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Gottlieb wanted to create a way to seize control of people's minds, and he realized it was a two-part process. First, you had to blast away the existing mind. S

Gottlieb wanted to create a way to seize control of people's minds, and he realized it was a two-part process. First, you had to blast away the existing mind. Second, you had to find a way to insert a new mind into that resulting void. You don't need LSD for this, just expose yourself to media (news, social media, "influencers", etc) and they will helpfully convince you that everything you thought before you encountered them was bad/racist/sexist/conservative/etc. They'll also give you opinions about specific groups of people, and certain people in particular (all of whom you haven't met, nor will you ever meet), and reinforce that every day you continue to consume from them. Then it's just a matter of swallowing wholesale whatever else they feed you after that. Online, platforms with downvote systems (HN included) present the apparent legitimacy of certain views over others, and help reinforce what you shouldn't be thinking or voicing (don't get greyed out by posting that!). The net result is we've sleepwalked into being controlled anyway, except that we contort ourselves justifying why "this is different".

kungito 6y ago
HN uses voting to legitimize content of higher quality and tries to avoid political discussion. What you are doing is generalizing the non-issue of most platforms allowing the silent majority to express their opinion about other people's opinions. The funnies part about people complaining about getting downvoted is that no one is even removing or preventing you from speaking their mind even if they fucking hate the opinion. On reddit some extremist groups exist for quite a long time before they get banned. Firs they want a platform, ok, then they want to silence all opposing opinions within their small garden, and then they start going to other communities to harass and impose their content which doesn't belong there after which they get banned and restart the cycle.
- ratsmack 6y ago
  >HN uses voting to legitimize content of higher quality The majority of the down votes I have seen are for disagreement, and not for the quality of the post. I have seen many comments down voted and flagged dead that were eloquently stated and/or just an opinion.
  - jlnthws 6y ago
    True. The reason is that voting and downvoting semantic is perceived differently, and people’s ego. The easiest, although imperfect, solution I think would be that downvoting costs you some karma (both the downvotee and the downvoter).
    - ratsmack 6y ago
      > downvoting costs you some karma Gab had implemented that early on, but currently I believe they eliminated down voting altogether.
  - Hoasi 6y ago
    > The majority of the down votes I have seen are for disagreement, and not for the quality of the post. It often looks like there is no other explanation than mere dislike or disagreement, which is unfair and calls for improvement. My policy: never downvote any post, and on the contrary, upvote posts that are contrary to my views but have merit and thus are worthy of consideration. I wish there were better ways to highlight thought-provoking posts, yet moderation is essential. A popular voting system is better than nothing. Let's compare this with the ability to block people on Twitter just because they disagree with you. That's stupid and not conducive to having a discussion—but then again, this wasn't the point of Twitter in the first place. At the same time, this is also a blessing for people who want to avoid negativity. In the long run, ignoring problems doesn't make them disappear. Suppressing exposure to bad ideas also comes at the cost of blocking the unpopular good ones.
    - pjc50 6y ago
      Blocking on Twitter is a necessary minimum to avoid the abuse and death threats. You can't have a discussion there because (unlike HN) there's no strong pressure to basic civility.
  - pjc50 6y ago
    Mere opinion is not very valuable. If you want to post something that goes against the grain and actually convince people, you have to tailor it to the audience.
- kortilla 6y ago
  The silent majority is pretty fucking stupid as a whole. It’s hard to have an informed populous when they are allowed to censor the stories that make their emotions feel bad. It’s like allowing grade schoolers to vote on what they eat for lunch every day. As a reddit user, this is what you’re dealing with. The non-college educated majority has control over the following things: - what politics you see - what comments you see - what science you see - what news you see It’s going to take a while, but one of the emerging lessons of this era is that democracy for information spreading is a pretty terrible idea. Ted the conspiracy enthusiast/barista maybe shouldn’t have the same voting power on a comment thread about orbital dynamics as an astrophysicist.
  - OneGuy123 6y ago
    > The non-college educated majority... Ironicaly the college educated way overrate themself on how objectively they see the world and think they know better than the rest, but they fail to see the forest for the tree just as often as non-college educated. College does not give you the ability to see objectivity, it just increases knowledge across a specific field. See: reproductability crisis.
    - kortilla 6y ago
      College is the only level of education where they even attempt to teach critical thinking skills. It’s definitely not a high success rate, but it’s better than the rote memorization that comes from high school level. What’s left is self taught which is a tiny slice of both populations. > See: reproductability crisis. That has no relationship to college education. The reproducibility crisis impacts the quality of research for PhD programs. It has nothing to do with spending time learning logic and philosophy that hasn’t changed for hundreds to thousands of years. The fact that you think the reproducibility crisis has anything to do with a college education sort of proves the point...
  - WildParser 6y ago
    Yes, the system doesn't work. When Usenet died it got replaced by forums and the old trolls got granted admin rights. The non-sane people that have a lot of time to post all day end up with the highest reputation and privileges. On the other hand closed groups of experts also don't work. I once knew some really extreme religious guys - pretty much flat-earthers. They were all heading for bioscience and networked like crazy - they got jobs in academia. Lonely brilliant scientists didn't. Most likely a lot of science-communities have already been overrun by "networks".. Maybe the era of rational thinking is coming to an end.
DoreenMichele 6y ago
Online, platforms with downvote systems (HN included) present the apparent legitimacy of certain views over others, and help reinforce what you shouldn't be thinking or voicing (don't get greyed out by posting that!). Corrective upvotes are a tradition on HN. If you aren't being an asshole, some people will upvote you back to neutral if they think you are being downvoted for the wrong reasons. You just have to have a little courage of conviction and patience and not start editing your post in reaction to voting or complaining about it, etc. HN does a much better job than most platforms of allowing people to genuinely express a minority view -- assuming they can follow the guidelines and not bitch about the voting and not get reactive and inflammatory because of baggage, etc. It's not an easy thing to do, but it can be done here, unlike most platforms.
- rorykoehler 6y ago
  My own personal experience is that opinions on topics are geographical cargo cults. Upvoted by Europeans in the morning and downvoted by Americans in the afternoon or vice versa.
  - DoreenMichele 6y ago
    And my personal experience is that some percentage of my comments are downvoted immediately and then upvoted to neutral -- as was the case here. I imagine if you interviewed all 5 million visitors you would get about 5 million different experiences. (That's not to dismiss your experience at all.)
    - rorykoehler 6y ago
      We could be experiencing the same phenomenon
      - DoreenMichele 6y ago
        I have also noticed that probably Europe and the US vote somewhat differently on at least some of my comments. But I think that's a separate pattern from the tendency for some of my comments to be immediately downvoted and then voted back to neutral. It tends to be certain kinds of comments and unlike almost everything else about HN, I am usually not surprised by that pattern because I tend to expect it for certain topics or certain types of observations that I sometimes make. I have a really poor ability to predict which comments of mine will do really well. I have a really poor ability to predict which articles I submit will do really well. I have a reasonably good ability to predict which comments will be promptly downvoted and then get corrective upvotes.
friendlybus 6y ago
Yes that's all true and we are sleepwalking into being controlled. Creating a news website without a regular set of themes that show up again and again is very difficult. Any control mechanism will allow some themes and remove others. The best outcome is people knowing what they're signing up for, when they read any given news source. The old order has fallen apart, I don't know what life their is left outside the metaphysical forces which tie us down.
thatguy0900 6y ago
Hn is especially obnoxious by making downvoted posts physically harder to read by lowering the text contrast. Just seems insulting.
captainmuon 6y ago
> just expose yourself to media (news, social media, "influencers", etc) and they will helpfully convince you that everything you thought before you encountered them was bad/racist/sexist/conservative/etc. I wish this was true. I actually feel that racism, sexism, reactionary thought is on the rise. If it seems that liberal ideas are becoming dominant in the public space, it is actually because 1) liberals are starting to feel with their back against the wall, and are reacting in the field where they have the most power, the discursive sphere. And 2) people are finally finding the courage to speak out again about issues that have been plaguing us for centuries (see MeToo and Black Lives Matter). And to put on a tinfoil hat and risk being downvoted: I don't buy the "social media is manipulating us poor people" narrative. That is a spin encouraged by the traditional media who see their share of the cake being endangered. They are used to be, well, "media", mediating between the public sphere and the people. With social media connecting people directly, they have a kind of existential crisis. What actually is happening is that social media amplifies and brings out what people are actually thinking, and in many cases that is a cesspool of hate and conspiracy theory - all across the political spectrum. We didn't see it before because traditional "media" chose what to amplify and what not, and kept a lid on it.
OneGuy123 6y ago
This is why 4chan is great: no accounts, no up or downvotes. You will find all kind of people there, each topic will be explored from 300 different perspectives.
- kthxbye123 6y ago
  290 of which are “how do we solve the Jewish Problem”
  - f1refly 6y ago
    4chan consists of more boards than /pol/
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
jonathanstrange 6y ago
That's complete and utter conspiracy nonsense because control implicates intentions, but the media - and especially social media - are not directed by a uniform actor with intentions. What you're insinuating to be mind control are normal social mechanisms that have always been in place and have nothing to do with the media. They are primarily exerted upon you by your peers (close friends, family, colleagues), and not by the media. Whether these social control mechanisms are good or bad depends on the how closed these groups are and what view/policies they have. For example, if you're surrounded by religious fanatics, then that's likely going to be bad for you. What you refer to is actually an "alt right" meme that was invented to discredit free thinking (free thinking requires people to be well-informed) and push an authoritarian and communitarian agenda in which people are more controlled than in a free society. It's a fascist agenda that only works if you successfully discredit media first, since otherwise nobody will buy the "alternative facts" nonsense they're trying to sell.
- pjc50 6y ago
  > the media - and especially social media - are not directed by a uniform actor with intentions. Well .. in some cases they are; Fox, Sky, News Corp Au. (many local newspapers in Australia), the UK Sun, Times, the WSJ, HarperCollins, and some talk radio stations are all owned by News Corp under Murdoch control and have at times been used to promote his personal politics, endorse parties, bully governments into accepting particular policies, and so on.
- throwaway743 6y ago
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_model https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_model https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird Media companies are businesses driven by profits and content, from advertisers and sources (at times supposed) who must be kept happy.
- txmachinery 6y ago
  "The media" and "social media" may not be controlled by a single actor, but it's common knowledge that large enough chunks of both can be and often are. For example, the conspiracy theory that Russia rigged the 2016 election for Trump is based on this premise. There is also a widely-accepted partisan divide between the encumbent news sources on the left, and Fox and newer so-called "fringe" or "alt" news sources on the right. These in fact aren't correctly fringe or alt - at least in the US - as clearly very close to or more than half of the US population for the past decade has indicated they have political beliefs aligned with them. It's therefore as disingenuous to attempt to delegitimize "alt right" media by referring to it thusly, just as it may br for right-leaning media to do the same by referring to the left as "fake news". With this example, both sides are behaving in uniform ways exactly typical of unified, single-actor control, respective to each. If the Russian conspiracy is true, the premise that single-actor control is possible is accepted, as it therefore happened with enough force to alter a major an election. If it isn't, then half of the US is legitimately right-leaning, making the labelling of their mainstream news sources as "fringe" or "alt" or "extreme" indeed tantamount to "fake news". Either way, it's mistaken to believe it impossible for the control of single actor to be enacted upon a large enough portion of the media to achieve widespread adoption of their agenda. In effect, your last paragraph directly contradicts your first.
AntiImperialist 6y ago
On a related note: one of the funniest things as a non-westerner to me is that a majority of westerners are convinced that when they vote, if they vote for policies that favor their own country, their own well-being, it is wrong. Here's a hint for those who are struggling: if you're convinced that you should vote against yourself, you've been brainwashed by your enemies. To those who are feeling anger after reading my comment: that's the trauma trapped in your body being triggered. That's what consumes your intellectual abilities and that is exactly what keeps the brainwashing in. It helps to be centered (i.e. find your safe place, find peace in your relationships, family or whatever personal/emotional issues you're struggling with, because it is negative feelings that you hold in your body, which is used to brainwash you)... and then when you're relaxed, the reality becomes more clear.
- andruby 6y ago
  Some westerners don't identify strongly with a specific country. I am one of those. We might consider the "good" of "all" people above the good of our country. When that is your mindset, voting for policies that favor your own country, your own well-being can in fact feel wrong, if it is at the cost of other people's well-being.
  - AntiImperialist 6y ago
    Greater good is often used as a reason to grab power from individuals, whether it is by foreign nations, corporations or even other national government. I am not talking about that. Groups exist for a reason. The biggest reason is that other groups exist. You can either be attacked by those or join them or create your own. Your group can be a political one, which in some cases may end up having their own nation state. If the group can defend a territory and its resources, sustain it, and gain respect, other groups may eventually acknowledge it. You may take these for granted but these things are not set in stone, they're fluid. Many people in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Palentine think they are a nation state. Most other nation state don't acknowledge them as such... mostly because they're not powerful enough. You can deny or devalue your own nationality but what you cannot deny is that nation states exist and they have incredible power, because they have to have at least enough power to defend and sustain themselves. They are definitely not the only organized power structures, but they are major ones. Maybe Open Society Foundation is right. Maybe all borders should be open, everything should be controlled by shared ideals with one world government and efficient open economy. They seem to think they have ways to make that work. Maybe they can. But until and unless they do that, we have to live with the ones we have, which grant the citizens certain rights and protections and subjects them to laws and regulations in exchange. What I am talking about in my previous comment is not these things. I'm talking about the brainwashing by various forces (Open Society Foundation being one of them), which have made nationalism repulsive... by using simple brainwashing techniques. Most of these people would not be able to have a rational conversation about cost/benefits of having nation states or favoring your nation. They're triggered into an emotional response when the topic comes up.
kthxbye123 6y ago
So true. When someone gets mad at me online for saying that black people have genetically bad IQs or that it’s ok to run over protestors with my car, that’s the dark hand of the CIA at work.
simias 6y ago
I can't make sense of what you're saying. All voting/moderation systems are flawed one way or the other, but what's the alternative? The only I can think of is complete anarchy and no moderation at all, and I know that some people think that it's the solution, but spending a few hours on 4chan or some other "free speech maximalist" forum should tell you that it doesn't usually generate very high quality discussion. Outrageous "loud" takes take over and more nuanced and developed arguments get buried. I really don't believe "they" are feeding us anything. "They" is "us", all it takes is some self discipline if you're unhappy with your exchanges online. I never had a Twitter account, never browse the website, yet I live. Crazy, I know.
specialist 6y ago
I've intentionally reprogrammed myself (at least) two times. Three takeaways: #1 How we talk changes how we think. This is how propaganda works. We're somehow hard wired for sociability, cooperation. Something about our mirror neurons, theory of mind, and empathy. #2 Our minds strive to maintain equilibrium. There's an immune system like resistance to change, of any kind. The backfire effect of persuasion must be somehow related to this. And yet, successful propaganda, persuasion somehow bypasses our defenses. Maybe we have an evolutionary glitch, where fearful stressed out people are more malleable. #3 We don't remember changing our minds. This is terrifies me. Swarm Intelligence [2001] explanation of social cognition cites the research about our amnesia. My guess is that forgetting is somehow necessary for learning. https://www.amazon.com/Intelligence-Morgan-Kaufmann-Evolutionary-Computation/dp/1558605959/ https://www.amazon.com/Intelligence-Morgan-Kaufmann-Evolutio... -- Please (!) share more recent explanations for the neuroscience of propaganda, cults, persuasion, and so forth. The only hopeful, optimistic stuff I've read recently is about de-radicalization and successful cult deprogramming. TLDR: Empathy, tenacity, and patience.
misja111 6y ago
You even forgot one major system that controls what we are seeing: Google search. Just give some other search engine (e.g. DuckDuckGo or SwissCows) a try for a few days and you'll see what I mean.
- AndrewBissell 6y ago
  Even Wikipedia is an avenue of narrative control. As a good example, their article on Reinhard Gehlen (Nazi intelligence officer who was recruited to head Western intelligence efforts in Eastern Europe after the war) is completely lacking in any mention of his war crimes in Soviet Russia, but dutifully repeats his own claim to have been involved in the plot to assassinate Hitler.
alexilliamson 6y ago
> "just expose yourself to media (news, social media, "influencers", etc) and they will helpfully convince you that everything you thought before you encountered them was bad/racist/sexist/conservative/etc. Or on the flip side, turn your dial to Rush Limbaugh or Tucker Carlson and be convinced that NOTHING you've ever said or done as a Patriotic American is bad/problematic.

kungito 6y ago

HN uses voting to legitimize content of higher quality and tries to avoid political discussion. What you are doing is generalizing the non-issue of most platforms allowing the silent majority to express their opinion about other people's opinions. The funnies part about people complaining about getting downvoted is that no one is even removing or preventing you from speaking their mind even if they fucking hate the opinion. On reddit some extremist groups exist for quite a long time before they get banned. Firs they want a platform, ok, then they want to silence all opposing opinions within their small garden, and then they start going to other communities to harass and impose their content which doesn't belong there after which they get banned and restart the cycle.

ratsmack 6y ago
>HN uses voting to legitimize content of higher quality The majority of the down votes I have seen are for disagreement, and not for the quality of the post. I have seen many comments down voted and flagged dead that were eloquently stated and/or just an opinion.
- jlnthws 6y ago
  True. The reason is that voting and downvoting semantic is perceived differently, and people’s ego. The easiest, although imperfect, solution I think would be that downvoting costs you some karma (both the downvotee and the downvoter).
  - ratsmack 6y ago
    > downvoting costs you some karma Gab had implemented that early on, but currently I believe they eliminated down voting altogether.
- Hoasi 6y ago
  > The majority of the down votes I have seen are for disagreement, and not for the quality of the post. It often looks like there is no other explanation than mere dislike or disagreement, which is unfair and calls for improvement. My policy: never downvote any post, and on the contrary, upvote posts that are contrary to my views but have merit and thus are worthy of consideration. I wish there were better ways to highlight thought-provoking posts, yet moderation is essential. A popular voting system is better than nothing. Let's compare this with the ability to block people on Twitter just because they disagree with you. That's stupid and not conducive to having a discussion—but then again, this wasn't the point of Twitter in the first place. At the same time, this is also a blessing for people who want to avoid negativity. In the long run, ignoring problems doesn't make them disappear. Suppressing exposure to bad ideas also comes at the cost of blocking the unpopular good ones.
  - pjc50 6y ago
    Blocking on Twitter is a necessary minimum to avoid the abuse and death threats. You can't have a discussion there because (unlike HN) there's no strong pressure to basic civility.
- pjc50 6y ago
  Mere opinion is not very valuable. If you want to post something that goes against the grain and actually convince people, you have to tailor it to the audience.
kortilla 6y ago
The silent majority is pretty fucking stupid as a whole. It’s hard to have an informed populous when they are allowed to censor the stories that make their emotions feel bad. It’s like allowing grade schoolers to vote on what they eat for lunch every day. As a reddit user, this is what you’re dealing with. The non-college educated majority has control over the following things: - what politics you see - what comments you see - what science you see - what news you see It’s going to take a while, but one of the emerging lessons of this era is that democracy for information spreading is a pretty terrible idea. Ted the conspiracy enthusiast/barista maybe shouldn’t have the same voting power on a comment thread about orbital dynamics as an astrophysicist.
- OneGuy123 6y ago
  > The non-college educated majority... Ironicaly the college educated way overrate themself on how objectively they see the world and think they know better than the rest, but they fail to see the forest for the tree just as often as non-college educated. College does not give you the ability to see objectivity, it just increases knowledge across a specific field. See: reproductability crisis.
  - kortilla 6y ago
    College is the only level of education where they even attempt to teach critical thinking skills. It’s definitely not a high success rate, but it’s better than the rote memorization that comes from high school level. What’s left is self taught which is a tiny slice of both populations. > See: reproductability crisis. That has no relationship to college education. The reproducibility crisis impacts the quality of research for PhD programs. It has nothing to do with spending time learning logic and philosophy that hasn’t changed for hundreds to thousands of years. The fact that you think the reproducibility crisis has anything to do with a college education sort of proves the point...
- WildParser 6y ago
  Yes, the system doesn't work. When Usenet died it got replaced by forums and the old trolls got granted admin rights. The non-sane people that have a lot of time to post all day end up with the highest reputation and privileges. On the other hand closed groups of experts also don't work. I once knew some really extreme religious guys - pretty much flat-earthers. They were all heading for bioscience and networked like crazy - they got jobs in academia. Lonely brilliant scientists didn't. Most likely a lot of science-communities have already been overrun by "networks".. Maybe the era of rational thinking is coming to an end.

DoreenMichele 6y ago

Online, platforms with downvote systems (HN included) present the apparent legitimacy of certain views over others, and help reinforce what you shouldn't be thinking or voicing (don't get greyed out by posting that!). Corrective upvotes are a tradition on HN. If you aren't being an asshole, some people will upvote you back to neutral if they think you are being downvoted for the wrong reasons. You just have to have a little courage of conviction and patience and not start editing your post in reaction to voting or complaining about it, etc. HN does a much better job than most platforms of allowing people to genuinely express a minority view -- assuming they can follow the guidelines and not bitch about the voting and not get reactive and inflammatory because of baggage, etc. It's not an easy thing to do, but it can be done here, unlike most platforms.

rorykoehler 6y ago
My own personal experience is that opinions on topics are geographical cargo cults. Upvoted by Europeans in the morning and downvoted by Americans in the afternoon or vice versa.
- DoreenMichele 6y ago
  And my personal experience is that some percentage of my comments are downvoted immediately and then upvoted to neutral -- as was the case here. I imagine if you interviewed all 5 million visitors you would get about 5 million different experiences. (That's not to dismiss your experience at all.)
  - rorykoehler 6y ago
    We could be experiencing the same phenomenon
    - DoreenMichele 6y ago
      I have also noticed that probably Europe and the US vote somewhat differently on at least some of my comments. But I think that's a separate pattern from the tendency for some of my comments to be immediately downvoted and then voted back to neutral. It tends to be certain kinds of comments and unlike almost everything else about HN, I am usually not surprised by that pattern because I tend to expect it for certain topics or certain types of observations that I sometimes make. I have a really poor ability to predict which comments of mine will do really well. I have a really poor ability to predict which articles I submit will do really well. I have a reasonably good ability to predict which comments will be promptly downvoted and then get corrective upvotes.

friendlybus 6y ago

Yes that's all true and we are sleepwalking into being controlled. Creating a news website without a regular set of themes that show up again and again is very difficult. Any control mechanism will allow some themes and remove others. The best outcome is people knowing what they're signing up for, when they read any given news source. The old order has fallen apart, I don't know what life their is left outside the metaphysical forces which tie us down.

thatguy0900 6y ago

Hn is especially obnoxious by making downvoted posts physically harder to read by lowering the text contrast. Just seems insulting.

captainmuon 6y ago

> just expose yourself to media (news, social media, "influencers", etc) and they will helpfully convince you that everything you thought before you encountered them was bad/racist/sexist/conservative/etc. I wish this was true. I actually feel that racism, sexism, reactionary thought is on the rise. If it seems that liberal ideas are becoming dominant in the public space, it is actually because 1) liberals are starting to feel with their back against the wall, and are reacting in the field where they have the most power, the discursive sphere. And 2) people are finally finding the courage to speak out again about issues that have been plaguing us for centuries (see MeToo and Black Lives Matter). And to put on a tinfoil hat and risk being downvoted: I don't buy the "social media is manipulating us poor people" narrative. That is a spin encouraged by the traditional media who see their share of the cake being endangered. They are used to be, well, "media", mediating between the public sphere and the people. With social media connecting people directly, they have a kind of existential crisis. What actually is happening is that social media amplifies and brings out what people are actually thinking, and in many cases that is a cesspool of hate and conspiracy theory - all across the political spectrum. We didn't see it before because traditional "media" chose what to amplify and what not, and kept a lid on it.

OneGuy123 6y ago

This is why 4chan is great: no accounts, no up or downvotes. You will find all kind of people there, each topic will be explored from 300 different perspectives.

kthxbye123 6y ago
290 of which are “how do we solve the Jewish Problem”
- f1refly 6y ago
  4chan consists of more boards than /pol/
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]

jonathanstrange 6y ago

That's complete and utter conspiracy nonsense because control implicates intentions, but the media - and especially social media - are not directed by a uniform actor with intentions. What you're insinuating to be mind control are normal social mechanisms that have always been in place and have nothing to do with the media. They are primarily exerted upon you by your peers (close friends, family, colleagues), and not by the media. Whether these social control mechanisms are good or bad depends on the how closed these groups are and what view/policies they have. For example, if you're surrounded by religious fanatics, then that's likely going to be bad for you. What you refer to is actually an "alt right" meme that was invented to discredit free thinking (free thinking requires people to be well-informed) and push an authoritarian and communitarian agenda in which people are more controlled than in a free society. It's a fascist agenda that only works if you successfully discredit media first, since otherwise nobody will buy the "alternative facts" nonsense they're trying to sell.

pjc50 6y ago
> the media - and especially social media - are not directed by a uniform actor with intentions. Well .. in some cases they are; Fox, Sky, News Corp Au. (many local newspapers in Australia), the UK Sun, Times, the WSJ, HarperCollins, and some talk radio stations are all owned by News Corp under Murdoch control and have at times been used to promote his personal politics, endorse parties, bully governments into accepting particular policies, and so on.
throwaway743 6y ago
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_model https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_model https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird Media companies are businesses driven by profits and content, from advertisers and sources (at times supposed) who must be kept happy.
txmachinery 6y ago
"The media" and "social media" may not be controlled by a single actor, but it's common knowledge that large enough chunks of both can be and often are. For example, the conspiracy theory that Russia rigged the 2016 election for Trump is based on this premise. There is also a widely-accepted partisan divide between the encumbent news sources on the left, and Fox and newer so-called "fringe" or "alt" news sources on the right. These in fact aren't correctly fringe or alt - at least in the US - as clearly very close to or more than half of the US population for the past decade has indicated they have political beliefs aligned with them. It's therefore as disingenuous to attempt to delegitimize "alt right" media by referring to it thusly, just as it may br for right-leaning media to do the same by referring to the left as "fake news". With this example, both sides are behaving in uniform ways exactly typical of unified, single-actor control, respective to each. If the Russian conspiracy is true, the premise that single-actor control is possible is accepted, as it therefore happened with enough force to alter a major an election. If it isn't, then half of the US is legitimately right-leaning, making the labelling of their mainstream news sources as "fringe" or "alt" or "extreme" indeed tantamount to "fake news". Either way, it's mistaken to believe it impossible for the control of single actor to be enacted upon a large enough portion of the media to achieve widespread adoption of their agenda. In effect, your last paragraph directly contradicts your first.

AntiImperialist 6y ago

On a related note: one of the funniest things as a non-westerner to me is that a majority of westerners are convinced that when they vote, if they vote for policies that favor their own country, their own well-being, it is wrong. Here's a hint for those who are struggling: if you're convinced that you should vote against yourself, you've been brainwashed by your enemies. To those who are feeling anger after reading my comment: that's the trauma trapped in your body being triggered. That's what consumes your intellectual abilities and that is exactly what keeps the brainwashing in. It helps to be centered (i.e. find your safe place, find peace in your relationships, family or whatever personal/emotional issues you're struggling with, because it is negative feelings that you hold in your body, which is used to brainwash you)... and then when you're relaxed, the reality becomes more clear.

andruby 6y ago
Some westerners don't identify strongly with a specific country. I am one of those. We might consider the "good" of "all" people above the good of our country. When that is your mindset, voting for policies that favor your own country, your own well-being can in fact feel wrong, if it is at the cost of other people's well-being.
- AntiImperialist 6y ago
  Greater good is often used as a reason to grab power from individuals, whether it is by foreign nations, corporations or even other national government. I am not talking about that. Groups exist for a reason. The biggest reason is that other groups exist. You can either be attacked by those or join them or create your own. Your group can be a political one, which in some cases may end up having their own nation state. If the group can defend a territory and its resources, sustain it, and gain respect, other groups may eventually acknowledge it. You may take these for granted but these things are not set in stone, they're fluid. Many people in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Palentine think they are a nation state. Most other nation state don't acknowledge them as such... mostly because they're not powerful enough. You can deny or devalue your own nationality but what you cannot deny is that nation states exist and they have incredible power, because they have to have at least enough power to defend and sustain themselves. They are definitely not the only organized power structures, but they are major ones. Maybe Open Society Foundation is right. Maybe all borders should be open, everything should be controlled by shared ideals with one world government and efficient open economy. They seem to think they have ways to make that work. Maybe they can. But until and unless they do that, we have to live with the ones we have, which grant the citizens certain rights and protections and subjects them to laws and regulations in exchange. What I am talking about in my previous comment is not these things. I'm talking about the brainwashing by various forces (Open Society Foundation being one of them), which have made nationalism repulsive... by using simple brainwashing techniques. Most of these people would not be able to have a rational conversation about cost/benefits of having nation states or favoring your nation. They're triggered into an emotional response when the topic comes up.

kthxbye123 6y ago

So true. When someone gets mad at me online for saying that black people have genetically bad IQs or that it’s ok to run over protestors with my car, that’s the dark hand of the CIA at work.

simias 6y ago

I can't make sense of what you're saying. All voting/moderation systems are flawed one way or the other, but what's the alternative? The only I can think of is complete anarchy and no moderation at all, and I know that some people think that it's the solution, but spending a few hours on 4chan or some other "free speech maximalist" forum should tell you that it doesn't usually generate very high quality discussion. Outrageous "loud" takes take over and more nuanced and developed arguments get buried. I really don't believe "they" are feeding us anything. "They" is "us", all it takes is some self discipline if you're unhappy with your exchanges online. I never had a Twitter account, never browse the website, yet I live. Crazy, I know.

specialist 6y ago

I've intentionally reprogrammed myself (at least) two times. Three takeaways: #1 How we talk changes how we think. This is how propaganda works. We're somehow hard wired for sociability, cooperation. Something about our mirror neurons, theory of mind, and empathy. #2 Our minds strive to maintain equilibrium. There's an immune system like resistance to change, of any kind. The backfire effect of persuasion must be somehow related to this. And yet, successful propaganda, persuasion somehow bypasses our defenses. Maybe we have an evolutionary glitch, where fearful stressed out people are more malleable. #3 We don't remember changing our minds. This is terrifies me. Swarm Intelligence [2001] explanation of social cognition cites the research about our amnesia. My guess is that forgetting is somehow necessary for learning. https://www.amazon.com/Intelligence-Morgan-Kaufmann-Evolutionary-Computation/dp/1558605959/ https://www.amazon.com/Intelligence-Morgan-Kaufmann-Evolutio... -- Please (!) share more recent explanations for the neuroscience of propaganda, cults, persuasion, and so forth. The only hopeful, optimistic stuff I've read recently is about de-radicalization and successful cult deprogramming. TLDR: Empathy, tenacity, and patience.

misja111 6y ago

You even forgot one major system that controls what we are seeing: Google search. Just give some other search engine (e.g. DuckDuckGo or SwissCows) a try for a few days and you'll see what I mean.

AndrewBissell 6y ago
Even Wikipedia is an avenue of narrative control. As a good example, their article on Reinhard Gehlen (Nazi intelligence officer who was recruited to head Western intelligence efforts in Eastern Europe after the war) is completely lacking in any mention of his war crimes in Soviet Russia, but dutifully repeats his own claim to have been involved in the plot to assassinate Hitler.

alexilliamson 6y ago

> "just expose yourself to media (news, social media, "influencers", etc) and they will helpfully convince you that everything you thought before you encountered them was bad/racist/sexist/conservative/etc. Or on the flip side, turn your dial to Rush Limbaugh or Tucker Carlson and be convinced that NOTHING you've ever said or done as a Patriotic American is bad/problematic.