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The New Mind Control – The internet has spawned subtle forms of influence

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Re: The New Mind Control – The internet has spawned subtle forms of influence

#41

Post by kbenson »

md224 wrote: post #22
pcmaffey wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The library is a catalog of books produced by publishers for the sake of making money. Your example doesn't hold weight, as there is no "purity of information". Even your own insights are filtered through the perspective of your personal influence, your wants, your desires, your history, etc. Google is no different. The organic search results are largely from commercial, or at a minimum, self-interested sources. That…

I'm just saying I wish we could have only organic results. Why should people with more money have more of a presence online? Money shouldn't be able to buy speech. The Internet should not be a place where those with more money get to cut the line in front of those with less. Let PageRank sort it out. Also, what's this about my example not holding weight because "information purity" doesn't exist? It's not about the i…

Power buys presence. Whether that power is national and the presence armed excursions, or the power is political and the presence is your ideas being heard from your pulpit. Money is just a proxy for other types of power. This has never changed.

Re: The New Mind Control – The internet has spawned subtle forms of influence

#42

Post by pcmaffey »

md224 wrote: post #22
pcmaffey wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The library is a catalog of books produced by publishers for the sake of making money. Your example doesn't hold weight, as there is no "purity of information". Even your own insights are filtered through the perspective of your personal influence, your wants, your desires, your history, etc. Google is no different. The organic search results are largely from commercial, or at a minimum, self-interested sources. That…

I'm just saying I wish we could have only organic results. Why should people with more money have more of a presence online? Money shouldn't be able to buy speech. The Internet should not be a place where those with more money get to cut the line in front of those with less. Let PageRank sort it out. Also, what's this about my example not holding weight because "information purity" doesn't exist? It's not about the i…

Money is absolutely part of the formulation of relevance. It's just not the whole equation. Nor is word-matching (altavista), nor is popularity (google). But each is relevant.

Someone (advertiser) is paying money because they believe they have information relevant to you. How is that categorically different than the blogger/webmaster who's paying money (time/hosting) because they believe they have information relevant to you?

All information has a cost associated with it. And that cost bears some significance on the value of the information. Measuring and weighing that significance relative to other inputs is the beauty of an effective system.

Re: The New Mind Control – The internet has spawned subtle forms of influence

#43

Post by Udik »

mtgx wrote: post #26
guelo wrote: post #18

This is a really interesting study but it's hard for me to believe in the conspiracy theory that the hundreds of engineers that work on Google Search would be OK implementing a complicated vote manipulation algorithm and keeping it secret. But it's possible, criminal conspiracies involving many people seem to happen regularly in the financial industry.

I'm not sure it would happen in such an obvious way. It would probably happen in a way that "makes sense" for most of those people, and not from a "let's manipulate the votes" perspective. I'll give an example. The establishment corporate media is already biased. That much has been clear this election (although it's been happening for many years or even decades). The Internet is "pretty free" right now, and people ca…

It's the old problem that is also evident in public (as in state-owned) tv broadcasting. Should the news programs and journalists take sides and endorse the viewpoint that they believe best reflects facts? Or should they just report the various viewpoints that are present in society regardless of their value?

In the first case, you run the risk of having a journalist using a public resource to advance his own point of view. In the second case you just end up being an echo chamber for what the politicians (who each represent a share of public opinion) want to say. Moreover, if you adopt the second approach, how much space do you give to each opinion, to avoid over or under-representing some? Proportional to the share of votes of the politician expressing it?

I'm not saying there is a solution. But the idea that the value of opinions can be established objectively- or even determined by an algorithm- is a bit naive.

Re: The New Mind Control – The internet has spawned subtle forms of influence

#44

Post by oldmanjay »

ashurbanipal wrote: post #32

Hold on, so we call it "Mind Control" when Google shifts our preferences toward one of two pre-selected choices? What do we call the state of the world that leaves us with only 2 pre-selected choices who happen to agree on 90%+ of all policies?

You call it "a freshly plowed field ripe for planting Donald J Trump"

If you are inclined to speak in metaphors, that is.

Re: The New Mind Control – The internet has spawned subtle forms of influence

#45

Post by aapierce »

pessimizer wrote: post #39
pcmaffey wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The library is a catalog of books produced by publishers for the sake of making money. Your example doesn't hold weight, as there is no "purity of information". Even your own insights are filtered through the perspective of your personal influence, your wants, your desires, your history, etc. Google is no different. The organic search results are largely from commercial, or at a minimum, self-interested sources. That…

The library doesn't make money through directing you to particular books or sell publishers your reading habits.

That's because the library is funded by taxpayers – it doesn't need the money.

How would you feel about a government-sponsored search engine? I think China has one of those.

Re: The New Mind Control – The internet has spawned subtle forms of influence

#46

Post by hotcool »

I designed supraliminal posters[1] to counter the covert forms of persuasion like Low Attention Processing marketing[2]. I definitely find them helpful, especially for meditation.

[1] http://zenpusher.com

[2] http://www.neurosciencemarketing.com/blog/articles/low-atten...

Re: The New Mind Control – The internet has spawned subtle forms of influence

#47

Post by Mindless2112 »

Google doesn't need to use search results to manipulate voting behavior -- they have Google Now.

Google Now currently displays cards to remind people to vote on voting day. Maybe it just happens to be more likely to show up for people that have been profiled as likely to vote for Google's favored candidate.

Re: The New Mind Control – The internet has spawned subtle forms of influence

#48

Post by return0 »

md224 wrote: post #9

I have made this case before, but I will make it again. The Internet is the largest information system in the world, and Google is the primary portal into that information system. Google's "organic" results are accompanied by AdWords results, which are based on a mixture of bid price and relevance. These ads are marked with a small "Ad" label that many people miss, and even those who know they're ads can't really "un…

> which have been biased by money. How does anyone consider this ethical?

Money itself is just a tool, it cant be (un)ethical. Best to focus on the human agents and incentives.

> should not be biased by monetary influence.

Influence will exist because it's part of human nature. Take away monetary incentives and you 'll have political influence, religious influence etc. We 've learned that from history.

Re: The New Mind Control – The internet has spawned subtle forms of influence

#49

Post by ljk »

guelo wrote: post #18

This is a really interesting study but it's hard for me to believe in the conspiracy theory that the hundreds of engineers that work on Google Search would be OK implementing a complicated vote manipulation algorithm and keeping it secret. But it's possible, criminal conspiracies involving many people seem to happen regularly in the financial industry.

Engineers work on top-secret weapons all the time though...

Re: The New Mind Control – The internet has spawned subtle forms of influence

#50

Post by x5n1 »

return0 wrote: post #48
md224 wrote: post #9

I have made this case before, but I will make it again. The Internet is the largest information system in the world, and Google is the primary portal into that information system. Google's "organic" results are accompanied by AdWords results, which are based on a mixture of bid price and relevance. These ads are marked with a small "Ad" label that many people miss, and even those who know they're ads can't really "un…

> which have been biased by money. How does anyone consider this ethical? Money itself is just a tool, it cant be (un)ethical. Best to focus on the human agents and incentives. > should not be biased by monetary influence. Influence will exist because it's part of human nature. Take away monetary incentives and you 'll have political influence, religious influence etc. We 've learned that from history.

Money is not just a tool. I think it would be possible to make the case that money as it interacts with our systems is inherently unethical in that it forces unethical behavior from agents trying to maximize their utility. And the legal system that we have built around it only amplifies this behavior.
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