From Mars, John Carter reports in a wonderful essay discussing the Regime’s attempts at manipulation says this: People don’t like being gaslit. The psychological techniques used by salesmen, con men, and pickup artists are highly effective right up until the point at which the target becomes aware of the game. Awareness brings emotional blowback, making further manipulation effectively impossible because the target now regards every piece of information originating from the manipulator with hostile suspicion.
It's like the banned book list of the Catholic Church and book burnings.
We learned, years ago, to go light handed on such matters. Not that a true and trusted source did not have actual authority - but that it truly is a delicate thing and that one can make mistakes. Giving guidelines and leaving it up to individual conscious is usually a much better solution except for extreme cases.
But, when your religion goes against Truth, as theirs obviously does...
All you're left with is propaganda. Ghettos and book burnings. Deplatformings, ostracizing, anathemas, etc. 'Burn the heretic!' they say.
Because, as you said, there's no middle ground any more. Lines are drawn, clear as day.
And, in the light of day, the battles will be fought.
Yeah, I have been seeing some academics proposing to do research on addressing the harm done by blogging and disinformation to 'democracy'.
Well, faculty are often very specialized thinkers, so spectacular failures in generalist thinking are a little bit common.
My reaction has been a bit 'official lies beget rumor', and 'if you have a problem with rumor, the first thing you must do is stop lying, and stop trying to wishcast your way via consensus manipulation'.
If a truth is not to your advantage, it is still true, and the cost of admitting it will always in the longest term be less than the cost of piling on lies to attempt never to experience cost or consequence.
The challenge is that one must first believe in the existence of truth.
I like referring to two continuums, though it puts me at risk of oversimplifying. One continuum is the horizontal time-line of lived experiences that humans go through, one era to the next. If only this continuum existed, opinions would all converge over a long-enough time-horizon.
But a second continuum exists with regard to human knowledge: a vertical one. The vertical continuum builds up from the base, and errors at the base get automatically incorporated into new thinking. This second continuum is philosophy, and it filters how you experience the world.
Not understanding philosophy well enough, economists ran into trouble when attempting to model Homo economicus (people who all act and think the same way, maximizing personal gain). The reason their model failed is that there is variability in the hierarchy of values which motivates people.
Have to admit, Sgt. Briggs, that the instant I see those formula or equation things, whatever they are, I become possessed by the spirit of that despondent kid in math class who hit a brick wall when algebra reared its ugly head. So muchas gracias for finishing up with the layman's bit. Gonna show how much I trust you and this crowd, trust you all not to fall out of your chairs laughing. But this is what occurred to this math moron after the read: If you have a beloved doggie at home, and it always gets the same food, store-bought stuff, best quality, keeps him healthy, he cleans his bowl, always a clean bill of health from the vet. But you start to give the good boy some variety. Today the store-bought fare, and then every other day he gets real meat, pan drippings etc. Will he at some point go on strike and refuse to eat the store-bought stuff and demand the good stuff, and in the process no longer consider you a trusted buddy?
A way to quantify distrust might be helpful, because distrust is figured up independently of the evidence for the proposition. For certain values of trust or distrust the evidence under consideration is largely irrelevant. Thus, 'nudges' only work in conditions where evidence weighing is the primary method for determining truth. But most of our internal truth calculations are based more on level of trust. This is of course, exactly the way that it should be.
"As the media got involved in the Russian war, for instance, opinions “polarized”, and we saw many Ukrainian flags in social media bios, but also new Russian ones. The great middle largely fled to the extremes. Opinions did not coalesce, but grew apart."
The thing is the regime doesn't just push pro-Ukraine disinformation -- they also push pro-Russia disinformation as seen by controlled globohomo operatives Scott Ritter, Col. MacGregor, The Saker, Andrei Martyanov, etc. It's important not to take a reflexive anti-whatever-globohomo-pushes stance as that just feeds into the overarching action-reaction-synthesis dialectic as well. It's better to step back and ask: cui bono?
According to Eustace Mullins, “the central bank owners adopted the Hegelian dialectic, the dialectic of materialism, which regards the World as Power, and the World as Reality. It denies all other powers and all other realities. It functions on the principle of thesis, antithesis and a synthesis…Thus the World Order organizes and finances Jewish groups; it then organizes and finances anti-Jewish groups; it organizes Communist groups; it then organizes and finances anti-Communist groups. It is not necessary for the Order to throw these groups against each other; they seek each other out like heat-seeking missiles and try to destroy each other. By controlling the size and resources of each group, the World Order can always predetermine the outcome. In this technique, members of the World Order are often identified with one side or the other. John Foster Dulles arranged financing for Hitler, but he was never a Nazi. David Rockefeller may be cheered in Moscow, but he is not a Communist…a distinguishing trait of a member of the World Order, although it may not be admitted, is that he does not believe in anything but the World Order. Another distinguishing trait is his absolute contempt for anyone who actually believes in the tenets of Communism, Zionism, Christianity, or any national, religious or fraternal group…If you are a sincere Christian, Zionist or Moslem, the World Order regards you as a moron unworthy of respect. You can and will be used, but you will never be respected.”
Lastly, per J.R.R. Tolkein, “The true equation is ‘democracy’ equals government by world financiers. The main mark of modern governments is that we do not know who governs, de facto any more than de jure. We see the politician and not his backer; still less the backer of the backer; or what is most important of all, the banker of the backer. Enthroned above all, in a manner without parallel in all past, is the veiled prophet of finance, swaying all men living by a sort of magic, and delivering oracles in a language not understood of the people.”
«The gist: the harder distrusted sources try to control “the narrative”, the more damage they do to the sources."»
I was saying four years ago to ban all TV, all radio, all newspapers, because they were causing major harm to the mental health of everyone. They were clearly taken by the enemy. If it was true that an emergency is enough to throw all rights out the window, we should start censoring the most obvious vector that an enemy can take control of, which are the Regime Authorized Media, which can be achieved by "poisoning the well," a far more powerful fallacy than we usually think of.
But, now I think that doing so would have protected the sources of the regime and that's not what they wanter. There was nothing to protect. As weird as it sounds, the regime wanted to harm the minds of everyone, starting with "trust," so a little bit of a sacrifice of its own sources was actually a gambit to have something better than simple censorship, which is near total distrust and confusion.
Once your eyes are open to the BS being thrown at you every day, trust is no longer an option.
It's like the banned book list of the Catholic Church and book burnings.
We learned, years ago, to go light handed on such matters. Not that a true and trusted source did not have actual authority - but that it truly is a delicate thing and that one can make mistakes. Giving guidelines and leaving it up to individual conscious is usually a much better solution except for extreme cases.
But, when your religion goes against Truth, as theirs obviously does...
All you're left with is propaganda. Ghettos and book burnings. Deplatformings, ostracizing, anathemas, etc. 'Burn the heretic!' they say.
Because, as you said, there's no middle ground any more. Lines are drawn, clear as day.
And, in the light of day, the battles will be fought.
Yeah, I have been seeing some academics proposing to do research on addressing the harm done by blogging and disinformation to 'democracy'.
Well, faculty are often very specialized thinkers, so spectacular failures in generalist thinking are a little bit common.
My reaction has been a bit 'official lies beget rumor', and 'if you have a problem with rumor, the first thing you must do is stop lying, and stop trying to wishcast your way via consensus manipulation'.
If a truth is not to your advantage, it is still true, and the cost of admitting it will always in the longest term be less than the cost of piling on lies to attempt never to experience cost or consequence.
The challenge is that one must first believe in the existence of truth.
Good stuff, Briggs.
I like referring to two continuums, though it puts me at risk of oversimplifying. One continuum is the horizontal time-line of lived experiences that humans go through, one era to the next. If only this continuum existed, opinions would all converge over a long-enough time-horizon.
But a second continuum exists with regard to human knowledge: a vertical one. The vertical continuum builds up from the base, and errors at the base get automatically incorporated into new thinking. This second continuum is philosophy, and it filters how you experience the world.
Not understanding philosophy well enough, economists ran into trouble when attempting to model Homo economicus (people who all act and think the same way, maximizing personal gain). The reason their model failed is that there is variability in the hierarchy of values which motivates people.
Have to admit, Sgt. Briggs, that the instant I see those formula or equation things, whatever they are, I become possessed by the spirit of that despondent kid in math class who hit a brick wall when algebra reared its ugly head. So muchas gracias for finishing up with the layman's bit. Gonna show how much I trust you and this crowd, trust you all not to fall out of your chairs laughing. But this is what occurred to this math moron after the read: If you have a beloved doggie at home, and it always gets the same food, store-bought stuff, best quality, keeps him healthy, he cleans his bowl, always a clean bill of health from the vet. But you start to give the good boy some variety. Today the store-bought fare, and then every other day he gets real meat, pan drippings etc. Will he at some point go on strike and refuse to eat the store-bought stuff and demand the good stuff, and in the process no longer consider you a trusted buddy?
"The gist: the harder distrusted sources try to control “the narrative”, the more damage they do to the sources."
Is math (or symbols) really necessary to explain this concept?
Isn't the narrative enough to communicate the concept?
For a non-math geek (just a regular geek like me) introducing symbolic equations does not add clarity, only confusion.
"The gist: the harder distrusted sources try to control “the narrative”, the more damage they do to the sources."
And the corollary - To the extent possible the sources will try to suppress contrary information.
A way to quantify distrust might be helpful, because distrust is figured up independently of the evidence for the proposition. For certain values of trust or distrust the evidence under consideration is largely irrelevant. Thus, 'nudges' only work in conditions where evidence weighing is the primary method for determining truth. But most of our internal truth calculations are based more on level of trust. This is of course, exactly the way that it should be.
Awesome post.
This is great. I look forward to seeing the more mathematical version.
"As the media got involved in the Russian war, for instance, opinions “polarized”, and we saw many Ukrainian flags in social media bios, but also new Russian ones. The great middle largely fled to the extremes. Opinions did not coalesce, but grew apart."
The thing is the regime doesn't just push pro-Ukraine disinformation -- they also push pro-Russia disinformation as seen by controlled globohomo operatives Scott Ritter, Col. MacGregor, The Saker, Andrei Martyanov, etc. It's important not to take a reflexive anti-whatever-globohomo-pushes stance as that just feeds into the overarching action-reaction-synthesis dialectic as well. It's better to step back and ask: cui bono?
According to Eustace Mullins, “the central bank owners adopted the Hegelian dialectic, the dialectic of materialism, which regards the World as Power, and the World as Reality. It denies all other powers and all other realities. It functions on the principle of thesis, antithesis and a synthesis…Thus the World Order organizes and finances Jewish groups; it then organizes and finances anti-Jewish groups; it organizes Communist groups; it then organizes and finances anti-Communist groups. It is not necessary for the Order to throw these groups against each other; they seek each other out like heat-seeking missiles and try to destroy each other. By controlling the size and resources of each group, the World Order can always predetermine the outcome. In this technique, members of the World Order are often identified with one side or the other. John Foster Dulles arranged financing for Hitler, but he was never a Nazi. David Rockefeller may be cheered in Moscow, but he is not a Communist…a distinguishing trait of a member of the World Order, although it may not be admitted, is that he does not believe in anything but the World Order. Another distinguishing trait is his absolute contempt for anyone who actually believes in the tenets of Communism, Zionism, Christianity, or any national, religious or fraternal group…If you are a sincere Christian, Zionist or Moslem, the World Order regards you as a moron unworthy of respect. You can and will be used, but you will never be respected.”
Globohomo owns Russia just as it much as it owns the West, unfortunately, as I've documented here: https://neofeudalreview.substack.com/p/how-real-is-the-russiaukraine-war
Lastly, per J.R.R. Tolkein, “The true equation is ‘democracy’ equals government by world financiers. The main mark of modern governments is that we do not know who governs, de facto any more than de jure. We see the politician and not his backer; still less the backer of the backer; or what is most important of all, the banker of the backer. Enthroned above all, in a manner without parallel in all past, is the veiled prophet of finance, swaying all men living by a sort of magic, and delivering oracles in a language not understood of the people.”
Math is too hard
“Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus”
False in one thing, false in everything
«The gist: the harder distrusted sources try to control “the narrative”, the more damage they do to the sources."»
I was saying four years ago to ban all TV, all radio, all newspapers, because they were causing major harm to the mental health of everyone. They were clearly taken by the enemy. If it was true that an emergency is enough to throw all rights out the window, we should start censoring the most obvious vector that an enemy can take control of, which are the Regime Authorized Media, which can be achieved by "poisoning the well," a far more powerful fallacy than we usually think of.
But, now I think that doing so would have protected the sources of the regime and that's not what they wanter. There was nothing to protect. As weird as it sounds, the regime wanted to harm the minds of everyone, starting with "trust," so a little bit of a sacrifice of its own sources was actually a gambit to have something better than simple censorship, which is near total distrust and confusion.
Matt - great to see you and the lovely bride this weekend.
This is a timely essay given our discussions regarding Mr. Jaynes' work and Anton's remembrances of Jaynes.