Ohms Come in Many Flavors

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The higher the resistance, the less current flows for a given level of voltage.

The resistance of the intact human body is higher than you might imagine.

If current is applied where the skin is cut however, the resistance falls dramatically.

Dry, unbroken skin means the resistance of the human body may be as high as 100,000 ohms but broken skin can lower that to as little as 500 ohms.

What about the body politic?

Pure water is not such a great conductor as it turns out. But add a tiny amount of salt and it becomes a great one!

A copper wire is, as most everyone knows, a great conductor and offers little resistance. However, how much resistance depends on diameter of the wire. The greater the cross-sectional area, the less the resistance. They are inversely related.

These days, many people actually get more pleasure and spend more time “living” in the information space they inhabit than they do from the real world that they are actually living in. The result is less resistance to good information but also to misinformation.

The resistance is also directly related to the length of the wire. More length, more resistance. This makes me wonder about the length of the communication channel as well. It is now “shorter” than ever before. You can literally watch a video shot by someone else across the world with no intermediaries touching the content. Or, seemingly so.

Now, let’s introduce the fact that, for the most part, it is non-trivial to decide what is “real” and what is “made-up.” And, you’re subject to more of this stream and more instantaneously than ever before. Not so long ago, new information was vetted by experts and, in fact, multiple experts. This is what happens in scientific journals as well as journalistic reporting. The same is true of financial transactions (which are typically purely informational). No-one is ever expected to be the only source of verification. Everything is cross-checked.

Given this lack of resistance, people are much more susceptible to manipulation. Theoretically, they are also much more “susceptible” to learning more truth more quickly. But whoever controls the wire, controls the flow. For instance, if you have enough money, you can buy more bandwidth and hire entertaining people and collect & analyze data on your audience in great detail so that you can tailor your message for maximum effectiveness.

Given the choice, one has to ask:
“What sort of person with a great deal of wealth would use that wealth to misinform and mislead their fellow human beings?” They could choose instead to use that wealth to improve everyone’s knowledge, know-how, and creativity. This would result in a better world for everyone, including the ultra-wealthy unless their greatest source of pleasure is seeing others in misery.

Seriously though. Try to imagine that you had billions and billions of dollars to burn. What would motivate you to spend a substantial amount of that money to lie to people; to intentionally mislead them? I’m really curious.