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There has to be a good reason why psychological warfare is used, including by the United States in periods like the Vietnam War. The expectation is that stateme
by nonbirithm 6y ago
There has to be a good reason why psychological warfare is used, including by the United States in periods like the Vietnam War. The expectation is that statements written on paper or recited through loudspeakers or similar influence people's thoughts, which influences what actions they will take. Those actions are supposed to be beneficial to the forces scattering them from a helicopter or posting them on walls. They're trying to get you to do something regardless of what your preexisting thoughts are beforehand.
Now tear down the pieces of propaganda and burn them. Is this censorship?
I think human brains are sufficiently able to be hacked by the right information. With certain kinds of information, those people could end up causing material harm to someone who is completely uninvolved. That is the ultimate danger that I believe YouTube and the like are trying to avoid, and if true it would be an admittance of a sort that some kinds of information are dangerous to some kinds of people. The name "psychological warfare" implies that communication can be weaponized, in a sense. Certain people do not change their ways regardless of what you try to tell them.
I think the issue is centered not around people trying to have a reasoned debate, but those who have been lost to debate more or less permanently. Previously, you couldn't scatter this kind of information about on the scale were seeing today, and also recommend similar content using very effective algorithms. The more millions of people the content reaches, the more latent believers it will reach and end up converting, even if the conversion rate is a fraction of a percent. And many of these people are very vocal.
In a sense, the content takedown seems like an attempt to counteract the fact that the algorithms are too effective of a medium for misinformation. I don't think we would have seen this kind of scale with books or flyers.
- lopmotr 6y ago>algorithms are too effective How effective are they? Just because social media keeps promoting people who promote those ideas doesn't mean they're actually widely and strongly held. If you really care about misinformation, you'd be more worried about Islam which is explicitly sexist, homophobic, anti-Semitic, anti-science, and supremacist and those beliefs aren't just written in a book somewhere, they're held by most common Muslims. How are we going to eliminate that with censorship when the censors themselves believe it's a good belief? We need smarter people to have the power of censorship so they can distinguish the truly dangerous beliefs from the transient swings of popular culture.
- maccard 6y agoThis is one of the most shallow and outright racist comments I've ever seen on this site.
- newfriend 6y agoIslam isn't a race. If you criticize Christianity, or Hinduism, or Buddhism, or yes, even Islamism, you aren't being racist.
- skinnymuch 6y agoThe poster meant bigoted. This is pedantic.
- maccard 6y agoI did. Thank you.
- skinnymuch 6y agoHah people correcting racism on a technicality but not at all addressing the bigotry issue is a personal pet peeve of mine. Anti intellectual in my humble opinion
- rayiner 6y agoThis is mostly true but the three religions you mention aren’t parallel in this respect. Apostasy in Islam is (typically) defined as someone who leaves Islam after being born into a Muslim family or previously accepting Islam: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apostasy_in_Islam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apostasy_in_Islam. So it’s not a race or ethnicity, but in a theological and practical sense people are “born Muslim.” Put differently, separation of ethnic group, language, and religion are less well-defined in many parts of the world than it is among people of European descent.
- skolsuper 6y agoYou left a certain major world religion off your list that counters your argument... Accident?
- chordalkeyboard 6y ago> I think the issue is centered not around people trying to have a reasoned debate, but those who have been lost to debate more or less permanently. Previously, you couldn't scatter this kind of information about on the scale were seeing today you and I couldn't. Oligarchs and their governments could and did. The difference is that now their position is threatened by the democratization of information warfare.