[fatcat500]

Interesting how our leaders see their role not as representing our interests, but in shaping our interests. There exists an entire subject in political science dealing with how to increase compliance with the schemes of regulators (see Nudge Theory).

The mistake they make is a classic short-run vs. long-run miscalculation. In the short-run, you can get away with these kinds of tactics to increase compliance. For example, running talking points on the MSM works well. They run the talking points and in the next days, everyone is parroting what they heard on the news, as if it's their own views.

But in the long-run, people will become more familiar with these tactics, such that they will become less effective (e.g. waning trust in the media). They are burning through the cultural & social capital which sustain these institutions (like the MSM or academia), and don't realize that once it runs out, they will no longer have these levers and buttons at their disposal.

At that point, the only way to increase compliance is with force. And once you go down that road, it becomes extremely clear to those wielding that force, just how precarious their situation is (e.g. Maduro assassination attempts). That is how totalitarianism takes root, fear of the people.

[hulitu]

> Interesting how our leaders see their role not as representing our interests, but in shaping our interests.

Someone called it "Manufacturing consent". I think this name describes it pretty good.

What these politicians do not seem to underestand is that those law may turn against them at a later point in time.

[ugurnot]

"Manifacturing Consent" is a book written by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky. They discuss the propaganda model of communication in much broader sense.

[dekken_]

Don't forget about

> "The Engineering of Consent" is an essay by Edward Bernays first published in 1947,

[RobotToaster]

"Inventing Reality" by Michael Parenti is another book on the subject.

[wahnfrieden]

barthes mythologies

[gverrilla]

The Society of the Spectacle, Guy Debord

[germinalphrase]

“Crystallizing Public Opinion” (1923) is another important Bernays text.

[andrepd]

And he surely knows what he is talking about.

[fwungy]

The Century of Self is a BBC documentary about Bernays and his propaganda models. It's quite good and available on yt.

[JakeAl]

Watch everything by Adam Curtis. Century of the Self, The Trap and The Power of Nightmares specifically.

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0193231/

[stubish]

Suspiciously absent from every streaming service over here. But at least Century of the Self has been uploaded to Youtube.

[hackandthink]

"Die vierte Gewalt – Wie Mehrheitsmeinung gemacht wird, auch wenn sie keine ist"

https://www.fischerverlage.de/buch/richard-david-precht-hara...

[sveme]

Richard David Precht is a poor caricature of a French public intellectual figure and loves to create outrage to stay relevant. He lives off the same mainstream media that he criticizes.

[hackandthink]

Precht doesn't seem particularly French to me. He is a solid craftsman. I associate French intellectuals more with esprit and a certain craziness.

His earlier books had a slightly penetrating American style, popular science peppered with human interest stories.

Precht, however, is willing to make himself unpopular, but he is also one of the few intellectuals who can afford to do so. Many media workers probably don't like to read how strong the pressure to conform is, they prefer to suppress that.

[vkou]

> What these politicians do not seem to underestand is that those law may turn against them at a later point in time.

Those laws are incredibly unlikely to be turned against elites and former elites, and if a situation[1] ever arose where they would be, a lack of these laws on the books would not save them.

Populist uprisings are about the only things that elites are scared of, and these kinds of laws help prevent them[2].

[1] That kind of situation would require a complete and utter breakdown of the elite social contract. Things would have to get unrecognizably bad before we are at that point.

[2] Ever notice how, say, pro-gun politicians tend to want guns to be everywhere except near them? As a class, they aren't interested in dealing with the consequences of their policies.

[lockhouse]

> Ever notice how, say, pro-gun politicians tend to want guns to be everywhere except near them? As a class, they aren't interested in dealing with the consequences of their policies.

I’ve also noticed that anti-gun politicians tend to have armed security teams with them.

I’m not giving up my guns until they do.

[vkou]

You're assuming that your guns will protect you from random acts of gun violence, which they won't. It's why those politicians have security teams, as opposed to personal guns. What they are doing is completely rational in a country where it happens, frequently.

Unlike their counterparts, they are actually trying to solve the problem, instead of hypocritically exacerbating it.

If you're going to hold someone accountable, why not make your support of the pro-gun ones conditional on them providing you with a security team?

[lockhouse]

> You're assuming that your guns will protect you from random acts of gun violence, which they won't.

You’re assuming gun control laws will protect you from random acts of gun violence, which they won’t. Criminals get their hands on guns they can’t legally possess every day. There are more than enough gun control laws on the books and most Americans aren’t voluntarily turning theirs in no matter what the law says.

You’re also making the false assumption that I only support the personal right to bear arms for self defense against criminals. I also support it to defend against tyranny, which to me is far more likely to be a threat than a random act of gun violence.

[vkou]

> You’re assuming gun control laws will protect you from random acts of gun violence, which they won’t.

"No way to prevent this", says only nation where this regularly happens.

> Criminals get their hands on guns they can’t legally possess every day.

They get their hands on guns because the country is flooded with them. Because people in states with next to no private sale restrictions sell guns to them. Because people aren't held liable for selling a gun without running a background check.

Not to mention all the gun violence performed by 'law-abiding gun owners'. (Who, after performing it, are, of course, labeled criminals.)

> There are more than enough gun control laws on the books

In some states. They get flooded by illegal guns from neighboring states, which have no such controls.

> I also support it to defend against tyranny, which to me is far more likely to be a threat than a random act of gun violence.

Why is it, then, that the militias and their friends seem to roll out to defend tyranny, not oppose it? Why are the 2A advocates deafeningly silent on police killing POC in their homes/vehicles? Why does a cop thinking that 'He may have had a gun' a death sentence for the person they are apprehending? Why does this group intersect so much with the Jan 6 attempt to overthrow the results of an election?

I hear 'guns will protect us from tyrrany' a lot, but in practice, I see the opposite.

[andromeduck]

Anti gun politicians are also known to make personal exceptions.

[PeterisP]

On the other hand, technical capabilities are highly likely to be used against elites and former elites; there often are situations where a country's police or intelligence communities are opposed to some political parties, so if there are backdoors in everyone's (including politicians) communications, they should rightly fear that their phones will be abused by their political opponents.

[nickstinemates]

Today it is their problem. Tomorrow it's someone else's. That's basically how the US has been operating for at least my lifetime.

[marcosdumay]

> What these politicians do not seem to underestand is that those law may turn against them at a later point in time.

They have a belief that they will be The Law up to the end of their lives. One very well grounded on reality.

[8n4vidtmkvmk]

or instantly. politicians are people and I'm pretty sure they use phones. if a backdoor is added it will almost instantly be used against them I'm sure. even well meaning apps are hacked.

[lockhouse]

This is where you’re wrong. Inconvenient rules don’t apply to them. They can engage in insider training and enrich themselves. They can disarm the public while they are protected by armed security. They will lay our secrets bare while maintaining theirs.

They will use national security as an excuse to keep their encryption while taking ours away.

[quantum_state]

Progressively… politician has become the new used-car-salesman as a profession …

[zoklet-enjoyer]

It's a moral obligation to do this to those who impose restrictions like this on the public.

[csomar]

oh they understand that. They are just scheming to make sure they are on the right side. Politicians are hated all around but most of the time, they are people who are willing to take massive personal risks.

[jruohonen]

Securitization is a common one too.

[neo_matrix]

The term "Manufacturing consent" was coined by Noam Chomsky, American philosopher.

[herbstein]

It wasn't. Noam Chomsky readily acknowledges that it was coined by Walter Lippmann in 1922's "Public Opinion".

[acqq]

Indeed it can be found in the book "Public Opinion" (1921) by Lippman:

https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/6456/pg6456.txt

[BoxOfRain]

For a case study in this phenomenon the UK made use of nudge theory during the covid pandemic and I think one of the outcomes is some people distrusting the organs of state in a way they didn't before. I think people remember the 'look them in the eyes' campaign along with other 'nudges' and associate it with a time they not only felt miserable and scared but also felt taken for mugs by the very politicians who were trying to increase compliance when things like Partygate and shady government contracts to friends of ministers came to light.

I think anything that's not completely candid with the public is eventually seen as dishonest whether rightly or wrongly. Personally I think no matter how well-intended it's hard to see nudge theory as anything other than 'shady behavioural psychology tactics to induce compliance with government policy without personal consent or a democratic mandate' which is something I believe fundamentally breaks the social contract.

[2-718-281-828]

> Interesting how our leaders see their role not as representing our interests, but in shaping our interests.

I mean that's what "leader" means at the end of the day. Of course, though, leader isn't the only way to refer to politicians. In German leader translates literally to Führer ... which isn't really used since the ultimate demise of Herr Schickelgruber. We also use "Repräsentant" whose English counterpart is obvious. Also some people believe that politicians are supposed to know what's going on and what to do - even me - question is where a line is crossed.

> But in the long-run, people will become more familiar with these tactics, such that they will become less effective

I doubt that given those tactics have been continuously applied since ever.

> e.g. waning trust in the media

yes, but the result is simply new media channels and outlets which are supposedly more trustworthy. those abusive politicians we are talking about here will play those media entities like an instrument and simply switch where ever they expect to get the most attention.

> They are burning through the cultural & social capital which sustain these institutions (like the MSM or academia), and don't realize that once it runs out, they will no longer have these levers and buttons at their disposal.

They won't need those levers and button anymore. Abusive power hungry politicians belong to an elite whose end game is a totalitarian state for them to parasitize. At that point everybody has to believe or at least shut up ... or men will come and take them away.

> At that point, the only way to increase compliance is with force.

Exactly.

> And once you go down that road, it becomes extremely clear to those wielding that force, just how precarious their situation is (e.g. Maduro assassination attempts).

One can argue that most totalitarian states end badly but that can take a while. Criminals also do criminal things despite bleak prospects. One might argue they are statistically stupid for being criminal just to have a good time for a while. But that's just your sane point of view. For people who _are_ of criminal mindset (and I consider politicians with totalitarian inclination effectively to that group) really enjoy their life style.

> That is how totalitarianism takes root, fear of the people.

This and fear of the goverment.

[WarOnPrivacy]

>> Interesting how our leaders see their role not as representing our interests, but in shaping our interests.

> I mean that's what "leader" means at the end of the day.

I disagree with this sentence.

Many minor leadership positions and a generation of parenting taught me that leadership is an act of service. My purpose is to help coordinate the fulfillment of others' needs. If I ever forget that, I will have lost my way.

[fwungy]

Historically once people recognize the media is not trustworthy they discount it. You see this in the former USSR countries. People don't take the media seriously like they do in the west.

[kmeisthax]

Yes, and this is very exploitable by dictators and those wanting to become such. If you can't get people to buy into your propaganda paper you can at least get them to buy into nothing at all, detach themselves from any notion of objective reality, and accept all complicity with whatever war crimes the regime wishes you to commit.

The most dangerous situation for a dictator is to be faced with multiple independent and competing sources of truth that all disagree with you, because they will propagandize your subjects away from you quite quickly.

[midoridensha]

>You see this in the former USSR countries. People don't take the media seriously like they do in the west.

They certainly do in Russia. People there (esp. older people) absolutely believe all the propaganda that's fed to them about the war in Ukraine by Russian state-owned media.

[WeylandYutani]

Lol explain Fox news.

[carimura]

Martin Gurri in The Revolt of the Public had a pretty good explanation of this. Leaders used to be the gatekeepers of information, and thus maintained control. Now the Internet has lifted the curtain and opened the floodgates of information, causing a loss of control, thus pushing many leaders to double down on attempts at controlling the narrative. When control gets too strong, we see revolts.

[jruohonen]

I too love Gurri, but I don't think this is at all what he is saying. The Internet and particularly the social media have certainly something to do with it, but to my understanding he is talking about the erosion of knowledge-creation and the collapse of "elites". (Note also that everyone in this forum probably belongs to the latter category in a way or another.) His takes correlate with those from political scientists who talk about institutional decay and such things.

[carimura]

In his own words:

> And the legitimacy of that model [traditional institutions] absolutely depends on having a semi-monopoly over information in every domain, which they had in the 20th century. There was no internet and there was a fairly limited number of information sources for the public. So our ruling institutions had authority because they had a very valuable commodity: information. [1]

https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/22301496/martin-gurri-the...

[thatguy0900]

I worry that the advent of an entirely mechanized military with robot infantry will be the end of the leaders ever being in a precarious situation

[staunton]

I really don't think that's necessary. So far there has never been a lack of people willing to commit atrocities when ordered to under the right conditions.

[mrburnssama]

We saw a master class of this during the last 3 years of the "pandemic".

I find it frightening how western liberal countries are becoming more and more like China, possibly in an attempt to beat them.

[davidjones332]

Not quite, communism is both china and american woke morality. The same force is shaping and controlling both china and usa.

[hayst4ck]

> but in shaping our interests.

The more educated you are, the more you realize people don't know that much. If everyone could see the consequences of their beliefs and actions, governments wouldn't need to exist. Public education/shaping interests can be a good thing.

Shaping someone's opinion of sugary food or smoking cigarettes, or the negative effects of various drugs or any other number of things can be good. Informing the public of foreign adversaries fomenting and supporting fascism via bot networks promoting hatred and division is a national security issue. Good faith information from places of intellectual authority is positive for society.

The problem is not the government shaping interests, the problem is who is the government shaping interests for.

In a democracy supposedly the government acts on behalf of the people, but we do not live in a democracy, the west is largely plutocratic. Governments represent billionaires (not literally billionaires, but the wealthy). That's why our government promotes socialism for the rich and capitalism for the poor. Because the government works on behalf of those with money.

This is not a casual statement. This is the product of our voting system. Before anyone gets to vote on any candidates, candidates must fund raise to win a primary. Before any person votes on candidates, money votes on candidates. So our government is responsive to money, because money votes first.

So it is not the government shaping interests, but the government using force on behalf of the wealthy that is problematic.

All political roads lead to a central problem: The rich are too rich and therefore cannot be bound by law and are able to coerce the government to act on their behalf.

[account42]

The more educated you think you are, the more you look down on people and deny their ability to think for themselves.

Informing people of facts is different from shaping opinions - the former tries to give people what they need to make their own decisions while the latter starts out with a conclusion and seeks to make the general public arrive at it too. Manufacturing consent is as much about omitting information or outright preventing it from spreading as it is about providing information that would support your conclusion.

Sugary food, smoking cigarettes, and legal drugs are interesting examples here because there is a third party that benefits from them and is actually engaging in similar tactics to shape the public's consent. Perhaps the most obvious part of this is advertisement. Ideally the government would recognize this and severly limit how corporations can manipulate people.

I do agree with your point that the root cause of all of this is that the government is representing the people as you would expect from an ideal democracy.

[majormajor]

Most people don't like littering and pollution. So we've passed laws against it.

Yet if you don't have any trashcans or other ways of disposing waste around, and you don't have much social pressure against it, many people will eventually leave their waste behind somewhere.

Much better to nudge them towards complying in specific with the laws that they want in general

[uoaei]

That's not even nudging, that's just providing a necessary option. There is no coercion between "I want to throw something away" and "There's a trash can on the curb".

[majormajor]

"Not providing the option very frequently" is pretty indistinguishable to me from "nudging in the wrong direction"...

but here's a much more explicit nudge example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_Mess_with_Texas

[uoaei]

You're just trying to redefine the concept of the nudge. What a nudge is, really, is a thing whose purpose is to influence a choice, not to constrain it so that there is no choice.

[machina_ex_deus]

Their role is neither representing nor shaping interests.

Their role is managing while being accountable. And doing said managing by the least amount of coercion and the maximal amount of convincing.

There's no such thing as "represent". It's a political dead end meant to draw votes and political power to those who are presented as "representing" the current social division magnified by the media, whether it's race, religion, or the usual liberal conservative division.

You're supposed to hold them accountable even and especially if it goes against your "representation" or interests. But so long as the majority are playing the "representation" politics meta game, there's no hope for accountability.

[ajsnigrutin]

> The mistake they make is a classic short-run vs. long-run miscalculation. In the short-run, you can get away with these kinds of tactics to increase compliance.

...

> But in the long-run, people will become more familiar with these tactics, such that they will become less effective (e.g. waning trust in the media).

I though that too ~20 years ago. I live in a small country with elections every few years (usually less than the full term of the government) and a "one supposedly rightwing party" vs. "a bunch of supposedly left wing parties"... the mix of left wing parties also slowly turned to "a new face + a bunch of old parties" recently.

Every pre-election period we get a bunch of people advocating online and in person, that if "party X" got elected, they'd solve the "problem Y", because they can do it, and "current party" is blocking them... somehow those same people (and not just fresh 18yo going for their first election) forget, that party X has been in the government 3 years ago, and the government before that, and before that, and that the "problem Y" has existed for atleast 20 years (healthcare, housing,...), and they did nothing.

People either forget or are gaslighted by the media.

> assassination attempts

This happens when problems get unsolved and worse and worse for years... bad healthcare, especially mental health, depression, drugs, save 10k, but the apartment you wanted is now 30k more expensive, average rent higher than average pension, etc., create more and more people with nothing left to lose.

[jameshart]

> There exists an entire subject in political science dealing with how to increase compliance with the schemes of regulators (see Nudge Theory).

It’s a very cynical view of the potential for human government that believes there is no way that the democratic will of the people affects what goals ‘regulators’ pursue.

Consider the possibility perhaps that the point of government is to overcome the prisoner’s dilemma and move people into a better collective equilibrium than they will naturally settle into. Nudges can be a useful tool for creating better outcomes for everyone.

In theory, at least.

[blitz_skull]

I read this as “The government’s role is to nudge people into what the government determines is better than the people’s natural inclination.”

Did I understand that correctly? If I did, I don’t think anyone would disagree… in theory. The problem is there’s no standard way to measure and certainly no agreement on what that collective equilibrium should be.

Until we figure that out—no thanks. I’ll take my naturally not-as-optimized freedom without the government’s input.

[13415]

I've had similar criticisms to nudging, that it's basically just the same as advertising exploiting human biases, and that it's not really conducive to insight and a better political culture. It is kind of paternalistic. However, most real-world applications of nudging I've seen were uncontroversially beneficial. As a typical example, markings on roads can be spaced and designed in ways that make drivers slow down in danger zones, thereby reducing accidents. I've been to a number of talks about nudging over the years and know people working in that area, and have never seen an example where the term was used for "shaping public opinions", let alone shaping political opinions.

[pintxo]

Guess the problem is, there is a whole other group of parties how are manipulating us to act towards their interests. And I would say it’s clear that they are winning (see for example obesity, opioids).

So I don’t think we should handle this as a yes no question.

[ClumsyPilot]

Your point of view falls apart when crime enters the picture.

Criminal law is just another form of regulation. Somehow we decided that taking cocaine is a crime. And that pedophiles are criminals. And then government tries to ensure compliance with criminal law.

People generally agree that it is fit and proper for government to act, through education and other means, to ensure most people aren't criminals.

You might say: "well criminal law is different - but is it?

Someone spent 8 years in jail for sending lobster in an incorrect container. Not a live lobster, a dead one.

[AlecSchueler]

I think the difference is criminal law seeks compliance with the laws as they are, but this manufacturing of consent seeks compliance on bills when the elecorate may well note vote in their favour otherwise. Does that make sense? In one case they do what the public has told them and in the other they're telling the public what to do. As public servants the first should be acceptable but the latter now.

[majormajor]

Not everyone wants to follow criminal laws 100% of the time.

If someone wants to punch you in the face just how "optimized" do you want their freedom to do so, without legal consequences, be? Aka how many "nudges" should be in place to make that harder to get away with? If you don't want to get punched, you want people to think there'd be consequences, that bystanders would tell on them, etc. All those "nudges" need to be stronger than the "snitches get stitches" and similar nudges from the other side.

[ClumsyPilot]

I am not sure the difference is as real as it seems

No-one specifically voted for the patriot act, no one was elected on promices of passing it, yet it became law.

In Britain they are considering a law to ban drivers under 25 from carrying any children in the car. Noone has ever voted for this.

https://www.fleetnews.co.uk/news/company-car-tax-and-legisla...

[AlecSchueler]

Isn't that because we're manufacturing consent?

[WarOnPrivacy]

> Someone spent 8 years in jail for sending lobster in an incorrect container. Not a live lobster, a dead one.

I feel this isn't a terrific example as it doesn't seem to be true.

"The notion the case was about packaging is incorrect,' [the prosecutor] said. 'Packaging was the means by which the crime was concealed. It was the mechanism to conceal the extent of overharvesting."

ref: https://web.archive.org/web/20210603000400/https://www.eenew...

US Gov's overzealous prosecution of Aaron Swartz on behalf of major publishers (and major donors) might work better. That involves creating law and the exercise of gov power, both of which were granted to the copyright interests behind influential lobbyists.

[blitz_skull]

Eh, not really. Criminal law is by-and-large generally consented upon.

A vast majority of the population agrees that sexually violating a child is morally reprehensible and fit for a wide range of punishments. And that’s been a social standard for most of the world, for a REALLY long time.

I’m not sure about the number of people who agree or disagree with cocaine being illegal. But everyone knows it’s self-destructive behavior that can easily boil into destructive behavior for others. Therefore, most people I know understand why it’s illegal and agree with it.

So my original point still stands. It’s largely not-optimized, and largely consented upon on the large points that matter concerning violence and preservation of life. That doesn’t make it without flaws which, by nature makes it unoptimized.

[csomar]

It’s roughly the same thing with currency. The trick is to call it modern monetary theory instead of the printing press. of course, who doesn’t want modern?

But surely it can only run so long. The problem is that most people believe that their countries can’t fall into authoritarianism because they are a democracy.

[keester]

I agree with you, but nudging can be a good thing if it's meritorious. Lincoln, for instance, had to manipulate people to some extent to achieve his goal of emancipation.

Similarly, I'd say some nudging is in order to tackle the obesity epidemic in the US and other places.

[chris123]

Would be great if it's was that simple, but for every person who wakes up, two younglings replace him. It's a cycle from birth to "education" to wokester to actually opportunity your eyes. Welcome to the real world, Neo.

[midoridensha]

>Interesting how our leaders see their role not as representing our interests, but in shaping our interests.

That's the very definition of "leader". It's exactly what leaders are supposed to do: "lead". They're supposed to have a vision, and get other people to follow them to achieve that vision.

What you're advocating for is a "manager" or an "administrator", not a "leader".

[2devnull]

I had a nice dialog with GPT (davinci) that made me reconsider very similar reticence I felt about nudging. I think nudges can be done in ways that are transparent, ethical and long run net positive. But clearly it’s a very complicated subject.

[heliodor]

You should call them representatives then. Leaders lead.

[frozencell]

« Complotist! »

[ihatepython]

> Interesting how our leaders see their role not as representing our interests, but in shaping our interests.

Not in shaping our interests, but the interests of the 'deplorables', the people who disagree and who they see as beneath them.

[Arnt]

Well, our leaders serve two goals: The voters' will and the fairness of the law.

Nothing requires to vox populi of some issue to agree with its own opinion of five minutes ago, or its own current opinion in a similar issue. Your opinion as voter can be as fickle as it pleases you. The law requires fairness, though, and our leaders are the unfortunates whose job it is to tell the voters about the longer-term principles and try to shape people's opinions. To make them less fickle and more principled.

Now, which principle? I don't mind if a particular politician or party tries to shape voters' opinions around the principles in that politician's or party's program.