About Hyperstition

Fictional concepts which through their belief and dissemination engineer their own reality.

First proposed by the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit, Hyperstition is a means of bringing fictional concepts into reality. Its most well known successes are in the emergence of Virtual Reality, Swarming Drone Warfare, and Powered Exoskeletons.

Hyperstitious concepts can be loose ideas, entertaining anecdotes, legends, myths, or detailed scientific analyses. Be forewarned, however, that Hyperstition is by no means Magic. The key is not that Hyperstition warps reality, but that it provokes humans to do so on its behalf and — by extension, at least at first— the behalf of its author.

Hyperstition is difficult to realize and even more difficult to control. It is incredibly rare for a single person to maintain control of a Hyperstitious concept once it has gone viral. Arthur C. Clark and H.G. Wells do not have special dominion over how AI Military command systems or energy weapons are used just because they helped to originate the concepts that would later force themselves into reality.

A Hyperstition is an idea so compelling, so engaging and inspiring to its audience, and so materially possible, that this combination of factors creates a self assembling memetic machine for both propagating itself in the minds of its audience and projecting itself into their physical reality.

Hyperstition cannot function without the willing if sometimes unwitting support of human agents. It is not some divine combination of words or symbols that wields special metaphysical power, but an adaptation of ideas and concepts especially operating within the boundaries of reality and proliferating through human minds. It is the embodied accumulation and organization of many viral pieces of information that have passed the various filters of natural selection to a degree that they can evolve beyond illusory mental constructs and into the ragged and demented world of the physical.

Any author attempting to create Hyperstitious concepts, or who is at risk of doing so, should take care to remember that controlling them is not something that can be guaranteed. They take on a life of their own as they’re transmitted and altered by thousands or millions of minds, adapting to suit the needs of their own virility and the populations serving as their carriers.

A person can by no means ensure they will live long enough to see the fruition of all their Hyperstitious concepts, and most authors of these ideas do not live to see them come to fruition. Many of these ideas, after all, are decades or centuries ahead of their time and first proposed by Science Fiction writers.

Hyperstition can serve as an incredibly valuable component of Military Information Support Operations, branching off of concepts first introduced in Lieutenant Colonel Michael Aquino and Paul Vallely’s MindWar paper written for the 7th Psychological Operations Group.

As Aquino first put it in his groundbreaking paper:

“Unlike PSYOP, MindWar has nothing to do with deception or even with “selected” and therefore misleading — truth. Rather it states a whole truth that, if it does not now exist, will be forced into existence by the will of the United States.”

It is that forcing into existence of our preferred reality which Hyperstition describes. Political parties, think tanks, and even Military advisory boards are examples of groups which commonly work with Hyperstitious concepts. A political platform a policy recommendation and a new military doctrine are all examples of Hyperstitious concepts because all of them attempt to remake physical reality to reflect highly selected and evolved self replicating pieces of information subject to the rigors of both Natural and Artificial Selection.

It should be noted that the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit is something of a fringe philosophical and occult organization and that the author does not agree with many of their ideas. He does, however, find their concept of Hyperstition immensely valuable in understanding the proliferation of self replicating pieces of information and their occasional transition into physical reality. 

Enjoy this article? Say thanks by purchasing several random hideous objects from our online shop and mailing them to relatives you dislike.