[uxcolumbo]

> The reason political propaganda is often more effective is the easy exploitation of negative caricatures combined with ingroup/outgroup effects and the errors of our brains.

Yes - spot on. And this was used during the Trump and Brexit campaigns.

However, brainwashing to me is when you can turn someone who originally is far away from your side and make them come over to your side. So maybe we just have a different definition of it.

I hope we can agree though that Trump was not good for the US - he created a lot of damage and used those tactics you mentioned to create division and in-fighting, which benefits the status quo and hinders societal progress.

I always wonder how can you ensure that people get factual information and how to change the system so politicians lose their jobs if they deliberately spread misinformation or lie. It's key for having a functioning democracy, voters need accurate and factual information.

[cf141q5325]

Agree on the not so great again and the need for a honest inquiry for factual information. Its just that i think some of that stuff is caricatures itself. Q-Anon for example is more or less crack. Here is a game developer describing it https://medium.com/curiouserinstitute/a-game-designers-analy...

>It’s not that strange actually. In fact, the difference between apophenia and science is just the scientific process and the reliance on proof. People make the connection before they know for a fact if it’s real or not. Maybe it is apophenia, maybe not. It’s a hypothesis. THEN YOU TEST IT. The facts determine the outcome and then, whether it feels good or not, you accept them. Even scientists may not want to let go of a good theory that just isn’t panning out. The feeling of correctness is over-powering. This is why people need to have peer-reviews. Colleagues need to be able to replicate results. Solutions need to be tested and the facts harnessed.

>In Q, the proof is more apophenia! Another arrow in the dirt in an endless cycle back to the central propaganda. It has to because there is no truth. The answer is whatever feels the best, makes the most sense, and helps the story. Any truth is just fuel for the propaganda and reinforces the conclusions of the apophenia and central narrative.

>It feels like it’s really happening. It especially seems so when cheered on by a curated fake “community” clapping you on the back and telling you you are a hero for every radical leap into the void you make.

Being opposed to something like this is very easy. And at the same time the ability to figure stuff out without political framing gets harder and harder as well. Its made only worse with propaganda on the political level being also very profitable. And even stuff with good intentions backfires.

Its a clusterfuck all around, stuff gets more and more complicated. We havent solved scaling problems in software development or companies and it seems political discourse cant handle either. In addition to problems becoming too complicated, you also have to stay realistic. If you just fire every politicians dealing with disinformation you have the old problem of replacing everyone with some magic competent new humans with authoritarians meanwhile racing onwards. Give people certain incentives and its hard to behave differently. People want to get reelected and peoples opinions are very easily swayed with some well made propaganda.

On the bright side, this should all be a rather easy fix as long as we can agree on meaning well and reality mattering more then wanting to feel right. Because that is how a really nice made frame looks and you might have to let go and try to be rational for a moment.

edit: tldr: Any attempt to ban missinformation would likely be a terrible idea, we will have to agree to wanting to fix it instead. And that is hopefully just a question of tooling.

[uxcolumbo]

I have to read up on the ancient Greeks and the origins of democracy.

And yes agree - banning misinformation isn't the answer.

So what are the solutions - how do make sure propaganda doesn't bubble to the top, but facts and truthful information does - so people can make informed decisions.

How do you avoid people like Trump, i.e. narcissistic self serving people rising to power and subverting democracy.

[krapp]

You can't simply expect truth to win. History shows time and again that a lie can circle the world a hundred times before the truth even gets its shoes on. Misinformation is viral, information is not. Lies are simple, the truth is often complicated. Charismatic con men and charlatans appealing to base emotion, rumors and conspiracy theories often short circuit reason and rationality in ways that a presentation of facts to the contrary can't repair.

If your top priority is ensuring the playing field is always even between truth and lies, and that lies are always given a fair shake, then you're just rigging the game for lies. The truth only wins and holds precedence in an environment where lies can be recognized and fought against, and prevented from manifesting their own reality bubbles.

Banning misinformation alone isn't enough, and yes it can certainly be abused, but it is necessary.

[cf141q5325]

>Banning misinformation alone isn't enough, and yes it can certainly be abused, but it is necessary.

Its impossible. And its one of the most dangerous and insidious ideas out there. To put it quite bluntly, you arent competent enough to determine for other people what is true and what is fake. And neither is anyone else. Its the reason we had informed consent, because without it, idiots thinking to do "the right thing" historically time and time again inflict horrible fates upon those deemed not smart enough to make decisions for themselves.

I understand that you want it to work, or even feel it needs to work, but reality quite simply doesnt give a crap about what anyone feels "should or needs to work".

This might look like a stupid disagreement, but quite frankly, this is the line in the sand towards totalitarian dystopias. If you were competent enough to make that decision, you would be competent enough to explain why something is true or fake. Which in my view leaves either malice or delusion motivating those pushing on regardless.

Thanks to the internet i had the possibility to speak with people holding despicable views, be it nazis or thanks to /r/syriancivilwar even interviews with ISIS supporters. Please really think about the fact that i am still more worried about people with your set of believes.

This is truly dangerous, especially because people tell themselves they do it for the "right reasons". Its what makes it such a horrible trap. Its an easy narrative to fall for and once you are in you left reality in favor of the group narrative. And while other extremist groups use the same mechanisms, this one is a lot more palpable on first view. After all, who would be against no more misinformation? Overlooking the horrible and costly insight of the last 100 years and more that just as running an economy, this isnt a trivial task you can just dictate, even if you really want to. Especially since running the economy would be trivial in comparison.

For the sake of a livable future, please stop before you doom us all.

edit: sorry for the addition 30 minute in

[uxcolumbo]

Not sure you noticed - but your reply is to a new contributor to this discussion.

I agree - we shouldn't ban information, same as not cancelling people into oblivion, e.g. for jokes they made 10 years ago.

But /u/krapp made a valid point... "Misinformation is viral, information is not." ... or it seems to be that way.

There should be consequences for lying and spreading misinformation, esp if you have a large platform and your decisions will impact millions of people.

And my question prior... what do you think can be done to stop people like Trump rise to power - how can this system weed out narcissistic and self-serving people who don't care about progress or improving society. With those people in power long enough, we will eventually have a system where our freedoms will be taken away.

[cf141q5325]

> Not sure you noticed - but your reply is to a new contributor to this discussion.

Yes, i hope you didnt thought this applied to yourself, far from it. I also jumped in a few posts ago on a conversation you had with somebody else.

I also didnt want to imply that missinformation spreading viraly wasnt a problem. Its just not fixable with authoritarian measures and the problem goes far deeper then "just" liberties. The problem is that any attempt to ban the sharing of information means you need a means to accurately determine what is wrong or incomplete information (jumping over the whole problem of miss-/diss/mal-information and true information without context to keep the post short) without the ability to challenge errors. By attempting to ban information you are interfering in your reality finding process. Doing this is extremely dangerous due to the inability to judge implications of errors and such errors being extremely profitable. Its a truly horrible idea, no matter how nice solving the problem of spreading missinformation (while actually being impossible) sounds. Its the patching out of a vital safety check without which you loose your ability to error-correct. As everywhere, without a means to error correct, all the problems such an approach allows for already exist, time just hasnt caught up.

I think this is a vital point people overlook. Its not a moral argument, totalitarianism isnt just horrible, it does not work. Its a process that leads to the creation of errors in thinking, dismantles the means to error correct and breeds corruption. Its groups of idiots moving forward while ignoring the consequences, encouraged by socio/psychopaths profiting off such movements temporarily at the cost of long term problems it creates.

>And my question prior... what do you think can be done to stop people like Trump rise to power

I mentioned it at the end of my first post, i think the solution is as old as time and as with everything technology makes them more solveable. You cant fix stupidity centrally, its a decentralized problem for which a centralized solution would require totalitarian perfection due to loosing the ability to error-correct.

So its down to everyone to have a honest conversation about how stupid they are on individual questions and whether they are emotionally mature enough to have that conversation without becoming cynical. So figuring out where your views are wrong, or incomplete, where you are acting ideologically or are just reacting to a frame. Instead of attempting to get rid of miss-information you focus on figuring out where you can say with a high degree of certainty, and strict requirements for falsifiability what is likely true. So what is non-missinfornation, approximating base-reality from which we then can have meaningful conversations. Since we make the effort to communicate, we clearly decided on cooperation instead of conflict. So lets work on making that more productive, after all there is a core question here. Are you actually interested in being right or do you just take pleasure from feeling right? If its the later, know that reality is a bitch that will win every time over your feelings. Clinging on regardless is how being stupid looks from the perspective of a stupid person. Which we all are sometimes. Which cognitive biases trick us into ignoring or brushing aside.

I think this is a task where tooling can help and where we can give a hand to other people in the process. Talk to people meaningfully, think steelmening instead of strawmaning. You might be missing a perspective somebody else overcorrected for. Almost none of the issues are one dimensional, its all spectrums you cant overcorrect on without being just as wrong as before. Understand how people came to a conclusion and show up errors instead of regurgitating your own views. As this is obviously difficult (take this from the experience of a seasoned idiot) its clear why we havent "solved" it yet. But i believe it is something technology can help us with. And cooperative decentralized solutions are still a lot more solvable then the insane idea of trying to dictate reality.

It would also help with the old star trek question of where technology will move towards. Will we manage to create a world in which technologies are useful tools or are we headed for becoming clogs in a malfunctioning machine we dont understand and cant control?

This problem is hard to fix because everyone believes they themselves are not an idiot, everyone else is. Thats an error caused by cognitive biases. But one were we can help each other and develop tooling to achieve better results all around. I suspect there will be massive payoffs once we just agree on trying to be less stupid and meaning well, even just for the benefit of a less shit future for yourself.