by Erik Hoel at The Intrinsic Perspective:There’s a saying on the internet: “The most entertaining outcome is the most likely.” People like to say this saying. Here’s Elon Musk saying it to 58 million views:
I don’t know if he originated it. Probably not. Although I understand its attractiveness: it does a good job at capturing the telegenic insanity that has been American politics this past decade (and to a similar degree American culture at large). There was some sort of phase shift whereafter the arc of history has always seemed to bend with a teleological purposefulness. And if everything is now trending along some unseen arc, it makes sense to speculate on what that arc is.
“Entertaining” does kind of work—albeit entertaining in the way a car crash is, where you can’t look away. But I don’t think it’s specific enough. It’s not the real measurable angle. Instead, what I think is that if you look at America from around a decade ago, say, 2012 on, the more apt descriptor is that American culture is increasingly unable to be satirized. Aesthetically, it becomes ever more resistant to the artistic medium itself, like some sort of satirical immune system is developing. Satire slides off of us, water to our glossy duck backs. So I prefer:
The outcome that makes satire harder is the most likely.
This, I think, fits the directionality of our cultural teleology best: whatever is going to happen, it is ordained that the world will out-satire any satire you throw at it…
