Mike Cernovich

Snow Crash – Virus, Drug, or Religion?

Cast as a cyberpunk story about a young girl caught between the mafia and a primitive version of Scientology, Snow Crash is a non-fiction introduction to memetics and cult psychology.

“This Snow Crash thing–is it a virus, a drug, or a religion?”
Juanita shrugs. “What’s the difference?”

The story centers around a phenomena known as Snow Crash. As Hiro Protagonist travels between meat space and virtual reality, he sees dealers hanging out Snow Crash as if a packet of drugs. But is it a drug or a virus, and does it, as one character asks, matter?

We now know, for example, that viruses (biological or computer, and what’s the difference?) alter human behavior. The type of bacteria you have in your gut, as Dr. Rhonda Patrick explained on a Joe Rogan Podcast, can influence food cravings. Obesity may be in large part due to certain species of gut bacteria increasing your cravings for unhealthy foods. A virus inside your stomach is controlling you. (So much for human rationality!)

The dichotomy between hardware (body) and software (mind) is an illusion. What you put into your body influences your mind, and the ideas you put in your mind influence your body. If you meditate on negative thoughts, your body’s fight-or-flight response will be engaged. Cortisol levels rise. Your body changes due to thoughts in your mind.

You’ll appreciate this digression into probiotics once you’ve read Snow Crash, as the theme of the book is that ideas are a mind virus. Ideas control human behavior.

Before you shake your head and say, “Duh! I’m a veteran of the Great Meme Wars of 2016,” check out Snow Crash’s publication date – 1992. Before the world wide web, before social media, before meme became a household world, Neal Stephenson wrote the treatise on memetic warfare.

A number of factors make Snow Crash an excellent book, including his observations on social psychology and human behavior, which he makes through fictional characters.

“Ideology is a virus.”
“All people have religions. It’s like we have religion receptors built into our brain cells, or something, and we’ll latch onto anything that’ll fill that niche for us.”
“We are all susceptible to the pull of viral ideas. Like mass hysteria. Or a tune that gets into your head that you keep humming all day until you spread it to someone else. Jokes. Urban legends. Crackpot religions. Marxism. No matter how smart we get, there is always this deep irrational part that makes us potential hosts for self-replicating information.”

Stephenson even sneaks in some Benjamin Franklin esque homespun wisdom.

“If you did enough traveling, you’d never feel at home anywhere.”
“When you are wrestling for possession of a sword, the man with the handle always wins.”
“The sight of the bare katana inspires everyone to a practically Nipponese level of politeness”

(Yes, there is sword fighting in Snow Crash!)

Stephenson may be the most intelligent writer who has ever lived, and Snow Crash is certainly one of the best books ever written.

If you like fiction with complicated characters, anti-heros, and sword fights, you’ll like Snow Crash. If you enjoy studying influence and persuasion while reading about sword fights, you’ll have found your new favorite book.

How to Win Bigly in a World Where Facts Don’t Matter

By Mike Cernovich Leave a Comment

“So you’re saying it’s OK to lie!” is a joke you’ll get if you’ve read Scott Adams’ latest masterpiece, Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don’t Matter. (Hint: It’s in the section on cognitive dissonance.) It’s also a great starting point for the central thesis of Adams’ book – The Two Movies Hypothesis.

According to Adams (and in fact all of the Nobel-winning cognitive science available), humans do not reason from facts to conclusions. We instead hold biased conclusions about the world, and force the facts we observe from the world to conform to this conclusion, or story, or narrative, or movie as Adams calls it. Americans are watching two movies.

Half of the country is watching one movie on Trump, based on how they subjectively alter the facts to conform to their conclusion about Trump. The other half of the country is watching a movie where the economy is entering a Golden Age, as the stock market rises, companies invest heavily in America, and our military has tremendous success against ISIS.

In a rational world, people would update their priors about the world. If, for example, you said you opposed Trump because you feared a stock market crash, you’d say, “Huh? Looks like I was wrong. I no longer oppose Trump.” Yet that’s not how humans work. You’ll find a new reason to oppose Trump.

As Benjamin Franklin quipped, “So convenient a thing to be a reasonable creature, since it enables one to find or make a reason for every thing one has a mind to do.”

Adams, as any skilled comedian, is able to distill truths into smaller, understandable insights. If you read David Hume (A Treatise of Human Nature), Simon Blackwell (Ruling Passions) and Kahneman and Tversky (Choices, Values, and Frames), his book will be an excellent practical application of timeless wisdom and cognitive science.

If you’re new to the idea that you aren’t rational, Win Bigly will trigger cognitive dissonance within yourself, as you declare that everyone else might be lying to themselves, but you can’t be tricked by your own mind.

With Win Bigly, Adams has cemented himself as a national treasure.

P.S. Don’t miss this interview I did with Scott Adams on Trump and how to Win Bigly at life.

Watch it here and listen to it here.

How a Night for Freedom Changed History

By Mike Cernovich Leave a Comment

Highlighting the insightful and usually reclusive Stefan Molyneux, a Night for Freedom drew huge crowds. Event organizer Mike Cernovich even had to cut off ticket sales, as the venue had been oversold.

Watch a Night for Freedom highlight reel.

Here’s what we learned, and how we will improved.

Our people are really cool and accepting of disagreements.

Chelsea Manning attended a Night for Freedom. A few veterans came up to me and said, “Keep that person away from me.”

Others really liked her.

There was zero drama from our people. Everyone was cool.

People want to party.

I got the idea for a Night from Freedom while attending the DNC’s after party, which hosted Snoop Dogg at a major night club. I thought, “Why don’t Republicans ever do anything like this?”

A Night for Freedom was an opportunity to socialize and party with open-minded people.

That said, many people told me the party went longer than they wanted, and they would have preferred having more podcasting and Q&A time.

For future events, we will likely have 2-3 hours of a club vibe.

Venues will outright try to “punk” people.

The first venue booked assured me they were excited to host a Night for Freedom. I had a Plan B venue on deposit, and the first studio told me to not be foolish. They loved us and even listened to our podcasts.

On Friday at 2:30 PM EST time, the first venue owner told me he couldn’t host us, because he needed a “permit.” This was after he told me they required an additional $9,000 (on top of the $16,000 I paid them) for “fire marshals.” The venue owner claimed that under New York City law, a fire marshal was required for every 75 people who attended the event. (Yes, this is all in writing, and yes we are taking appropriate legal action.)

I can respect a business owner who may not like me because of the lies he or she has read. But this wasn’t the case of someone being honest. This was an outright stunt designed to prevent a Night for Freedom from happening at all.

Brunch was too crowded.

Sponsors joined Molyneux and Cernovich for brunch. Even though the brunches were split into two separate groups, some felt that they didn’t get enough one-on-one time.