Human society runs on two different levels. The first is the rhetoric. This is what people say in speeches, on social media, in manifestos, and during elections. It’s full of moral declarations and promises about how things should be. The second is the behavior. This is what people actually do, how they spend their money, who they vote for, and how they treat their neighbors. The idea of behavior revealing true opinions and motivations with rhetoric being an expression of what a person thinks they believe can be called behavioral realism for the purposes of discussion within Technocracy.

The biggest mistake we make is thinking these two levels are the same. In reality, the rhetoric is mostly just noise and statements made for self-expression. It’s how people signal to each other, show off their tribe, or try to look good. The behavior is the only thing that actually matters. If you try to run a country based on what people say they want, you’re like a pilot flying blind, trusting the clouds instead of the instruments. You’re going to crash. To fix society, we need to stop focusing on the noise and start looking at the data of what people actually do and how they feel about policies and systems. It is important to listen to the desires of the people to not become tyrannical, but it is also important to understand that they may not have as good of an idea of what they truly believe as they might think.

This gap causes huge problems in politics. Democracies usually run on the rhetoric which is campaign promises and polls. But when politicians try to pass laws based on what people say they want, it often backfires. For example, people might say they love “freedom,” but then demand strict rules to protect them. The result is a mess of laws that nobody follows.

We can see this clearly in places like Florida. A lot of the laws passed there are designed just to send a message or “virtue signal” to a specific group of voters, rather than to actually solve problems. These laws often end up being ineffective or getting blocked by courts because they don’t match the reality of how people live and take no account for the reality of how policy affects citizens in their real daily lives.

Take the idea of rhetoric as a form of self-expression. Lots of people call themselves socially conservative and say they want strict moral rules enforced. But if you watch what they actually do, they often just want to be left alone. They rarely bother their neighbors for having non-traditional lifestyles, and they might even watch the same movies or read the same books they claim to hate. They prioritize peace and harmony over being a moral police officer. The same phenomenon can also apply to the Left. Asking anarchists how the government should respond to certain behaviors causes them to state there should be punishment or vigilantism. Some socialists may believe that animals or children are exploited but action towards that belief can fall outside the scope of their activism focus. This is a universal human flaw that poses a challenge to Technocracy and scientific government if it is not known and managed.

A smart system wouldn’t try to enforce rules based on what these people say they believe, because they aren’t willing to pay the price to make it happen. Instead, we should look at the data: tax records, traffic patterns, and energy use. That tells us the truth. We need to stop asking people what they want and start watching what they do.

This same split happens in institutions. Institutions often cling to old rules written on paper, while the people inside them have already moved on. Think about big religious groups. Their official books might say certain things are forbidden, but in real life, those groups often welcome LGBTQ+ members, let them marry, and treat them like family. The “official rule” is just a leftover from the past; the real behavior is about keeping the community together.

If you only looked at the laws and social expectations of a society, you would think that people were living strict legalistic lives. But if you look at the people, you see they are adapting and surviving. When a culture cares more about looking virtuous than being virtuous, everyone starts lying to each other about their real motivations and beliefs. This creates a social game that cannot easily be opted out of or ignored, because it engenders social interaction within the society it happens in. It also disadvantages neurodivergent people or those who do not understand the dynamics of the social games they are playing.

The most dangerous part of this gap is when it comes to serious issues like domestic violence or child abuse. Everyone says they hate it and would become ballistic towards anyone doing it. But in reality? Most people stay silent. Neighbors hear screaming but don’t call the police. Coworkers suspect abuse but are afraid to get involved. Communities value family privacy more than the safety of a victim. The cost of stepping in feels too high. There can be a fear of getting sued, getting hurt, or making a scene which results in everyone doing nothing. This is not a condemnation because some of these issues are too complex and unpredictable for a random bystander to involve themselves and for it to be productive, but the stated rhetoric directly contradicts the real societal response. In some cases strong state interventions can actually cause the people involved to resent the state and intentionally distance themselves from it or disrupt its attempts to help.

This is a policy failure. We have a society that claims to have zero tolerance for abuse, but its actual behavior is an inability to stop it. A smart system would account for human behavior and use expert opinion to determine what will truly change in regards to any policy decisions. It would change the rules in ways that positively alter behavior rather than punish it or ineffectively criminalize it.

The reason our world feels so broken is that we keep trying to fix it with rhetoric. We pass laws based on feelings, and we expect institutions to follow rules that nobody actually believes in. This creates normative overload of violations that nobody could possibly enforce even if they wanted to. Technocrats need to stop taking rhetoric and stated beliefs at face value so the actual data that human behavior provides can be the basis of policy making.