In Cixin Liu's The Three-Body Problem trilogy, sophons are neutron-sized supercomputers with a propulsion system that can whizz around the solar system in no time and mess up any experiments we do that might advance our understanding of fundamental physics.
(Yes, I know, but it makes for an interesting read.)
That has to be the best explanation of why, all of a sudden in the mid-1990's, everything stopped developing: physics, music, politics, fashion, art, literature, mathematics, movies, name it. There have been engineering advances in computing, but no fundamental breakthroughs, and look at what that got us. TikTok, dating apps, Facebook, the Lockdowns, working from home, mass-scale social flaking, and Netflix. Yep, real progress.
I think the Sophons are distracting us with that stuff.
The essence of Sophon intervention is that it should look as if it's a neat idea and will make our lives better, easier or more fun; absorbs a huge amount of effort and smart people in its implementation; but after a while turns out not to be such a good idea after all.
I hereby suggest that the adjective 'Sophonic' be used to describe anything that meets these criteria, and those who devise and push be described as 'Sophons'.
Not all distractions are Sophonic, we do quite enough on our own to distract ourselves. Celebrity and royal gossip is just plain ordinary stuff, as is corporate PR. Political BS has always been with us. Bogus research in psychology, social "sciences", behavioural "sciences", not to mention anything prefaced by "Evolutionary", are just plain old-fashioned academic BS.
The Green agenda and Climate Change were taken over and exploited by the Sophons. I demur from suggesting what research in maths is Sophonic, but String Theory and Supersymmetry are both clearly Sophonic. Facebook, Instgram, Pinterest, TikTok, You Tube, and the rest... all Sophonic media.
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