By simply telling people the same thing several times, almost literally word-for-word, people will go from blank stares almost miraculously to collaborating with and understanding the simplest explanations. Or else.
That's correct. It's a simple propaganda tactic but telling someone the same thing several times, almost literally word-for-word the same, works. People will start to show understanding.
I think you missed the sarcasm here. techbio's point is that by repeating something over and over, you aren't necessarily convincing people, you're just making it clear that non-belief or arguing with you about it is a dead end and they have to comply. Then you mistake their parroting your own words back at you for 'understanding'.
If I may, I would like to tell you a couple of anecdotes from a colleague of mine and myself, which lead me to notice what is going on (and made fun of up there).
That former colleague of mine, being student, once had to make presentation for Sociopsychology (some complex area outside of tech student typical field of expertise) class and he has two days to do so - he was that lazy. And all he got for his work were two dictionaries, one for Psychology and another for Sociology and nothing else. Frustrated, he repeatedly read dictionaries' definitions of keywords from the theme of his presentation, for three hours straight, as he told me. At the end of that third hour he started to somehow connect these two things together and started to look for other things that he felt are connected to the theme. Next day he had quite solid presentation sprouted from definitions from the dictionaries and common sense and knowledge. He got hard 5 for his work (top score).
I myself experience something like that when I tried to understand video compression standard - intermittently reading just glossary for several days brought me enough understanding that actual text of the standard just filled some of the not quite important gaps.
Repeating the same thing allows my vis-a-vis to connect dots he or she missed the first time, if the answer is clear misunderstanding. It allows him or her to link what I am trying to convey to his or her experience - with life, code base, user experience, etc.
And, of course, repeating not quite sensible things that cannot be ruled outright as nonsense is a propaganda tactic - and this make regular people to fall to a propaganda as they manage to connect dots that were missing.
I dont dispute that repetition does work to ingrain information. All educators, marketers, and propagandists know that.
But changing a deeply held belief, one tied to a person’s identity, is different than teaching a new concept or selling a product a shopper is reluctant to buy. It is more closely tied to political propaganda, but as Hitler proved with the Big Lie, it can change minds there as well.
I still prefer deep canvassing. It might not be a good fit for Russia, but in many places, it’s a healthy and mutually beneficial process… assuming of course the mind you are trying to change would actually benefit from the change, e.g., a dialogue that opens up a qanoner to the possibly that they have been duped.
By repeating something to people a few times you can get them to start to absorb it and eventually understand it.