When we mistake spreading ideas for taking real action, we overlook a crucial asymmetry: ideas and actions distribute their consequences wildly differently across time and space. A stupid idea—one that seduces with utopian dreams—can viralize for months or years, infiltrating millions of minds long before it ever collides with reality through attempted implementation. A stupid action, no matter how appealing it feels, delivers swift, brutal feedback on its flaws. Reality's harsh lessons then flow back through one's mind, dismantling the faulty ideas that birthed it. This imbalance fuels an insidious form of social arbitrage: Pick a utopian idea that taps into deep-seated desires, but that's fundamentally flawed, unworkable, and impossible for any individual or small group to test—for good measure, frame it as a "systemic" issue beyond personal reach. If chosen wisely, belief in your idea explodes virally. Now you've built a swelling memetic army: their loyalty boosts your status, and their zeal to push the untestable vision amplifies your power. This creates "social collateral" you can leverage to inflate the idea further—spinning it into ever more grandiose, ever more absurd fantasies of perfection. All without a single brush with reality's cold feedback. But humans aren't endlessly gullible. Eventually, the rhetorical IOU comes calling: demands grow louder to make good on those lofty promises. So you roll out some version of the idea—it doesn't matter which, since failure was baked in from the start. The genius of this ploy? Failure doesn't derail you. Just name a scapegoat to rally your followers against—the "enemy" who sabotaged utopia—and watch their unity harden in shared outrage. Scapegoats abound, since the idea's "minimum viable test" is society-wide. Anyone or anything in the system qualifies! Bonus points for sealing the deal by stoking old resentments or tribal grudges. And with causality so murky at massive scales, who can prove the idea's rotten core? It sounds flawless (everyone agrees, right?), so blame subversion or incompetent execution. A few purges or "re-educations" will sort it... This playbook might ring a bell—it's the default operating system of today's Liberal political order. After all, in 250 years, it's no shock that such an exploit would surface, then replicate virally to define the whole game. Yet spotting this pattern equips us to sidestep its traps. Prioritize ideas grounded in quick, tangible tests over those shielded by scale and rhetoric. In a world of relentless change, survival hinges on honing our ability to adapt—constantly recalibrating against reality's feedback, not clinging to unyielding illusions that crumble when the landscape shifts.