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Or the power of technology will enable them to repeat the message until public believes it. If you repeat something enough people start believing it. Fun exerci

Or the power of technology will enable them to repeat the message until public believes it. If you repeat something enough people start believing it. Fun exercise, check out persuasive techniques below and count how many of those China (and other governments) are employing en masse. https://www.mindmeister.com/213923097/persuasive-techniques-and-their-examples https://www.mindmeister.com/213923097/persuasive-techniques-...

jerf 8y ago
The inability to instill belief is not the problem... the ability to instill belief is the problem. You instill belief in the place of social feedback, which breaks people's ability to react to the feedback the system is yielding, like "that's too much money being spent here" and "that's not enough money spent there" and "it turns out that while everyone believes everyone believes that the right answer is X, that in fact nobody believes it" and just an uncountable list of other adjustments societies have to make in order to survive. In a hypothetical world where humans were not subject to social pressure and the corresponding ability of social systems to produce situations where privately everybody knows a thing but nobody is publicly allowed to acknowledge it... well... that's effectively a world on the other side of a singularity from us. Presumably it would have its own pathologies, greater ones for all I know. But it would not have this problem of entire societies riding off the rails because it applied ever stronger powers of social coercion to prevent the society from correctly (without reference to any particular definition of "correct") reacting to the changes that occur over time. It would have to come up with its own new pathologies. This scenario doesn't fail when everybody stops believing in it; it fails, and then everybody stops believing in it. (Peer pressure in the modern world is dangerous, and merely "being pressured to do drugs" is a fairly innocent instance of it, because that only does local harm. When you find yourself unable to speak out about your own beliefs to your own neighbors and friends because of the social costs, it's not just a problem for you, it's a problem for your society.)
- stcredzero 8y ago
  This scenario doesn't fail when everybody stops believing in it; it fails, and then everybody stops believing in it. The 21st century 1st world aspirant intelligentsia is in this situation right now. When you find yourself unable to speak out about your own beliefs to your own neighbors and friends because of the social costs, it's not just a problem for you, it's a problem for your society. My "tribe" is trapped in such a bubble. It's intellectually doomed.
  - leephillips 8y ago
    Can you give an example of a belief or opinion that you feel unable to express to other members of your tribe?
    - jeffreyrogers 8y ago
      Not the OP, so I'm not claiming to speak for him, but here are some views I've seen really upset left-leaning people despite having a fair amount of evidence to support them: heterosexual two-parent households are best for raising children, rape is less common now than in the past, unrestricted immigration hurts low-skill workers. I'm not necessarily saying these are all true, but they're at least open for debate, and you will lose friends in some parts of the US for voicing these opinions.
    - stcredzero 8y ago
      1) Many actions of Antifa are immoral, authoritarian, and bad for society. I can write this here on HN, but I've encountered what can only be described as toxicity on other social media and in person. (The most extreme example of this would be someone responding to a wedding invite by calling me a racist.) 2) Homo sapiens is a sexually dimorphic species, which results in some biologically driven differences on average between men and women. Again, I can write this here on HN, but I've encountered what can only be described as extreme toxicity on other social media and in person.
      - clairity 8y ago
        > Homo sapiens is a sexually dimorphic species, which results in some biologically driven differences on average between men and women. the precision with which you said that is key. you can say things about populations that are not necessarily true of many, or even most, of the individuals in the population. as a human, i can run, but how would you define running for a given cell? cells don't run, but a specific collection and configuration of cells can. other collections of cells can swim. still others do both.
stcredzero 8y ago
Or the power of technology will enable them to repeat the message until public believes it. If you repeat something enough people start believing it. Fun exercise, check out persuasive techniques below and count This has been true of media since the beginning. It's certainly at play in social media today. It has been glaringly true of print and television media for decades. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent

jerf 8y ago

The inability to instill belief is not the problem... the ability to instill belief is the problem. You instill belief in the place of social feedback, which breaks people's ability to react to the feedback the system is yielding, like "that's too much money being spent here" and "that's not enough money spent there" and "it turns out that while everyone believes everyone believes that the right answer is X, that in fact nobody believes it" and just an uncountable list of other adjustments societies have to make in order to survive. In a hypothetical world where humans were not subject to social pressure and the corresponding ability of social systems to produce situations where privately everybody knows a thing but nobody is publicly allowed to acknowledge it... well... that's effectively a world on the other side of a singularity from us. Presumably it would have its own pathologies, greater ones for all I know. But it would not have this problem of entire societies riding off the rails because it applied ever stronger powers of social coercion to prevent the society from correctly (without reference to any particular definition of "correct") reacting to the changes that occur over time. It would have to come up with its own new pathologies. This scenario doesn't fail when everybody stops believing in it; it fails, and then everybody stops believing in it. (Peer pressure in the modern world is dangerous, and merely "being pressured to do drugs" is a fairly innocent instance of it, because that only does local harm. When you find yourself unable to speak out about your own beliefs to your own neighbors and friends because of the social costs, it's not just a problem for you, it's a problem for your society.)

stcredzero 8y ago
This scenario doesn't fail when everybody stops believing in it; it fails, and then everybody stops believing in it. The 21st century 1st world aspirant intelligentsia is in this situation right now. When you find yourself unable to speak out about your own beliefs to your own neighbors and friends because of the social costs, it's not just a problem for you, it's a problem for your society. My "tribe" is trapped in such a bubble. It's intellectually doomed.
- leephillips 8y ago
  Can you give an example of a belief or opinion that you feel unable to express to other members of your tribe?
  - jeffreyrogers 8y ago
    Not the OP, so I'm not claiming to speak for him, but here are some views I've seen really upset left-leaning people despite having a fair amount of evidence to support them: heterosexual two-parent households are best for raising children, rape is less common now than in the past, unrestricted immigration hurts low-skill workers. I'm not necessarily saying these are all true, but they're at least open for debate, and you will lose friends in some parts of the US for voicing these opinions.
  - stcredzero 8y ago
    1) Many actions of Antifa are immoral, authoritarian, and bad for society. I can write this here on HN, but I've encountered what can only be described as toxicity on other social media and in person. (The most extreme example of this would be someone responding to a wedding invite by calling me a racist.) 2) Homo sapiens is a sexually dimorphic species, which results in some biologically driven differences on average between men and women. Again, I can write this here on HN, but I've encountered what can only be described as extreme toxicity on other social media and in person.
    - clairity 8y ago
      > Homo sapiens is a sexually dimorphic species, which results in some biologically driven differences on average between men and women. the precision with which you said that is key. you can say things about populations that are not necessarily true of many, or even most, of the individuals in the population. as a human, i can run, but how would you define running for a given cell? cells don't run, but a specific collection and configuration of cells can. other collections of cells can swim. still others do both.

stcredzero 8y ago

Or the power of technology will enable them to repeat the message until public believes it. If you repeat something enough people start believing it. Fun exercise, check out persuasive techniques below and count This has been true of media since the beginning. It's certainly at play in social media today. It has been glaringly true of print and television media for decades. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent