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>Modern advertising techniques are effective enough that most people simply cannot defend themselves against them. This worldview is just sad and wrong. You ar

>Modern advertising techniques are effective enough that most people simply cannot defend themselves against them. This worldview is just sad and wrong. You are dehumanizing human beings, victimizing people and trying to strip them of their agency. How can you let people vote when in your view they are incapable to make informed decisions?

saulrh 8y ago
Fun fact: Most people also simply cannot defend themselves against guys in tanks with machine guns and infrared cameras. I do see where you're going with the bit about justifying crimes. But at the same time, if you shout "fire" in a crowded theater, the people that tried to get out aren't responsible for the deaths of the people that were trampled in the crush. I actually don't think that "blame" is a particularly useful concept. I believe that a more effective cognitive framework is along the lines of "what action is available to us which maximizes the expected value of society". The causes of a person's crimes matter exactly as much they as they inform the likelihood of further crimes and the action that would do the most good for them and the people they affect. I think that the issue is that the kinds of attacks we're talking about now leave injuries that are persistent, invasive, and infectious, and that simplistic systems like "blame" have obvious breakage when faced with such complex scenarios. When you spam a micro-demographic with falsely-attributed hate speech, you haven't just incited a riot, you've damaged the worldviews of a bunch of people enough that they're going to require active rehabilitation to participate in civilization again. It's like you dumped something into their neighborhood that left a bunch of them with brain damage. Punishing those victims is useful only as a way to rehabilitate them. A much better solution might be to force them to go back through high school history and civics courses or something, same way you'd help the victims of the chemical dumping by sending them to the hospital instead of to jail.
- mike_hearn 8y ago
  If you really think words can literally cause brain damage, as you obviously spend a lot of time reading and commenting online, what makes you think you aren't completely insane and shouldn't just be sent right back to school yourself? I for one think your worldview is deeply damaged, you're basically a totalitarian who has convinced themselves anyone who disagrees with you is literally suffering a brain disease.
  - saulrh 8y ago
    That's a fantastic misinterpretation of what I said. Putting things in your mouth is necessary for survival. Unfortunately, there are some things you can put in your mouth that will kill you. Consuming information is necessary for survival. Unfortunately, there is some information that, when consumed, can be very, very bad for you. I say nothing about disagreement, nor about it being brain damage, and where did you even get totalitarianism from in the first place? There are people that disagree with me in perfectly reasonable fashion for perfectly reasonable reasons. Their opinions are important and necessary. There are also people who have been subjected to information that removes their agency just as surely as a pointed gun would. I do not think and did not think that I could possibly have been interpreted as thinking that this is a form of what is colloquially known as "brain damage". There is a rhetorical device known as an "analogy" which I employed to illustrate a comparable scenario that I hoped would help my audience examine the situation from a new angle and come to a clearer understanding. However, since you brought it up, and as an extreme case with which to question assumptions, I would like to point out that there are a number of psychological conditions, such as PTSD, which can be induced via "gaslighting", also known as carefully chosen words, and that are beginning to be recognized as involving systematic neurological changes which might be classified as "brain damage". Or, to take another example from the opposite end of the spectrum, everyone that whines about cell phones and televisions causing attention disorders is very clearly claiming that purely the presentation of information can induce brain damage. However, it is equally obvious that not all information is dangerous, in the same way that not all things you can put in your mouth will kill you if swallowed. Also, I really do wonder where you got the idea that I was advocating some kind of totalitarian lockdown on all information transmission. We can punish attacks that use targeted advertisements to cause agency-denying state-of-mind changes without damaging anything else, in exactly the same way that we can punish food manufacturers that violate FDA regulations without shutting down the restaurant industry, or how we can have and enforce fire and earthquake codes without banning architecture or sculpture.
    - mike_hearn 8y ago
      How is it a misinterpretation of what you said? You said: I think that the issue is that the kinds of attacks we're talking about now leave injuries that are persistent, invasive, and infectious and carefully chosen words ... recognized as involving systematic neurological changes which might be classified as "brain damage" Injuries? Persistent and infectious? Might be classified as brain damage? You're saying that merely being exposed to words can turn someone into some kind of damaged disease spreading intellectual leper. My interpretation of what you said appears to be entirely accurate. there are a number of psychological conditions, such as PTSD, which can be induced via "gaslighting", also known as carefully chosen words You can induce PTSD using carefully chosen words? Can you provide evidence for any of this? These views are alarmingly extremist, your hypothesis is far, far stronger than even the strong form of Sapir-Whorf which is essentially discredited at this point. I have never encountered any theory of psychology that would support any of this. Finally, of course your views are totalitarian. Who gets to decide what information is "damaging", exactly? Presumably the lucky few who can be exposed to words and not get PTSD, i.e. yourself. It is fundamentally totalitarian to believe yourself so mentally superior to others that you have to protect them from "bad" ideas and information. That is how all tyrants throughout history have justified their campaigns of censorship and control.

saulrh 8y ago

Fun fact: Most people also simply cannot defend themselves against guys in tanks with machine guns and infrared cameras. I do see where you're going with the bit about justifying crimes. But at the same time, if you shout "fire" in a crowded theater, the people that tried to get out aren't responsible for the deaths of the people that were trampled in the crush. I actually don't think that "blame" is a particularly useful concept. I believe that a more effective cognitive framework is along the lines of "what action is available to us which maximizes the expected value of society". The causes of a person's crimes matter exactly as much they as they inform the likelihood of further crimes and the action that would do the most good for them and the people they affect. I think that the issue is that the kinds of attacks we're talking about now leave injuries that are persistent, invasive, and infectious, and that simplistic systems like "blame" have obvious breakage when faced with such complex scenarios. When you spam a micro-demographic with falsely-attributed hate speech, you haven't just incited a riot, you've damaged the worldviews of a bunch of people enough that they're going to require active rehabilitation to participate in civilization again. It's like you dumped something into their neighborhood that left a bunch of them with brain damage. Punishing those victims is useful only as a way to rehabilitate them. A much better solution might be to force them to go back through high school history and civics courses or something, same way you'd help the victims of the chemical dumping by sending them to the hospital instead of to jail.

mike_hearn 8y ago
If you really think words can literally cause brain damage, as you obviously spend a lot of time reading and commenting online, what makes you think you aren't completely insane and shouldn't just be sent right back to school yourself? I for one think your worldview is deeply damaged, you're basically a totalitarian who has convinced themselves anyone who disagrees with you is literally suffering a brain disease.
- saulrh 8y ago
  That's a fantastic misinterpretation of what I said. Putting things in your mouth is necessary for survival. Unfortunately, there are some things you can put in your mouth that will kill you. Consuming information is necessary for survival. Unfortunately, there is some information that, when consumed, can be very, very bad for you. I say nothing about disagreement, nor about it being brain damage, and where did you even get totalitarianism from in the first place? There are people that disagree with me in perfectly reasonable fashion for perfectly reasonable reasons. Their opinions are important and necessary. There are also people who have been subjected to information that removes their agency just as surely as a pointed gun would. I do not think and did not think that I could possibly have been interpreted as thinking that this is a form of what is colloquially known as "brain damage". There is a rhetorical device known as an "analogy" which I employed to illustrate a comparable scenario that I hoped would help my audience examine the situation from a new angle and come to a clearer understanding. However, since you brought it up, and as an extreme case with which to question assumptions, I would like to point out that there are a number of psychological conditions, such as PTSD, which can be induced via "gaslighting", also known as carefully chosen words, and that are beginning to be recognized as involving systematic neurological changes which might be classified as "brain damage". Or, to take another example from the opposite end of the spectrum, everyone that whines about cell phones and televisions causing attention disorders is very clearly claiming that purely the presentation of information can induce brain damage. However, it is equally obvious that not all information is dangerous, in the same way that not all things you can put in your mouth will kill you if swallowed. Also, I really do wonder where you got the idea that I was advocating some kind of totalitarian lockdown on all information transmission. We can punish attacks that use targeted advertisements to cause agency-denying state-of-mind changes without damaging anything else, in exactly the same way that we can punish food manufacturers that violate FDA regulations without shutting down the restaurant industry, or how we can have and enforce fire and earthquake codes without banning architecture or sculpture.
  - mike_hearn 8y ago
    How is it a misinterpretation of what you said? You said: I think that the issue is that the kinds of attacks we're talking about now leave injuries that are persistent, invasive, and infectious and carefully chosen words ... recognized as involving systematic neurological changes which might be classified as "brain damage" Injuries? Persistent and infectious? Might be classified as brain damage? You're saying that merely being exposed to words can turn someone into some kind of damaged disease spreading intellectual leper. My interpretation of what you said appears to be entirely accurate. there are a number of psychological conditions, such as PTSD, which can be induced via "gaslighting", also known as carefully chosen words You can induce PTSD using carefully chosen words? Can you provide evidence for any of this? These views are alarmingly extremist, your hypothesis is far, far stronger than even the strong form of Sapir-Whorf which is essentially discredited at this point. I have never encountered any theory of psychology that would support any of this. Finally, of course your views are totalitarian. Who gets to decide what information is "damaging", exactly? Presumably the lucky few who can be exposed to words and not get PTSD, i.e. yourself. It is fundamentally totalitarian to believe yourself so mentally superior to others that you have to protect them from "bad" ideas and information. That is how all tyrants throughout history have justified their campaigns of censorship and control.