Alain de Botton on existential maturity and what emotional intelligence means
themarginalian.org
themarginalian.org
I honestly think the general premise here holds true and perhaps applies to many of us here in computed related occupations.
It seems many of us focused on STEM STEM STEM or COMPUTERS COMPUTERS COMPUTERS in education but perhaps are emotionally infantile to an extent.
How many of us write programs, support infrastructure, design gadgets … for what? What is important ? Our job… buying gadgets… traveling..
I don’t have any answer but it’s worth pondering. How many of us work countless hours for companies whose missions we don’t perhaps even agree with… how many of us ponder what is important to us and why we act the way we do?
Just My two cent
”Another awakening?”
”Yeah.”
”Just do what we always do, make their argument look nihilist or absurdist. Remember to avoid mentioning capitalism and neoconservatism!”
This would loosely describe the general form of most middle class peoples' jobs, technical or not. You work a lot so as not to slip down to a lower class (and build up a buffer that will last into your twilight years), and try to massage more meaning into the small amount of remaining time using gadgets, fashion, and travel. Security in the future would leave your brain free to do more meaningful things, but few have such luxury.
> How many of us work countless hours for companies whose missions we don’t perhaps even agree with… how many of us ponder what is important to us and why we act the way we do?
Once again, this is generally the domain of the affluent. Most great philosophers were affluent.
To me, the OP’s post is an inquiry into “why” we do what we do. It is a useful inquiry that may be followed up with personal introspection, which might lead to a better understanding of ourselves if done with integrity.
For example - we work to earn money. Why do we earn money? So we can live comfortably (your answer might vary). Why do we want to live comfortably? And so on…
The line of reasoning you seem to have chosen ends at “to earn money” and then pivots to philosophers being affluent while seemingly (to me) proceeding to dismiss all the learnings procured by affluent people as though that makes them inherently different to the learnings procured by others (a conclusion that seems to have no solid basis).
When you have enough security that you have no worries for the medium term, you gain the luxury of time and brain energy to contemplate these things rather than having to focus your thoughts on such base things as eating, shelter, health, and maintaining your position.
The majority of us focus on our jobs, buy gadgets and take vacations because we don't have the luxuries of time and peace of mind (since our focus is by necessity on the near term), but we'd like to have them. And even a short-term feeling of luxury is better than none.
Apparently you’ve never been truly poor.
Oh no, wait. The opposite.
The poor live in a completely different world from the middle class, who live in a completely different world from the rich. And the philosophers generally live in the world of the rich, to preach to the world of the middle class. For the poor, there's only religion.
Top that all off with the constant victim blaming (I know you don't mean to, but that's basically what you're doing) and complete lack of empathy, and you have a vicious cycle that only the very lucky escape.
I know that HN is big on the fable of the meritocracy, but that's mainly because a not-insignificant chunk of HNers are in the ruling class, and most of the rest are hopeful to enter someday, somehow.
[1] https://phys.org/news/2012-11-poverty-people-focus-short-ter...
Also, the article is interesting because the underlying assumption here is that long term planning is a good thing. Meanwhile everybody who isn't poor is constantly talking about being more present and living in the "now". Again, I'm not defending this system or proposing any other system, but I'm trying to give another perspective on the issue.
For me, I define personal success by the impact I have on other people's lives and the imprint I leave on their hearts. Everything else is filler. Undeniably useful - but filler.
> Beloved father, husband, son. Forever in our hearts"
was brutally generic but then ...
> He was a good employee
Which is worse than "he was a decent man" [0]. Oof.
A hermit in a cave could similarly be described, but I think any life that makes a positive impact, however small or large, requires something more.
[1] https://ernestbecker.org/about-becker/beckers-synthesis/#:~:....
It changes the motivation slightly - great family bonds definitely yes if possible. But I won't care less if tons of other people would come and praise me, or not. I want to be proud of life lived, and I am good enough to judge that. Not harming others to be successful in personal life, happy, balanced person.
Why I don't care that much for opinion of others - ie if you live your life beyond what anybody expected from you, this will produce some envy even in closest peers. They see points where you chose different path to greater success than them, and successes compound over time, hard to avoid regrets there. What a lot of people do in such situation is stopping sharing any info about cool great things happening with practically anybody, in same manner when properly rich live maintain façade of relatively frugal life. Possible, but its caving to want-to-be-liked emotions.
Living life of adventures, exotic travel, extreme sports (in my case, this is what makes me tick and it makes me tick very well).
I am definitely the type that works to live... I mean wasting more life than necessary in the office inevitably leads to regrets later in life, regardless of the amount of wealth. Sometimes learning from others mistakes is enough, especially without save positions available.
However, if I don't put in the hours now, I might get to enjoy life less because I'll have less resources to do so. (Within reason of course, life really does come first. But work is still important).
People have odd ideas about their amazing historical impact. The way people will remember them, being "on the right side of history".
But 99.9% of people won't really be remembered at all beyond a generation or two, if that. And canned speeches at funerals last for like 10 minutes, certainly not living my life for that.
Those who won't be remembered after a couple generations still shape that next generation that will shape the next generation and so on.
That's closest to immortality you can get.
But, you appear to be making the assumption that the impacts one leaves are the defining features of ones life. It's certainly a valid point of view, but not sure I fully subscribe to it.
Additionally, I doubt my ability to recognize, in sum if an impact is ultimately for good or ill.
You’re not describing what success “is”. You are just describing something then calling it “success”.
The whole setup is like bad Platonic philosophy.
Socrates: what is success?
Useful idiot: Money!
Socrates: Ah, but will your money miss you after you die?
Useful idiot: Wow! Deep!
I don’t think invoking the usually incoherently used word “good” is very helpful.
Why?
I just know that I personally choose to try and not be an asshole.
Given jobs in a "healthy" economic system, I don't think anyone should do anything if their only goal is to show they improved society through their work. What do we know about the nuns that would have filled mother Teresa roles if she had not displaced them?
When you are done working for income, if you have more useful skills than a crossword puzzle player they can be used in a ~volunteer role that might not otherwise be filled.
I don't know about those professions. But the job of manager or marketing/salesperson at least gives you interpersonal skills.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Mother_Teresa?wpr...
Steve Jobs always wanted to hire people who had a liberal arts education. He knew there was more to making tech objects than stem.
The latest example (and the one that also made me think along those same lines as your post) is this otherwise really interesting Economist article [1] about gender quotas among Finland's teacher corps (like I said, really interesting article). At some point the authors of the study the article is all about define as "more success" when it comes to the pupils involved in said study those kids that later turned out to study "STEM or medicine" (as it shows up in one of the charts, STEM as a "object of desire" is also explicitly mentioned in the article itself).
So, in a way, it looks like we have already conditioned ourselves (and probably our kids) to look at STEM as inherently more "valuable" than a liberal arts education, which will probably mean even less kids choosing that arts education way.
This isn't limited to STEM and computers.
It goes for almost everybody.
Edit: Forgot sports and the entire industry around that.
100%. Worse than that, I think we are even encouraged to be computer-like. We are told that AI can be conscious - that we are just a machine. As if emotions/intuition/spirituality are non-existent.
The core problem for me is that the principles that drive most us are not our own - they are installed in us by school, society, etc.
You can take the time to work out what they really should be. Eg is trying to be based in truth a valuable principle? What am I assuming and have not verified? Is the 'golden rule' a principle that I should follow (don't do unto other as I wouldn't have done to me)? What happens when I follow this?
The way I think about it is that when we die, we judge ourselves. You can bullshit your boss, neighbour, partner even - but you can't bullshit yourself. You know why you choose what you choose, and whether this accords with the principles you purport to hold. If you choose according to your heart, whether you believe in life after death or not, there is a value to it in the here and now.
No, money/jobs/[some other provided external goal] isn't everything; being yourself and living authentically according to your heart is.
It is entirely possible to be a secular spiritualist. Make it a habit to feel one with nature and the world around you, without any supernaturals entering into the picture.
And funnily enough, for all people dunk on experts and say they can rely on themselves instead, it is pretty much the definition of an expert to be a person that has so much experience with something that they have developed good intuition for it. That’s also why everybody is useless as an expert just coming out of school, they may know all the theory but none of the practicalities.
Anyway I just wanted to say that none of this is incompatible with the premise that we’re basically meat based automata that accidentally developed consciousness. I don’t think we’re anywhere near developing general AI but in principle I don’t see why it couldn’t be done.
It is. It doesn't exist.
But regardless: do any conclusions derive from your observation?
My point was: it is an interesting phenomenon whereby people who claim that certain things do not exist seem to have a deep interest in discussing them.
Another interesting phenomenon: there are certain ideas that cause the unforced errors in cognition to spike, and religion and spirituality is one of the more potent ones - it can cause people who are otherwise exceptional at logic to suddenly lose access to those abilities. If you ask me, science should be studying this phenomenon with greater vigour due to its (plausible) causal importance.
The majority of people on the planet claim to practice some religion / have some spiritual practice.
I think that means spirituality exists, as it's practiced to at least some extent by billions of people every day.
Do you mean the supernatural doesn't exist?
I'd readily grant that most (maybe all?) supernatural claims cannot be falsified, but that doesn't prove they're false.
I recommend a much more limited claim, perhaps reflecting your personal experience, such as "I have found no evidence that anything supernatural exists."
What is the meaning of a claim whose truth has no impact on my sense experience?
If yours hasn't, then obviously that isn't pertinent for you personally, but it seems wise to me to admit that others have their own experience and their own interpretation of those experiences (often not easily falsified).
A good example is Philip K. Dick's experience of apparently hallucinating a pink beam of light telling him his son needed medical care. He took the kid to the hospital, and found his child had a hernia, IIRC.
could that be coincidence, or his drug-addled subconscious picking up on some subtle behavioral cues from his kid? Yep.
Could it have been something beyond human ken? Also possible.
Can we confirm or falsify either of those possibilities? I don't see how.
How can you perceive the supernatural? If you perceive it, then it’s sense data. So photons and sound waves.
> A good example is Philip K. Dick's experience of apparently hallucinating a pink beam of light telling him his son needed medical care. He took the kid to the hospital, and found his child had a hernia, IIRC.
Not having a good explanation for how you know something does not imply fairies did it.
This presumes materialism, which many believers in the supernatural do not grant.
Even in a materialist framing, where the brain is the source of all perception and experience, these things could originate as strictly internal phenomena, not triggered by senses.
It's also conceivable a supernatural being / Simulator could tweak things directly in your brain to communicate, which stays fairly materialist but still allows for non-sense-driven communication.
Are these plausible? Perhaps not. They are conceivable, though.
Your perspective is perfectly valid and rational, but holding yours out as the correct answer won't help you understand perspectives other than yours.
> Not having a good explanation for how you know something does not imply fairies did it.
Since I didn't bring fairies up, I'm not sure what that has to do with anything.
If you have no good explanation for something, that's not great grounds for saying "I'm sure the true explanation lines up with the way I see the world."
And yes, that cuts both ways, and a little more humility would hurt neither side.
You can perceive something, but what you perceive is not necessarily a comprehensive and accurate representation of what may be there.
> Not having a good explanation for how you know something does not imply fairies did it.
True, and the fact that this is true has little bearing on whether the underlying proposition is objectively true (but perhaps beyond humanity's current ability to "know").
inb4 solipsism.
I don’t understand what point you are making here. Please clarify.
> True, and the fact that this is true has little bearing on whether the underlying proposition is objectively true
Agreed. But if you offer the explanation “magical pink laser did it”, then I say, “going to set up some lenses and sinks and mirrors to study this phenomena”, then you say, “nope, it’s magical, your dorky science equipment can never contain it”.
Then what?
"Water is wet." - it is true that water is wet, but is that all that water "is"? (Non-comprehensive)
"January 6 was a coup attempt." - it is certainly believed by many to be that, and it was an insurrection (according to the technical definition), but whether it was actually a coup attempt in "base reality" is a function of (among other things) the number of people who genuinely intended to commit a coup. (non-accurate)
> Agreed. But if you offer the explanation “magical pink laser did it”, then I say, “going to set up some lenses and sinks and mirrors to study this phenomena”, then you say, “nope, it’s magical, your dorky science equipment can never contain it”. Then what?
Then I would suggest you ask me to present any supporting evidence for my claim because I have a burden of proof, as I am doing to you here for your claim (with implicit claims made explicit - feel free to criticize my translation):
>> "How can you perceive the supernatural? If you perceive it, then it’s [only] sense data. So photons and sound waves [only and necessarily, nothing else is going on]".
And there you have Marxist Alienation in a nutshell, and a new thematic thread to read though, if you're interested.
Whether it's easy to get back to that communal (community/communist) life of the very old days "after the revolution" is a whole 'nother question, of course. The history of self-identified communist societies suggests that it's no cakewalk.
So yes, exploitation is a huge part of the problem, but ending that is a means to an end, to community and a more human life. Marx seemed to want to restrict production (to prevent "overproduction" (recessions) not to keep going towards more and more material wealth.
I did that for many years both as a factory worker and as a software developer. I don't need to spend much time pondering why I act the way I do.
YouTuber Big Joel has done two breakdowns of it that are worth watching: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JlkJJygIoVU and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4VZ30qL7j3Q.
From the article:
> De Botton is careful to acknowledge that this line of inquiry might trigger the modern intellectual allergy to the genre of learning dismissively labeled self-help. And yet he reminds us that the quest for self-refinement has always accompanied the human experience and animated each civilization’s most respected intellects — it is there at the heart of the Stoics, and in the essays of Montaigne, and at the center of Zen Buddhism, and in the literary artistry of Proust (whom De Botton has especially embraced as a fount of existential consolation). He aims a spear of simple logic to the irrational and rather hubristic disdain for self-help:
> > To dismiss the idea that underpins self-help — that one might at points stand in urgent need of solace and emotional education — seems an austerely perverse prejudice.
> “The emotionally intelligent person knows that they will only ever be mentally healthy in a few areas and at certain moments, but is committed to fathoming their inadequacies and warning others of them in good time, with apology and charm.”
Is that "wise"? Who reads this and nods?
Self-help is rarely written by successful people. Napoleon Hill (a fraud) was no exception.
It focuses on superficial behavioral and cognitive changes, based on "wisdom" that half the audience will cringe at (see Twitter gurus). The more intellectual kinds of self-help (like De Botton, as opposed to Tony Robbins) essentially help people domesticate themselves, by becoming low energy, excessively self-reflective (which is what the word "neurotic" means) and permanently stuck in their head, as opposed to taking action in the real world.
The more you believe you are afflicted by various subjective, non-clinical, non-diagnosed emotional issues, the more they will consume you. You will be raising waves where there is no wind.
The most effective self-help is either the Lindy kind (reading the Bible; joining a Buddhist monastery), or just aligning your behavior with what you want out of life, without caring for the "childhood reasons" for your behavior. "Self-awareness" is a lie; you are just projecting meaning and patterns where none exists. The ultimate embodiment of this navel-gazing is Lacanian psychoanalysis, which has enormous suicide rates. Just reflect on whether your behavior is aligned with your goals, and choose to change your behavior accordingly, without imagining that you need to change an entire machinery within your mind beforehand.
Well, yes, and this is more or less where we're at with Psychology (as I understand it, I'm definitely a lay person): it's hard to make a concrete proof with something as complex as a human.
And Alain's ideas as expressed are certainly not purely his invention - this is pretty mainstream Psychology / Therapy, and borrows a lot from ancient philosophy (with even a dash of Buddhist psychology thrown in).
Specific to this issue: Alain is saying that many times underlying frustrations are not so much about the here and now, but can be related to one's early upbringing and point to frustrations - especially attachment frustrations - from that age. I find that an interesting idea, but it's certainly not ground truth. Nor does it mean that you can't be frustrated with a partner for valid reasons in the present moment. The kind of takedown that Joel makes ("reductive nonsense") is unsophisticated and frankly immature, and certainly not worthy of any more investment of my time.
Edit: typo
This is what immediately struck me when I started watching the video.
It could be possible that everything Joel is saying is true, and yet, his presentation style comes from a place that feels like the opposite of good faith. His attitude is not one that seems to involve seeking truth/understanding, and he comes across as snarky, bitter, and with an undercurrent of some underlying agenda.
It's a style that I dislike generally, but it seems especially problematic given the subject matter - a topic that requires at least an inkling of intellectual curiosity to explore.
Yeah, just looking at the titles of his other videos it's pretty clear that's almost certainly what he's doing. It looks like he frequently makes stuff in the genre of "let's hate that otherside thing you hate, and together feel superior for hating it."
I think his project is more or less the same Sam Harris' - to extract useful (for some definition) ideas out of traditional religious or other moral systems and to secularise them for modern consumption as part of a project to improve humanity. My background and experience with this kind of thing makes me think that it's a doomed project and slick videos on YouTube is a poor way of teaching these things.
... OK I've got it: Advice is only worth what you pay for it.
I guess either one works here...
The UK has a few people - like poverty-cook Jack Monroe - who have faced real financial and emotional challenges and come through them to become inspirational people.
But without becoming Professionally Inspirational™ about it.
de Botton seems like a spoilt dilettante in comparison - an entertainer for the aspirational classes.
IMO someone who has never faced extreme poverty or unusual emotional stress has no business telling others how to live their lives.
- All parties are terrible and you're a terrible person if you like parties
- Women date abusive men because they were traumatized as a child, and they avoid nice guys, so be an asshole to women
- You can't be a good person unless you had a shitty time growing up, and people only start families to deal with their own shitty family trauma, so, good luck
- You are doomed to an unhappy marriage. Don't look for someone you like, look for someone you can endure
- People with bad taste were traumatized as children. All Russians and Saudi Arabians have bad taste
- People give self help books a lot of shit, but you should read self help books (Alain sells self help books)
- For dinner you should order children's fish sticks, cranberry juice, and the most expensive dessert, the last two because you feel awkward about ordering the first one, and this will help you on a date
(most of them come from the 2 takedown videos linked in a parent comment, the rest are from Alain's own press or blog posts writing about them)
Here's the man himself holding forth on interior design. Apparently people who like minimalism are compensating for their inner emotional chaos, and people who like rustic country stylings want a break from being overwhelmed by technology. People who have ornate gold everywhere are terrified of being poor.
It's silly pseudo-psychological nonsense - all opinion, with no empirical basis.
Worse, it ignores the existence of competitive status display and class identification.
Worse than that, he's clearly writing about himself and generalising to other people.
There's an entire book of this. If you want to learn nothing about taste or architecture - but more than you want to know about Alain de Botton - you can read it.
https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=646338...
Then he moves to the friendship video. His complaint seems to be that the videos simplify and overstate their claims. Which is true. But he doesn't really refute the main point to the video, which is that friendships, by having lower expectations, suffer less (though definitely not always, we all know about toxic friendships) from the more complicated dynamics of romantic relationships. It sounds more like nitpicking. Then he changes from the descriptive presentation of relationships to a normative one (romantic relationships should be "nice"), which misses the point entirely. (Plus the ideia that relationships should be "fun" and "nice" and not also a space for emotional growth where shit comes to top tells me he probably didn't have really intimate relationships).
Honest question: why is "YouTuber Big Joel" someone I should spend an hour listening to?
If you're not interested in The School of Life, then it's not worth an hour of your time.
Only if you have a very vague definition of 'analysis'. "Chatting about in an entertaining way" would be closer to reality.
I dropped in a few times at critical points in recent years. They helped me look at my current circumstances in a more objective and factual way.
I didn’t necessarily learn anything “new” from their bite-sized videos, but many of them helped me cut through the fog of stress/anxiety. I felt immense relief as they helped me recognise what was really going on behind-the-scenes in my current situation.
I’m thankful for the different perspectives they brought to me, especially when they were so easy to digest at a time when my mind was not able to think as clearly as I’d have liked.
In the work of his I've encountered, he regularly quotes old philosophers without adding anything new, and trying to apply the knowledge of old in new ways. Reading old philosophers and engaging with their work directly, produces the effect of transforming it into your own understanding, you don't need a middleman to re-apply it for you.
His work feels like someone writing as it were a performance, rather than an act of discovery.
So little was established without a doubt about psychological and emotional stuff that there's absolutely no wonder people focus their efforts on other more material fields.
People just choose to learn the domains where there's a lot to learn not just a lot to ponder.
Maybe you haven't had the experience of feeling perpetually unable to connect with people in an emotional capacity and the ennui of an over quantified and systematized mode of being. Like many others, I have. The difference is striking. Dropping an absolute reliance on Cartesian rationality opened the door for real human connection. What I gained by balance, I'd never willingly give up.
I've recently started allowing myself to think in this direction. Can you please provide some specific examples of what this looks like?
Emotions are as important as analytical thought. They are another form of information processing -- they aren't arbitrary. Thought doesn't occur without emotion. You need both. This can be a scary and difficult lesson to learn if one has difficult emotions that have been suppressed. It took me years to work through suppressed emotions, and I'm not fully done yet. A good therapist can help, but they can be hard to find.
Don't take yourself too seriously :) Be gentle and compassionate whenever possible. Especially to yourself. We treat our friends with kindness and love, but ourselves with bitterness and hate -- try to treat yourself like your own best friend.
Ask yourself -- and continue asking as the years go by -- what is a good life? Try to live like that.
Humans aren't meant to be alone. We evolved as a social species. Seek out others to spend quality time with. Forming connections can be difficult in the modern world, but one good social bond can change your life.
---
The above was a very quick brain dump. Hopefully it is helpful in some way :)
I'm sorry. I'm not abandoning method and the process specifically designed for avoiding lying to yourself. Because, you know, I might lie to myself. More than I do now.
Science and rationality are the best tools of constructing accurate models of reality, both internal and external.
But it says nothing of purpose. However if you combine it with nihilism or absurdism you get a pretty robust framework for comfortably and efficiently tackling challenges of human condition.
1. Don't mistakenly overgeneralize this to all rationality. I specified for a reason.
Life is not an optimization problem.
Other words that also resonate with me are that sub-optimal solution is not provably optimal, but it's provably not the worst.
I live my life in accordance to those two statements.
This essay seems to suggest that the secular world lacks these practices for passing down EI, because many of the premises were foreign to my lived experience.
Amazingly fruitful practice that only takes 15 min or so. By the time the kids graduate from the home, they are quite mentally/emotionally prepared for the world from the practice :)
It isn’t very actionable. I’d rather have a method that works for non-intellectuals too, because it lets me not think. One that says “have a glass of lemon water in the morning.” and not tell you that it has some physical health benefits, but that building morning routine is crucial to starting off right... that way I can detach my intellect and my ego.
I still like Alain’s books.
Any of you knows his work extensively, and can provide an opinion?
That's not an accident. Nor a failing in the many timeless tools of emotional education - literature, drama and other arts. It's deliberate and systematic. Ever since Edward Bernays the power of Wall Street has been directed at stripping our emotional centres of everything but blind selfish desire. Late capitalism depends on arrested emotional development. Indeed, I think it was Adam Phillips who said "Capitalism is for children". The object of a consumer culture is psychoanalysis in reverse, to make the conscious unconscious and to celebrate and harness the irrational impulses of fear, shame, greed and so on. That's what sells stuff.
"The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. …We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. …In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons… who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind."
Quite conspiratorial if you ask me.
There's few things quite as profitable as an endless black pit of despair within yourself. Well that, and war.
Despair may be a late onset symptom, but on the whole it's joyous self-invention, instant gratification, ephemeral experience, and other kinds of microwavable self-stroking that's being pushed. Nice as they are, convenient, zero-effort mind candies give a quick rush but no lasting sustenance. Hence Adam Phillips's comment, I guess.
I think that implies a belief in a total dominance power hierarchy (with absolute power at the apex of one or many). God, USA#1, world conspiracies, lizard men, etcetera. Personally, I haven’t seen any evidence that exists. If complete power domination exists why would it be hidden, and isn’t most everyone powerless to fight against omnipotence? To fix capitalism in this case would require becoming part of the apex, which seems unlikely.
Another belief could be that the actions of the reptile brainstems of 8 billion people create outcomes that result in emergent system behaviours that are bizarre and unpredictable (from the perspective of a simple human). If capitalism is a systematic outcome of billions, then to fix it requires systematic changes to how humans act. Education? Fascism? Enlightenment? As a starting point, we can try to understand how emergent systems occur, regardless of how complex that task is, however the cyclomatic nature of human systems is that the systems change and become more complex as we discover anything about them!
It doesn't. Not at all.
It just acknowledges the existence of an industry which spends ~300 billion dollars a year in the US alone. [0] Not exactly hidden.
[0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/272314/advertising-spend...
Emergent systems are cool to understand and all, but don't forget: “People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.” - Adam Smith