4 ms·

> "I heard X, I heard Y, sounds to me like it could go either way." Still an improvement compared to "I heard X", which is the default with radio and books.

jfengel 6y ago
I'm not so sure it is, when there are so many well-funded, concerted efforts to deliberately induce ignorance in people. Radio and books have at least some bottleneck where you can at least try to cut off deliberate falsehoods. Obviously that doesn't always work, but social media makes it effectively impossible. Not only do you have official sources of propaganda, you live in a swamp of anecdotes that are impossible to refute or contextualize. The radio says "Group X is bad", and you yourself may never have had any trouble with X, but a flood of "X did [bad-thing] to me" stories on social media can make you think that you've got personal exposure to it. Ultimately, I believe the problem rests with the individuals who are willing to be manipulated. The human organism has a massive security hole that has been very well exploited, and I've got no idea how to patch it. No amount of coherent, cogent argument will change the mind of somebody bent on having a target to hate, and people have gotten very good at insinuating those targets.
- 082349872349872 6y ago
  some ideas on changing minds (not by coherent, cogent argument, but by providing attractive alternatives to hate?): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24373042 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24373042 also, the remedies chapter of: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxxylK6fR81rckQxWi1hVFFRUDg/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxxylK6fR81rckQxWi1hVFFRUDg... still looking for more in this vein. from HN, the discussions on https://theintercept.com/2016/09/07/google-program-to-deradicalize-jihadis-will-be-used-for-right-wing-american-extremists-next/ https://theintercept.com/2016/09/07/google-program-to-deradi... suggest attempts to de-hate might not be uniformly well-received.
- amadeuspagel 6y ago
  > I'm not so sure it is, when there are so many well-funded, concerted efforts to deliberately induce ignorance in people. Radio and books have at least some bottleneck where you can at least try to cut off deliberate falsehoods. I don't see how you can believe these things at the same time. If these efforts to induce ignorance are indeed so well-funded and concerted, how can bottlenecks be an obstacle? Indeed why couldn't these well-funded, concerted efforts use those bottlenecks to cut off people disagreeing with them?
  - jfengel 6y ago
    I meant to suggest that if you have a few large, expensive propaganda organs, you have some hope of running your own counterpropaganda campaign: disprove it at the source, and maybe you can convince people. Of course if the money can shut you down entirely, you can't succeed. But it's hard to completely control radio and books. It can be done, but only by making your totalitarianism clear. It's more effective if people think they came to their conclusions on their own, and have been exposed to "all sides". Today, they can bolster their organized propaganda with a sufficiently effective astroturf campaign (magnified by social media). The two provide confirmation for each other, and appear to be independent. They may even actually be independent; they don't need to formally coordinate if they roughly agree on the ends. So people believe they're getting "all sides" of the story, and there's no need to shut down disagreement. Instead, people hear the message from two sources that affirm each other, and disregard any disagreement willingly.

jfengel 6y ago

I'm not so sure it is, when there are so many well-funded, concerted efforts to deliberately induce ignorance in people. Radio and books have at least some bottleneck where you can at least try to cut off deliberate falsehoods. Obviously that doesn't always work, but social media makes it effectively impossible. Not only do you have official sources of propaganda, you live in a swamp of anecdotes that are impossible to refute or contextualize. The radio says "Group X is bad", and you yourself may never have had any trouble with X, but a flood of "X did [bad-thing] to me" stories on social media can make you think that you've got personal exposure to it. Ultimately, I believe the problem rests with the individuals who are willing to be manipulated. The human organism has a massive security hole that has been very well exploited, and I've got no idea how to patch it. No amount of coherent, cogent argument will change the mind of somebody bent on having a target to hate, and people have gotten very good at insinuating those targets.

082349872349872 6y ago
some ideas on changing minds (not by coherent, cogent argument, but by providing attractive alternatives to hate?): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24373042 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24373042 also, the remedies chapter of: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxxylK6fR81rckQxWi1hVFFRUDg/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxxylK6fR81rckQxWi1hVFFRUDg... still looking for more in this vein. from HN, the discussions on https://theintercept.com/2016/09/07/google-program-to-deradicalize-jihadis-will-be-used-for-right-wing-american-extremists-next/ https://theintercept.com/2016/09/07/google-program-to-deradi... suggest attempts to de-hate might not be uniformly well-received.
amadeuspagel 6y ago
> I'm not so sure it is, when there are so many well-funded, concerted efforts to deliberately induce ignorance in people. Radio and books have at least some bottleneck where you can at least try to cut off deliberate falsehoods. I don't see how you can believe these things at the same time. If these efforts to induce ignorance are indeed so well-funded and concerted, how can bottlenecks be an obstacle? Indeed why couldn't these well-funded, concerted efforts use those bottlenecks to cut off people disagreeing with them?
- jfengel 6y ago
  I meant to suggest that if you have a few large, expensive propaganda organs, you have some hope of running your own counterpropaganda campaign: disprove it at the source, and maybe you can convince people. Of course if the money can shut you down entirely, you can't succeed. But it's hard to completely control radio and books. It can be done, but only by making your totalitarianism clear. It's more effective if people think they came to their conclusions on their own, and have been exposed to "all sides". Today, they can bolster their organized propaganda with a sufficiently effective astroturf campaign (magnified by social media). The two provide confirmation for each other, and appear to be independent. They may even actually be independent; they don't need to formally coordinate if they roughly agree on the ends. So people believe they're getting "all sides" of the story, and there's no need to shut down disagreement. Instead, people hear the message from two sources that affirm each other, and disregard any disagreement willingly.