Institute for the Future director Alex Soojung-Kim Pang tells us how to conquer the world:
Be certain, not right
Claim to be an expert: it makes people’s brains hurt
No expertise, no problem
One simple idea may be one too many
Get prizes for being outrageous
There’s a success hiding in every failure
Don’t remember your failures. No one else will
Relevant History: The Evil Futurists’ Guide to World Domination
(via Blustr)
*It’s a little odd that Pang doesn’t seem to realize that he is describing religion here. His “evil futurist” is a morally-certain holy prophet with a scripture. Social figures of this sort carry out practically every tactic that Pang describes, and that scheme’s been working grandly for millennia.
*I’m trying to imagine a human society that has survived without any holy prophets dominating from the sainted woodwork somewhere. If you count Marx as a holy prophet, which I most certainly do, I don’t think there have ever been any such societies. Maybe “in the future,” eh? Yea, verily it is written!