The era of personal, scientific, and effective psychological operations is coming. The instruments won’t be much harder to operate than an Arduino by the end of this decade.
“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. ...We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. ...In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons...who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.”
- Edward Bernays, Propaganda
> Propaganda, an influential book written by Edward L. Bernays in 1928, incorporated the literature from social science and psychological manipulation into an examination of the techniques of public communication.
> ..Bernays' thesis is that "invisible" people who create knowledge and propaganda rule over the masses, with a monopoly on the power to shape thoughts, values, and citizen response. "Engineering consent" of the masses would be vital for the survival of democracy.
> ..He asserts that the emotional response inherently present in propaganda limits the audience's choices by creating a binary mentality, which can result in quicker, more enthused responses.
> ..Public relations scholar Curt Olsen argues that the public largely accepted Bernays' "sunny" view of propaganda, an acceptance eroded by fascism in the World War II era. Olsen also argues that Bernays's skill with language allowed terms such as "education" to subtly replace darker concepts such as "indoctrination."
> ..Writers such as Marvin Olasky justify Bernays as killing democracy in order to save it. In this way, the presence of an elite, faceless persuasion constituted the only plausible way to prevent authoritarian control.
> His techniques are now staples for public image creation and political campaigns.
But not by machines procedurally. To my understanding, actually programming humans is still a science fiction. We’re dosing people with substances and creatively composing propaganda texts for that to limited effects. It’s not as sophisticated, repeatable, automated, approachable as, say, neural network training process.
(And I hope I’d be able to one day stare at rainbow mosaic for 30 minutes and be fluent in Chinese)
I'm not entirely sure what purpose bombarding politicians with ChatGPT emails is if their response is simply to run ChatGPT to create automated replies.