billionaire sickness and strengthen their mental health, which does the world a lot of good when you do it for anyone, but billionaires have even more impact than the average person.

I'm just trying to get my raw milk farm to join nostr

Same!

Only gay losers mute people.

Sorry nostr:nprofile1qqs8wakr9493685t725kh2ltgwke4hs400fk8kymslak8eh3g42c3zqprpmhxue69uhhqun9d45h2mfwwpexjmtpdshxuet5qy88wumn8ghj7mn0wvhxcmmv9uq32amnwvaz7tmjv4kxz7fwv3sk6atn9e5k7tc7ztvdw, I can't be bothered to do more.

Nah. A clean feed is a clean mind. I choose what I engage with. That’s the beauty of nostr. Some people provide no value to me. Others negative value.

I wouldn't brag about having a smooth brain. The only "negative" value a person can provide to me is posting something that I'm too stupid to be able to cope with. Otherwise, "ignoring" has another interpretation besides pressing a button on a screen.

Reading mentally ill ramblings is net negative. I’ll pass thanks.

I just muted scoundrel😂. Imagine thinking everybody is obligated to sort through whatever drivel someone tries to insert into the feed 🚁🙄

I don’t blame you lol It’s a super retarded position to hold

Yes, that would definitely be a pretty retarded position. Did I say anything about an obligation to read posts or an entitlement to have one's posts read?

Yeah, that was pretty wild entitlement theory.

You're entitled to your safe space echo chamber, snowflake, don't worry.

Why not just ignore them manually then? Do you have self control? Why don't I seem to have the same problem as you?

You have a small account dude.

This will be remembered.

For posterity's sake, here's my initial reply as well nostr:note1wch379wsfgppmcpkwa3y903txn0w6e6md7yvevvrkgs8f66rys0qavqzm8

I do!

How does that relate to my desire to keep certain peoples' posts in my feed?

It just means you don’t have as many schizophrenic people following you as I do.

I've seen plenty of retarded, trash, and schizo posts. I've never encountered a person I'd benefit from muting. My mind doesn't need protection, and muting someone would just be an insulting myself. You seem pretty insistent that you aren't less capable than me, but what else could it be? Is there a difference between your schizos and mine?

lmao thanks

In book form.

Yes. All of this.

Being a normie is the decision to be stupid out of convenience, where stupidity is ultimately just a cognitive energy-saving mode that has gone awry.

-Ignorance (financial illiteracy)

-Fear of taking a stand on their own (lack of courage)

-Lack of curiosity (early programmed)

-a Lazy mind, always shortcuts -(manipulation as a way of life)

#7 is the most detrimental thought they have. They believe they must be led. They cannot imagine being self-governing.

This is a good thesis that researchers in the future will use to better understand the fall of western societies.

The school system is designed to instill these commandments deep into your mind.

People who manage to protect their minds from the indoctrination are the dark horses to bet on.

From my experience, the guys who skipped the most school have the most assymetric outcomes in life.

There's maybe some prior underlying cause. But for sure, the average "good students" have the highest odds to become normies outsourcing their own thinking to the experts.

I feel like it should be possible to create a 50 question test, 5 for each commandment, where the test taker reads a short passage (like 1 sentence) then picks between two options: one normie, one other.

Then, add up how many normie answers they provided and multiply by 2 to get their normie percentage score.

You should create this lol

I had some free time this morning and made a rough draft. Let me know what questions you'd like to see, what other memes you would like incorporated, or how the style could be improved.

https://normietest.com

Lol. Good one!

What happened?

I think it’s good, funny.

Thanks fam. Would love suggestions to make it funnier though.

Hmmm, got an 18 out of 20, so not bad, but the whole idea that there's one correct set of answers seems pretty normie 😁

Maybe that should be #21. But I do think that there is a clear wrong and right.

Question 21 should be “you reject this test and will make your own rules” - instant 20.

I do think that the argument on “multiple sets of right and wrong” does lean toward normie moral relativism. It’s complicated.

Because you haven’t set up your wallet! I tried to zap you cuz good comment

THE REAL TEST IS WHO ZAPS THIS SHIT OR NOT!!!

You don't like zaps?

I LOVE ZAPS - I JUST SAW HODL REPOSTED THIS AND DIDN’T SEE HIS ZAP IS ALL :)

We are all gods?

Is it true or false?

true

true, but you can be a shitty one

I wasn't sure if that's a trick question or not

Anyways, idk can you be a shitty god now, haha? Maybe if you're shitty god within you isn't manifesting at all

Exactly, if it doesn’t manifest it doesn’t mean is not there, he is just miserable following wrong principles

18/20

Maybe I’m not a god lol

You are a god. I guarantee it.

17/20 I'm not toxic enough.

The fact that you actually did the test proves you’re not toxic enough.

Fuck tests & test givers. Flip tables & break shit.

Fuck I've been had 😦

It’s how we learn.

Test takers are the most toxic. If you're afraid to fail you're afriad to win.

Based.

19/20

"We are all gods" - I didn't see the plural

Should probably change that one to "There is no god".

There is no god = we are all gods. The highest power is everything together.

Responisibility

And privilage

I got 19/20 🥳

Baller alert!

I need to know what I got wrong!!

I'm unfortunately not a very good dev lol

16/20

That was funny 😆

I won't lie, there were a couple I was decently sure I was getting wrong, still:

19/20 nice work on the test!

Just have to post this for the record

Bad test. The questions are mostly contingent on what you're talking about, but no further explanation is given.

Seems to be a test of whether the taker sees the same "anti-establishment" memes that the creator does. Real "sheep of the other flock" stuff.

Clearly created by someone who is in the upper levels of the iceberg.

I refuse to believe that such people really exist

The normies believe in KYC.

One way to summarize many of these points:

Never do your own research.

Or:

Trust, don't verify.

Concise. Very quotable - most definitely, an extremely jarring shit list for many.

Basically high time preference.

COVID was a big eye opener on the normie mindset.

The Litmus Test

For sure. Some are still blind though

A lack of critical thinking is the greatest plague

The light you consume is the reason. Then diet.

Normies believe seed oils are the devil

The concept of an "availability cascade" refers to a situation where a belief gains more and more credibility as it becomes more widely accepted, often due to social influence and the visibility of others' beliefs. This phenomenon can lead to a situation where individuals adopt a belief not necessarily based on its intrinsic validity, but rather because they observe others doing so.

In the context of algorithmic game theory, particularly in a "Location Game," the availability cascade can play a significant role in how players make decisions about their strategies. In a Location Game, players typically choose locations in a space to maximize their utility, which can depend on the choices of other players.

Here’s how the two concepts might be connected:

1. **Influence of Others' Choices**: In a Location Game, players may observe the choices of others and adjust their own strategies accordingly. If a particular location becomes popular (perhaps due to an availability cascade), more players may choose that location simply because they see others doing so, rather than evaluating the location's actual benefits.

2. **Equilibrium and Strategy**: The emergence of an availability cascade can lead to a new equilibrium in the game. If enough players converge on a particular strategy or location, it may become a dominant strategy, even if it was not the optimal choice initially. This can create a situation where players are locked into a suboptimal equilibrium due to the cascading effect of social influence.

3. **Information Asymmetry**: Players may not have complete information about the payoffs associated with different locations. The availability cascade can exacerbate this by leading players to overestimate the value of a location simply because it is popular, rather than based on objective analysis.

4. **Network Effects**: In many Location Games, the value of a location can increase as more players choose it (network effects). An availability cascade can amplify these effects, leading to rapid shifts in player behavior and location choice.

In summary, the availability cascade can significantly influence decision-making in Location Games by affecting how players perceive the value of different strategies based on the choices of others, potentially leading to suboptimal outcomes and new equilibria.

I don't disagree with any of this but think it can be simplified:

1. Follow the herd in all things

(because, for example, injecting yourself - let alone your children - with a novel genetic agent that the developers described as "building the plane while it was alreay flying" is *insanely risky*.. ..but if the herd does it it must be right)

That encapsulates a huge chunk of normiedom, for sure.

A lot of this comes down to sunk cost bias.

# 5 is probably the worst, followed closely by # 6

It couldn't be done without #7.

Nailed it

Normie's don't exist. No one trusts the system anymore. But we all behave as though we do.

1984

Accurate, but not as commandments.

Commandments are written to be understood by their intended recipients.

My mum is visiting right now.

.. they also die a lot sooner.

NPC’s

Default pursuit of line of least resistance.

I would add

Others are responsible.

Long story short, be the contrarian

🔥

The normie is he who occupies the dead center of the Overton window on any and every issue.

They are sardines. They will ultimately share the same fate.

Sounds like Nic Carter on Bloomberg a couple weeks ago ..