A Satire on Evolutionary Psychology: Quantum Psychology

Yo, Brave New World, with these thought-leading peeps in it who are beauteous as fuck, you're so friggin' wonderful! 

Viz:

Pitch/Sample: A typically breathless New Yorker or New York Times Magazine thinkpiece from the future that leghumps a new field of quantum chemistry, Quantum Psychology, which argues that all evolutionary psychology can be reduced to different quantum states. 

So no need for these postmodern, Marxist “biologists” with their “theories” about “genes” in “populations.” It’s all Feynman diagrams, baby! 

Here's proof: the one on the left means “grumpy”; the right, “happy”:

And this is “sleepy” and “bashful”:

And here’s “sneezy” and “dopey”:

The piece would begin with some brash young scientist at, say, MIT who wears a leather jacket and has a mohawk. Or should I go for a dedicated scientist who nonetheless perfects her work-life balance while also running half-marathons and when not encouraging her daughter to code in Python before her lie down and her son to lay a variety of grains in the Ally Circle chalked underneath a Hillary Clinton Buddha, located a long walk out into the woods? (Liz Warren? Too soon?) 

Anyway, start with the personal angle, hopefully in some interesting setting, like a NASCAR race the subject of the profile, despite being described as "a total nerd," insists on attending, Budweiser in hand obtrusively noted, precisely in order to make a good impression on Middle America, as directed by his PR firm. Make sure to return to the personal angle at least every two paragraphs otherwise no one will sit through the boring, like, science stuff. We don't want our intended audience to die of eye-rolling, after all.

Make a terrible stretch of a segue between some aspect of car racing and the science about to be discussed, e.g.: “As I watched spectators try to flee the burning car that had just careened through the guard rail, to little avail, I was struck by the irony that fire, like terror, is essentially a quantum phenomenon.” Then go on to explain the new field as you would explain a simple task, like chewing thoroughly before you swallow, to an unusually slow three-year-old, possibly with supporting finger puppetry in an embedded video.

Pile on fifteen comments, at least a third of which must be repeated as pull quotes, from people financially, professionally, or institutionally connected to the new field of Quantum Psychology all of which maintain that QP is, at the outside, a mere three months away from solving all outstanding questions of mind and brain since Thales in a world-shaking, epochal revolution in thought that will make Newton’s seem like a brief note to the Proceedings of the 46th Meeting of the International Society of Mineralogical Metrology: Nitpicking Section that corrects the digit of the fifth decimal place of a measurement of the weight of a chunk of Archean gneiss from the Baltic Shield noted in a footnote to Table 93 (“Some Rock Shavings We Swept Up From Our Lab That We Decided to Weigh”) in Appendix L (“Man Is the Measuring of All Things”), page 1035b.

Include one dissenting voice, which will have to be Steven Pinker’s head in a vat (insert photo shown up top from 2011 in which Pinker first explained the process for head-preservation), and frame it as old-man-shouty-Bernie as you can without actually coming out and saying that such notions are the dead weight of accreted, scholastic tradition before returning to the profile subject’s life by interviewing him (or her) on a C-130 before they do a HALO jump for a children’s charity. 

(Also arranged by the PR firm, as was the crash course in HALO jumping. Equipment and plane provided by the CIA, the main sponsor of MIT’s Quantum Psychology Lab, aside from Mohammad Bin Salman, Golden Dawn, and the Metro Boston chapter of NAMBLA. Include an in-depth video interview segment featuring the CTO of Quicksilver, the just-launched Route 128 spin-off whose CEO is Nate Silver, Edward Snowden. (As all recall, Snowden was forcibly repatriated in 2023 and enrolled in a Trump University re-education center.) In the interview Snowden emphasizes how convenient shopping will be when automatic quantum mind-state readers are installed on every device and appliance sold in America, as will be required by law as soon as the technology is available:

SNOWDEN: We’re really excited here at Quicksilver. Because of Nate's leadership, his 2021 projection that the first prototype of the ThoughtClick fiber optic sensor will be ready by June, 2028, just 18 months from now, will come to pass, and typically right on the nose.

JOURNALIST: It is really exciting! Can you explain in simple terms how this wonderful new technology will improve all our lives far more than something as paltry as universal healthcare, a Green New Deal, or nuclear arms control agreements?

SNOWDEN: With pleasure. Since we've already proven a few paragraphs ago that quantum states determine all aspects of human thought and emotion, ThoughtClick simply operationalizes that knowledge, which in non-nerd-talk means it reads your quantum mind-state. Then it compares that state to a centralized database housing all the test-subject data that our partners, the adult inmates at the Homestead Temporary Shelter for Unaccompanied Children, fed into it. Big shout out to our partners in Florida for their voluntary effort on our behalf! 

[CUT TO: an exterior shot of the camp, surrounded by barbed wire and guard towers bristling with SGR-A5s, the current generation of that kind of LAWS, or, Lethal Automatic Weapons System. 

CUT TO: Snowden.]

Then the system simply chooses your product, deducts the cost from your bank account or other assets, and delivers it fast to your doorstep. 

JOURNALIST: How fast? You know that all good Americans know that fully embracing the role of consumer to the exclusion of all else is central to maintaining a decent, democratic society while fighting climate change and embracing diversity, so they are brutal about demanding convenience and have little patience.

SNOWDEN: We know, we approve, and we welcome the challenge. This is what is so wonderful about working on things like this: sure, you make money, but you also gain the pride of knowing that your product is encouraging the right political and social values. We've always been deeply mindful of such things in our progressive, corporate culture. It's more than just open-office layouts, you know.

Anyway, our algos have been crunching on this data for months already. Accuracy is quickly improving even now, and it’ll just get better and better the more people use it.

So, how's that for convenience? All you do is think, and the product will be at your home within 24 hours.

You've no doubt seen the videos on social media now going viral in which our already rabid, totally unpaid fans are doing the "Heel-Click Challenge," right?

JOURNALIST: Who hasn't? Everyone's getting in on the fun, preparing for the upcoming roll-out by closing their eyes and clicking their heels together three times while thinking, "There's no role like consumption!" A brilliant piece of totally spontaneous mindset-change-management.

[CUT TO: an early-Soviet-film-speed montage of members of every possible demographic group having a ball doing the Challenge.

CUT TO: Snowden.]

SNOWDEN: That kind of grassroots, bottom-up activity is what has always made America great until Leader Trump made it even greater...such beautiful greatness...I can't take all the greatness.

JOURNALIST: I couldn't agree more, but what about the product-selection misfires we've heard about?

SNOWDEN: Well, those are just what you'd expect in beta-testing; it's why we do it. We care about the safety of our customers. We love our customers.

JOURNALIST: That I do not doubt, since you've provided me, a mere, lowly journalist, with everything I could possibly want, from a stretch limo to the airport, to a first-class airline ticket, a five-star hotel suite, an eight-ball of cocaine, and four nubile "masseuses" -- and all just to help me maintain my professional objectivity. 

But if you'll allow me to press you gently just a little...?

[SNOWDEN nods regally.]

Just to pick one, what about the story we've heard that a beta tester-whistleblower claims to have thought, "I want a new iPhone," only to wake up to find a nuclear-powered, Nimitz-class aircraft carrier on his front doorstep with a bill taped to the bow for that portion of the $8.5 billion price tag not covered by the automatic depletion of all his assets?

SNOWDEN: See, this is the beauty of beta-testing: even if one of your beta-testers turns out to be a traitorous high-tech terrorist, as this one turned out to be, you still get good data with which to improve the system. Data is blind to ideology.

Anyway, you won't be hearing much from that beta-tester from now on, I can tell you that. Just like back in the old days, we once again are smart enough to know what to do with traitorous spies.

JOURNALIST: On behalf of all decent, real Americans, I thank you for your service, for protecting our freedoms, and for keeping us safe. 

SNOWDEN: Thanks, but I was just doing my duty, as all good Americans should. If you see something, say something.

JOURNALIST: I really hope young children, if not too busy with various unity-building exercises at their local chapter of the Ivanka Youth Brigade, will hear that message in particular. We all must love our children enough to pass it forward.

On another topic, it’s not big and clunky is it? We all like a sleek design.

SNOWDEN: It’s the very model of unobtrusiveness. You can hardly see the tiny sensor. It’s actually quite hard to find -- frankly, you'll never find it, but trust me, it'll be there. 

JOURNALIST: This technology is read-only, right?

SNOWDEN [To camera.] : I’m afraid that’s all the time we have. Thank you!)

That is, the story obviously writes itself.

Projected Market Characteristics: Anyone who would enjoy a satirical parody of science journalism-PR, academic politics, one aspect of the contemporary sociological hierarchy of knowledge, and all the rest of the crap you just read.

Estimated Market Size: Seventeen people, including Grendel the Cat who will at least lie on it if I print out a copy and leave it out on the bed.

Punchline: I bet you a thousand right now that when I use The Google, I'll find that someone has already proposed something in reality that's not too far from this satire. 

I dare you to take that bet, especially since I refuse to specify which country’s currency I’m referring to until we see which of us wins.